Chapter Twenty Five: Second Chances
River Jenkins

Sophia was staring right through me even as I started to shake her shoulders to try and get a reaction out of her, but it was like I was talking to a brick wall. She was completely unresponsive and she barely blinked when her eyes started to fill with unshed tears. Her eyes were also starting to redden a lot due to the lack of blinking.

She keeps muttering something under her breath, something I couldn’t quite understand but whatever she was saying made more tears well up inside her eyes and her chin started to quiver more.

I flick my fingers in front of her face, but that didn’t work either.

She was just…gone.

It was a look I knew so well.

Her eyes were distant, she was muttering something under her breath and tears were welling up inside of her eyes…

Sophia was stuck inside of her own mind right now, and once someone was locked inside of their own minds, it was going to be hard getting them out.

I need to save her before she’s stuck in her own mind forever.

I get up from my crouched position, and jog to the reception area of the hospital to see if there was anyone on hand who would be able to help Sophia to get out of the shock she was in, but when I neared the station, everyone was busy either talking on phones, or rushing to help people who needed help more than we did.

It was a madhouse.

“Hello?” I ask, trying to grab someone’s, anyone’s attention. “I need help.”

Nothing. No one pays me even the slightest of attention.

I sigh loudly, running my fingers through my blond hair. I turn around to go back where Sophia was now cradling her knees to her chest, crying even louder.

Her cheeks were wet from tears, her eyes red-rimmed from crying so much.

It pained me to see her like this because I was just like her once, in the same position she was in and in shock after what happened to my mom and Beck, but the only difference was that she had someone who tried to comfort her, I didn’t.

I was completely alone with no one to comfort me, but just because I was alone didn’t mean that Sophia has to be alone, too.

I crouch down in front of her, my knees touching her feet as she hugged her knees to her chest, silently sobbing. I place both of my hands onto her shoulders, giving them light squeezes to show her that she wasn’t alone. “Sophia… Please come back to me.” I beg, hoping that my words would break her out of whatever trance she was in. “Sophia… She’s going to be just fine.”

“It’s all my fault.” She mutters under her breath, so softly that it was just above a whisper. “It’s all my fault. If I had just driven the car like she asked me to…” She starts to shake uncontrollably again, her tears coming out more than ever.

I shake her gently again. “Sophia… It’s not your fault.” I console her. “Heart attacks are unpredictable. You couldn’t have known that it would happen.”

She blinks a few times as if she snapped out of the trance. She sniffles and lets her cheek rest against her arm. “I was too stubborn to drive. It was all my fault.”

I shake my head, reaching my hand out toward her. “Let’s get up from the cold floor. Okay? We can talk where it’s a little warmer.” She looks at my hand without taking it. I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut tightly. “Please, Sophia.” I practically beg her. “I can get you some coffee from the cafeteria. We need to get you warmed up. You’re wearing a dress and the cold floor is going to make you sick. Please. I am begging you. Please, Sophia.”

She nods and finally takes my hand into hers.

I had to bite back a gasp because her hands were absolutely freezing, it’s like she played outside with snow without gloves. When she noticed that my hands were warmer than hers, she squeezed my hand tightly, savouring the warmth.

Once she was standing on her own and I made sure that she wasn’t going to fall over any second like she did earlier when her knees buckled and her legs caved out from underneath her, I turn to look at her.  “It’s not your fault.” I tell her, hoping that she would believe my words this time. “Your grandmother is going to be fine, and everything would be back to normal in no time at all. And I just need you to stop blaming yourself for something you didn’t have control over.”

I nearly chuckled at the irony. Here I was, telling her that she shouldn’t blame herself for her grandmother who had a heart attack and that she clearly couldn’t have known that it would happen, while I blamed myself for something my dad did. The situation was out of my control too, but yet I still blamed myself for it.

She looks at me with her tear-filled eyes and wipes her cheek with the sleeve of her jacket. “I don’t, uh, feel very good right now.” She says, swallowing hard. “I think I need to go to the bathroom.” She places her hand against her mouth.

I nod and pull her with me to the nearest bathroom I could find.

We had to look at the signs dangling from the ceiling to find a bathroom, but after a few minutes of walking down the halls, we finally found the women’s bathroom.

“There you go.” I jerk my head towards the door of the bathroom. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

Who the hell would’ve thought that I’d be the one to say those words to Sophia?

I was supposed to hate her after she tried to fish about what happened to Beck and my mom, but I was busy comforting her the most right now like we weren’t sworn enemies just a few days ago, but how could I hate someone when they had a mental breakdown moments ago after finding out that the only person they have left in their lives had a heart attack and could have died because of it?

Sophia nods, sniffles, and disappears through the bathroom door. The door clicks shut behind her and I walk to the wall across from the bathroom, not wanting anyone to think that I was trying to enter the women’s bathroom.

• • •

Sophia hasn’t come out of the bathroom yet and it has been ten minutes already.

I was still waiting outside the bathroom, leaned with my back against the pristine white walls of the hallway with the smell of antiseptic wafting through the air and burning the back of my throat until I finally decided to find Sophia.

She was obviously still in the bathroom because I doubted that she would try to escape out of the window, but what was she doing in the bathroom for so long?

I wanted to leave her alone, to respect her privacy, but then I realised that she might be in there right now, having a panic attack with difficulty breathing.

I quickly turn my head side to side, trying to see if anyone was lingering in the hallways, and when I saw or heard no one close in the proximity, I walk towards the bathroom and pushed the door open.

I make sure that the door clicks shut behind me.

Sophia was standing by the bathroom mirror with the faucet open, cold water was running out of it, but her hands were clutching the sink’s edges tightly. Her face wasn’t wet either, telling me that she didn’t splash some cold water over her face like she intended to when she first opened the faucet.

Heaven knows for how long the cold water has been running.

And Sophia... she was just staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were completely red now from crying and the shaking has returned. She wasn’t unresponsive because she noticed my footsteps and she looked at me.

“I thought you left already.” She says, her words merely above a whisper. “They always leave me when I need them the most.”

“Sophia… You need to rest. It has been a long day.” I tell her, leaning over her so I could close the running water. “You’ve been through a lot and need some sleep to calm yourself down. You’ll feel better once you have rested.”

She shakes her head slowly and repeatedly. “I don’t need to sleep. I have been through a lot today but maybe I deserve it. Maybe I deserve this pain I’m feeling. Maybe I deserve to lose everyone I have cared for in my entire life.”

She turns around to look at me. “I don’t deserve to be happy.” She says. “My mother said so. I thought she was wrong for saying that, but I realised now that maybe I deserve to feel like this for the rest of my life. The pain and the guilt.”

Fuck.

Her mother sounds like an asshole.

“You don’t deserve this pain, Sophia. Don’t tell yourself that.”

She makes a sound that almost sounded like an eternal sob, like it was struggling to come out, but she managed to compose herself. “I nearly killed two people, River. I killed one, and now the other is on the verge of dying…”

I frown at her. “What do you mean?” I ask her. “Who did you kill?”

She lifts her shoulders half-heartedly in a shrug. “It doesn’t matter. All I know is that I don’t deserve to be here. He’d still be here if it wasn’t for me. I was the cause of him dying. I caused his death. And now I might have caused my grandmother’s death too because I was too stubborn to drive the damn car.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Like what?” She asks.

“Like you want to die.”

She smiles sadly at me. “And what if I do? Surely you would be relieved—”

“Stop!” I yell, seeing her flinch at my sudden tone. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have run after you at the party. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have pulled you out of the way of that oncoming car.” I swallow hard, balling my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “Yes, I don’t like you very much at times, but to wish you dead… that’s fucking absurd, Sophia. I might be an asshole all the damn time, but I am not that dastardly to wish someone dead.”

I only wished one person dead, but she didn’t have to know that right now.

She swallows hard, processing my words. “I’m sorry. I just… I am… tired…”

I nod, unclenching my hands again.

I couldn’t be angry at her.

She was in shock, and nothing made sense to her, so being rude would only confuse her more, and it might even upset her too, so I talked in a much softer tone than I did before and told her that we needed to go to the waiting room.

She might even get a few hours of sleep there.

Once we were in the waiting room, she sits down and I sit down beside her.

“Is there anyone I can call for you?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “No. It’s just me and my grandmother.”

And your mother but by the sounds of it, you don’t exactly want her here.

• • •

Sophia was sleeping soundlessly on my shoulder. I couldn’t bring myself to move, so I let her sleep on my shoulder. It was the only time she actually was starting to calm down, so who was I to take that away from her? I let her sleep.

“Who are you?” A woman asks right when I wanted to close my eyes to sleep.

I turn my head slowly, careful not to let the movement wake Sophia up.

I see a woman in about her early forties with her hair tied into a tight bun at the top of her head, not a single strand falling to her face. There was a man behind her, probably her husband, who just had a sad smile across his mouth.

“Who are you?” I ask, frowning at them.

“We’re her parents.” The woman replies, jerking her head towards Sophia. She didn’t say that in a proud manner. She said it like she was disgusted and irked.

“You’re her mother?” I couldn’t hide the surprise or disgust in my own tone.

I didn’t know Sophia had parents until a few minutes ago.

I never saw photographs of them anywhere in her room or around Jenna’s house. And that made me think that she was living with her grandmother all this time, but if she did, wouldn’t she have enrolled into our high school sooner?

The move must have been sudden.

“I didn’t say that you could ask questions.” She says. Her tone tight, like she was talking to a co-worker of hers she didn’t like. “You can leave. You are not family, and you’re under regulations not welcome here if you are not family.”

No wonder Sophia didn’t talk about them.

Her mother’s a real damn bitch.

“Just,” I pinch the bridge of my nose again, feeling a headache coming, “let her sleep for five more minutes. She has had a rough day.”

“You are not family. I will not ask you to leave again.”

I scoff. “Where were you when your daughter was in shock? Where were you when she needed someone to comfort her? Where were you?” I lift my shoulder in a questioning shrug. “That’s right. You weren’t here when she was completely alone and needed someone to comfort her. You weren’t here. So I think I have more right to be here than you do seeing that you couldn’t even have been here for your own daughter when she needed someone the most.”

Sophia’s mother just looks at me like she was bored trying to talk to me.

I sigh, shaking my head at the woman.

I tap Sophia’s shoulder trying to wake her up. Her eyes open and she looked at me with confusion written across her face. “River? What happened?” She asks, her voice still so soft and scratchy from all the crying from earlier.

“Your parents are here.” I tell her, jerking my thumb over my shoulder.

“Oh.” She mutters, but it was more in disappointment than surprise.

“You should run before she kills you, too.” Sophia’s mother warns.

Sophia tenses up, but before she could tense up even further, I place my hand on her shoulder.  “I’ll be right outside, Sophia… if you need me.”

She nods. “Thank you, River. For everything.”

I dip my head in a quick nod and get up from the chair.

I make my way out of the hospital, but not before shooting her mother a glare.

I thought I would’ve at least gotten a thank you or something, but I don’t think I wanted one anyways coming from her mother. She didn’t look like the type of woman who meant what she said.

She was as fake as the nails on her fingers.