Gone Forever (Adam Gontier #2)

Chapter 23

Jason's POV

Bright lights. Bright white lights, burning into the back of my eye sockets with a slight pink tinge even when my eyes are closed. I groan and try to turn away from the lights but I can't, cables and tubes wrapped around me. At first, I think I've fallen asleep at the computer again and gotten cables coiled around me in my sleep, but then my memory returns to me.

A flash of the sun disappearing behind a tall lorry, its wheels moving at a speed unseen by the human eye. Then a crushing, overwhelming pain filling my entire body until I feel almost like a corpse. I'm dead. Please let me be dead. The bright lights have got to be the afterlife. It has to. Maybe it's the white-hot flames of hell, down where I belong.

"Jason, are you coming to?" 

I raise one hand over my eyes and leave it there, groaning in pain as I feel a warm liquid slowly trickling down onto my eyelid.

"You tore your stitches doing that. Put your hand back down and lie still. I know it hurts. I'll get some painkillers for you."

"Am..." I cough, dropping my hand and feeling my lungs eject themselves through my throat. "Am I... dead?"

"No. I'll be right back."

The sudden realisation hits me - I'm alive. The constant pain and echoes of regret pounding through my skull at every second of the day. Everything I've ever done wrong suddenly hits me, and at the top of the list is my latest failure: I can't even end myself right. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and shake my head, feeling slow, freezing cold tears run down the length of my cheeks.

"Jason, what's wrong? Is the pain too great? I've got something for that if you just wait a few minutes for it to kick in."

I slowly open my slightly swollen eyes, squinting against the lights as my eyelashes pull each other apart and I look up at the nurse stood beside the bed, her hands expertly working at the IV stand and injecting some sort of liquid into it. "Wait..." I cough again, my throat squeezing the words until they're unrecognizable. "What.. is that?"

"Morphine. It'll make the pain easier to handle but also might make you a little woozy. Could knock you out. How are you feeling?" she asks.

"Like shit. How did... did I live?" I mumble under my breath, clenching my teeth at her laughter in response. Doesn't she understand the situation?

"The driver missed most of your main organs to a certain extent, you've just got a lot of cuts and bruises and broken bones. He swears he didn't see you, that you just threw yourself into the road. Is that true?" she questions me, staring me right in the eye. I blink, closing my eyes. 

I could lie to her and have that poor driver thrown in jail for years. Or I could tell the truth and have myself put under suicide watch. What the fuck do I do?

"Jason! Oh my, God, you're okay. Are you okay?" I turn my head to the doorway to see Alyssa stood there, tear tracks staining her face under dark circles from what appears to have been many sleepless nights. "Jason?"

"I'm fine, Liss," I reply, trying my hardest not to be grouchy. "How's things?" 

She scoffs, fresh tears welling up in her eyes and giving them a glossy shine that I've only seen a few times from her: once when she fell in love as a teenager and another time when her pet died. Just seeing that glint means this is a big deal to her - and the guilt hits me like a punch to the throat.  "How's things? You threw yourself under a truck, Jase! How do you think things are?!"

"Liss, I'm sorry," I try to say, but she shakes her head.

"Why?" she begs me, and I bite my lip. I really didn't want this question. "Why'd you do it? Is your life really that shitty?"