Chapter 8

It’s dark and distant with the smell of blood and gas in my nose and like a far off echo I can hear Taylor screaming at me. I can hear “Jenna!” and “No!”

There’s the feeling of movement.

I see a bright light and there’s voices.

Voices calling out my name. “Jenna?, Jenna?, Jenna can you hear me?”

***

Taylor-

Oh god, oh goddamned Jesus Christ what have I done?

It started out as a pretty good day. The night before was awesome and I see things with Jenna, feel things with her that I’ve never seen before or even thought that I’d see. Or get to feel. I’ve said it before. Other girls just don’t get it. They met me, liked me, dammit they said they loved me. But once my tumor comes up, once I have an attack or get the shakes or I’m sick from a headache that won’t go away they took off.

Jenna’s different, and it’s not because she’s TG either…or maybe it is. It’s just she’s gone through hell herself. She’s stayed with me and loved me already like nobody else.

So what do I do? I get upset with her for fighting. Get all scared and pissed off and angry because she wants me to go back there. She wants to keep fighting, she wants me to keep fighting.

I said things I shouldn’t to hurt her. To hurt her and to push her away from me so I don’t have to fight. So I don’t have to be in there wasting away dying. I was a fucking coward and took it out on the one person who I had left. The woman I love.

God I’m such a basket case I’ve killed her.

My parents died; I’m dying from cancer, and the one relative I had my Uncle Charlie, my grand-dad’s brother who took me in died of a heart attack while I was in Juvy and then I was alone. I’ve always been alone, you know where it matters.

I’m stubborn, you know when I got sick and the doctors found the cancer and I stayed in the hospital for nearly two and a half years. I’ve been drugged with this and that and hit with radiation and all that crap already. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I left AMA (Against Medical Advice.) I fucking hate that place, I hate being like that. I feel like I’m dying, really dying when I’m it there. Suffocating dying in there.

I said things you should never say to somebody you love.

I let her think things that drove her away.

Then she said she’d start packing her things.

I hit that stupid pig for maybe another five or six hits before I realized what I’d done…When I met Jenna…she was looking to end herself…I really, really might lose her.

I ran as fast as I could after her. I caught her as she was running from downstairs and out towards the back. Okay, I thought I caught her…she was going left, then right, then left then rolled around my grab at the outside of my arm and then she was gone. Taking off like a shot and even jumped the eight feet to the ground right off the loading dock and hit the pavement running? What the hell? When did I fall in love with Jaime Sommers (The Bionic Woman.) I run after her, I try to run after her and I’m yelling at her, screaming at her to stop.

I watched as she ran through four lanes of traffic crossed the green strip then I saw the truck down the road swerve like he was drunk into somebody’s car. The whole thing distracted her, she turned eyes red from crying and stared right at me. The woman in the chevy impala was distracted by the car accident and didn’t see Jenna.

I couldn’t get there in time and no matter how fast I ran all I could do was watch her get hit by the car and see her go up into the air in slow motion the car hitting her in the legs and then she partly turns over in mid air and comes down hitting and spider webbing the windshield of the car and then the force bouncing her up over the hood of the car until she crashes down again right at the back of the care before the spoiler and that’s up high enough it makes another impact so hard it half tears off.

Then another slow motion spiral around and around as she hit’s the ground and rolls on the pavement.

There’s chaos going on all around as I’m running to her. I see blood fountain out of her left arm and I’m trying to stop the bleeding!

“Oh shit, oh god!, Jenna!, Jenna!, hang on baby, hang on!” I yell, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Somebody call 911!”

Time flows all out of joint for me as I’m holding my hand to the place where the blood was squirting out from and there’s glass cutting into my hands and I’m begging her not to die.

“Please, please baby, you got to live. Please Jenna hang on! Don’t leave me…please, please don’t leave me. I love you, I need you…c’mon honey please stay with me.”

The ambulance and the paramedics arrive and take over moving me gently aside so to keep her from bleeding out. They get her packaged and we get into the ambulance as their checking her vitals and shining lights in her eyes and saying medical stuff I don’t get but we’re driving like bats out of hell and one guys sticking needles in her and they’re yelling at her trying to get a response.

We hit the ER at a run and I’m only allowed to go so far…I push though moving an orderly out of the way and lean down to her. “I love you, I love you and don’t you dare die on me, you got that!”

Her eyes flicker open for a second and there’s blood in the eye, in her teeth as she smiles at me and somehow manages to say “Ditto.”

Then her eyes roll back in her head and there’s that death knell long.

“Beeeeeppp!” of her coding….

I’m screaming. “Jenna!” as they take her away from me…