Suddenly—almost as if to prove me wrong—I felt a hand firmly squeeze mine, which sent a ripple of warm tingles to pass through my body.
How can something be imaginary if it feels so real? I asked myself, wondering what this all meant.
I felt completely confused and disoriented. I knew I was missing something—something big that was staring me right in the face. I felt like I could figure out the answers to my questions if I could just push away the fog that blurred my thoughts. I felt like I knew what was going on, but somehow, my mind was scattered about like an unfinished box of puzzle pieces.
“Clo.” His familiar, soothing voice broke through the silence, startling me out of my thoughts.
I whipped around to look behind me, expecting him to be standing there at the entrance of the door.
But he wasn’t there.
I turned back to face the empty room. Nothing.
Maybe I’m hearing things? Jax isn’t here.
“I need you to fight through this, Clo,” came his voice again.
I didn’t have to look around again to know he wasn’t in the room. His voice seemed to resonate through the emptiness of the room, through the walls, and throughout the hallway, almost as if he were on a PA system that covered the entire facility.
“You’re a fighter.”
Jackson’s words reminded me of something Uncle Tom had said earlier. “Right now we just have to wait until she wakes up. It’s up to her now, and Chloe’s a fighter.”
Am I still asleep? Am I unconscious? I looked around my surroundings again. This place doesn’t seem like it’s real. And I don’t remember coming here. I tried again to think of the last thing I was doing before I found myself in the white hallway.
I was in my car…I just found John’s letters to my mom…I was upset…then I lost control of the wheel… Then it hit me. I drove off the bridge and into the lake!
“You need to wake up, Clo. I still have so many questions for you. Like why did you leave your house so abruptly? Why were you upset? Why didn’t you pull over when I was behind your car? Why did you ignore me when I was honking at you to stop?” His questions came out in waves of grief.
He was behind me? I took in his words, wondering if I understood them correctly. I tried to think back to the minutes leading up to the moment the car crashed through the bridge railing. I couldn’t remember seeing him behind me or hearing any honking. I remembered that I’d been a wreck when I ran out of the house. The radio had been on when I was driving and I had been crying so hard, I could barely see a thing on the road.
I heard him let out a heavy sigh through his mouth and I felt my chest tighten at the thought of him in so much agony.
I didn’t mean to swerve off the bridge! I didn’t realize you were behind me, I wanted to scream out. But I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me. By then, it was clear to me that somehow I hadn’t died in the lake that day. I was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious. From what Uncle Tom had said earlier, whether or not I was going to wake up was now up to me. I wondered if that was true. More importantly, I wondered if I really wanted to wake up.
“Please just wake up, Clo,” Jackson said, almost as if he were objecting to my last thought. “We’re supposed to be on our first date right now. We’re supposed to be happy right now.” I heard him sigh again, this time low and drawn out. “You wanna hear about the night I had planned out for us tonight? It was going to be perfect. I was going to pick you up early because I couldn’t wait to see you. Of course, you had no objections to that because you were dying to see me, too.” He gave a little chuckle. “I was going to have a large bouquet of tulips for you when I picked you up. That would make you smile, which was going to make me smile because I love the way you look when you smile like that. We were going to have a romantic dinner at this amazing restaurant called Ela in the city. We would eat amazing food, drink lots and lots of wine, and lose ourselves in each other’s company. Then at some point, our waiter would probably come over to our table and ask us to leave because the restaurant was already closed. After dinner, we would go on a nice, leisurely stroll down South Street. At some point, we would probably stop at one of the bars on that street and grab a small table in a secluded corner. You’d laugh at all my silly jokes that you don’t find funny, and I would let you punch me a few times because I know that’s one of your favorite pastimes.” He chuckled again. “Clo, it would be like how we used to be. Except it’d be better, because now I could kiss you whenever I wanted to—which is like all the time, by the way—and hold you in my arms, and tell you how I feel about you without worrying about how you’d respond.”