The Mess Love makes

Chapter Twelve: Pursuit of Happiness

Chapter Twelve


         The next few weeks were hell for Hayley. She felt that she had never felt more miserable and alone. René eventually gave up on her friend and stayed out of her way, keen to avoid Hayley’s bad moods and quick temper.

Alex had not returned her calls. She had called twice every day for a week, and then once every day for the next week and a half. Now, she moped around the house, snapping at any noise, and staring out of the window, or at the phone absently, and for hours on end.

All that she could think about was Alex. It was driving her crazy. At first, it was the burning desire to be there for him, just like he had always been there for her, even if she was the reason that he would mope and need someone there for him. She was sure she could never live without his friendship. She needed to hear his voice say everything was ok, they’d always be fine. And then… slowly it turned into a crazy obsession to talk to him, to touch his hand, to see his face light up when he saw her. She was distracted at work, staring at and through the papers in front of her in a dream world of her own, and snatching desperately at the phone when it rang, hoping to hear his voice on the other end.

Everything he had ever said to her, every smile he had ever flashed at her, every comforting hug he’d ever bestowed upon her span round and round in her head. He’d always been there for her. Every mess she’d found herself in, every dead end and catastrophe that had fallen on her, every time her world threatened to crash and tumble down around her ears, he had done his best to help her. He’d dropped everything to be the one standing by her side. The last five years of her life had been standing on his shoulders whilst he carried her through raging rapids of water, and Hayley had only just realised it. She also had only just realised what she had been feeling for a long time.

She was in love with him.

She’d been so blinded by Leo’s flashy smile, and the love she believed she felt all those years ago. Blinded by the self-righteousness that she had indulged herself in believing was so heroic and sacrificing – when the truth was that if it had been a true sacrifice, she would have been happy to see him with the woman he chose. But Alex had always believed her to be the heroine she made herself out to be, with the silent suffering she poured out only to him. He only saw the good in her. And now she saw that she could see no bad in him.

Her finger traced the outer shell of the phone as it sat in its cradle. If only he would call her. She closed her eyes and willed him to call her. Willed the phone to suddenly ring, so that she could hear his voice on the other side of the phone and tell him what she knew to be true now. But it never happened.

Sniffing a bit at the thought of having lost the one man who’d been by her side for as long as she’d known him, she tried one last desperate call.
         “Laura?”
         “Hayley! How good to hear from you. I was hoping you’d call-”
         “Laura, have you heard form Alex lately?” Hayley cut in, fidgety and impatient. She didn’t want to hear the changed, more adult voice of the little girl she’d first met – for, although she no longer loved the other woman’s husband, Hayley still found her intensively annoying. Habits are hard to break, she realised.

Silence fell on the other side of the phone.

         “I thought you knew.”
Her blood ran cold. She took the fingernail she was chewing from her mouth; her spine straightening at the hushed, serious tone.
         “Knew what?” she asked slowly and distinctly.
         “Alex has been in hospital for the last month. He had a car accident the night of Steve and Chelle’s reception…”
         “Is he ok?” babbled Hayley, standing up, her free hand twisting the hair on her head so sharp any other time it would have made her cry out – yet now, she didn’t even feel it.
         “Well, the car almost exploded before he got out, but there was a passenger in the car he hit who was only bumped a bit. He got everyone else out – including Alex.”
         “What about Alex? Is he hurt badly? Is he alive?”
         “He’s alive – but barely. He’s been very badly hurt – three broken ribs, a broken leg and he was in a coma for a week. He almost choked on his own tongue. The extensive internal injuries he has are still badly affecting his health… I’d assumed you’d been in, because he didn’t ask for you. They were unsure he was going to live-”
         “I’m going to him.”
The phone slammed down, and Hayley was out of the door in a flash of car keys. The drive to the hospital kept her frantic. How close she’d been to losing him. ‘Oh God, oh God, what if he had died? What would I have done without him? What if he thinks I don’t care about him at all? Oh God, what if he no longer cares?’  Rush hour; the horn on her car had never been used so frequently. Cursing loudly, she pulled to one side of the motorway and manoeuvred herself feverishly down the traffic.

         “Room 364. Just down there, to your left.” A doctor directed her.
Hayley ran down the corridor, to be stopped by a nurse coming out of Alex’s room.
         “Are you family?”
         “No.” she said quickly, begging with everything she had. “Please, let me see him! I had no idea…”
The nurse looked sternly at her.
         “I’m afraid no-one but immediate family can see him right now.”
Hayley grabbed her arm frantically as the nurse turned to walk away. She was too close to Alex to give up now.
         “Please. I’m his… fiancé.” She lied desperately.
The nurse looked at her hesitantly, her stern face relaxing slightly.
         “Well… perhaps we can make an exception for you.” She said, smiling a little at how much the woman in front of her must love the patient lying in the room beyond her.
         “Thank you, thank you!” Hayley rushed past the nurse and pushed open the door to Alex’s room, stopping abruptly when she saw him.

She gasped.

He was lying there, so vulnerable, his chest and head wrapped tightly with bandages. The sight of the numerous life support machines surrounding him scared her into crying again. He seemed to be asleep. She hurried to his side, kneeling by his still, broken body, and picking up one of his hands, she cried over him. ‘I can’t believe how close I came to losing you,’ she whispered, kissing his hand, wishing he’d wake up and see her.
         “I’m not gone yet.” rasped a weary voice from above her head.
She faltered, her eyes looking up from his cut and bruised skin.
         “Alex! Oh my God, you’re awake! How are you? Are you ok?”
He laughed feebly, shifting drowsily.
         “I’ve been better.” His eyes focused, and raked over her face. “Have you been crying?”
         “Yes.” She wiped her tears on the back of her hand. “Oh God, what I would have done if you’d died, I can’t believe I didn’t know you’d been hurt…”
         “You would have cared?”
         “Alex, how can you say that?” Hayley rocked backwards on her knees, astonished. “I’ve always cared.”
         “Oh. Like that.” He said bitterly, turning his head away.
         “And more.” She stood up, and grasped his chin, forcing him to look at her. “Alex, I… I love you.” She blurted, the need to tell him bursting out from her.
         “You’re just saying that because I could have died.”
         “No, I knew before.” Hayley said soldiering on, then smiling hesitantly. “I love you, Alexander Dean-Smith, and I have for a long time – I just hadn’t realised.”
         “And what about Leo?”
Hayley waved her hand impatiently, dismissing the topic as unimportant.
         “I don’t think I ever really loved him – it was a crush and something I wanted to feel that I clung onto.”
He looked at her with eyes that said he wanted to believe her. ‘Olive’, she thought. ‘His eyes are olive. What a long time it’s taken me to realise such a lot of things.’
         “Oh, Alex. You are the one I love.” She cupped his face in her hands, tears running freely down her cheeks, her smile gentle and adoring as she spilled her heart out. “You are my rock, my blue skies and rainbows… the one who I would die for. And when I thought you might have left me…”
He reached up a hand to hold one of hers that held his face.
         “You’ve changed your mind a lot in this time.”
         “No. I just realised a lot.” She took a breath, hiccupping as she smiled down on him, adding in a raw whisper, “I love you.”
She waited for him to repeat her, tell her that he loved her too, that they would be forever happy. But there was something wasn’t right. His eyes were all wrong; the hand covering hers was gripping too tightly.
         “Alex?” she whispered, waiting for him to confirm that he still cared for her the way he’d said he did. “Alex,” she said again, her voice rising slightly, hysterically. “Talk to me!”
         “I’m sorry, Hayley.” He said at last, his eyes moving away from hers mournfully. “You’re too late.”

There was a pause, a pause filled with a horrible silence and trepidation whilst Hayley absorbed his words. Her hands melted away from his face and now grasped the metal rail on the side of his bed tightly, as her spine straightened and her face turned white.
         
         “Too late?” she whispered, her voice beginning to rise. “Too late? What do you mean, too late?”
Alex winced at the desperation in her voice.
         “I mean,” He said solidly, “that I’ve been doing some thinking.” He grabbed her hands and held them in his, wincing at the pain in his side as he twisted to see her properly.
         “What sort of thinking?” Hayley said slowly, almost sternly.
He sighed and shook his head.
         “I have spent the last five years being madly in love with you.” He said, and her heart leapt. “But not any more. This time in hospital has made me realise that I had to move on… I can’t keep fighting Leo for your affections -”
         “Oh, my love, can’t you see? You won’t have to!” she gabbled frantically, hope pumping through her body.
         “Hayley, listen to me!” Alex commanded.
She ignored him, the tears flowing again as she sobbed.
         “It can’t be too late,” she said hysterically. “I can’t have just found the love of my life, just to lose you immediately!” her fists clenched. “I just can’t!’
         “You’ve got to believe it.” Alex said firmly. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you, Hails. I just… I’m just not in that place anymore.”
         “We can work on it then,” she said, grasping at anything he threw her. “If you love me even just a little, we can make it work! We can -”
         “Hayley, you are not listening to me!” Alex’s words cut through her hazy hysteria like a knife. A coldness wrapped around her.
         “Then you mean it,” she said, stepped away from the hospital bed. “I’ve missed everything you could ever have felt for me?”
         “That’s what I’m saying.” Alex said wearily, as if explaining to her had been the most taxing task he’d ever done.

Hayley stepped away from the bed, grasping at imaginary straws as she tried to fight her way out of the situation. There just had to be a way, there just had to be! But through the denial searing through her head, she realised that there was no escape this time. It hurt. It hurt more than the time she’d given up on her relationship with Leo – hurt more than watching Laura walk up that church isle to claim a husband she had wanted more than anything in the world. This time, it hurt because she couldn’t control it. The situation was not her decision to make – she could not determine the outcome to the way she wanted. Shaking her head, Hayley stopped crying. It made no difference. ‘This isn’t how it was supposed to be!’ she screamed silently, before she understood that it never turned out the way she expected – because she never knew what she really wanted. And know that she knew – it was too late. ‘Too late,’ – the words pounded through every bone in her tense body. It seemed that she’d never heard any words so devastating – weren’t they the words her mother had last said to her? ‘I always wanted to be the perfect mother,’ she had said, expressing regret on her death bed. ‘Now I have found out how to be, but it’s too late. Too late for me to be the person I should have been…never forget I love you.’ And now she was gone – leaving her daughter to wonder why love in her life always seemed to stray from the fairytale it was supposed to be – why the love she found always began or ended in ‘too late’. Hayley thought to herself hazily that she’d never felt pain so bad; never felt a pain in her chest like the one she felt now.

         “Hayley…” Alex was saying now, quieter. “Don’t look at me like that – we’ll get through this as friends like we’ve got through everything together. Hayley!” he called as she stumbled away from him and clutched blindly at the door.
         “Must go,” she mumbled thickly, her throat and mouth shocked into numbness.
         “Hayley…”
         “Call me when you get out of here.” And she was gone, apologising to the nurse she ran bodily into as she rushed back down the corridor, hastening to get away, away from here.

         “What was all that about? Wasn’t that your fiancé?” the nurse said to Alex as she went to check the readings on his life support machines.
         “No.” Alex said suddenly, looking up at her. “Why would you say that?”
         “Oh,” said the nurse airily, watching him through narrowed eyes, “just, you know, because she said she was.”
         “She what?” Alex said, his head jerking up suddenly. “She said that? Why?”
         “Because she was desperate to see you.” The nurse folded her hands and looked down at her patient. “She is obviously very in love with you.”
         “And I am in love with her.” he said wearily.
         “Really?” said the nurse in genuine surprise, a frown beginning on her forehead. “Then why was she running from this hospital as if the plague was actually chasing her down the corridor?”
There was a slight pause. Then,          
         “Because I said I didn’t love her.” was the sullen reply.
         “Well then,” began the nurse, not in the least perturbed, and starting to refill the intravenous drip that was leading into the back of his hand, she told him sternly, “I don’t know what game you’re playing with that poor girl, but you’d better end it soon. Women don’t like being played with, you know.”
         “Yes, I know.” Alex told her quietly. “But I’m still under life threat. If all that internal bleeding isn’t cleared up in the operation tomorrow, then I might not live. And if I die…” he shrugged. “At least she will have had the opportunity to be moving on already, instead of having love thrown in her face and then taken away again.”
         “How would you feel, young man, if you die and never got to tell her how much you love her?” demanded the older woman, glancing at him sternly as she went about her job.
         “I wouldn’t care,” Alex said stubbornly. “As long as she would be happy.”
         “You think that she’d be happy? When the love of her life dies professing that he didn’t care?”
         “It’s a chance for her to be happy.” Alex shook his head carefully. “I had to grab it.”
The nurse leant in to look him in the eyes with her pale blue gaze.
         “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” Her voice clipped.
         “It was being a fool that made me fall in love with her in the first place.” Alex sighed.
The nurse stood up straight.
         “I suppose it’s none of my business,” she said reluctantly. “So I will say no more. You’d better get some rest,” she advised as she made to leave the room. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
         “Tomorrow is going to decide whether I am going to lose the right to live,” replied the man heavily from the bed. “Or if I have just royally screwed up the best chance I ever had with love.”


*  *  *  *  *

         “Hayley,” René called exasperatedly to the curled form under the duvet. “You have to eat something. Look, I brought you some breakfast.”
         “G’way.” The lumpy duvet groaned in a muffled tone.
         “No.” said René in a determined tone. “You haven’t left this room for five straight days now, except to go to the bathroom. And last week wasn’t much better. After getting back from that hospital you spent the entire time on that album of pictures you’ve got of him. Today you are going to get up, have a shower, and come to work with me.”
The duvet had no response. René began to get angry.
         “For goodness sakes, girl! Get your little butt out of that bed right now before I call Steve and make him haul you outta that thing.”
The idea of someone seeing her in this state made Hayley groan, stir and feebly sit up, poking her head out of the covers.
         “I don’t want to go to work today, René,” she croaked. “Please don’t make me.”
         “You have to.” René said stubbornly. “Your client will be pretty pissed if you miss this morning’s court date.” She handed Hayley a piece of toast from the tray sitting on her bed.

The taste of food caused a dull ache in Hayley’s stomach, which growled suddenly from its starvation.
         “Thanks.” She said feebly.
         “That’s ok.” René watched her closely. “When was the last time you ate?”
Hayley thought carefully. “About two days ago, when you brought me that sandwich that I pretended I didn’t want?” she queried.
René shook her head and rose from the bed. “Now, go get ready for work. And remember, he’s not worth crying over anymore.”
         “I love him.” Hayley said in a slight stupor, but she could feel herself warming up to the idea of regular life.
         “I know. But there’s nothing you can do about it if he doesn’t want to be with you, is there?”
         “No.” she said, defeated. “I guess not.”
         “Good girl,” smiled René in a motherly way as she left the room.

Hayley finished her breakfast slowly, her eyes still sore from continuous sobbing. She knew what love was now – it was what was driving her to give Alex what he wanted; it was the numb ringing in her head. This was it. It was the real thing. And she’d blown it all before it had even started. She sniffed as her nose ran slightly. She sighed and raised herself dizzyingly out of bed.

Time to get back to reality.