Chapter 5
As Olivia walked with Aaron down the hall of ICU, a middle-aged
woman with black hair approached them.
“Hey, Mom,” Aaron said to the woman, surprising Olivia, who had not
realized that the woman was Nick and Aaron’s mother.
“Hi, honey,” Mrs. Carter greeted tiredly. Her face was lined and weary-looking, and
Olivia could tell how stressed and scared she must have been.
“Olivia, meet my mom, Jane Carter,” Aaron introduced. “Mom, this is Olivia. She lives next door to Nick. She was the one who… uh… found him…” Aaron trailed off uncomfortably.
Mrs. Carter’s eyes widened and grew bright with a mist of
tears. “Oh… dear, I couldn’t possibly
thank you enough,” she gushed, her voice thick and wavery
with emotion. “If you hadn’t have come…
my boy might be dead right now.” She
smiled tearfully and swiped at her eyes.
Olivia smiled uncomfortably.
“You don’t have to thank me,” she said.
“It was just fate that I found him in time, I guess, and I just did what
I had to do.” She shrugged.
“You… you saved his life,” Jane whispered. “Without you, he would have died. Thank you… so much.” Her voice had risen with emotional tears
again. Luckily, she managed to calm
herself down and blink back her tears.
“You’re welcome,” Olivia said awkwardly, unsure of what else to
say.
“What was your last name again, dear?” Jane asked.
“It’s Caisson,” Olivia replied.
“And you live in the house next door to Nick?”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t know me
though; I just moved in last week. I
didn’t even know he was the one who lived there,” Olivia explained.
“I see. What made you go
over there that night then?” Jane wanted to know.
Olivia hesitantly explained about the music that Nick had been
playing and how she had gone over there to ask him to turn it off. As she thought back to that then, she
remembered how innocent she had been.
She had never known that just minutes later, she would be thrown into
this world of life and death.
“Thank God,” Jane whispered when she was done. “Thank God for that music, for you, for
everything.”
Olivia nodded, managing a smile.
Just then, some more people came down the hall. Glancing at them, Olivia knew right away
that they were more of Nick’s family members.
There was a tall man with blonde hair and a teenage girl, also tall and
blonde.
“Oh, there you are, honey,” the man said to Jane. Glancing at Olivia, he asked, “And who’s
this?”
And again, Olivia had to stand and listen to the story of how she
had saved Nick’s life, as Jane introduced her to the man, who turned out to be
Bob Carter, Nick’s father. The girl
beside him was Nick’s sister, BJ.
When Bob and BJ had gotten done showering Olivia with their
gratitude, the conversation wore down.
Feeling out of place, Olivia decided it was time to go.
“Well, I better head home now,” Olivia said to the Carters.
“Okay, dear. You take
care. Feel free to come back here and
visit Nick whenever you want,” Jane said, smiling.
Olivia returned her smile and thanked her for her kindness, then
politely said goodbye and left, knowing that she would not be coming back.
***
It was a few days after that when Olivia noticed signs of life in
Nick’s house. Watching through the
window in the kitchen as she was making breakfast one morning, she saw a van
pull up and stop in the driveway.
Interested, Olivia watched as the doors opened, and when the
people inside got out, she saw that it was Nick’s family. There was Bob and Jane, Aaron, BJ, and two
other girls. They all hauled suitcases
out of the van with them and carried them inside the house.
Olivia figured that they must have been staying in a hotel near
the hospital for the past week and had finally decided to come stay at Nick’s
house instead. Olivia wasn’t sure why
they hadn’t done that in the first place, but she supposed it was so they could
be closer to the hospital and to Nick.
Olivia wondered what had made them decide to come stay there all
of a sudden. Maybe Nick’s better, she
realized suddenly, brightening with the thought. It made sense to her – if Nick was no longer
in a coma, in critical condition, his family wouldn’t feel the need to be to
near to the hospital, just in case anything happened.
Olivia decided she would call the hospital later and find out.
***
