I stumbled to my feet and rushed over to Katie. Her breaths were low, and her eyes widened, panicked. “Eli,” she murmured, and I wrapped my arms around her.

“It’s okay,” I told her, panicked when I noticed the blood on my fingers as I touched the back of her head. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

She started to shut her eyes, and I shook her.

“Son,” was barked my way, forcing me from my thoughts. My recent memories were on replay in my tangled mind.

“Son, focus!”

I shot my eyes open.

Two officers stood across from me as I sat on a bench in the hospital hallway. One was mute with a notepad, and the other talkative with no notetaking. He was the one who kept calling me son, even though I wasn’t his son.

“Son, I need you to understand, we need all the information that you can give us. We need every detail about what happened. What you saw. Do you understand, son?”

I’m not your son.

I stared forward at the wall, blinking every now and then. A light kept flickering down the hallway, and each time it flickered, I twitched. Please stop flickering. My hands were shaky, my throat dry. Each time I swallowed it felt like cuts against my windpipes.

“Son, please. The sooner we get this information, the sooner we can move forward with this accident.”

“It it it i…” I murmured, blinking my eyes shut. “It wa-wasn’t wasn’t…”

“Come on, then. Spit it out,” he urged me. “What were they wearing? How many of them were there? Did you have any relation with them? Do you know their names?”

My body started to rock back and forth, and when my eyes opened, I was staring down at my ripped, bloody knuckles. Covered in both my blood and my sister’s.

I blinked my eyes shut once more.

No.

No.

No…

Tears streamed down my face as acid rose from my stomach and landed in my throat.

I wasn’t strong enough. She was dead because of me.

“Maybe we should take a break, Kenny,” the mute cop spoke. “Wait till his mom gets here. He’s in shock.”

“But,” Officer Kenny started.

“Just a break,” the other said, cutting in. “I think he needs it.”

When they walked away, I went back to staring at the wall as the light continued to flicker above me.

Please stop flickering.

“Elliott,” Mom cried, rushing into the hospital waiting room toward me. I’d been staring intensely at my bloody hands, shaky as I waited for her to arrive. The moment I saw her, I stood from my seat. TJ wasn’t many steps behind her.

“I-I-I-I-” My lips parted as my shaking grew. No words could form in my head, or my heart as I tried to apologize to my mom. I tried to craft words to beg her to forgive me, to understand my mistake. “I-I-I…”

No.

No.

No…

I needed words, but I couldn’t grasp them. I needed air, but no breath was there.

I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I was broken. I was lost.

My legs shook beneath me, and my vision began to blur. The second I was about to collapse, Mom wrapped me against her body and held me. Still, that didn’t stop either of us from falling to the floor as heartache attacked us intensely.

“No, no, no,” Mom cried against me. “Not my baby, not my baby,” she sobbed uncontrollably.

TJ tried to help us, but he couldn’t. There was no way we could be put back together.

Mom couldn’t catch her breath as she began to realize she was suffering from a parent’s worst nightmare. She lost herself on the hospital floor and was unable to be fixed, because once a parent lost their child, they lost themselves. There was no way to fix a broken heart that beat for a child. There was no way to console a person whose world had just been stolen away from them.

There was no way to make any of this okay.

As Mom tried her best to comfort me, I tried my best to hold her tight. Neither one of us would ever be okay again. Something inside of each of us snapped, and it was beyond repair. That something would be damaged forever, unable to know what it felt like to be alive ever again.

That something was our hearts.

My heart stopped beating the moment Katie died because of me.

Mom’s stopped beating the moment she realized the truth.

I’d never forgive myself.

I’d never expect Mom to forgive me, either.

As we sat there on the floor, broken and damaged, I managed to push out the only words that kept flying through my mind. As tears fell down my cheeks and my throat burned, I finally spoke the four words that would never mean enough, the four words that would haunt me each day moving forward.

“I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry, Mom.”

I kept repeating it over and over again, and still, it felt empty.