I opened my eyes slowly and immediately squinted, blinded by the bright lights. I could vaguely see a figure in white. I sighed, thinking I was seeing things again. I blinked several times, trying to get the annoying mirage to go away, but, instead, my vision sharpened. I was staring into a face so familiar, yet so distant at the same time.

I swore under my breath, trying to get the hallucination to go away. It couldn’t have been Opal. I raised my arm to rub the sleep from my eyes and hissed as my body protested against the movement. My head felt much clearer, but I was still feeling rather dazed and confused. I could feel someone holding my hand.

I looked around, trying to piece reality together and distinguish between hallucinations and what was going on. My mouth felt dry and unpleasant. I heard someone whispering my name so softly I wondered whether I was just hearing things again.

“Ethan, it's me, Opal.”

I could hear her voice. I opened my eyes and tried to shift up on the pillows, but my body protested with pain. She let go of my hand and adjusted my pillows, gently raising my head up a bit. I felt the back of her hand stroke my cheek. I could see the concern on her face.

“Take it easy, you’re still pretty banged up.” she said softly.

Haze disappeared from my vision. As my gaze sharpened, my confusion began to clear, too. Memories of my last conscious moments came back, at first in small pieces, then quickly unfolding into a full picture, knocking the breath out of my chest as if they had happened all over again. I stared at Opal blankly.

I didn’t know why she was even there. I wanted to know. I opened my mouth to ask, but all that came out was a cough, which made my chest pound with pain. Opal let go of my hand and passed me a glass of water with a straw.

“You need to rest. I’ll come back later,” she told me shortly, but I wrapped my hand around her wrist.

“Fuck! What do you want?” I asked her slowly.

She stepped away, getting out of my grip, and leaned against the wall with her arms folded across her chest. “I work here, Ethan. You’re in a hospital,” she told me.

I looked around. I’d figured out the hospital bit, and now I realized that she was, in fact, wearing her uniform.

“What would be a better question is, what are you doing here?” she asked after a moment.

I looked away. Everything was hitting me all at once and looking at her was breaking my heart. She was as beautiful as I remembered, even with that stern look on her face. I didn’t feel like telling her anything. At the same time, I wanted to tell her everything; I wasn’t even sure how it all worked.

“Car crash…” I responded shortly, trying to avoid the details.

She let out a long breath. “I know that. I know a lot could have changed over the years, but you’ve been driving since we were in our teens and I never saw you have as much as a sip of a beer and drive, you were a more than apt driver by the time we went to college, and you were never a moron. So how does a guy like you end up scraped out of a wreck of a car wrapped around a lamp post with a ridiculous amount of alcohol in his system?” she asked as she straightened up.

I looked away again. How could I even begin to explain anything to her? Could I still trust her? She was right, it’s been years, and a lot could have changed. She sighed softly and looked back at me, relaxing a degree. She straightened up and adjusted her badge.

“Never mind. Sorry I asked. It’s none of my business. I’ll swing by later. Try and get some rest, you need your strength to recover,” she told me and headed for the door.

I sniggered. “No point,” I muttered before slowly and painfully rolling onto my side. I was expecting to hear her walk out. Instead, I heard her take a long, deep breath.

“You’re not going to get better if you don’t put any effort into it. Doctor’s orders and all,” she replied slowly.

I couldn’t help but snigger again. I didn’t particularly care about getting better. In fact, I wished I’d hit that damn lamp post even harder. I wanted to ask her to stay with me, but I knew that I didn’t have the right to make any requests. I wanted to say something, ask something, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Why do you care?”

I heard her let out a frustrated breath as I slowly faced toward her again. She was walking back to the chair next to my bed and sat down heavily. She fixed her gaze on me before she spoke.

“I still do care about you, Ethan. I know we aren’t exactly as thick as thieves, but it doesn’t mean I don’t care,” she told me.

I could almost see her tense every muscle in her body. I stayed silent. I hadn’t been alone with her for so long; I wanted to tell her everything, but I didn’t feel like I had the right to dump all my problems on her after barely exchanging a dozen words in the last few years. I decided to remain silent, but I could feel her gaze on me.

“What happened to you, Ethan?” she asked softly as she looked at me.

I looked away, but, without any conscious decision from me, my mouth opened and everything came out.

“I found Claire in bed with Martin. After all these years, after everything we shared, and she was the only thing that felt real. You can't fucking trust anyone on Wall Street. I thought that the only two people I could trust in the whole city were on my side. I never knew that they were fucking. How had I been so blind?

“I can’t trust anyone or believe anyone anymore. What’s the point of going on if you’ve got nothing and no one you can trust?” I asked, almost tasting the bitterness of my words.

She sighed and shook her head. “I just can’t understand her. You seemed happy together. My mom told me about you guys every now and then, and it always seemed like she cared about you,” she muttered as if unsure what to say.

I laughed shortly, then coughed as my chest disagreed with the laughter. “Yeah, I thought the same, but I was wrong,” I told her.

She uttered some phrases of disbelief before moving closer to my bed. She stared at me in silence for a moment. “You’ve always come across as so confident and…well, easy-going, comfortable with pretty much anyone,” she told me.

I could not help but smile. Opal knew me better than anyone, she knew the truth, but she had always pretended to fall for my front. Sometimes I wondered whether it was to protect my dignity or to avoid my blatant denial. This time I opted for honesty.

“It didn’t feel like that. It was easier to pretend than it was to open up…” I told her.

She gently placed her hand on my shoulder.

“Wish you were more honest with me before, Ethan,” she muttered.

I winced. I knew that often I’d made her wonder whether I trusted her when we were younger. She always knew when something was wrong, but I never really told her much. It was easier not to. I didn’t want to bother her with my issues, and I didn’t want the world to know that I struggled.

She usually found a way to get me to open up, eventually. I looked at her for a while. There seemed to be more we both had to say, but neither of us did. Instead, I changed the subject to something or other trivial. I asked her about a good pizza place nearby, and we talked a bit about current news articles. She left after a while, leaving me alone with my thoughts once more. It was nice to see her, but it didn’t feel right. Nothing did. What I had with Opal was lost years ago. I had no one left, and the thought of facing life on my own was terrifying. I no longer had a purpose or a direction.

Nothing seemed to matter, and all I ever believed seemed to have either shattered or proven to be just an illusion. I didn’t feel strong enough to deal with it; I didn’t feel strong enough to deal with anything at all. The doctor who was in charge of my case visited a couple of hours after Opal left. He told me that there was some damage to my nervous system. He used a lot of medical terms I didn’t fully understand. He told me that the overall prognosis was good, but it would take a while for me to return to full capacity. As he left, I decided to try and sleep. I didn’t feel like I could cope with anything else. I’d had enough.