Episode 1087: Hysteria

She needed to talk to her husband, explain that it wasn’t how it must have looked to him. She and Xavier weren’t anything more than friends, she’d been upset and he’d offered her a shoulder. She knew from the look on Sebastian’s face, from the way he’d walked out that he’d jumped to the worst possible conclusion. She had to reassure him, to-

Ava’s thoughts stopped cold as she stepped out of the bookstore to a loud shriek of tires. There was Sebastian only a few feet in front of her. Sprawled on the ground. Bloodied. Not moving. She felt a hand on her shoulder and she understood the accident had been loud enough, jarring enough for Xavier to have heard it from inside the store.

She could not have Sebastian wake up to the sight of Xavier’s hand on her. “Please. The store. He can’t see you again.”

Xavier squeezed her should and was gone. Ava was soon gone, too, into the street. She knelt beside him. He was breathing. He had a pulse.

“Do you know him?” A frantic female voice asked. “I- I’ve called for help, they’re on their way. He wasn’t at a crosswalk. I wasn’t expecting someone to just step out like that without a crosswalk. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I just I didn’t realize until it was too late.”

The woman went on and on like that, over and over, repeating her rambling explanations and apologies. Ava did much the same, only with her cheek resting on his chest and she apologized as best she could with tears streaming and getting caught in her throat.

It felt like an eternity even if it was in actuality just minutes until the sirens blared near. A paramedic gently pried Ava off of Sebastian. She got to her feet but her knees almost immediately buckled.

An arm came around her, holding her upright. The woman who had hit him with her car.

“He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay,” the woman chanted almost as if in a trance as they watched the paramedics work.

They loaded him into the ambulance and the female paramedic held out a hand to help Ava inside. At the same time the police arrived on the scene, attempting to talk to the driver who hardly seemed in a state for answering questions.

The ambulance door slammed shut and they were off. Ava couldn’t take her eyes off Sebastian’s stillness, but she finally found the words to ask, “is he- will he be okay?”

“We’re doing the best we can. And you’re doing the best you can by being here. Somewhere in there your presence is a great comfort to him.”

Avalon wasn’t so sure of that.

Episode 1088: Nobody Better