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In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on -- Robert Frost

The world spins round on its axis, and it doesn’t matter what the hell the rest of us are doing, it continues to spin round and round and round without fail.

It makes no difference if we’re facing a crisis, if we want the world to stop for just ten minutes to regroup, gather up our thoughts, the gravity, or whatever it is that makes it spin in the first place, keeps its hold on the Earth and it rotates regardless.

And that’s a frightening thing sometimes.

For someone who is scared of so little, the very fact that we carry on living is quite a daunting thing.

That year, that time, taught me that.

The election was just around the corner, and I was worrying that life is going ahead without me thinking about it, days passing by, fading into each other, and I had no control over it.

And I needed control.

I had watched as Josh had lost control, as his life spun away from him without stopping for breath once in my life, and I was watching it again.

And this time I wasn’t caring about it.

Okay, so I was, but I was doing a pretty impressive job of keeping my distance.

Josh had changed and that alone worried me. I noticed it when Donna left with all their bitter exchanges, and I noticed it more when the tobacco thing reared its ugly head.

He sank into himself, and it was so uncharacteristic. But no one noticed until it was too late.

We were all too busy thinking about ourselves.

How Donna’s leaving had affected us, what consequence a scandal would have on us and our jobs and the reelection bid. And even when the truth came out, we were still thinking about ourselves. We were relieved for ourselves.

Or that’s how it was for me, anyway. I’m assuming that everyone else was just as bitter and angry by Josh’s actions, as they didn’t go to help him out either.

Things changed. The world was still spinning round and we were so busy keeping up with the pace that we didn’t notice that Josh was lagging behind.

Things weren’t the same for a long time to come.

I remember a couple of weeks after Josh had been cleared of any wrongdoing and we all went out to a bar. Sam, Toby and I made arrangements - we even asked Charlie and Zoey along. I was going back to my office and I passed Josh’s open door. He was standing by the door looking as though he couldn’t make his mind up whether to come out or not. He’d probably heard every single word we said and it was then I realized just how much things had changed. We hadn’t even thought of asking Josh along, something that would have been instinct mere months before. And he hadn’t butted into the conversation assuming that he was invited, either.

I hadn’t spoken to him beyond the usual ‘hello’ or small talk that we had been reduced to in my anger since February.

It was time to forgive, I thought to myself, and so I followed him into his office as he returned to his desk.
He sat down, and I stood there in front of his desk, not knowing what to say. And for someone who used words and communication every day as part of their job, this was saying something.

“Sit,” he finally told me. And I did so slowly. All the time I wanted to get out, I wanted to leave and never have to face him again. I still was mad about how he had treated my friend, and then I realized that he had been my friend too.

“So, Josh,” I started, and faltered.

“You don’t have to,” he said, and I’m not sure what he thought I didn’t have to do. Perhaps he was sensing my awkwardness and was suggesting that I didn’t have to try to speak to him out of a work situation.

Perhaps not, but I wasn’t deterred. “How would you like to come to the bar with us after work?” I asked finally.

And then I saw it, the first glint in his eye suggesting that Josh was returning to us in some form. He nodded. “Yeah sure,” he said nonchalantly. “What time?” I could tell that he was a lot more excited about it than came across in his tone of voice. Finally he was able to start being friends with us again.

I told him about eight, and he nodded again, and I rose and started to walk to my own office.

And then he cleared his throat and said. “Thank you, CJ.” And I had no idea what to say. So I nodded and smiled slightly and exited.

We went out that night, and we weren’t back to how we’d been by any accounts, and Josh wasn’t the Josh we’d all known, in fact he sat in the corner and listened as we talked about things he wasn’t involved in. And it didn’t seem right, but no one did anything to change it.

Then Sam left for Boston and I can only imagine what he thought when he returned.

It took far too much for us all to remember what we almost had lost.

Josh was involved in an accident and no one found out until almost two days later. It had happened on the Friday night after work as he was driving home.

Apparently some guy had been too busy concentrating on changing his CDs and swerved across the road, right into Josh, crashing into his car head on. Fortunately there were no fatalities but it had caused an impressive pile up.

And I remember sitting in the traffic and cursing as it had prevented me getting home at a reasonable hour. And I watched as the EMT’s came by with their wailing sirens, and all I could think was to wonder if it would make the news.

It did, but that’s irrelevant.

Josh hadn’t been himself in the past few months and we’d all been too busy to care. It made me feel guilty, I admit. I hadn’t noticed that there was anything wrong. There was no yelling this time to indicate that he might be having problems, no Donna to know to make things right, to call Leo and tell him that Josh needed some, any help. And I had been selfish enough to start complaining that the inconvenience of someone crashing his car would delay my being able to watch a movie that was on.

The nurses had managed to get in touch with his mother, and she had only phoned Leo on Sunday night to inform him that Josh wouldn’t be in work the next day. Or indeed for the next few weeks.

That’s how we found out.

Josh didn’t even trust us enough to ask for any of us when he needed someone. We were no longer friends. We were mere work acquaintances.

That night I remember it rained, and I was so glad as it complimented my mood perfectly. And I went and sat outside after Leo had phoned me, sat out as it poured down and wallowed in my self-pity once more. And all I got was drenched for my troubles.

But I managed to get things in focus.

What sort of world is it in which we don’t even let our friends know when we need them? And I made a promise to myself that I’d get over my pride and I’d try my best to become the sort of friend for him that he needed. That everyone deserves no matter what they do wrong.

I went to the hospital the next morning, not caring that I should be at work. This was my friend and he needed help.

I got there and I found Sam sitting out in the waiting room.

“Won’t they let us in?” I asked, sitting down next to him on one of the hard orange plastic chairs.

Sam looked up at me and shook his head. “I couldn’t face going in,” he told me. “I’m not even sure he counts me as a friend anymore. Would I be welcome?” And he looked so lost without his friend, more lost than he had looked in the many months where Josh was there but not there.

“We’ve all been so selfish,” I said without ceremony. “And we can’t take that back. We can only go and hope that we can change it for the future.”

He gave a tight smile and stood up. He started out the room before turning back towards me and saying, “But will Josh agree?” And then he exited and I was left sitting there alone.

I stayed there for a while, allowing Sam to visit Josh alone. We all had our pain and guilt that I felt we needed to address separately.

We had each other to support us, but Josh had no one.

Sam came back to the waiting room about twenty minutes later. He sat down next to me, and his eyes met mine. I saw the tears that were cascading down his face, his eyes red.

And I didn’t want to know what he was going to tell me. To tell me would be to make it seem true.

“It doesn’t look good,” he told me, despite my protests. And all I could think of was how was I going to be able to tell the press that once again Josh was in danger. And this time he’d had no one around him to help him, no friends to make sure that he was okay. For God’s sake, we’d spent the best part of two days not knowing. How the hell could we face ourselves let alone face his mother or Donna.

Then it hit me. Donna wasn’t even here. We had no idea where she was; no way of telling her that Josh might not be around for much longer.

I think that was what made me start to cry.

Not the fact that Sam was upset. Not even when I visited Josh later, his mother by his bedside sitting, hoping and praying that he’d make it through the next few days, not even the sight of Josh lying there motionless surrounded by tubes and lines and god only knows what else. No, it was none of that. It was the fact that this time we hadn’t got Donna to help us through, to make us all strong for Josh. And without Donna was there much reason for Josh to fight to stay alive?

And I sat alone in that cold, stark room surrounded with posters about violence in hospitals and no cell phone signs, and other paraphernalia, and I cried. I broke down and let myself go. There was no one to comfort me; no one to tell me that everything was going to be okay.

And so I began to pray.

I can’t say that in normal circumstances I’m a religious person. God isn’t the most important person in my life; I don’t go to church with any regularity. But in that desperate situation I needed a solution, someone I could tell my problems to who wouldn’t be judgmental or lie to me, just someone to listen.

Dear God,
I don’t know where to begin. Forgive me for I have sinned? I’ve been a terrible friend and I’m so sorry.
Please, please help Josh.
Thank you.

It was just small sentences here and there, nothing major or drastic. And I knew that as soon as everything had resolved itself I’d revert back to being the atheist I usually was. But I needed to do as much as I could to try and make up for where I’d failed.

And the days went by, and there was no change for the better, and it seemed that no one was hearing me.
We took it in turns, Leo, Toby, Sam and I, to visit Josh, spend time with him in his unconscious state and tell him things. Talk to him. Whether he listened or not, I don’t know, but it made me feel better that at least I was trying to do something now.

And it was the next Friday when I walked into the room only to find someone already there, reading to him from a book. It was a face I hadn’t seen in months, and I had missed so badly.

Donna had come back, at least temporarily.

I stood there quietly in the shadows of the dark room and just listened to her speak to him. She had managed to put aside everything that she had held against him in order to spend her time just talking to him, and it made me so proud to ever have met this wonderful woman.

Finally I made my presence known, and Donna jumped.

“Hey,” I said, I couldn’t think of anything else to start with.

“Hey,” she replied, and nothing more was said for a while.

So I dragged one of the chairs in the room and brought it to a place beside Josh’s bed, next to Donna. We sat there for a long time in silence. I was just praying to God that Josh would be all right, that he’d come back to us and tell us that everything was okay. But he was unconscious, and silent.

Later I spoke to the doctor and asked him if he could give me, a friend, any information. I only hoped that Josh would consider me a friend, but that wasn’t important.

The doctor seemed to weigh it up in his mind. “Sit down Ms. Cregg,” he told me, and I knew then that something wasn’t right. They never told you to sit down if everything was going to be okay. “Josh isn’t well, you can see that yourself. The internal injuries seem to be worse than we’d hoped, and we won’t know if he has any permanent damage until he wakes up.” Pause. Just get on with it, I remember thinking to myself, mentally yelling at him. “Ms Cregg, I think you should prepare yourself for the eventual possibility of bad news.” He left then. And all I could think was how do you prepare yourself for someone telling you your friend could be dying?

What on earth can you do to prepare?

Convince yourself that he’s going to die, so you won’t be shocked when it happens?

How? How?

I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it; you simply can’t prepare yourself. It’s impossible. I knew that I would be shocked and devastated as soon as I heard that Josh had… that Josh was… that he would never recover. I wasn’t going to allow myself to expect it, and I wasn’t going to prepare myself for it. Josh was alive, he was strong, he would fight, and Donna was here.

Donna wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

I sat in the waiting room for a good half-hour after the doctor had spoken to me. I thought of nothing, my mind completely blank. I was going to go back into Josh’s room, I was going to talk to his mother, I was going to talk to Donna and we were all going to get together and convince Josh that he couldn’t leave us.

And in sitting there I realised that I had wasted so much time being angry with Josh for something that was out of my control, that was nothing to do with me. If Donna could forgive and come back to help, surely I should have no problem with it.

God,
I know we’ve not been all that close, but hear me out, okay? Can you help me? I have to forgive Josh, but I need him to forgive me. Think you can give him the message? He doesn’t seem to be listening to me.

I went back into his room eventually and sat in the chair next to Donna. And I thought of all the things that I could say to her, but all that came out was “Why did you come back after all that he did I knew as soon as I’d said it that it wasn’t the right thing to say, not now. But Donna seemed to take it in her stride.

“Because he needed me,” she said and left it at that.

Josh’s mother came back shortly after and we sat in that room talking to Josh and talking about Josh.
Reminiscing, sharing all the silly Josh things that he’d done, Donna relating all the times that she’d had to apologise to people for his behaviour, Josh’s mom telling us stories from when he was young, and I talked about the things we’d done on the campaign trail.

All the time I was thinking, why was I so cold, so unforgiving when he needed me? I still didn’t know about the truth behind the tobacco thing, but I knew that whether he had been guilty or innocent he had needed friends, and no one was there for him.

Now was my time to be there for him.

I got home that evening after a day spent with Josh’s mom and Donna and I sat down on the couch. And I sat and cried and listened to depressing songs and cried some more.

And I prayed to the God that I had never really known, and soon probably wouldn’t even remember.

God, you there?
Please, please don’t let Josh die. God?

END OF PART THREE

[part four]

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