Page 2 of Crescendo

Ella

I walked down the steps of University College Hospital feeling lighter than I had in months—well, years, really, if truth be told.

Suddenly, the rush hour crowds racing around me felt like something I was actually a part of.

It was like I’d been watching it all from above for years, participating only as an automation.

But now, as I dashed towards Euston Square station, I could actually breathe it in, experience it again.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as having a sabbatical approved solving all of my problems, but it was an important step. And, now, I was looking at three months to myself. To really… heal.

It was terrifying, and part of me felt guilty, like I was giving up something I’d hung onto for the last four years and I was ruining everything. But, deep down, I knew it wasn’t that. This was… living, and that was important.

I joined the throngs passing through the barriers, keeping right as we headed underground, and standing shoulder to shoulder as we waited for our trains.

It wasn’t difficult to see how I’d been walking through life without really releasing it lately, but I was ready to come back. For me. For Callum.

And everything suddenly felt so very, very real.

I knew I’d crash at some point. I could feel the emotions building up inside of me—too raw, too fresh, too much for the years I’d spent trying not to feel them—but, for now, they were amazing.

The crowds, the noise, even the scents. It reminded me of the first time Callum had come to visit me in London.

Just the two of us, young and free. He’d always loved it so much, but it had been different seeing it together, rather than with our dads as tourists.

Well, he’d still been a tourist, but I’d moved and that made the whole thing feel a million miles away from our childhood trips.

I coughed to cover the bubble of sentimental laughter that burst up from inside of me, blinking away the accompanying tears. The crash was going to be hard. It turned out hiding from grieving for four years didn’t mean the emotions would be smaller when you finally let them in.

The train arrived and I allowed the crowd to move me forward, pushing into the train, and finding myself pressed awkwardly against a pole. At least I had something to hold onto.

I could have laughed again.

My friends were going to get worried if I was like this all night.

For a few minutes I gave myself over to the sway of the train and the knowledge that I was being whisked across London.

The weight that usually crushed my chest still ached, but it felt relieved, alive almost, like we were both finally breathing, as if I’d been starving both of us of oxygen all this time.

A smile spread across my face as we reached my stop and I exited the train and returned to ground level, stepping out into the sunny evening and walking quickly towards the Barbican. My quick pace didn’t stop Sian and Alisha beating me there, though.

Sian nodded my way as she spotted me coming and Alisha whipped around. Both of them froze for a second before their expressions became cautious.

“What’s going on?” Sian asked once I was within speaking distance.

“Nothing,” I replied. “What’s going on with you?”

Alisha shot me a sceptical look. “Please. You’ve got a whole… energy about you.”

“Exactly,” Sian agreed, nodding furiously. “What’s going on with you?”

I smiled, fighting the urge to cry. This whole thing was wild and painful and hopeful and… it had been a long time coming. “Arundhati okayed the sabbatical.”

They both stared at me until Alisha sucked in an audible breath. “For real?”

“For real. Three months.”

Sian let out a low whistle. “Wow. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it. How are you feeling?”

That was a question and a half.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Good, I think.”

“You’re sure?” Alisha asked, reaching lightly for my shoulder, her brow furrowed. I wondered what my face must have been doing to elicit such concern.

“Yeah.” It was a tiny little word, barely audible.

“It’s okay if you need to cry, you know?”

“Absolutely,” Sian agreed. “If you want to cancel tonight, if you want to all go back to my place and… have a breakdown, whatever you need, it’s okay.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to cancel. I want to go to the show. I want to… be .”

Sian frowned. “I don’t even know what to do. Four years and you haven’t stopped for one second. Even when you take a holiday, you fill every second of it. Now, you book three months off work and… just… stop?”

I laughed a little breathlessly. It was probably a good thing there was still a little time before my sabbatical.

If it had started today, I might have been in trouble.

“I know. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know it’s time.

I can’t keep going the way I have been, and I know now that’s not what Callum would have wanted. I’m ready. To get better.”

Alisha smiled, her expression a tangled mix of relief and concern. “Your dads are going to be so proud of you.”

Tears stung in my eyes again as I nodded. I’d scared them a lot in the time since Callum’s accident. They didn't deserve that. I’d find a way to make it up to them.

“We’re really proud of you, too,” Alisha said softly.

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure Arundhati is too.”

Sian laughed. “I can imagine. Remember how much she tried to give you time off when… you know?”

“Yeah. I was… stubborn.”

“When are you not?”

“I know what I need.”

Alisha shot her a look like neither of them believed that. “Are you sure you don’t need to go literally anywhere else tonight?”

I nodded, resolute. “I’m sure. I know you’re both worried and, believe me, I know it’s not all going to be sunshine and roses, but, for tonight, this is what I want to do.

” I looked up at the Barbican. “I have three months to process and grieve and remember who I am. Tonight, I want to see this show. Callum loved music.”

“ You love music,” Sian pointed out.

I shrugged. “I do, but you know, it’s been difficult.”

They both nodded as Alisha said, “If you need to do this for him, we’re here with you. And, of course we’re here for whatever your sabbatical entails, too—however much stuff you need to do for Callum—but make sure you do something for you.”

“I know.” I sniffled slightly. “For both of us , I need to start living again. I know that. I finally got the message.”

I could feel both of their gazes on me as I looked up at the concrete monstrosity before us. It was beautiful on the inside, but, outside, it… divided opinion. Callum would have loved it, but he’d have loved it for the music inside more than anything. It was a shame he’d never visited.

In many ways, it felt right that music was what had finally done it, finally broken me and put me back on my path.

For years, I hadn’t picked up my clarinet, too heartbroken by the memories of Callum that seemed to fill every sound it made. The couple of times I’d even tried, overwhelming nausea had flooded through me the second I’d tried to pick it up and had me shutting it away again.

Then, I’d fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole of audio production and DAWs and orchestration, and music had brought part of me home again.

It had woken up something that had been in hiding for too long.

It was a connection to Callum that felt safe and warm and real.

And then, I’d been requesting a sabbatical and knowing that it was time to be more than my job and moving soullessly through my life.

Sian hooked an arm through one of mine and started us towards the doors. “You can change your mind at any time and we’ll both leave with you.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” I said confidently.

“Well, just in case, the offer is there.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“So,” Alisha said, unable to hide the curiosity in her voice, “do you know what you’re doing with your three months of freedom?”

I laughed. “Nope. Not a clue. Well, not no clue . I’m going to spend the first week alone, unboxing, processing, and feeling. You know, all the things all those therapists have been trying to get me to do.”

“Yeah, yeah, them and the rest of us,” Sian said, exasperated in a loving way.

“Sorry about that. I haven’t made it easy.”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “You did what you needed to do. Nobody else can tell you how to process stuff like that. We’re all just doing the best we can with the tools we have. It is what it is.”

There were few people in the world as lucky as I was.

Alisha and Sian had stuck with me through the days I wouldn’t leave the house, the ones where I was essentially a robot, and through the deadened version of me they’d been working with since the accident.

It was a lot to stick with someone through, and I didn’t think I’d ever make it up to them, but I was at least going to try.

God knows I wouldn’t have blamed them for walking away.

Plenty of others did, and, honestly, I was glad some of them had—they couldn’t help me and I couldn’t be what they wanted, couldn’t grieve and return to normal immediately.

We couldn’t be there for each other and that was okay.

But, these two, they were with me until the end, and I was never letting that go.

“So, after the first week?” Alisha prompted.

“Go see my dads for a whole week.”

Sian whistled again. “They’re going to be over the moon.”

“I know.” I was oddly aware of the air in my chest. I hadn’t spent more than two days back home since it had happened. My dads had asked, had left the option open, but I couldn’t. I was too busy running. So they’d spent four years coming to me. Now, it was time to go home.

“And, after that?” she asked, continuing the conversation rather than the three of us lingering on what going home meant to me, my dads, all of it.

I sucked in a breath. “I don’t know. But I’m excited to find out. Something… I like, I guess. Something I’ve been putting off or ignoring or missing out on.”

Alisha watched me from the corner of her eye. “You’re really doing it?”

I nodded slowly. “I’m really doing it. Something for me. Remembering who I am. Or, maybe not even that, maybe just learning who I am now, what I want, what I like, what I want to be.”

“You’ll be telling us you’re changing career next,” Sian said lightly, and I couldn’t have found the words for how grateful I was for how they were handling this. They always knew exactly what I needed.

I laughed. “I don’t think that’s on the horizon. I love my job. It’s all I trained for. Radiology is my life.”

Alisha nudged me slightly. “It has been, but this is your moment, your opportunity to make it more than that.”

I looked at her, a million emotions flooding through me. That was the goal, that was the point. This was the moment that I was ready to accept the life I actually had and not the one I wished I had, but I’d wanted to be a radiologist since I was a child. I didn’t think that was going anywhere.

My eyes were pulled to the room around us. Music. That was what I wanted now.

I cleared my throat and spoke in a whisper. “I think I might want to take a music class or something.”

Sian’s eyebrows shot up her head. “For you? Or for Callum?”

“For me.” For him too, but not in the way she meant it, I didn’t think.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. It’s been really helpful lately. And I don’t think I’m ready to pick up my clarinet again, but I think music theory or composition or something.” I felt my cheeks heating up and my heart pounding in my chest. “That feels really necessary right now.”

They both smiled at me and I felt my eyes welling up again. Nobody could ever prepare you for the grieving process—even the people walking you through it couldn’t make it make sense—but nothing about it had gone remotely the way I’d have imagined before I experienced it.

Sian cleared her throat. “I think I might have something for you.”

My stomach swooped. Whatever she had felt like it was pulling at something inside of me, even before I knew what it was.

And, when she’d finished explaining about Crescendo, the tears were rolling down my cheeks and I felt more real than I had in years—and like Callum was closer to me than he had ever been.

I knew I had to do it. The timing was perfect, too.

He was sending me this and I needed to go.

I wanted to go. I wasn’t sure when the last time I’d wanted something like this had been, but, now that it was happening, I couldn’t let it go to waste.