I Don't Do Lonely Well

“Shh, don’t wake her up!”
“Ow! Fuck, can’t we turn on a light?”
“Have you ever been concussed? No, you can’t turn on the light.” A loud smack resonates through the silence along with a few more muttered curse words.
The bedroom door opening stirs me a little, but I’m convinced I’m dreaming. I hear rustling and a weight sitting down next to me. “Virginia, sweetheart.” Someone rubs my arm gently.
I yawn and force open my tired eyes. “Hmm?” My eyes focus into the dark and on the figure in front of me. “Alex?”
“Hey, honey.” He presses his lips to my forehead.
“Is this a dream? What are you doing here?”
“No, it’s not a dream,” he laughs, “We played a show in Vegas, and it’s only four hours away. I wanted to see you and make sure you’re okay, so I made the drive.” He touches my cheek lightly. I reach up and hold his hand against the side of my face. “I feel horrible for not making it out to see you until now.”
“You’re amazing.”
He smiles and climbs over me, settling next to me on the bed. He gently wraps his arm around me. I lean my head against his chest.
“I missed you, Lex.”
“I missed you, too.”
“Hey, Alex?” He hums in response. “Can you sing to me?”
“Of course.” He pauses a moment to think of a song. “I wish you could see your face right now ‘cause you’re grinning like a fool, and we’re sitting on your kitchen floor on a Tuesday afternoon. It doesn’t matter when we get back to doing what we do. Right now could last forever just as long as I’m with you.”

I wake up in the morning with Alex’s arm still wrapped around me, assuring me that I wasn’t just dreaming. I carefully roll myself onto my side. I lightly peck Alex’s lips, and a smile forms on his face. “Good morning,” he mutters. “How did you sleep?”
“Much better with you.” He chuckles and stretches his arms over his head.
“Me, too. How are you feeling?”
“Alright. My head doesn’t hurt, but my ribs kind of do.” He nods and leans forwards to kiss my lips again. I smile and rest my hand on his cheek. I lean back him and kiss him again when he pulls away. He scoots a little closer to me and wraps his hand around mine. He smiles down at my hand, spinning the ring around my finger a few times.
He looks back at me, eyes scanning every inch of my face—the cuts and bruises from the accident. “Do you know how fucking beautiful you are?”
I scoff and push his chest. “Beautiful? I’m a wreck.”
“If you still think that changes my opinion, Virginia,” he kisses the tip of my nose, “you’re sadly mistaken.” He sits himself up and helps me up. “You could have just gotten in a car accident and rolled out of bed all in the same day, and I’d still think you’re the most beautiful girl on the planet.” He waits for the laugh out of me before he winks and gets off the bed. He holds his hands out for me and slowly pulls me up. “Let’s make breakfast, yeah?”

It’s great to wake up to Alex again, even if the circumstances aren’t ideal. It sucks to see him leave after breakfast, but he promises his return in two weeks for their show in LA and any other time he can make a drive to see me.
I still loved seeing him, even if it was for a couple of hours, and I swear I feel better than I did the day before just from him.
Or at least until my medications from breakfast wear off. I would never expect this sudden rush of pain surging into my head and shooting down to my fingertips. Maybe it’s what my body deserves for finally lugging itself out of bed for the first time in five days.
But my head is fuzzy on the way back to my bedroom. Despite the constant ache in my chest, my shoulder is pressed firmly against the wall to guide me and my braced left hand runs against it to find the door.
I know the first door I reach isn’t my bedroom, but I need the lights off. Now. I shove the door open and collapse onto my knees on the carpet in front of the toilet before kicking the door shut. My head is pounding, and my stomach churns from the pain. I’ve never been in so much pain that it physically makes me sick until now.

“Jesus, sweetie! Why didn’t you call me?” Cass gasps, helping me up from my hunched over position on the toilet.
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “I just need to sleep.” I lean against the sink, my eyes tiredly drifting shut.
“Nuh uh. I’m taking you back to the hospital, Gin.” She wraps my arm around her and walks me out of the bathroom. “You can sleep at the hospital.”
I’m pretty much passed out the entire car ride and through checking me in at the hospital. “Hey, Alex…well, I just checked her back in at the hospital. Poor thing is trying so hard to feel better.” They continue on talking for a while until a doctor comes in and pulls me out of my half-asleep state by asking me three thousand questions.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shitty.”
“What hurts?”
“Everything.”
“More specifically what hurts?”
“My head.”
“And you were vomiting earlier?”
“Yep.”
“Is the pain better?”
“No.”
“Have you taken your medications today?”
“This morning.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how immense is your pain?”
“Fifteen.”
“Alright. We’re going to take you in for a CT scan. I’m going to need to ask you a few more questions, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Are you sexually active?”
“Not lately.”
“Is there any chance that you might be pregnant?”
“Nope.”
“Are you currently wearing any jewelry or body piercings?”
I just hold up my left hand as my answer.
“That’ll be fine. We’ll have you transported to the CT room shortly.”

I end up just sleeping throughout the entire CT scan, and the next time I’m awake, my brother is in the room. “Cody? I thought you were recording.”
“You can have people fill in for you for recording. I came as soon as Alex called me, drove in from Vegas.”
“Why are you all in Vegas?”
“My band played with Alex’s last night…”
“I’m so confused.”
Cody laughs. “Just stop thinking, Gin.” He sits in the chair next to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“Yeah, the nurse said you would be. You’re pretty drugged up.” I whine in response. “Have Mom and Dad seen you yet?”
“No, and I don’t want them to.”
“I heard…you know they only want what’s best for us, right?” I shut my eyes in attempts to end the conversation. “You can try to ignore me, Gin, but they did that for us.”
“Well, they shouldn’t have.”
Cody’s phone rings loudly. “Shit, sorry!” he curses, pulling it out and answering it immediately. I cover my ears until they stop ringing. “Yeah, I just got here…not so good. She just got out of her CT scan. Cass left for practice, and I’m waiting on the results…Will do.” He hangs up. “Alex has been calling like crazy. He’s really worried about you.”
“I miss him, Cody. I’m moving back home to Baltimore.”
I don’t know why I expect his reaction to be any different than Alex’s. “Just get some rest, Gin. You’re on some heavy medication, and you need sleep.”
I sigh in defeat and pull the thin cotton blankets up before letting my eyes fall shut.