Hospital Beds and Memories

So, the day I was going to go back home finally came. But the closer it got to the actual moment, the more I was just wishing I didn’t have to leave. Sure, being apart from Jack was part of it, but the fact that I was going to start chemo soon, freaked the shit out of me. I had done it before, but that was ages ago! I was so young and only had to do what they told me, now I was so much more involved. At six years old you don’t get to hear what all the side effects are, nor it the entire process explained in freakishly creepy words. Back then it was all made more fun, and everything was simple. I didn’t want to fucking die! And dying from the chemo would just be the worst way to go.

Just take a deep breath. Everything was going to be fine. Maybe it was true that the chemo would tire me out, but so what? I could definitely still pack all my stuff into moving boxes and carry heavy stuff around. No biggie. I could totally do all that… Of fuck, who was I kidding! Of course I couldn’t do that! I would just die by tiring myself out, forget the leukemia or chemo or any other shit that could fucking kill me!

I just wanted to be in the safety of Jack’s arms forever…

I couldn’t do any of this without him; I was literally nothing without him. And after Cam was going to move away, he would be literally the only person I would fully depend on. Yes, I had my mom and dad, but that was different. Let’s just say I always made sure to be happy around them. No, I didn’t do it on purpose; no, it wasn’t because they wouldn’t want to help me with my problems. I just did it automatically. Don’t most people have that? Act around certain people in a certain way, I mean. The only people I didn’t have that around were Cam and Jack. So, now with one of them leaving, I couldn’t afford having the other one disappear as well.

“When are you leaving again?” Jack asked me while drawing shapes on my legs, which were residing in his lap.

I checked the time, seeing in was 4pm, “in an hour.”

“Does somebody need to drive you somewhere?” he questioned, wanting to know every single detail that he knew exactly where I was and when I was there.

“Nope.”

“Do you know what time you’ll be back in Baltimore?” he continued, literally having asked me this not that long ago.

“Jack,” I groaned and stretched out, “I told you everything I know! Just stop worrying, if anything goes wrong, you’ll probably be the first to know. Plus, the hospital back home still thinks you’re my fiance, so they’ll probably contact you as well if something bad happens.”

“What?” Alex laughed loudly and looked at Jack like it was something he would totally do, which it probably was.

“Hey,” Jack snapped at Alex in a joking way, “her whole family was out of town, and they wanted to send me away! It was either I lied, or she would be kept at the hospital for another three days! Remember that one time I totally canceled our plans with Rian? Yep, that was then.”

Alex glared at me and gasped, “that was your fault! Jack totally missed out!”

“I told him I would be fine staying all by myself, but he didn’t like the idea,” I shrugged and pointed the blame towards Jack instead.

He acted like I had just shot or insulted him, “I just didn’t want you being all by yourself after that! And good stuff only happened after that, so I don’t regret it,” he was referring back to that it was the first time that we officially said ‘I love you’ to each other.

“Oh, did you guys lose your virginity to each other that night?” Rian laughed at the recurring joke of this band, that he just made again.

“No,” I groaned and hid my face in my hands. Maybe it was a joke on Jack’s side, but for me it just made me want to cringe away. This was still pretty new for me, and only Lisa, as far as I knew she had never told Alex, knew about it “I’m still going to crawl away into a hole and die.”

“Oh, come on,” Jack tried to pry my hands away from my face, but I held on tightly, “it’s not that bad.”

I looked through the small gaps between my fingers and saw Jack laughing at me. It just reminded me of how much I actually loved that guy. Everything was perfect about him; his laugh, his eyes, his personality, just everything. It just made me understand why his fans hated me even more. They thought about him the same exact way I did, so seeing the guy you love (romantically or not) be in love with someone you don’t think is good enough, must be terrible. But as long as Jack loved me and I loved him, I was going to be fine.

When I felt the blush that had decided to form on my face finally disappear, I took my hands away, “I’ve had to help Jack out of awkward situations way too often to know he wasn’t a virgin when we got together. I’ve been a simple girlfriend that catches him with a random girl, I’ve been a sister that’s absolutely disgusted, I even found a ring once so I could play his pregnant fiancee. Over time I developed a new skill.”

“She should be an actor,” Jack agreed, thinking back to all the times I had to quickly improvise in the mornings.

“But,” I menaced by shooting daggers at Jack, “if I ever catch you cheating now, I will probably walk in on you, turn around straight away and be like ‘nope’. Then close the door, walk out of the house, get in the car, and drive all the way to Mexico. When I’m there I’ll suddenly think ‘wait, what the fuck just happened?’ and I’ll realise that I actually caught you cheating. So, I’ll change my name to Beatrice and start a horse ranch.”

“What the fuck?” Zack laughed, while the others were just as amazed by my speech.

Jack pulled me closer by dragging me across the couch by the waist, “she has plans for everything… seriously… it’s pretty terrifying.”

“No,” I shook my head, “I come up with them on the spot… I’m just really really weird…”

“It’s the only reason why I keep you around,” he quickly pecked my lips, earning gags and groans from the other guys on the bus; they had to endure Jack being clingy for the past 3 days, so it was probably all getting way too much for them.

----

I was sat on Jack’s lap. We still had 45 minutes to spare, so Jack decided to make my dream of learning a musical instrument come true. He got an acoustic guitar that they had in the bus to play random songs on, made me sit on his lap, put the guitar on my lap, and then taught me how to hold it. Of course 45 minutes really wasn’t enough time to learn something well, but it was fun. I actually got to learn my basic chords!

At first Jack made me only strum while he played the chords, and it seemed pretty easy. Ok, yes, it wasn’t advanced, but I could play the easy strumming patterns, you know, the ones you often find in acoustic pop songs. And then the fun stuff started. Jack would carefully place my fingers on the steel strings and took the job of strumming. I actually wanted to be able to do it, so I honestly tried to remember the shapes he taught me. After messing up the whole shapes and positions, I finally got to the point where I only misplaced one finger, to when I was able to slowly place the chord properly. The love my brother had for playing his guitars made so much more sense. I always had an appreciation for the instrument, because I always fixed Cam’s guitar, but now I appreciated playing it as well. It was just so much fun and once you actually get to know the basics, you can start to create your own stuff.

“So, how’s it been going?” Alex returned to the front lounge. The guys watched for the first bit, but eventually went to do their own things, leaving Jack and I alone.

Jack rested his head on my shoulder and place a soft kiss on my neck, “pretty good. She’s a very good student.”

“Well, why don’t you show me what you’ve learned so far?” Alex took a seat opposite from us.

“Oh god, ok,” I looked at the guitar, “I can’t promise this will be any good.”

I started playing each of the chords, “D, A minor, A, E, E minor, C, and G.”

“What the fuck?” I heard Jack whisper from behind me and Alex looked at me with wide eyes.

“I think you’ve got yourself a musical talent,” Alex gasped and then shifted his gaze towards Jack.

“I was just playing what Jack showed me before he started teaching me these chords…” I told them with a confused tone, “there’s nothing special about it. It’s literally just chords, they don’t even sound good together in that order.”

“No,” Alex shook his head, dragging out the ‘o’, “you don’t understand. You aren’t supposed to be able to transition between chords that quick after only 40 minutes of playing! And so many chords! It’s not normal! Most people still struggle with the first chord they learn by now!”

“Are you sure you’ve never played before?” Jack exhaled in astonishment.

I nodded, “I’ve never played any musical instruments before. Like I always say, I was good at sports, and Cam at music. I don’t think I ever even tried playing guitar.”

“Well, it turns out you’re musical as well,” Alex pointed out.

“Well that sucks.”

“Why?”

I chuckled, “because Cameron is still really really bad at sports.”

“I bet you can even sing better than him!” Jack said, while nodding in excitement.

“You haven’t even heard him sing once! You don’t know that!” I put the guitar next to us and slapped him against his chest.

“That is not my problem,” he acted like it was no big deal and like he knew he was 100% right.

“Well,” I included Alex again as well, “they’re playing a show in Baltimore in a couple of weeks, you guys should come. I’m going, at least, I have to help with soundcheck, and I want to watch, of course.”

Alex titled his head to the side and honestly asked me, “why would you need to help with soundcheck?”

“Because Cam doesn’t know how to tune a guitar,” I said with a straight face.

There was a knock at the door and I immediately knew this was going to be goodbye. It was time for me to leave, and there was no way I was going to be able to stay much longer. But it had to happen. Goodbyes were never forever, though… or at least I hoped so- Gosh! What was wrong with me! I kept thinking of every little thing that could go horribly wrong, but always had to reassure myself that everything would be fine. I was not going down that path again.

I stood up from Jack’s lap and announced, “that’s probably for me, seeing as it’s exactly quarter to five.”

And just like I thought, my dad was standing there, ready to come pick me up. With all the business things he always did, he was always exactly on time, never late or early. It was like he was able to teleport or something; it was that amazing. Jack and I, however, prefered to be ‘fashionably late’... or more like, we accidentally feel asleep and had to get ready in 15 minutes, which wasn’t all that easy.

“Hi,” I grinned widely, getting a greeting back from him, “come in, I still need to get my stuff.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the front lounge, where Alex and Jack were still sitting. Normally I would be very excited and hyper if I saw my dad, but we both knew that wasn’t such a good idea now. I didn’t want to use up the leftover energy I had. Sure, yes, I would be able to sleep on the plane properly, but I still needed to be able to get myself to the plane. It was weird logic, maybe, but I didn’t want my dad having to do everything.

“Oh, hi, Marcus,” Jack suddenly noticed who was standing in front of him, before glaring at me, “if you would have told me that you were going with your dad, I would have been a lot less worried!”

“I didn’t tell you?” I frowned and quickly got my duffle bag from the junk bunk, returning in no time, “I thought I did… But now you say it, I also don’t recall ever telling you… my brain is playing games with me!”

“Your brain is just a little bit messed up,” he teased and pinched his fingers together with some space apart to emphasize the ‘little bit’ while squinting.

I rolled my eyes and nodded sarcastically, “yeah, a little bit.”

“So, Dan says he’s got the plane ready,” my dad looked up from his phone, “and we can leave in 45 minutes. If we want to make that, we might want to start to get going soon.”

“Ok,” Jack nodded, totally not fazed by the fact that he just found out my dad had a private plane anymore; he had found out way too many things like that about my family before, “I’ll walk you guys out.”

Before I could leave, though, Rian and Zack realised what was going on and quickly joined. I hugged them all goodbye, and they all promised me they would keep Jack away from any trouble and that they were very happy to have me, that I could join them again anytime. I probably should have, but I wasn’t worried about Jack doing anything stupid. Like I told him before, I trusted him. But if he betrayed it, then there would probably be some consequences.

And then Jack and I were left alone outside. He had put my bag in the back of the rented car and my dad already got it to give me and Jack some privacy. This was going to goodbye until he came back home. We wouldn’t be able to see each other anymore until then, and it made me pretty upset. But I wasn’t going to cry. I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to, or so I was telling myself. It would just be stupid if I did. It wasn’t going to be long… but I was terrified. However, I wasn’t going to show Jack that. He had to finish this tour without any worry.

“I’m going to miss you,” I mumbled into his chest while our arms were wrapped tightly around each other. A part of me was begging me to never let go.

“I’m going to miss you so so much too,” Jack sighed and kissed my forehead, “don’t ever think that I’m not thinking about you every second of my day. Even when I’m up on stage I’ll be thinking about you and how much I love you.”

I just nodded, not really knowing how to reply to that. I wasn’t sure if he was reassuring me, or trying to make me even more upset. It wasn’t just part of me that didn’t want to leave anymore. All of me wanted to stay here with Jack and not have to give a fuck about hospitals and my stupid memories. Life just simply sucked without Jack with me.

“I love you too,” I whispered back.

Jack slowly let go of me, but kept hold of the sides of my arms while looking in my eyes, “be strong, ok? In just a couple of weeks I’ll be back and I’ll be able to give you as much kisses and cuddles as you need. Just be strong for now.”

He was just as afraid as I was; afraid enough to think I might already die while he was still on tour. And that was what caused one tear to fall from my eye. Jack quickly wiped it away and kissed me passionately. Everything was going to be fine.

“I- I should go before it get’s any more difficult,” I told him honestly, afraid that I was going to burst out into tears at any moment.

Jack nodded and quickly kissed me one last time before we parted ways. I got into the passenger seat of the car and he took a few steps back. He kept watching the car until we turned the corner. And we were apart once again.

My dad gave me an assuring squeeze in my thigh and smiled when I looked at him. I smiled back, but it wasn’t as strong and as wide as I wanted it to be. But that was nearly impossible with the feeling of tears building up. It was only ten minutes later that he actually started talking to me once again.

“So, have you figured out the living situation yet?” he asked, keeping his gaze focused on the road.

“Yeah,” just thinking about it already made me smile, “I’m going to be moving in with Jack.”

“Really?” My dad seemed surprised, but not like he was disapproving of it, quite the opposite actually, “you guys are getting pretty serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded. Jack and I were really getting serious, and I actually wasn’t afraid anymore.