Hospital Beds and Memories

Another morning, and yet again I woke up drenched in sweat. On top of all the nauseating feelings coursing through my body, I knew I also had had a nightmare. It was the day after the girls had beaten me up, and I was very sore. Everything about me hurt; whenever I switched positions, a sharp pain would shoot through me, taking a deep breath would make my chest feel like it was collapsing, and even something as simple as reaching up to scratch my nose would be too much for me to handle. Everything was causing me trouble and I just wanted to give up. What made it even worse was the fact that I had no idea what my nightmare was about. All I could remember were agonizing screams, pain like I had never felt before, and the deep feeling of fear consuming me.

Normally, I would be able to recall the events and tell myself what clearly told me that it was all fake and there was nothing to be afraid of… but this time was different. It was completely the opposite. Something about it seemed so real and tangible, like I was actually there despite knowing I obviously couldn’t have been. This was a dream, none of it was real. It just couldn’t be! I was fine, and there was no logical reason why I was afraid. But the fact that I jumped when Taco suddenly jumped onto the bed proofed otherwise. I was petrified.

Something happened, but I didn’t know what.

I got out of bed, trying to ignore all the stabbing pain soaring through me; I just had to see if Jack was actually at home, or decided to leave me for a couple of hours. If the latter were true, then I’d be jumping at every small noise and shadow. Not knowing what happened in your dreams, especially if they got you scared like this, really was the worst thing to possibly happen.

Before opening the door to the hallway, I walked past the full length mirror, catching a small glimpse of myself. I looked a lot worse than I originally expected in just one of Jack’s t-shirts and panties, but then again, I did bruise from the smallest things ever, so it was only natural that getting beat up made me look like I was hit by a truck. Not only did I have a black eye, a busted lip, and bruises covering my limbs, but when i raised my shirt, I saw that my whole side was a shade of purplish black, outlined by yellow. It looked absolutely horrifying.

When I finally managed to waddle down the stairs, I heard Jack talking to somebody else. As soon as I entered the living room to reach the kitchen, I saw that Alex was comfortable sitting on one of the couches, a cup of coffee sat right in front of him on the coffee table.

Jack smiled at my presence and happily chirped. “Morning!”

“Fuck off,” I grumbled. I didn’t mean to be so moody, but I couldn’t help it. With the way I was feeling, you would agree. Bruises were littering my body and I could feel both men look at them all as closely as possible from where they were sitting. I could exactly guess why Alex was here. There was no doubt he was here because Jack had made him aware of the entire situation. I didn’t exactly mind that Jack told him, but what bugged me was that I didn’t know anything about somebody coming over. If I had, I would have made sure that I was wearing some pants, and not walking around showing off my beautiful legs that were purple and blue.

The stares Alex gave me made me so uncomfortable. I know he meant nothing bad with it, but I didn’t exactly like anybody inspecting me. It was pretty obvious that I was hurt, there was no reason for him to want to see anything. I didn’t mind Jack looking at me like that (he had seen me in all my glory before), but even his gaze made me squirm.

So, I went into the kitchen to take my medication. I would have been stupid to keep standing there for them to continue to examine me. If I felt uncomfortable, then I was going make sure I made it less uncomfortable for myself. Just standing there awkwardly wouldn’t get me anywhere. Having to take my medication was the best excuse there was. If Jack and Alex wanted to see all my beautiful bruises better, they would have to ask, and I’d maybe let them see everything, but what was going on now wasn’t going to work.

I opened the cupboard where all the pills were kept, so they would just stand around in the kitchen or get lost, and grabbed the three bottles I needed: the medication I took for my seizures, my nausea medication, and some other shit I needed to take because of the chemo. It all tasted disgusting, and I didn’t even know what exactly I was putting in my body anymore.

To make swallowing the pills easier, I went to grab a glass to get myself some water to drink along with it. Nearly making it fall over when I got the tall glass from the cupboard, I went to turn the tap on. But suddenly something flashed in front of my eyes. There was a knife pointed right at me, threatening to hurt me if I didn’t oblige. I screamed as loud as I could, dropping the glass right next to me. Trying to get away from the vision, I stepped backwards right into the shards. They pierced right through my foot, each cut burning and stinging more than the last. The image was gone, though. It was nowhere to be found.

“What’s going on! Are you ok? What happened?!” Jack rushed into the kitchen, leaving me surprised with how fast he had actually gotten here. He was looking around to see if there was anything going terribly wrong, until his eyes froze at my feet. A red liquid was already slowly starting to seep from underneath them. “You’re standing right in it! Oh my god, ok. Umm, let me get some shoes and help you out of there!”

With that he ran back out of the kitchen, ordering Alex to get a chair for me to sit on as soon as I was no longer in the sharp ocean of clear class. I just continued to stand there in shock, trying to process what has just happened. Something seemed so familiar about that knife, but I didn’t know what it was from. It just seemed to set it me off. But, I mean, who doesn’t freak out when they think they are being intimidated and menaced by a large kitchen knife?

Jack returned back in no time, having something safe on his feet, and a pair of tweezers and bandages in his hands. He placed down the medical items on the empty counter, before slowly stepping through the dangerous sharp pieces on the floor to get to me. I wasn’t going to dare move my feet anymore, afraid I would only make the whole situation worse. Jack swiftly picked me up before carefully placing me on the chair.

“I’ll clean it all up,” he nodded towards the mess I had made, but proceeded to raise one of my feet instead, getting the bandages and tweezers from their previous place, “But first, let’s get you cleaned up.”

I sighed, already starting to feel dizzy from the entire situation. I had only been awake for fifteen minutes, and I already managed to make it one of the worst days ever. The whole thing just made me feel tired and numb, I couldn’t even feel Jack pulling out the small shards. I just tried to not look down at what he was doing, knowing it would make me be sick; I could deal with blood, but things being pulled out of my body made me feel very nauseous.

“Nope,” Alex stated, standing up and swiveling on his feet, having leaned down to see what Jack had to work with, “That’s disgusting. I can’t see that.”

I rolled my eyes as him, while Jack took the gauze and square bandaging to swathe the wounds formed on my feet, “It’s not that bad. This is a lot more disgusting,” I raised my shirt up to just below my chest to show off the bruise I was hiding on my ribs. It looked even worse with this lighting, making me happy that Jack was too focused on my feet to pay attention to what was happening between Alex and I.

“Our fans did that?” Alex asked quietly, not believing it could be possible. I nodded in response, not wanting to hurt him anymore with giving him any details about the event. He shook his head in disbelief, “Did they also cause that scar?”

Well, shit. I forgot about that. The fact that I had a bruise, totally made me forget about the one reason why I was insecure of taking my shirt off and why I felt anxious while wearing bikinis. It was weird that I forgot completely about it, and I did not know why it suddenly slipped my mind like that. However, that didn’t stop me from quickly pulling down the shirt again.

“No,” I mumbled, feeling very self conscious. All I could do was wait for Jack to finish wrapping up my second foot. “It wouldn’t even make sense if it was because of them; a scar doesn’t just form overnight like that. I don’t know what it’s from.”

“Ok, all done,” Jack smiled up at me, completely oblivious of the conversation Alex and I had been having. He got out of his crouching position and stood up, assessing the damage on the floor, “I’ll clean this up before it causes any more casualties.”

I nodded, not feeling up to arguing about it. I would have told him I would do it, but that wouldn’t have been any use. The only thing that could happen with me trying to do that, would be me cutting myself even more. It was already very likely that these bandages weren’t going to hold for long, I did not need to waste anymore of the dressing.

“I think I’ll just go back to bed and try today over again, it has not been going well at all,” I got up from the chair, careful with my footing so I wouldn’t hurt myself, or slip because of the fabric on the soles of my feet.

Jack quickly kissed me, before I let my body transport me back up the stairs. I fell right back into bed, lying down on my stomach and pulling the duvet up over my head. The last couple of days, i had been able to deal with everything, but it was finally all getting to me. I just wanted to sleep and stay in bed forever until I finally had the energy of a normal human being again. Closing my eyes, I tried to stop thinking about everything so I could rest peacefully. I had to forget about everything that just happened, that I had a weirdass nightmare, all about the shit that went down the day before, and the fact that leukemia and chemotherapy were slowly consuming and ruining my entire body.

I suddenly felt a hand on my back, and the bed dip to my side. I could already tell it was Jack, knowing that Alex wouldn’t just come up here and do something like this to me.

“Hey, baby,” he placed a glass on the bedside table, drawing shapes through the blanket and ticking my back. “You forgot to take your meds, you should probably do that.”

I groaned, popping my head out of the covers like a turtle coming out of it’s shell. Jack had been considerate enough to lay out the exact pills I had to take, so that I didn’t have to figure that out anymore. I popped them all into my mouth, drinking the entire glass of water to chase them. This time, I made sure to carefully place back to glass to make sure history wouldn’t repeat itself.

Jack went to stand up again, by I wrapped my arms around his torso before he could do so. Placing my head in his lap, I looked up at him with a pout and puppy dog eyes. “Please stay.”

“I have to get back to Alex...” he told me, but something about the way he ran his fingers through my hair lightly told me that he actually really wanted to stay here with me, “We are trying to figure out what to do with this whole hate thing going on. So far, we’re decided we're going to post that video, share it on Twitter and the band's website before taking a break from social media in general. It should tell everybody that stuff like this will have consequences.”

“They’ll probably blame me for you guys not updating your Twitter feeds.” I muttered, not originally wanting to say it out loud.

“If they do, then we’ll have to figure something else out.” he told me although he was confident that his plan would work and that people would actually leave me be. I, however, was pretty sceptical about the plan working, but things couldn’t get worse than they already were. He stayed silent for a little while before speaking up again. “What actually happened downstairs?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed, taking his empty hand in one of my own and playing with his fingers, “I woke up from a nightmare, but I couldn’t remember anything from it. Then, in the kitchen, I had a weird hallucination, causing me to jump and drop the glass. It’s all really confusing me.”

Jack sighed quietly, giving me a sympathetic smile. I was only having another side effect from chemo: delusions. “Well, if you wake up from another nightmare, just shout for me, and I’ll be here. As soon as Alex leaves, I’ll make sure to come up and cuddle with you anyway.”

“Okay,” I grinned, letting go of his hand and getting off his lap so he could freely leave without me being in the way. At least I knew he was going to be there to help me through the other side effects as well. Not only did he hold my hair when I was throwing up, deal with my random grumpiness, but now he was also going to help me while I was basically having weird mental episodes that made me think there were things that weren’t there in reality.

He really was the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with.