Status: Completed! Sequel up soon

Hospital Beds and Memories

All These Looks With Different Meanings

“Oh my god,” Jack gasped as he saw my eyes flutter open uncomfortably. The light was way too bright for me to handle, having literally been consumed by darkness for a while. My eyes somehow felt dry, even though they had been closed all that time.

But that wasn’t what I was focused on, nor on the terrible aching throughout my entire body. I couldn’t really care about that. There were more important things going on. For example, the haunting thoughts that were consuming my mind. Nothing made sense to me anymore. I didn’t know that I was remotely alive. I still didn’t feel like it. But the fact that I was somehow experiencing this, meant that I had to be breathing and my heart was still beating. Dead bodies didn’t have senses anymore.

“Isle! You woke up!” Jack quickly picked up his chair and sat down closer to me, making the plastic scrape painfully over the laminate floor, “I-- I thought you weren’t going to anymore. The doctors tried waking you up, but nothing happened. I thought I was going to lose you forever!”

I couldn’t match Jack’s excitement. Actually, all my feeling were quite the opposite of excitement. I didn’t want to be there. After having made the decision that I was fine with leaving, I was actually expecting to never have to come back. Yet, here I was, in a hospital bed, in a private room, Jack talking to me. I was always ready to take things the way they came, but this time I really had hoped that it was the end.

I slowly turned my head to look at Jack, my face and eyes completely blank. The fact that he had one of the biggest smiles on his face didn’t make my mouth even twitch slightly just showed how annoyed I was.

No, I wasn’t annoyed, I was numb. I wanted to die. I was content, but now I couldn’t even remember what that felt like.

“You don’t even understand how happy I am right now,” Jack emphasized, only making the contrast between us bigger, “I almost lost hope! You were supposed to wake up two days ago latest. But you’re alive!”

“I wish I wasn’t,” I deadpanned and turned to look up at the ceiling again. The plain white tiled ceiling look cold with the fluorescent tube lamps giving off an unnatural bright light. It described the feeling in my heart, only had hoped that it was dark rather than showing signs of life.

“What?” He barely managed to squeak out, not even loud enough to be a whisper.

“Well, let’s see,” my voice was still monotone as my eyes didn’t flicker to look around, “you managed to keep me alive for however long I’ve been here. But what now? The time you managed to keep me alive hasn’t benefitted anyone. You weren’t able to do anything with me, I literally couldn’t do anything. I’m going to die eventually. But for some reason, rather than letting me die and have it over and done with, you’re making me go through this for longer than necessary. Don’t you think I wouldn’t have fallen over if I had tried hard enough? If I was really motivated, I would have been able to stay awake. But what was the point? Everybody was happy, the only person who still needed to be was me, so I decided to take that in my own hands. I’d never have to live with this fucking cancer ever again. But, now, look what you’ve done. I’m stuck here for longer, having to live once again until my body finally decides to give up again soon.”

“But you don’t understand!” Jack interjected before I got anymore depressing with my pessimistic views. I just thought that he was trying to make it right, but it was obvious he couldn’t.

“Just shut up,” I snapped back, not wanting to listen to his lame selfish excuses, “I’m guessing it’s not just you who hated me enough to do this. There’s no way I’d be in a room like this and still be fucking alive if my parents weren’t involved. I thought they knew better than that. They said they would never do it again after they kept me alive for a year while everybody told them there was no point. But, hey, guess what! You’re all selfish twats who made this worse.”

“Ireland!” He sternly looked at me, not allowing to let me keep going on with my rant. His hand was on my arm, holding on me tightly. “The cancer… it’s gone.”

And that’s what got me out of my weird daze. I froze up, my eyes finally showing emotion for the first time since I woke up: shock. For a second I thought that I must have made it up, that I was still dreaming, that I wasn’t actually back. No, it couldn’t be real. Things just didn’t go so easily for me. Jack said he was happy I was alive, there was no way that it was all gone. He wouldn’t have had to be so worried if it was. But I could feel his thumb run over my knuckles, I knew it had to be real.

I looked at him once again, the smile on his face showed me that he wasn’t lying. What the hell had happened in the time I was out? How did they somehow manage to cure it while they first always told me that it was never going to happen? And why did I still feel like shit?

“I-- I--” I was lost for words, not sure what to think. There was too much going on. I guess I was happy, but I also felt guilty for ‘blowing up’ on Jack like that. I also wanted to know how they managed to do it, how everybody was, and what was going to happen next. This was the last thing I had expected.

“Don’t worry,” he continued to grin at me, coming a bit closer, “I accept your apology. You’ve been here for around two months or so. They decided to try out a new treatment. It was affecting you pretty hard, so that’s why I’m so happy you’re awake. When they said they were taking you out of the medically induced coma, there was just under a 50/50 chance that you’d make it. You had three days to wake up, but it’s day five right now. I thought I was going to lose you. I’d hate myself if I knew you had beaten the cancer, just to die because of the treatment. But you’re here. However, it’s not over yet. You still need to get a stem cell transplant which will take a while. They first need to find a match and then it takes a while for you to actually receive it, and then you still need to wait a bit to see if things actually work out. But when they find that match, it will be over quickly.”

“I’m so lost,” I mumbled, still not being able to believe what was happening.

“Too much at once? I’ll try to say it in simple words. Two months, cancer gone, need donor for stem cells, stem cells given to you, hopefully you get better fully."

“No, I understood that, it’s just…” I breathed out a sigh that was just a tad shaky. “Wait. Two months? How in the world have you been able to go without sex for two whole months?!”

“Well, you see,” Jack dragged out, rocking in his chair a bit, “I got a new girlfr--”

Just at that moment, Abagail came walking into the room with a baby in her arms. I could immediately tell that it was her daughter. But what confused me the most was what Jack said before, and how weird it was that Abagail was actually in here. When I took a quick glance at his left hand, I saw that his promise ring was missing from his ring finger. This was all adding up way too much, and it certainly was making me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but this seemed way too incidental.

“Oh, hey, you’re awake!” Abagail gave me a smile and handed the baby to Jack, who was just looking at me with wide eyes.

“Ok, umm, this is completely coincidental. Don’t think that this is what I was going to say,” Jack quickly began to defend himself, however still taking the newborn baby in his arms and gently rocking it, “I was actually going to say my right hand… you know, make a stupid joke. I didn’t actually find a new girlfriend.”

Abagail frowned as she looked in between us, sitting down on a chair close to the foot of my bed. The only thing that didn’t really sit right with me was that I didn’t really feel like she was frowning because she didn’t know what was going on, it seemed way deeper than that. She actually looked sad with a hint of anger mixed in it. But today wasn’t the day of jumping to conclusions.

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything,” I reassured Jack, but actually felt relieved to know that it wasn’t what I was thinking. It didn’t explain his missing promise ring though. “Just one question, not to be rude or anything, but correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t there usually something made out of metal on your left hand, specifically on your ring finger?”

“Oh. Umm, yeah, kinda embarrassing story,” He blushed, also having an explanation for this, “I was in the shower, you know doing things you do in the shower, and I slipped, I managed to grab onto that small weird ledge on the wall and my ring got this annoying deep scratch on it, so it’s getting fixed right now. You can call me stupid, because honestly I am, but I would never take it off otherwise.”

The baby let out a couple of fussy noises before breaking out into a cry. Jack tried to calm her down by bouncing her up and down a bit more, but it didn’t work. Abagail stood up, suggesting that she was just hungry, and took her back from Jack, sitting back down on the chair.

“You guys don’t mind if I feed her, right?” She asked before staring right at me, “You’ve both seen my boobs before.”

It wasn’t the fact that she was going to breastfeed in front of me that made me uncomfortable (really, babies had to eat, there was nothing wrong with that), but the looks she gave me was just so intimidating. I just quickly diverted my eyes away from her, and instead decided to look at Jack who shrugged and said it was ok. All I did was nod my head along.

“What’s, umm, what’s her name?” I decided to try to break the tension between us, which I wasn’t sure I was imagining, or if it was actually there and that Jack didn’t notice it at all.

“Ruby and she has my last name,” Abagail answered, “I was first planning on giving her her father’s last name, but we didn’t really have that connection. He’s still moving out here, but we are just going to be friends and parents of our daughter, but nothing more. I could tell he wanted more, but I just didn’t feel it. No harsh feelings. But Jack’s been helping me out a bit since she was born two weeks ago.”

“Yeah, that little girl there has been trying to cheer me up a bit the last couple of days,” Jack gazed at Ruby with speck of love.

“She really has taken a liking to you. She rarely lets other people hold her, but she’s always been fine around you,” Abagail look at Jack with a lot more love than Jack was looking at the baby. This was more like an ‘I’m-in-love-with-you’ look rather than the appreciative look Jack was giving. Maybe I wasn’t imagining all this.

“Babies love me,” Jack grinned with a chuckle, raising his arms in triumph, “I’ve just been around my nephews and nieces a lot, I know how to deal with other people’s kids, I don’t think I’ll be ready for my own though.” He gave me a quick glance as a wink, showing his support of my decision to preferably never have kids (not that I was sure I would ever be able to get pregnant anymore).

“You know, you can always hang around with me and Ruby if you ever feel like you need to be around a babe again.”

Oh, I hated her wordplay. I knew she meant herself and definitely not Ruby. But of course Jack was stupid enough to not realise Abagail’s flirting. I was actually getting annoyed, just wanting her to back off already. Something told me that this wasn’t going to end soon, though. I was jealous, and it was making me furious.