The Goth and His Psycho.

The Goth and His Psycho: [Chapter Ten]

  It took ages for Kieran to fix Bree. Alex sat near her head, clutching her hand, she was conscious as the doctor performed the medical surgery on his dining room table. Bree had to be conscious the doctor said, because then it would be easier to control her breathing and movements, Kieran said he didn’t have the sufficient equipment to keep her breathing constant. 

  He did give her pain killers though, lots and lots of them. And Alex tried his hardest to divert his eyes from the work the doctor was doing, he didn’t want to see that, he couldn’t watched as Kieran pulled bullets from her skin. He couldn’t, because then the reality of all of this would come back to him, the fact that Bree could die would hit him square in the chest and he'd find it hard to breathe. The fact he could get put into jail for what he was doing would register. Even the fact that Bree wasn’t the girl he wanted her to be would sting. 

  In truth, he wanted all of this to be different. 

  He wanted a cute relationship like you got in the books, in the movies. You know the ones. Kids started out as best friends, they were close and they loved each other with everything they had. And then, something happened, and they were pulled away from each other, one of the kids became an asshole. One moved away, some sort of excuse. And then out of the blue they meet again, or they start to like each other again, there was a few problems, but they always ended up together, kissing and smiling and holding hands and generally being too happy. 

  That’s what Alex wanted, he wanted Bree to be his childhood sweetheart. 

  He didn’t want to be holding her hand while she was having surgery that could kill her. He wanted to slip his hand into hers shyly after they’d just gone to the movies and Alex had pulled the ‘arm-around-the-shoulders’ move for the first time. That’s what he wanted. 

  But he knew he was being stupid. He couldn’t have that. 

  Because Bree hadn’t just been taken away, Alex hadn’t become a popular jerk like in the movies. Bree had killed her family, and then she’d been thrown into a mental asylum. And they hadn’t just met up with each other again, Bree had tried to kill him the first time they’d met up again. 

  Alex had become an antisocial goth who hated everyone and had severe depression. 

  Bree had become a raging psychopath who’d kill you as soon as look at you. 

  What a pair they were, but, Alex thought, almost hopefully as he looked down at her, sweating heavily from the effort of staying still, maybe that’s what made them good for each other.

  He didn’t know. He didn’t even know if he liked her in that way. He didn’t want to have sex with her, or be in a relationship with her, not really. Bree wasn’t the kind of girl you imagined doing that kind of stuff with. All he wanted was to have her close, to protect her. He supposed big brothers got that kind of feeling too, but he knew it wasn’t just a brotherly, best friend kind of protectiveness that was spurring him on.

  There was something more than that, stirring in his chest. He could feel it gripping his heart and constricting his breathing. He didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t a pleasant feeling, not at all. Every time he looked at her, he got that feeling. The feeling of not being able to breathe, surely it wasn’t normal. Surely it were some kind of disease that could be cured. Because it was hurting him, and he couldn’t deal with pain like Bree could, he wanted the feeling to go away as soon as possible. 

  The operation took ages. Maybe hours. Alex couldn’t tell, because by the end of it he was half sleeping on Bree, his head resting on her shoulder from where he sat in a wooden chair near the head of the table. She’d held onto his hand throughout the whole operation, and cracked several fingers by the feel of it. But Alex didn’t mind, if she hadn’t taken his hand he would have given it anyway.