redemption || josh kiszka

1

josh

"Nothing you can do? What the hell do you mean there's nothing you can do?!" I screamed in the face of our only hope - the neurosurgeon who could save my soulmates life. The one who would determine our destiny, the one with our fate in his hands. "There has to be something - fuck!"

His expression hadn't faltered - he had been through this countless times before. He studied me as my hands tangled in my hair and paced back and forth, a fresh set of tears pooling and spilling over my lids for the millionth time that day. My heart hurt, along with my chest. My eyes drooped, the bags excessive and darkened like the night that cast over us as we waited in fear. I was exhausted, hopeless, and ready to throw in the towel.

Until his eyebrow twitched with inspiration.

"What, what is it?" I asked him, stepping closer. "Please tell me you have an idea."

Dr. Maurice Resmond glanced hesitantly around the room at the handful of visitors, then beckoned me to follow him with a nod of his head, stepping out of Lorelei's room and into the hallway. I looked back at her as she lay still on her back, hair draped over her shoulder with most of the side shaved off, her many, many stitches on display for everyone to see. Anastasia, as usual, was at her side, holding her lifeless, limp hand with her head resting on her other arm, while Jake tiredly rubbed circles on her back. The familiar distaste, disgust, uneasiness washed over me and I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting, again.

Guilt.

Guilt is what consumed me every time I looked at her. It was tough - extremely tough to think that I am part of the reason she's laying in that hospital bed. That i'm part of the reason that she jumped off a fucking bridge. That, while I was fucking another woman who very much resembled her, she was on her way to the bridge with the intentions of ending her life.

It was constant.

You know how people say grief comes in waves? Guilt comes in waves?

Wrong.

It was like a river, constantly flowing rather than periodically washing over me like the calm waves cyclically washing up on the ocean shore. It was a river with a current so strong that it sucked me under every moment of every waking second with no indication of mercy, a constant gasping for air, but to no avail.

Three days had passed.

Three days since her surgery and no improvement.

They said there was nothing they could do, and that she would either wake up on her own time or she wouldn't. That was all.

And I was to blame.

I was at my wits end. With no sleep in three days and lack of a miracle, I was ready to chew this guys head off and take Lorelei somewhere else - somewhere they can actually fucking fix her. With the fifty tubes and wires and the vent, you couldn't even tell who it was underneath, and it made me sick. The man in front of me is the determinant of life and death here, and surely, I hope he sides with life.

He shut the door behind him, taking a deep breath in, then out, seemingly fighting an internal battle given by the sight of the crease in his forehead, the downturn of his brows. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak, lowly.

"There's an experimental surgery I've developed that deals specifically with brain bleeds at this magnitude." He began in a hushed tone, as if he hadn't wanted anyone to hear, like it was a secret. Maybe it was.

"Okay, do it." I nodded, pinching the bridge of my nose, a small spark of hope igniting in my chest. "Do something, anything. Whatever you have to do."