If I Stay✔️

58

I lost my teen hood when I barely got to be a teen. I lost my parents before ever getting to know them as them rather than knowing them as my mom and dad.

We all did.

We were orphaned before we even knew how to appreciate what we had.

I hate them. I hate that they left me. I hate that they left us. I hate them.

I hate them. I need them. I love them. I miss them.

I miss them so fucking much that everything hurts.

***

Ace was terrified.

We were in the hospital treatment room, the same room that was beginning to feel like my second home. I sat in the familiar blue, uncomfortable, plastic chair, the same one I'd sat in time and time again, with my hands clenched around the fabric of my sweatpants, my eyes remaining on the off white tiled floor as I took short breaths to keep myself from crumbling.

I'd managed to drown out everything around me; the ticking clocks, the buzzing doors, the doctors words, even the smell of bleach became so subtle that I began to wonder if my nose was blocked.

Ace was to the left of me laying on the bed where he was being treated right now, and I couldn't bring myself to look at him. I'd already seen how his eyes widened in horror when he'd seen the doctor prepare the needle to stitch his forehead. That was all it took for me to look away.

I knew Callan was by his side, taking the place where I should be as he clutching our brothers hand, comforting him as the doctor tended to his wounds.

There was a few sounds I couldn't drown out,
one was Ace's winces and curses. It was breaking my heart to hear his pleas: his fear of needles came into my mind, how he'd clutch my hand so tightly anytime he was due his shots as a kid, even as a newborn he was inconsolable.

But even with the picture of his tear stricken baby face engraved in my mind; his trembling lip, teary eyes and shaky fingers, I still didn't move.

It made me feel like a horrible brother — a horrible Dad. The fact that I sat so close whilst my mind remained too far.

The second sound was my heart beat. I could hear the rhythmic throb as it hammered against my rib cage. It was so loud that it swirled around in my mind and floated to the back of my throat, the intense throb being the only thing reminding me of where I am. Of how terrified I felt. But even with that terror there was numbness.

I felt like I was floating between two worlds, loosing reality as I sunk further into the abyss of my fear filled mind.

Was this what drowning felt like? I'd always claimed that I never knew what Leo meant when he said he'd was drowning, now I wonder if I was lying to him or myself when I said it.

Bones crunched and Ace's scream filled my ears, the sound snapping me out of the darkened depths I'd fallen a victim too.

I looked up, eyes meeting his for the first time since we'd entered the room, because I'm the biggest coward on earth.

I felt like I was looking at a mirror image of the memory from my mind. The same trembling lip, the glassy, pleading eyes filled with so much terror. He was my mini me, my carbon copy, one of my favourite people, yet who would know it if they'd to look at me now.