Behind The Glass Door

Chapter 25

Riley:

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There's a difference between fucking and making love.

Fucking is meaningless. You do it for yourself and no one else, you only care about yourself.

Making love is a term I've always hated but it has a deeper meaning. It's when you care about someone so deeply, that it's soft and not rushed. The thing about Val and I is that everyone believed when we were dating, that we were like newlyweds on our honeymoon.

We weren't.

We fought, and fought, and fought. She tried to fight with me because I got her the wrong flavored coffee, she'd tell me that I didn't care, or that I never cared about her. I felt bad, her parents wanted her to be some world-class surgeon and she wanted anything but that.

Then we'd make up with sex. It meant nothing honestly, and I hated it, she hated it. But she always came back and said 'No one else is like you'. But I'm not enough for her standards, no one is. She's just not made for dating. 

Now she was trying to do the same with Lacy, the girl who was too fragile to go into surgery a couple of days ago, so she died for ninety-three seconds.

And now we have the same situation.

She was throwing up blood, lots of it into a plastic tray on the table, she had told Mia, who was playing with dolls on the bedside table while she sat on Lacy's bed, to look away. It had been a week since her surgery, since the accident. 

"She has an ulcer, we need to get her into surgery, now! Get O.R. three ready!" Doctor. Wilson yelled as Lacy's body shook and her eyes fluttered.

"She's seizing! Christ," he ran his hands through his hair. "Come on Lacy," he muttered, lying the bed down flat.

She was fully awake though, her mouth opening to try and say things. Doctor. Dupont put a net on her hair, putting the breathing mask on her.

They pushed her out of the room and down the hall as her whole family watched, following her. I knew she'd be alright, it'd go smoothly just like last time.

I foreshadowed myself so badly. 

****

After four hours of waiting, chewing on nails, and dead silence while Mia talked to herself, holding her dolls in her hand and moving them around as she waited in the chair next to Lacy's bed, waiting for her to come back and play again.

"Where's Lacy?" she asked.

"She had an appointment, sweetie," Mrs. Clarke said, clutching her purse in her hand.

Finally, Doctor. Dupont came in, looking at us sympathetically.

I only squinted my eyes shut and crossed every bone in my body. 

"Lacy had a hole in her artery, she was bleeding out internally again. She lost a lot more blood than last time, we did everything we could-" She was cut off by a sob. A sob out of me. Out of her mom and dad, her siblings, and my mom, Mia still played with her dolls. How was she dead, she couldn't be, they needed to keep going on her. 

"No, no, no she's not dead madam, don't worry. She died for a while and we started to give up but her heart used all its strength to get her back. See, she's very fragile right now because she's not eating enough, so it puts a strain on her heart because she's so weak. We are keeping her in the hospital for a while until she's not severely underweight,"

"She should be fifty-eight kilograms, at the minimum, that's a hundred and thirty pounds, but she's fifty-two kilograms, which is a hundred and fifteen pounds, someone who's eleven to thirteen should weigh that much, at the minimum," she said, growing angry.