Worth Living For {Completed}

Chapter 12 | Three's a Company

          I slowly slipped back into the ICU waiting room, just to quickly see how Kenny and Cartman were doing and I waited with a surprise. The ICU, empty just minutes ago, now sat full of people. Familiar people, people I knew.

          My Mother and my Father both never had any siblings, and both of their parents died long ago. I recognized the familiar faces, faces from the students at school, faces from the friends I knew, faces of adults that I can't quite put my finger on who they are. 

          They all looked the same, sad, emotional or emotionless faces scattered the crowd. The emotionless faces so stiff they looked as if they were wearing a mask or made of stone.

          I looked across the crowd and saw Cartman, standing at the end of the room, slowly and carefully slipping a dollar bill and two quarters into one of the vending machines. I watched him, my eyes following his every move. 

          My feet moving in closer and closer to him, bypassing all of the blank and teary expressions. My feet kept moving until my body was close to his, my eyes staring and his hands, the delicacy and carefully he punched in a number and let the candy bar fall into the bowl. It took him a while to lean down gracefully and reach under, and pick the candy bar up.

          He sniffled and I peered over his shoulder to see what he had gotten. It was a Reese's, the four pack, the ones we would always share on the car rides to school. The music turned up loudly,  Stan was usually behind the wheel, and in the King pack of Reese's held four little Reese's peanut butter cups. I would get one, Stan would get one, Kenny would get one and Cartman would have one. Butters didn't have one because he had a peanut allergy. 

          My eyes welled up with tears once again, but I couldn't look away from the candy bar, and neither could Cartman. He breathed in hard and fast, closing his eyes and squeezing the candy bar in his hand. He then breathed out slowly and I saw tears brimming the edges of his eyelids.

          "Eric!" A voice cried from behind us, I wiped the sleeve of my sweater against my eyes and slowly turned around to see where the voice was coming from.

          Butters ran up to us and jumped into Eric's arms. Eric was surprised, but laid a hand delicately on the top of his hair and held him tightly against his chest.

          "What's wrong?" Cartman asked, I don't think he knew what else to say, considering the fact that everything was going wrong.

          Butters sobbed hard into his chest and waited a long time to reply.

          My eyes widened and I leaned in close and although he couldn't hear me I whispered into his ear, my blood pounding in my ears "Butters, why aren't you with Ike?"

          Butters looked up into Eric's eyes "It's Ike"

          I sucked in a breath and I couldn't breath, then it started. The beeping of the machine measuring lives in its counts. The lives all sitting on a little green line with a black background. The sound pounded in my head and I squeezed my eyes shut. Ike.

          He's gone. You should be too, you have nothing left to live for. Nothing, just like what you said to Ike, he's all you had left. The only thing worth living for.

          "No!" I cried at the top of my lungs and started to run.