Anne scooted next to me and sighed.
"When Harry was eleven, his dad and I split up. It broke his heart terribly; he never talked to his father anymore after that. What really chocked him was a couple of months later, when his dad died in a car accident. He never opened up to anyone, not even me. He looks mysterious to other people, but deep down he's still my baby. Since then, he's had this overprotective streak in him that makes him feel like he has to protect everyone he loves. I don't think he can grasp that he can't save everyone. When he was thirteen, he was put on antidepressants. Sometimes, he would get-" She sighed as she rubbed her hands together.
"You don't have to tell me if this is upsetting you." I said as I placed my hand over hers.
"It's fine. He would get angry and he would act like his father; that scared me the most. He didn't hit me or his sister; he would get angry and leave. He would go to the park a couple of minutes from the house and sit there for hours. When he turned fifteen, he'd stopped speaking to us and communicated by doing something we'd asked; if he needed to tell us something, he'd write it down on a sheet of paper. He was giving us the silent treatment until he was eighteen. A couple of months ago, my brother called me and said that he wouldn't mind helping Harry pay for his flat. I went into his room and all of his stuff was in boxes; he was stacking a box on another when I'd asked him where he was going. He wrote down 'I'm moving out'. It broke my heart to see him leave without warning me. I understood how he felt; he needed to get out of the house because of the troubling childhood. When I was six, my parents' got a divorce too. This morning I'd gotten a text from him and it was strange because he rarely texts us anymore."
"What time was the message sent?" I asked.
"Um... ten forty-seven, why?"
"We were in the cafeteria around that time, that's when he'd passed out."
A man came into the waiting room; Anne stood up and approached the man.
"So, how is he?" she whispered.
The boys came in with two bags from Jimmy's Burgers and two water bottles. I smiled as they sat next to me.
"We got you and Anne a burger. We didn't know what you wanted so we got water." Louis said.
"Thanks." I said.
Anne came back from talking to the doctor and said, "You guys wanna see him?"
I nodded my head and followed behind her, the boys did the same. We entered room D211, and saw Harry sleeping in the hospital bed. The white walls surrounding us reminded me of when my mother died.
~Flashback~
"Daddy, where's Mommy?" I asked.
I looked at my father, with tears in my eyes. He didn't respond, he only held me in his lap. He closed his eyes, tears slipping from his eyelids.
"Daddy, please stop crying. Where's Mommy?" I looked at the hospital bed.
A body was underneath a blanket; my eyes diverted from the body.
"Let's go." Dad whispered.
He picked me up and walker out of the room. I screamed for my Mom, as my dad kept walking away from the hospital room.
"Listen, Mommy's on vacation for a long time. I don't know where she's going but-" My dad started to say.
"She's dead, isn't she?" I asked.
He nodded his head and didn't say a word. I looked at the furniture in the house, the brown couch we used to watch Disney movies on, the stove where I'd burned my finger. My eyes scanned over a picture frame that was on the shelf next to the TV. It was a picture of me and Mom at the beach from our vacation in Eastbourne; I was climbing on her back while Dad snapped the picture. That was the only vacation I remembered. I grabbed the picture and walked towards my dad's room. He was sitting in the bed, leaning over the bed as he silently cried.
"Dad, what does dead mean?" I hesitated.
~End of Flashback~
