Save My Heart

1. Thiago

I walk into the room quietly and look at her as she's sleeping peacefully. It's been two months, twenty-two days and three hours. Two months and twenty-two days of me coming and visiting her, this girl they all call Mae. I don't know who she really is. I only know her because I'm the one who caused her this. The one who put her into this coma, or as I like to call it, to sleep. It's scary when you think about it, she's alive but yet looks very dead. Two months, twenty-two days and three hours of no movement or breath or anything of any sort on her own.

I sigh, stopping the guilt I feel temporarily, and look over to the clock, its three a.m. now. I had nothing better do so I decided that I could come and visit. Technically visiting hours are over, but since I am a patient here the worst they can do is send me back to my room. That's right, ever since the accident I've been stuck in this damn hospital too.

I look down at her face again and whisper, "Hey Mae, sorry to bother you, that is if you can hear me at all. Mind if I sit here?" I say as I walk towards the only chair in the room.

I laugh a bit. I probably sound really crazy, but somehow talking to Mae comforts me. It's like I finally have someone who will really listen to me. I mean, she doesn't really have a choice, but it still is nice.

"They still haven't found a heart for me. Two months and twenty-two days of medications and surgery and they still haven't found a heart for me. I guess it's kind of fair since you still didn't wake up. But Mae, I don't want to die, not yet, not like this in a hospital." I sigh and look away.

Things like this I don't go around and telling everybody, not even my girlfriend. With Mae it's different, she won't judge me. I know she can't judge me but she doesn't look like someone who would judge me.

I get up out of the chair I was sitting in and walk to the door. I look out and see that a nurse is coming down the hall checking on all the patients. I turn back around and face Mae.

"You know what Mae, both of us were getting out, okay. The day you wake up their either going to find me a heart or I'm not going to need one. Do you understand?" She looks so dead I can't stand it. "Mae, I'm not leaving without you."

I leave the room and I don't look back. As I'm half way down the hall I hear someone call me back. "Mr. Demonte you're supposed to be getting some rest." I turn around slowly hopping it would be one of the nicer nurses.

"Uh, I was just checking up on, uh" I say as I walk back towards the owner of the voice. As I walk closer I sigh a breath of relief as I see who it is, Nurse Melanie. The sweetest nurse you will ever meet. She was forty and had two kids but didn't seem like she was even above the age of 30.

"Checking up on Mae, I know. But Thiago you need to rest too and I promised you that if I heard any new about her I would inform you right away." She looks at me her voice softening.

"Yes I know I'm sorry, thank you again." I muster a small smile.

"Good now please go and try to get a good night's sleep, you have an early check up tomorrow." She smiles and points in the direction of my room.

I turn around throw a backwards wave and then I start walking back to my room. I pass a bunch of other sick peoples room on the way there and it makes me sick. I think about how people here have stayed her longer than I have and that I can stay strong but I don't know anymore.

I at least get to occasionally go home but it's not the same anymore. Everyone treats me like I'm so fragile, as if any second my heart will fail me and I will collapse. Their too kind, too sweet, careful to never shout at me or get mad at me.

I miss my old life where I was loud and obnoxious where I could do anything I wanted without the fear of my heart collapsing, where I could play Football and run into people with them getting hurt and not me. Where no one thought of me differently.

I walk into my room ad climb into my hospital bed. This is not the life I should be living, not the life at all. I let my head rest comfortably on the pillow and then I sleep and I allow myself to dream. I dream about a universe where everything was back to normal and I wasn't so broken.