What People Don't See ✔️ | Hailee Steinfeld

7 - Understand

It'd been 2 days since Hailee got mad at Haley. Hailee felt horrible waking up the next day when all the memories from the night before came back to her. She wanted to text her best friend but Hailee didn't know what to say. Hailee had kinda been ignoring her since. She felt bad but she couldn't bring herself to find the words to say to apologize.

That morning, Hailee got a call from her doctor. He said that she needed another surgery a week from then. It was nothing major. They just needed to fix her G-tube. Still, any surgery for Hailee is big. There was no guarantee that her heart would be able to keep working under anesthesia.

When Berlin had heard the news, she was not happy. It was quiet stressful for the young teen to send her foster sister off to surgery not knowing if she'd come back.

It was now the afternoon and Berlin had just gotten home.

"What's wrong baby?" Cheri asked the girl who had just entered the kitchen. Her face was stained with tears.

"You know my best friend Aaliyah?"

"Aaliyah Mendes?"

"No. Aaliyah Evans. She- she passed away last night in her sleep." Berlin said quietly. It was as if the world didn't know how much suffering Berlin had already encountered in her short life.

"And now" Berlin continued "Hailee has to get another surgery and we don't know if she'll make it. I ca- I can't loose two people I love in one week. I don't know if I'd be able to handle it." Now, the teen was crying into Cheri's chest. Cheri was hugging Berlin to try to comfort her. It wasn't working.

Hailee who was sitting at the kitchen table felt awful. She wanted to promise Berlin that she'd make it through but no one knew for sure.

"Berlin. I'm going to fight the whole way through surgery to stay alive. You won't be able to tell but I can feel that my body wants to keep living as much as you do. It's going to do whatever it has to do to keep my heart beating throughout the surgery. We can't think about the bad out come right now. We just need to fight and deal with he aftermath later okay? Whatever happens, everything will work out in the end. Can you trust me?" Hailee asked.

"Yes."

After talking to Berlin, that's when Hailee understood what Haley had been doing all these years for her. She needed her to fight for her family, her friends, and most importantly, herself. Haley knew that Hailee's body wanted to stay alive but Hailee's mind kept getting in the way. Haley was trying to get Hailee's mind in the same state as her body. To have the want to live. The fight to live. Now that Hailee's mind is willing to fight, Hailee was going to do everything in her will to stay alive. Because no matter how the fight ended, everything would be okay.

(506 words)