My Wish Upon A Star

Chapter 24 - Grand Theft Gown

"You can come see him now." I looked up at Sophia. She seemed tired. I got on my feet automatically. "You have ten minutes to talk with him. You'll switch with my mom afterwards so she can see him for the last five minutes," she instructed me.

"If this was Grey's Anatomy I could have slept beside him for the last nine hours," I told her as we walked side by side.

"If this was Grey's Anatomy he'd be dead, and probably something dramatic like your long lost twin."

"Your sense of humour needs some working on," I informed her.

She snorted. "I'm ignoring what you just said because I know I'm hilarious." She stopped in front of a door.

Landon was lying there on the hospital bed with a bunch of wires and tubes hooked up all over him. There were two other patients in his room, but only one of them had a visitor.

And I didn't really know what to do or say. So, I walked towards him and stopped at the foot of his bed and I went with a soft, "hey."

"Christ," Landon said in a raspy voice. He looked awful. He barely lifted his head and it seemed to be taking him all of his strength. "You guys really moved thing fast. You're getting married today?"

And then I realized what this must looked like. I hadn't really thought about it, I had only thought about getting to Landon as fast as possible. Not about giving him an actual heart attack. "Oh. OH. Shit. Wow, okay yeah, I totally didn't think about how this looks. Why am I always wearing inappropriate dresses at the hospital? I'm sorry. I called off the wedding. I'm not getting married. I just wanted to feel like a pretty princess."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"So, no wedding?"

"No wedding."

"What does it mean?" he asked me. Even if I could see he was weak and in pain, I could see it, the shimmer of hope in his eyes.

"It doesn't mean that I'm picking you."

"You're still picking him?"

I shook my head. "I'm no picking either of you. I'm picking me. You were right. I need to get my life together. But it didn't mean getting myself a boyfriend or a husband. It meant figuring out what kind of future I wanted."

"How grown up of you," he said, and then started to breathe a little faster and then slower again, like his body didn't know what it was doing.

What was I supposed to do? Should I hold his hand? Was I even allowed to touch him?

I felt a little uneasy. So I said, "I can't stay very long because apparently this isn't Grey's Anatomy, but I just want to see you and make sure you were okay."

"I wasn't okay, you know before. I was going to see you, to convince you not to marry him again. To explain why I was at Abbie's the other day."

"It's okay not to be okay. You and I, we convince ourselves everything is under control but it really isn't. We need to figure out lives out. You were right when you said I had to get my life in order, but you need to do that too. I'm finally trying to turn my life around. And if you ever want us to have a chance at something, you'll need to start doing something with yourself too," I told him.

He closed his eyes, taking this in. And then he said, "I have options, I know. But I never wanted to take any of them because starting something new meant giving up something old and I was too scared to do that. Moving on would mean that my circus years would be truly over and I wasn't ready for that. It's all I've been dreaming about for as long as I can remember. I never had any other plans than this, nothing that gave me as much joy and a sense of fulfillment as performing did. I always thought the heart thing might stop being an issue."

"But now you know they were right. Now you know it's real."

He opened his eyes again to look into mine. "Yeah, it's real. So, I need to accept it. And finally move on."

I smiled at him. "I'm proud of you."

He gave me a small smile back. "What does it mean for us?"

"It means that we can keep doing Pizza Fridays, and we can support each other and you could maybe try not to have a heart attack again."

It looks like he was maybe trying to laugh but it was too much effort. "That sounds good to me."

"To me too."

And then my ten minutes were now up so I went to kiss his forehead, because there were no tubes or wires on it, like his arms and hands and we smiled each other and I went to walk out of the room, and because I was wearing a ginormous dress and because I was Danika Wisher, I tripped on the edge of it, and flashed everybody once again.

Underwear, I should really start wearing those.