Sorry, I Love You.

2.30

Can I lay by your side
Next to you
And make sure you're alright
I'll take care of you
And I don't want to be here if I can't be with you tonight

-

"You said you didn't want wigs so..." Carmen said as she raised a large shopping bag on to the hospital bed. "I came bearing scarves."

"Pretty ones?" Eleanor asked with a knowing smirk as she stared at her daughter.

"Oh my god, obviously." Carmen scoffed and began digging inside the shopping bag to decide which one to show her first.

"What's wrong with the one she's wearing?" Teddy made a face as he looked atop his mother's head. He didn't see anything wrong with the dark blue one that was wrapped around her head and tied above her forehead.

"It's boring. This is called fashion, Teddy." Carmen retorted, making a face back at her little brother.

"Like you would know what fashion is. It's frickin' freezing outside and you're wearing a skirt." Teddy said with a mocking scoff.

"Fashion isn't about function, you little demon. It's about style." Carmen barked back at him.

"Okay, you two.." Eleanor lightly and playfully warned as she caressed Teddy's head and held it to her chest and motioned for Carmen to give her a scarf. "Just show me what you bought. I rarely get to see you nowadays. I'm excited."

Carmen shot one more glare at her little brother and quickly began showing off all the scarves she bought for her mother. While his mother and his sister fawned over floral patterns and soft fabrics, Teddy returned his attention to the homework sat in his lap.

Teddy almost always did his homework while sat in his mother's hospital bed. At least, for the last three months he had been. It wasn't very comfortable to have textbooks and homework sheets and notebooks all piled on top of him and his mother's lap but they didn't usually need the textbooks. Eleanor was a very smart woman, who had actually finished college, unlike her husband. She actually enjoyed helping Teddy with his homework and watching him learn and grow. It was something she knew she would miss once she was gone.

"Why is this number so big?" Teddy frowned down at his homework when he finished a math problem. "Everything else is under one hundred."

Eleanor continue to wrap and tie the new scarf around her head as she looked down at the homework in Teddy's lap. It only took her a few seconds to point a finger at his work and say, "you forgot to divide right here, baby. And your decimal point is in the wrong place right here."

"Oh! Okay, I got it, I got it." Teddy said and turned his pencil over to erase it while Eleanor went back to tying her scarf.

"Look! We can match!" Carmen happily exclaimed as she grabbed a matching scarf to her mother's and started wrapping it around her head and tying it around the bun atop her head.

"Oh, cute!" Eleanor exclaimed, matching her daughters excitement. "You look so darling, Carmen. Absolutely beautiful."

After a few more minutes of pulling out scarves and fawning over them with her daughter, Eleanor's eyes shifted to the door to her hospital room as her husband walked in. He had two takeout bags in hand and a smile on his face when he spotted his wife. Eleanor smiled right back at him but felt a weight in her chest at the sight of the bags under his eyes and his unshaven face. He was beginning to look more tired and more stressed every day.