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chapter sixteen: dreams and veins
{a/n:
just a heads up, the start of this chapter is a little sad... but it's finally in first person perspective!
hope you enjoy!}
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𝑉𝐸𝑅𝐴 𝑆𝐼𝑁𝐶𝐿𝐴𝐼𝑅
I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD AGAIN. Sitting on my bed, all alone in my room. My hands were numb, my face was weak and hot. I couldn't speak. My eyesight slowly went blurry.
I was confused.
Why did only the left side of my body hurt? Why couldn't I swallow? Why...why...why?
I attempted to call out for my foster mother at the time. Though my voice was all strained and squeaky, she'd somehow managed to hear me.
She told me to try to get up from my bed and walk it off. I didn't know it at the time, but she'd though I was faking it so I wouldn't have to go to school that day. But once she heard my small body drop to the floor, she rushed to the phone and dialed 911.
My eyes felt heavy. I couldn't keep them open.
I could only hear the screams of my foster mother crying for me to stay awake.
Then, everything went black.
The air in my dorm room was freezing as I woke up that morning.
My throat was dry, eyes stinging from how hard I seemed to have been crying.
I buried my face into my hands and let out a sigh of relief? suffering? I couldn't tell. Everything in that dream felt so real. I didn't understand why my mind wanted to relive that moment.
It was something in my life that I want to forget so deeply but as hard as I try, I can't.
There's always this one thing that reminds me of it.
My veins.
When I was five years old, I had just gotten moved into my first foster home, and I was terrified. My birth parents had been missing for over seven months.
Everyone presumed they were dead.
Imagine hearing that at five fucking years old.
"Hey little girl. So, um, your parents are most likely dead and we're going to have you live with some random strangers that will most likely treat you like shit."
Well, at least thats what it sounded like to me.
I was dealing with so much at the time, and I guess all the stress built up into my blood pressure as I ended up having a stroke. It's not something common to happen to anyone under the age of 18, but of course it happened to me.
As a result, I have a heart that functions around only 85% of its normal strength and some neurological problems like difficulty with balance when I'm walking or running- though skating is a totally different story.
I am perfectly fine when I skate. That's why I fell in love with hockey once Hayden introduced me to it.
Everything else is completely fine.
Well, mostly.
There's these ugly veins that bulge out from my chest and down my midsection. Since my heart is weak, my body has to work harder to pump blood.
I always seem to find a new one every time I make myself look at them.
Once I got into high school, I realized how hard it was for me to find a boyfriend. They liked me for my face, and sometimes my personality, but the second they caught a glimpse of my veins, they were gone.
Word spread around like fire. I've had girls make fun of me, calling me some weird-ass name that didn't particularly hurt, but just annoyed me.
Though as I realized the number of students who were grossed out, I couldn't help but let it get to me. Almost all of them haven't seen my body, yet they still felt like it was their place to judge.
It was sickening.
Since then, I've never let anyone, especially a boy, see what's beneath my shirt. I couldn't bare having that reality again.
I know one day I'll have to, and I hate that.
I hate it. I hate me.
-
"REALLY?" There was a small pause. Adam looked to Julie with an excited wide smile, nodding. He readjusted the phone in his hand. "Are you sure?"
Julie knitted her eyebrows. "Don't make him rethink it, Banks!" She whisper-screamed.
The boy waved a hand her way dismissively. "Yeah... yeah, I promise..." He gave the girl laying on his bed a thumbs up. She returned the same grin he had on his face.
"I know, I know...,' another pause, "alright, thanks! I love yo-" Adam's voice stopped abruptly. He sighed, tossing the phone onto his desk.
"He hung up."
"Well?" Julie questioned, her expression raised with a little bit of hope.
The blonde boy sat down in the chair beside his desk. "He seemed to be in a good mood today." he started with his nose wrinkled a bit. "I still have to call him everyday, but only once at 3pm."
"So, no more leaving at random times to have him scream at you like twelve times everyday?"
Adam chuckled, glancing down at his shoes while nodding. He looked back up and shrugged, "No more."
The girl flopped back onto the bed, squealing a small, 'yessss'
Guy had walked in suddenly. He was at the gym all morning because Connie had made a sarcastic joke over the phone about him having 'small guns'. Of course he didn't get it, and genuinely thought she was talking about how unmuscular his arms were.
Which is insanely false. She was talking about 7th grade Guy when, in her words, he looked like a pasta noodle, but still madly cute.
"What's with the celebration?" He asked while shutting the door behind him. He shrugged the duffel bag off his arm and tossed it into a random corner.
"Ads broke out of prison." Julie explained, jerking herself up into a sitting position. She rested her hands in her lap. "Mr. Banks finally agreed to one phone call a day."
Guy turned his head to Adam. "Does this mean you're going to stop ditching us all the time?"
Adam's face scrunched. He wasn't sure if he should take that to the heart, or let it go because it was stupid. Yet, he wasn't able to state his opinion when Guy started talking again.
"Thank God! I don't know how many more 'depression sessions' I could handle." He sighed in relief, taking a seat on the ground.
The boy's face remained scrunched, but for a different reason. He was confused. "Depression sessions?" He turned to Julie, who's face turned pale.
"What's that?"
Guy was quick to answer. "Well, when you'd leave it would just be me and Jules, right? It used to be kinda awkward but then we found fun in talking about your problems- you know because we can barley talk about our own."
"Quit it, Guy-"
But then Adam interrupted Julie. "No Jules, I wanna hear more about these depression sessions." He spoke before returning his attention to Guy. "Why're the named that?"
Forgetting how blunt Guy could be, he was expecting a full blown explanation that maybe resulted from an inside joke.
But all he said was, "Because your life is kinda depressing."
Julie's eyes widened.
Adam just sat there with raised brows.
And Guy? Well, he reached over to his nightstand and grabbed a granola bar. He unwrapped it and began to eat it.
The tension in Julie's body relaxed as Adam suddenly started laughing hard. Tears even started to well up in his eyes, and that's when Guy and Julie started laughing too.
"If that's not the truest thing I've heard all day." He cackled, almost falling off the chair. Once he managed to calm himself down, he sighed. "Yeah, my life is pretty sad."
"Depressing." Guy clarified. Once the word came out of his mouth, so did a deodorant bottle. Julie had grabbed one that was on a bedside table and chucked it at his chest to shut up him.
Adam raked a hand through his hair. "So, what problems did you guys talk about?"
Again, Guy answered. Julie couldn't find herself to say anything of the sort, mostly because she didn't want to hurt him. They were technically talking about him behind his back, but they wanted to help him instead of making him feel bad.
Except, they didn't end up getting to that part because of Guy.
"Mostly you dad, and Vera, and hockey." Guy spoke while munching on his granola bar. Then something lit up in his eyes as he remembered something else. "And how Charlie is mad a you."
Adam cocked his head to the side. "What?" He questioned. "How? Why? Did I do something?"
"Apparently." Julie said after she noticed that Guy suddenly didn't want to talk. "He said that you promised to call him at least once or twice every week so that you don't like- loose connection or something."
Guy nodded, confirming that what she was saying was true. "We've told him that you've been busy and he respected that for awhile. Then yesterday after you left, Julie told me that he called again. It sounds like he's having a hard time at Eden Hall."
A couple days into attending Westbrook, the three blondes were notified that some of the Ducks didn't want to play hockey their last year, and instead wanted to focus on their studies. That left Charlie with only a few of his friends, and a couple other teenagers that he didn't know.
To make things worse, it sounded like a freshmen team from Wisconsin had come and taken over the hockey teams, just like they did a couple years ago.
Now he knew how Rick Riley felt.
Adam blew out some air. "I'll try and make some time to call him in a little bit."
"Cool."
"Also," Julie started up again, earning the attention of her friends. "He said that some rich kid he knows is throwing a party this weekend. Since we have training off he was wondering if we would wanna go."
Guy nodded while getting up from the floor. "Yeah, I'm down."
They looked at Adam, who had a skeptical expression plastered on his face. "I don't know..."
"You're going, Banks."
-
VERA COULD FEEL HER LUNGS CLOSING UP. She placed a hand over her chest, attempting to level out her breathing as she leant her back against the wall.
She was in an empty hallway, nothing surrounding her but silence and her heavy breathing.
Just five minutes ago, she was finishing her workout by jogging on a treadmill. It's not the best decision considering her condition, but by the words of her physical therapist, she should start working on maintaining her balance better in order to become a better athlete.
But then suddenly, she felt her heart racing faster than normal. She tried to stop the machine, but ended up making it go faster. The girl lost her balance then, and fell.
Now, Vera didn't find it embarrassing as she's learned how to deal with those type of reactions when growing up.
But she was pissed.
She couldn't continue living like this.
Everyone always thought they were better than her, and they'd use her health problems as an argue.
That's how she found herself outside the gym room with her back against a wall, trying to ease herself from an on coming panic attack.
Vera closed her eyes to endeavor the dizziness. Her mouth fell dry and she began to sweat.
'Breathe' She told herself.
'Just breathe.'
After repeating that a couple times, she felt her body calming down. Slowly everything released all its tension, so much so that she took a seat on the ground.
Just as she was about to get up again, someone walked out from the men's restroom.
The boy looked at her for a moment. It didn't register that it was Vera from how miserable she looked. But once he did recognize her, he raced to her side.
"Vera..." He mumbled worriedly.
"I'm fine, Hayden." Her voice sounded otherwise. It was strained and just out of breath. To him, it looked as if she was just beaten up by a bunch of kids.
He shook his head. "You don't look fine. What happened?"
Vera couldn't handle when people asked her those type of questions.
'Are you okay?'
'What's wrong?'
'Did something happen?'
They normally led to her crying, and that's what happened here.
She started crying.
Hayden wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She dug her face in his chest, releasing all her frustration and anger through tears.
"I'm so tired of this." She sobbed. "I feel like I can't do anything anymore."
Not knowing what she was particularly talking about, he said, "You'll get through it."
"No I won't. I'll never. Why did it have to happen? Why did it have to be me?"
Hayden swallowed hard, trying so hard to keep his own tears from falling. He hated seeing her this way. "V, what happened?"
"I lost my balance again. I swear I-... I thought I was getting better, but-"
"Thats what this is about?" He suddenly didn't feel bad anymore. To him, this was just another minor accident.
They've always happened, and he was just getting sick and tired of her complaining about it; knowing that it could never get better.
Hayden lifted her head off his chest and gently pushed her away. He got up, dusting off his shirt that was now tear stained. He turned to her then. "You have got to realize that it's always going to be this way V. You heard the doctor. You just have to live with it!"
Vera got up as well. She felt the anger boiling within her once again. "He said that it could get better! I just need to-"
The brunette cut her off with a hasty sigh. "God, just give it up already! It's almost been thirteen years and nothing has improved. Nothing!"
"How could you say that?!" She screamed. The tears have returned but stronger this time, repelling down like bullets. "You're one of the only people who truly know what's wrong with me. I need to be able to trust that you'll support me!"
"I have been supporting you for the last eight years! It's tiring that I have to repeat the same damn thing almost every day!"
"Then don't." Vera snapped. "Don't."
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mari speaks!!
poor vera. i put her through so much this chapter
another kinda lame chapter since the two aren't interacting but... next chapter is gonna be... nevermind you'll see
these past few chapters felt a little rushed so i'm hoping after the next chapter i'll slow things down a bit.
thank you all for the support! seeing all your comments make my day
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