auden's pov
Every tick of the clock felt like an eternity.
She had made the decision to go under and although it may have been the best decision, I hadn't been able to stop the tears yet. The moment her eyes slipped closed and they declared her stable in the coma, River covered his face as he crumbled into the chair beside her bed. His grief came immediately. Warren was so silent I worried about him.
Truthfully, I didn't know what I was going to do if she didn't wake up. She had been my inspiration for getting into fashion. I only ever wanted to design pieces for her to wear so she could feel like royalty. I had been so focused on honing my skills and building my reputation, I shouldn't have been so selfish. I should have visited New York City more often, made it a priority for us to get dinner or have a movie night.
There were so many regrets now.
I just expected there to be more time and now there wasn't.
As I stared at her in that hospital bed, my heart hurt.
Every beat felt more painful than the last. My ribcage seemed to rattle with my breath. My lungs refused to expand and made my throat burn. I couldn't even more from her side, I'd promised.
She had been put under for almost twenty-four hours.
Dr. Welch and a whole bunch of other people I didn't even bother acknowledging came into her room like clockwork. They seemed surprised at the eight hour mark, then the twelve. So far, his theory was proven true. Perhaps being unconscious was helping her fight harder because if she had been awake, the swelling would have killed her by now.
When the eighteen hour mark came, I wasn't sure I was blinking. My eyes were dry and probably red. None of us were functioning in the slightest. I didn't know the last time I had water. Eventually, the nurses tried to fuss over us as if we were their patients and Warren snapped at them. They left.
River sat on her other side, honoring his promise to stay awake, but he had since retracted into his own mind. His emotions were reigned back, I didn't know if he would ever recover. Warren was silent. The three of us took turns holding her hands, she was never without support.
We waited.
Countless hours, countless rotations of people.
Until one of us finally lost our mind.
My eyes trailed the numerous wires and lines connected to her, they crisscrossed and stretched over every inch of her body. They had intubated her, the tube sticking out of her mouth as the machine made sure she got the oxygen she needed. Her skin had lost its color completely, her eyelids never fluttered anymore... she looked...
Suddenly, I wanted to rip all those lines away from her.
My Little Aida couldn't dance with it tying her down.
I didn't know what came over me but the rush of hot emotion brought action. I stood and my hands fell to the lines forcing her to stay in this bed. I began pulling.
"Auden---Auden, stop!" River was alarmed as he shot out of the chair across from me. In the next breath, his hands immediately prevented me from causing any further damage. Warren tried to fix what I had done as River dragged me away. The machine began screaming. Nurses rushed in as River backed me into the corner of the room."What are you doing?"
"She can't dance like that," I told him, even I knew that my voice was so monotone and detached. I felt trapped within my own mind as something else drove my actions. "She needs to be free."
He looked at me, his eyes flickering between both of mine, and then he must have understood the treacherous emotions reflecting in mine. He sighed, both his hands still on my shoulders. "It's alright," He consoled.
Those words triggered me as my heart screamed. I jerked away from him, turning upon him like a wild animal, "It's not! River, fucking look at her! It's not okay. From the very moment this hellish nightmare began, nothing is ever going to be okay again. Don't you understand that? Don't you know that if she dies, I can't cope with that?"
His eyes were torturously calm as he looked at me. I held his shirt in both fists, having pushed him up against the wall in my rage. "I know," He said quietly. "I can't fix it. I can't fix any of this. I won't be able to fix you either because a part of me is going to be broken."
Scoffing, I released him. My anger was overriding any other rational emotion. I was so mad at the world in that moment. So angry at the rotten deck of cards she'd been dealt. How could something as vile as this happen again? It was tearing our family apart until there wouldn't be one left.
I turned away, catching a glimpse of several people trying to fix the damage I had caused in my outburst, and then I spun in a circle. My hands were in my hair, pulling and yanking. My hands began shaking so I clenched them. I wanted to hit something, the pain I felt within my body needed to come out. It was tearing me apart. Physical pain was nothing compared to my heart cleaving itself into pieces, again and again and again.
My little sister was already too far for me to reach her.
I'd failed as her older brother.
Hot, angry tears began to violently rush down my cheeks. I choked on air as my lungs tried to shrivel and die. How could this happen? Why did the best souls leave earth too early? Why did bad things happen to good people?
Why the fuck wasn't cancer cureable?
I swiped everything off the nearest table. The noise was deaf in my ears. Someone had their hands on me again. I turned and threw my fist into their jaw. The vicious crack of my knuckles felt soothing compared to my hurting heart. I blinked and met River's ashen face. He was talking but I wasn't listening. I couldn't. I stumbled to the side.
I had finally lost it.
My back hit the wall and the strength of my anger left my body trembling. I slid down until I sat there with nothing but tears rushing down my face, busted knuckles, and a whole lot of metaphorical blood from the broken pieces of my heart. This was it.
The truth I never wanted to accept.
Even when I knew there had been a chance one of us would inherit it from our mom.
I would have traded places with Aida in a heartbeat. She didn't deserve any of this. She had always been the light in the room and she let it shine for the world to see. To have a star as bright as her go out... my darkness would not end.
Could I even live again?
No.
I stared at the foot of the hospital bed. I couldn't see her from my seat on the floor but I knew exactly what she looked like. She was a corpse being forced to breathe. Were we being cruel making her hang on? Was our inability to let her go making her suffer?
Had she tried to tell us that?
I let my head fall.
Tears escaped my closed lids, dripping from my nose to form a puddle on the floor. I brought my hands to the back of my head, clasping them. It felt like my organs were being ripped from my body, never intended to be returned, and the hollowness had begun in my ribcage until it consumed every inch of my body. I couldn't form the words to describe this kind of grief. I had felt it once before when mom passed but this was worse. To have it happen again... it crushed me.
Loved ones always took a piece of those who loved.
Eventually, I lifted my head. It felt like a million pounds. River was sitting beside me and we made eye contact. Something had broken in him, too. I could see it in the way his eyes were drowning. It suddenly hit me that River had been so strong for everyone else but nobody consoled him.
I wrapped my arm around him.
He exhaled and the shudder shook his body.
I pulled back and emotion abandoned me. I had gone numb. "She's not going to wake up, is she?"
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It's New Year's Eve...
If you're reading these last few chapters as I release them, I'm so sorry. You shouldn't do that.