Memories of Rain ❀ Calum Hood

eleventh; fall

The first thing Bailey noticed after walking back into the hospital, hand in hand with Calum, was that a lot of people were sitting in the waiting room. Some of them were crying. Most of them had flowers in their hands. Lilies, she noted. All of the flowers were in pretty red and yellow shades.

Bailey didn't like it. She knew very well that people only gathered in the waiting room when someone was, or had been, close to dying, and made her feel uneasy.

Calum squeezed her hand, and they walked past the mass of people.

Bailey's nurse, Zoey, was waiting in her room when they got there. Calum put down the bag of books. "What's wrong?" he asked. Zoey shook her head slightly.

Bailey was getting worried. What was going on? Did it have something to do with the people in the waiting rooms? The ones with the sad faces and the orange lilies...

It all made sense. But it had only been a few days since she had seen her, and she didn't seem to be that bad... Did she?

"She can barely breathe by herself," Zoey said, seeing how Bailey had already put the pieces together. She had a thing for puzzles, after all. Bailey shook her head at her. It couldn't be true, did cancer really work that way? One day she was fine, then suddenly she couldn't breathe? It couldn't be true.

"I have to see it for myself," she announced, spinning on her heels and rushing out of the door. She hurried down the hallways, her feet carrying her forward at an ureasonable speed.

She wanted to see her. She had to see if it was that bad. She had to find out if she should be buying a black dress soon.

No. She couldn't think like that. She had to think positively. She was fine, she was going to be fine.

She almost ran past her door. It was open, and through it she could see her, lying in her bed.

She was hooked up to all kinds of machines, her tiny face looking peacefully asleep. She had so many tubes sticking out of her body it almost made Bailey throw up.

To see Lily like this... The young, energetic girl that she knew was sleeping, her eyelids blue, veins visible through her paper thin skin... She was so pale she looked like a ghost.

But the worst thing was that there was no trace of the usual cheerful expression on her face. She almost looked as if she was in pain. But she knew that she couldn't feel anything, they had probably already pumped her full of all kinds of drugs.

The world was a horrible place.

She walked in through the door, trying to be as quiet as possible. She didn't want to wake her up. She didn't want to look her in the eyes. She didn't want to know just how bad it was.

She wanted to stay in the peaceful oblivious state she was in.

She kneeled on the floor beside Lily, carefully grabbing her hand. There was an IV in it. She hated it. She wanted her to wake up and tell her that she was fine. That there was nothing wrong.

But she didn't. So Bailey started crying. She didn't know why. She just felt a need to cry.

She felt the basic human need to cry, so she did.

She cried for her friend, sick in a hospital bed, possibly dying. She cried for her loss of memories. She cried for the memory she had regained. And then she felt a light squeeze.

She looks up to see Lily looking at her. There was a tired smile on her lips. Bailey almost laughed through her tears. Lily had a smile that could end wars.

Lily was about to doze off again, but Bailey didn't want that. As selfish as it was, she wanted her to stay with her. She wanted to stay around her, and not while she was sleeping. She wanted her to be awake.

"I remembered something," she told her. The tears were blurring her vision, but she could still see the smile on Lily's face grow bigger. She squeezed her hand again. "That's good," Lily told her.

Bailey let out a strangled sob. She hadn't planned on it. She shook her head and laughed.

"I'm sorry Lily, this isn't helping at all. I shouldn't be the one crying," she said. Despite her words the tears didn't stop. Bailey hadn't thought of herself as a crier. She was apparently wrong.

"It's okay. Crying's a natural reaction, I can take it," Lily said. Bailey squeezed her hand and nodded. She was taking it surprisingly well, maybe it wasn't that bad after all. Or maybe Lily had just gotten used to the thought of dying.

It hurt to think about it. That Lily was okay with it. That she wasn't devastated. That she was going to go without a fight. Without kicking and screaming.

It hurt.

Bailey stayed with her until the doctors came, and told her to leave. She refused to at first, so they had to carry her out. She didn't put up a fight. She just let them carry her away.

They left her in the hallway, thinking just how easy it was to go from flying to falling.