Candy ✔ (In Editing)

-Chapter Thirteen

Life is hard.

Many times during high school I kept on counting the years till I could finally go to university. Be a legal young adult and make my own decisions. You know, stop being under my parents wing and do what I want, when I want. I didn't know any better then because if I did I would have chosen to stay young forever.

I was so tired. Tired of everything in general.

Wayne had already left to go to Los Angeles, permanently. So I was officially a loner in my classes. There were at times I would turn to make a joke about something the professor said only to be greeted by an empty seat. When he went on that plane I hadn't cried, I just watched him leave promising to always blow up his phone. But when I got home I took an emotional turn. I had locked myself in my bedroom and cried while I called Mama. I apologized for making her go over the airplane departure scene twice in her life. I hadn't been there for Tumi's departure but after experiencing Wayne's departure I never wished it on anyone. It was extremely painful, like someone was putting a barrier between you and the person departing. Mama had listened to me cry soothing me as best as she possibly could through a screen. That made me feel worse. I wanted to smell her comfort and feel her arms around me as she sung a song for me which would make me laugh because she didn't have a good singing voice. I had the worst case of homesickness.

To top it off ever since Wayne left, I got less than five hours of sleep everyday. I lived on takeaways, almost never exercised and although I didn't gain that much weight, it was starting to get a bit noticeable.

Nothing was going right anymore. I went to work five times a week which was a drastic change to my schedule. Mr Slaters had Lisa teach me all I needed to know about the interview and to add insult to injury I still had to do my own work which I was actually employed for. Just when my life couldn't get any worse the professors saw it fit to drown us in assignments. My nights consisted of me working on my assignments or the interview straight through midnight and my mornings consisted of me running against time to get on time for class or for work.

My eyes had an unattractive layer of sleeping bags as proof of my sleepless nights and makeup did nothing to help.

I rubbed the top of my head hoping to chase away the headache that I could feel forming. It was one o'clock in the morning and the words on the screen had begun to look a bit unclear. The words didn't look nor sound right as I read through the business presentation for school. My head started feeling heavy and my eyelids even heavier. I pinched myself awake and had a drink of my energy drink. Coffee wasn't keeping me awake so I had to make a plan B, which seemed be working until now.

"Come on Lerato, focus." I urged myself as I narrowed my eyes at the screen. It worked for a few minutes until my head hit the cold keyboard and I jumped awake.

But soon enough my vision went black and the keyboard absorbed my body temperature.

• • •

I groggily awoke from my sleep feeling way better than I did in the last two weeks.

My vision was a bit hazy but I could make out the darkness outside of the window. My head turned at the sound of beeping machines and a drip was attached to my arm.

I was at the hospital.

Confusion seeped through my mind. What was I doing here? From the looks of things I looked okay. I ripped the flimsy hospital blanket away from my body and examined my body.

No scratches. No bruises. No stitches. My face held one of horror as I remembered that it could be an internal injury.

The heart monitor beeped a little faster. Was it heart failure or kidney failure like my grandmother's sister?