From The Perspective of Lizzy Heart

2020/04/21

My Lovely Lizzy, 

Do you remember when you were younger I would take you to this huge sunflower field near grandma's house? You made me this beautiful flower crown out of the sunflowers growing there. You would take some home too and press them into picture frames. Make sure to take your future lover there someday. 

Love Mum

~~~

It's almost been a year since Mom passed away. Now dad was almost at his death bed. Mom died from lung cancer. She didn't deserve it, not even in the slightest yet it still occurred, and because of it, she left the world too early. Too early to accomplish all of her dreams. Too early to see me get married. Too early for anything really. Dad was going to leave pretty soon too. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't make it. But even still deep down I wished that he would survive all of this because the mere thought of being left alone terrified me. 

My hand held on to my dad's tracing circles in the middle of his palm quietly listening to the beats of the heart monitor somehow enchanting me to a calm state. The breath of my dads assuring me he wasn't going anywhere yet. 

"How is he doing deary?" a voice called out from inside the room. Candice. She was my dad's hospital roommate. She always made small-talk with me but never overdid it, she always knew the right thing to say and when to say it. She's simply a sweetheart. I gave her a gentle smile turning to look back at my dad. 

"so far," I sigh looking at my dad's hand. "as good as he can be"

she lets out a low chuckle. "Everyone is trying to be as good as they can be, sugar" 

I nod in agreement quietly letting go of my dad's hand. Dad wasn't technically in any harm's way. He was simply in a coma. Around a month ago dad was in a horrifying accident. when police and paramedics got there, they said the scene looked gruesome. Car parts splattered all across the road, glass shards covering the vicinity and blood plastered all around as if Picasso whipped his paint brush on an empty canvas. To prove the accident was as terrible as it sounded dad, and the truck driver that slammed into him, both came back with intense injuries. The truck driver, unfortunately, didn't make it out alive, however, my dad fell into a coma. Which is probably worse for me since I'm clinging on to the false hope that he'd actually wake up. 

One of the nurses enters into the room to place a tray of food out for Candice and as for my dad, a new delicious bag of IV fluids. The nurse stars at me sympathetically smiling.

"Ah, Ms. Candice Jones, correct," the nurse asks before heading out to the corridor. Candice nods and replies with a simple 'that would be me'

"You're going to be moved to a new room next week, a new patient requested to be placed in a more lighted room," she says, iffy about the lighted room part. Candice raises an eyebrow in return. For a 64-year-old, Candice was pretty, how would you put it... Sassy? The nurse seemed to have caught on to Candice's suspicious face and simply added on to what she said before "don't worry you'll still get your fair share of sunshine, this patient just has a... sadder disease" she says almost as if she was imagining the patient in her mind at the time. 

Candice nods, not wanting to put up a fuss and the nurse quietly nods and leaves the two of us alone. I look at Candice, who didn't seem bothered in the slightest. Candice always loved nice huge windows where she can look out to. She's sort of claustrophobic but if there was a room where she could only move one step but was made out of just windows she wouldn't be bothered. Our room had one whole wall that was made out of glass always presenting some type of natural light. It was probably, in my opinion, the best room in the entire hospital. 

Speaking of the hospital, having this room made it seem so much better than the hospital actually is. The hospital had such an indescribable smell. It smelled like blood, urine, vomit, and a bucket load of tears. It smaller like happiness in the maternal section of the hospital, and it smelt like death and sorrow in the ICU and emergency surgery units. But defying all of those factors the hospital smelled too sanitary for its own good. 

"Will you be o.k.?" Candice asks breaking me out of my trance. I quickly shake my head turning back to face Candice. 

"Sorry?"

"I asked will you be ok without me?" she asks. I raise my eyebrow at her questioning what she meant by that. "don't look at me like that Lizzy, I'm asking if you'll be ok when I'm gone, your new roommate won't be as amazing as I am" she boasts. I let out a light laugh. She's not wrong, Candice really is one of a kind, and to be honest, if I could, I would talk to her for hours and hours without stops. 

"You're right, nobody can be as good as you" I reply back with a courteous compliment watching her munch away on the slice of bread given to her. She gives as wide as a smirk she could manage to give with her mouth stuffed nodding her head in agreement with what I said. Needless to say, Candice was definitely someone who adored to be pampered with compliments, and as much as I hate to add fuel to her pride she was too cute not to give a flattering remark to. 

After that, both of us remained silent simply enjoying each other's presence, and listening to the light beeping machine of my dad's heart monitor. Right now I didn't feel like focusing on what's coming next, I learnt from multiple experiences living in the moment has proven to lead to happiness. So that's what I'm going to do. Focus on what's in front of me. Focus on what's going on now and not what's going to happen. Because if I worry so much about what going to happen, later on, I might miss out on an opportunity to do now, that is truly something I will regret in the future.