Trials and Tribulations - [Bensler EO]

Part Twenty Six - Choices

"Liv, you need to eat something." he pleaded for the fifth time within the hour. He pushed the tray closer to you, removing the muted pink lid from the plate once again. The food had gone cold already and he couldn't blame her for turning it away by the looks of it.

"I'm not hungry," she deadpanned, refusing to make eye contact with him. Her eyes were set forward, staring at the blank TV screen as a ray of sun glimmered across the wall.

She had slept most of the night, allowing the anesthetic to wear out of her system. By the time they had allowed Elliot in to see her, she had fallen back asleep. When the rise of the sun and the annoying beeps of monitors woke her up, she had looked over to see him sound asleep in the chair beside her bed.

The idea of eating made her stomach churn. Somewhere under the blanket of anesthesia, her basic instinctual needs had disappeared.

"Can you at least drink some water?" he asked, adjusting the bendy straw in the pale pink cup. She didn't bother to look or even flinch at his movements. Her body stayed as still as stone, resting the new wounds that littered her skin.

"I don't want it." she reiterated, frustration growing in her tone. She was anxious, he could sense it in her voice and the slight but stricken movements beneath the thin blankets. By the time Dr. Keller had come to deliver the news of the operation, she had drifted off. Upon waking up, she was entirely clueless. All she knew was the pain of a neatly wrapped incision on her chest.

This was the worst form of limbo she had been in yet. With gauze around her chest, wrapped around her arm like a vine. Not knowing if it was all in vain or with purpose. Everything seemed to flood back to her even in her still drowsy state. Had IVF been the wrong choice? Did she wait too long, holding off on any sort of intervention while the tumors basked in the opportunity of going untouched and growing uninhibited?

She had the remainder of any eggs her body would grow, freezing in a storage tank somewhere in the city. Seven of them in total. The specialists had said that the lower amount of eggs could've been from the stress that the cancer had put her body under. Though, she had too much on her plate to worry about the survival odds of those lone seven eggs.

Seven eggs out, seventeen stitches in.

There was an irony there, she just wasn't sure how to spot it.

"Liv, talk to me." he pleaded,

Her skin ached from the seventeen stitches, but her soul ached from the seven eggs. Some of them would survive the freezing process, and fewer would survive when the time came to thaw them out. Even lower after they were fertilized.

If she made it that far, a dark voice in her head whispered. The self-pity had come in spades as soon as she had enough consciousness to wrap her mind around what was happening. The bandages dug into her skin and she wanted nothing more than to throw the scratchy covers over her body and melt away from the pain; and the world.