The Love In Our Lungs

Chapter 16

I was out of the hospital after a few days. I laughed at myself when I realized that I entered the hospital with a backpack with four wheels, and now I'm leaving the hospital with a set of eight. Four from the backpack and new oxygen tank, and another four from the wheelchair I was put in.

Tyler was forced out of the hospital when a nurse walked in on a six-foot-tall teenager sleeping in the same bed as one of their patients. Unfortunately because of that incident, he didn't get to come to pick me up, unless he wanted to be kicked out again. I did anticipate seeing him once my mother and I got back to the house.

My mother who was behind me and had been taking me towards the car was eerily quiet. She did seem happy when we got out, but that joy quickly diminished when we saw the blue car coming into view in the big parking lot. I furrowed my eyebrows and parted my lips to ask her what all this sadness was about.

"Why did you stop smiling when you saw the car? I thought you'd be happy to have me out of the hospital," I craned my neck so that I could look at her. My eyes fell to her tense hands on the wheelchair. As we moved, she didn't speak until we had made it to the car.

"I want you to be safe and I think that by having you in the hospital you'd be safer than ever," I was too much like my father, I knew that, but now it seemed more clear than ever. He refused to spend his days in a hospital, and I did too. My mother wanted him to get a room in the hospital that was near the emergency room, just so that way whenever he'd have an asthma attack, there was a slight chance that he'd make it.

My mother was mad when he wouldn't agree with her ideas of safety that to him seemed like a prison, just like I thought of myself as a hospital slave. I feel better, I'll give them that. I just hope that they won't send me off to another country that I too hoped I would like.

As of now, I simply felt empty. Unfortunately, I didn't have the socks to represent the feeling, so my mother wouldn't get it probably. When she unlocked the door of the car with much help from her, I was able to sit even though my legs felt like jelly and my back hadn't moved an inch ever since I was dragged, that is until now.

Now as the two of us were in the car and on our way to the house, I looked out the window like I did when I first came to Missouri. My mother tapped me with her right hand and then looked back towards the other cars surrounding us.

"There's something on the cabinet in front of you," she paused and pointed her finger at the gray cabinet that was at arm's reach from me. She then parted her lips and spoke in a sweeter tone than the serious dead one she had given me before: "Tyler thought you'd probably look for it the instant you left the hospital." I reached my right hand towards the cabinet and opened it once my fingers reached the handle.

Inside the dust-filled space was my sketchbook with a spider on top of it. When I first came here, I was greeted by a spider in my room, and as ironic as it seemed, it looked like the spider wanted to greet me at my new home, but couldn't wait any longer. I took the sketchbook out of the dark place just a second after the spider had left to join the black abyss of darkness in the cabinet, where most likely one would find more than just that individual spider.

I closed the cabinet and looked at the notebook I thought I would've found intact. When I opened it and loomed through the pages, my widened eyes seemed to be the only effect to the flabbergasting feeling I had while looking at the page that I had assumed would be empty, but ended up being filled with what I figured was Tyler's scrawly handwriting.

The page stated the following:

I know I may not know much about your state of health, but I can assure you I am here to listen as well as other people. Hopefully, when you come home you'll say yes to my proposition. I'm sorry for writing in your notebook, I know how much it means to you.