Learning to be Strong Alone // Jeraphina Fanfiction

PT 3; Prologue: Oxymoron

"Death is only parting,
for a little while.
You won't smile when it comes.
No one smiles
when they die."

...............

3rd POV

He looked at the woman before him, his grey eyes squinting gently at her green ones. What seemed to be gelled blonde hair came protruding from her head, styled in a curl or two on top of her small frame, but wrapped mostly in a low-resting bun. 

She wore an outfit similar to everyone who came in and out of his room, whitewashed blue nurse scrubs covering her plumped figure.

William blinked at her as she stood before him.

"You're . . . you're new here, aren't you..." he spoke, more of a statement than a question as he felt he already knew the answer he would receive.

The woman nodded hesitantly, her fear-filled reminders playing on a loop in her body and facial expressions like small electric shocks in her system, trying to keep herself afloat on top of her jolly façade.

"Indeed I am!" she spoke as she wandered through the awfully blank and boring room, the cool metal tray that lay within her wrinkled hands leaving as she placed it gently on the table beside his bed.

What a waste of retinol and money to just end up willingly wrinkling her own perfect skin--forcefully willed; oxymoron.

Diedre's finger reached up from underneath the tray and pointed at the white nametag sitting pinned messily into her nurse scrubs given to her by those who worked here as a tribute to her newfound "job".

"S . . . Sonya," she spoke, a temporary weariness settling into her voice as the name left her lips not as her mother's, but as her own. Her face tried to faulter; she kept the fault at bay. 

"My name is Sonya, and I've come here to assist you in your recovery process."

"William," he replied, small hesitation in between this and his gentle scoff at her words, not even bothering to search her for any truth that she may speak.

He looked up at her, tired--sick. 

"And what makes you think I'm going to recover?" he joked to her, looking out the window instead of back at her face for any sort of response. "I doubt I'm going to recover very well from this--I doubt anyone has nor anyone ever will."

This time, it was Diedre's turn to scoff . . . Sonya's. 

He was right, of course. That was old news; oxymoron.

"How about we rephrase our words," she said, "instead of saying: 'I'm never going to recover, life is awful, I'm going to die before I ever see the sun,' we can say: 'I'm feeling pretty shit right now, ask me how I am later.'"

She smiled at him kindly, hands quickly working to remove the dead flowers that sat inside the clear vase in the room. 

"It's always good to remove the negative things in our life; while it may not add any positive stimuli," she spoke, opening the window above the chair where William stared, "it adds a clearness to the air that we need to think."

Diedre didn't know how long she'd have to stay and work there—till the job was done, it's supposed.

"You seem more straightforward than the rest of them, you know," he chuckled, "maybe that might be good for me."

The woman chuckled, slowly—emptily.

Carefully, her hands worked at picking up the previous tray left in his room, her brackets jingling as they struck the metal of the tray and the porcelain of the plate and mug.

"There's nothing wrong with a little honesty now and then—something to hurt you enough just to get the adrenaline running; adrenaline helps to speed the healing process, you know."

"I suppose."

Diedre moved the tray to her lap, sitting on the chair beside his bed. 

"Any family to visit you here, William?" she asked as if she had ever cared about him a day in her life.

She knew the answer to that of course; just double checking.

The man let out a huff of air, sounding something like the remains of a chuckle or a grin: "That's the the reason why I'm in here, doc," he stated in some sort of a joking tone, "My late wife and late son can't really visit me from the grave, now can they? My brother in law was never really one I got along with."

"My condolences," Diedre spoke to him, almost emotionless in this moment, her eyes shifting over the patterns on the mug, "—No one else who may visit you?"

"Nope. Unless I forgot to pay my taxes and the IRS decides to pay little old me a little visit."

Seraphina. That was her name, right? The girl who has visited him that time?

Her hands slipped the blue gloves from her fingers, peeling them off like an extra skin her body had mutated to grow after staying in this insipid hellhole for as long as she had. The skin underneath was clean and fresh, no longer wrinkled, no longer old and meant for playing bingo at the old home.

The gloves dripped red--a contrast to the blue in which they were made from--flailing uselessly as she departed them into the black rubbish bag which sat drooped by the blood-stained blue scrubs that she wore. 

Her act was one of a cruel kindness; oxymoron. If she had not killed him the way in which she had--quick, fast, mostly painless--then he would've been prodded at as if he held all the answers that they had searched for. 

To them, his death would not be a murder--no reason to bother a sleeping corpse filled with so much sorrow and so much desire to simply be left at peace, is there?

Diedre's dead, green eyes peered back into his empty room, the curtains and window closed just like on the day she had arrived, the flowers still dead, a half-empty tray still rested upon his bedside table. She wouldn't change anything now, leaving him to rest.

As William still sat there, too.

But the silence was deafening.

................................................................

Not dead; dunno when it's next going to be updated; I'll try.

You guys want a face reveal?

982 words excluding ^^
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