For Every Missing Shade

Entry 19

My mind flowed back into consciousness after some time. Emma was beside me, breathing in a deep rhythm. I didn't want to wake her. I was thirsty, but I didn't want to get up. I looked for the buzzer to get a nurse. Maybe they could get me a glass of water. But there was only one buzzer and it was on her side of the bed.

I moved as carefully as my body would allow, setting her head down on the pillows beneath her. I moved my torso out from the covers and shifted my legs beneath me. My hands reached closer and closer to the button as I slowly moved my body over hers. I finally pressed it, but the ring screeched through the room.

I heard a gasp below me. "Look, I don't really know how to be a girl who has a month to live. But something tells me that I shouldn't need to worry about waking up to someone's crotch an inch away from my face."

My face turned bright red. "Sorry." I quickly replied.

She flipped off the covers and sat up. She stretched her arms above her head and yawned, the IV following the movement of her hands.

"Did you sleep alright?" She asked.

"Actually, like a baby. We need to do that more often." I flashed a smile.

"Yeah," she said brokenly. Under her breath she muttered, "often as we can."

I took her hand and pulled her closer to me. We laid like that for a bit

I reached over to my phone and opened an onslaught of messages from my mom and dad.

"Oh no. Shit." I sat up quickly

"What?"

"I forgot to tell my mom that I wasn't going to school, and now it looks like I have the school and my family extremely pissed off."

"Damn. Talk about a combo hit," Emma said plainly.

"Ya know," I said as I threw my phone on the table beside me. "This seems like a problem for future Israel. It's just you and me for now."

"Are you sure? You should probably at least call."

"Well, it's already been two hours since they called me. What's an hour more going to do?"

Tears formed in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Israel, please. I don't want to think about it. I wish I never even went here, I wish I just didn't do anything. And now you're going to leave the hospital and go home to leave the poor girl who's going to be dead anyway before you even know it and-"

"Hey, hey, hey," I moved close to her and held her close. "I'm not going anywhere, okay? I will always be with you. You hear me?"

She kept going. "I just feel so cheated. I don't know if it was my immune system or if it was, I don't know, God, but something jumped ship on me and I don't know why. Outside of my family and you, nothing is looking out for me. Nothing. Not even my own body."

"Emma, I know that all of this must sound incredibly unfair, but it's going to be okay. And I know that it's going to be easy to blame all of this on something, but-"

"Israel, I don't really think you get it. Before, I thought God was just something that must have forgotten about me. I mean, foster care. That was horrible. But I made my peace with it. But this," she waved at her body. "What the fuck type of sick joke is this?"

I didn't have an answer, so I didn't give her one. Suffering was an age-old question that I still didn't know how to answer.

She called her parents and told them to come back to the hospital while I got back in touch with my mom. I felt terrible, making her worry like that.