Meet me in the Middle

Chapter 23

After falling asleep with Molly by my side, the nightmares were the first to wake me in a long night of recovery. I screamed myself awake after I dreamt about my dad throwing all my medals and trophies into a fire but only after I walked past my father, did I see that Beckett was in my dream as well.

Beckett was holding my charred corpse in his arms and screaming at the world while sipping on a bottle of scotch. The only reason I knew that the corpse was mine, was through the brass badge on my breast pocket, still shining my name to the sky. The other side of my chest was cracked open and only a hole remained.

That's when I recognized Carina sitting on the opposite side of the fire from my dad, roasting something on a spit over the open flames and upon closer inspection, I could see that it was my heart spiked through with a metal rod and rotating around and around while she and my dad laughed about all my failures.

It reminded me a lot of the bond fires during the camping trips my dad always forced us to go to. Him and I would sit around the fire, making smores and laughing about how weak the other schools were who I just competed against. Mason would always distance himself from us and go sit on the side-lines and read a book or something. My mom would disappear into her tent as soon as she was done cooking and then my dad would pull out his clipboard and list all the things I did wrong that needed improvement in my next race.

When I woke up, Beckett was the one to pull me into his arms and calm the lingering effects of fear from my consciousness. He had arrived at the hospital while I was sleeping and sent Molly home. The guilt was eating away at me, especially since Beckett's screams were still very loud in my head from the nightmare.

I quite literally apologized myself back to sleep while he held me. He told me when I woke up again, that I refused to let go of my grip on his shirt, begging him in my sleep to not leave me. That would've been a lot more mortifying if I didn't vomit all over his lap after he said it.

At this point, we were so past the point of return from mortification, and I just let the world have its way with me and allowed Beckett to comfort me through the worst of it. The vomiting was due to the fever I spiked during the night and the nurses added antibiotics to my treatment to fight off the infection.

That was basically when I stopped sleeping and my brain went into overdrive. I would watch Beckett dosing off in the armchair at the side of my bed and my mind would spiral. I tried my best to focus on all the positive things like Diane requested, but that was easier said than done.

Sleep finally allowed me a break after enough time passed for my next round of pain medication in the early hours of the morning. My body had gone into a cold sweat and chills covered my skin, but my fever was still higher than they liked.

Diane and Molly walked in together just when the newest round of dry heaving and cries were dying down. Beckett climbed in behind me and was keeping my hair out of the kidney basin and massaging my shoulders when my brain started splitting open from the unwelcome pressure my gag reflexes placed on it.

My therapist took pity on me and moved our session to tonight, should I feel up to it and Beckett put in leave so he could stay with me. Molly helped me get showered and stayed with us while we all snoozed through the old westerns playing on the TV in my room. She eventually left when she needed to go pick up Antonio from day-care.

My fever broke just before noon and while Beckett got some of his beauty sleep, I pulled out the tablet Diane left me and started on my assignment. It felt impossible to think of reasons as to why anyone would love me, so I dove deep and tried to remember the situations where people said it to me.

It was a fairly short trip down memory lane, seeing how I haven't heard those words much in my lifetime. The conversation I had with Jack when I was trying to convince Miller to let me be his pretend girlfriend was the only one that brought a smile to my face.