Lovelorn

The Death In Longing

love·lorn /ˈlʌv.lɔːrn/

adjective

unhappy because of unrequited love.

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The cold morning air blew softly through a window. The sun had not yet risen fully, giving the room a blue hue from the open window.

"How are you, Bibi?" A hand came over hers, "Are you comfortable?"

Phoebe looked up at her mother and smiled in a comforting manner, "Yes mama, very."

Her mother smiled back at her, albeit pitifully rather than reciprocating Phoebe's own smile, "Well, tell me if there's anything you need, okay? Here, eat the grapes I've brought you."

She placed a box of grapes on Phoebe's lap and stood up.

"I'll see if they have any juice here, I know you must be sick of drinking water this whole week," Her mother said before walking out of her room.

Phoebe nodded and waved as she exited her hospital room.

She sighed, but a bout of coughing interrupted it. It was a dry sort of cough, one that left her chest aching and brought tears to her eyes from the stabbing pain it left her.

Her hand went to the collar of her linen shirt, she pulled it down slightly and grimaced at the spots of purple and blue that cluttered around one black bruise. It looked like a hole where, if one should look into it, they would find her weak heart as bruised as her chest.

Her best and longest friend, Rose, trying to comfort her when they first found out about her condition, compared it to a bouquet of hydrangeas, blooming in her chest. At the time, Phoebe found it a crazy enough comparison to laugh over.

She was at peace then.

And then the days passed and the black bruise soon formed and Rose couldn't find enough poetic words to envelop both her and Phoebe's grief into a nice little memory.

"What will happen now?" She had asked Phoebe, eyes blinking rapidly as if trying to drive away tears that haven't formed yet.

Phoebe, whose breathing was slowly worsening then, tried to control the quiver in her voice when she said, "I'm- I'll have about three months left to live, give or take."

Rose nodded, her brows furrowed and her face scrunched up, making Phoebe's face scrunch up as well. That day, they both cried until they had no tears left.

To her surprise, no one, not even her parents, dared ask her who the cause of the bruises was. Since her condition was so rare, her doctor didn't know what exact questions to ask that wouldn't make her condition worse.

But one person knew who the cause was, even though Phoebe had not once uttered the name that blackened the bruise on her chest days after they first appeared.

Not once had that person visited her since she was admitted into a private room from the hospital.

She thought to herself that it might be for the best that he didn't.

Her mother came into the room with an orange juice box, from the condensation around it, it was cold. A lifetime ago, her mother would have told her to stop being picky and drink room-temperature juice without complaining, which Phoebe always disliked having to do. The taste of the juice felt dull when warm. She thought of the same thing with fruit or desserts.

But here she was with a cold juice box and Phoebe is slightly stunned at how much grief can change people.

"What's wrong, Bibi? You haven't touched your grapes," Her mother asked, grabbing a nearby chair and sitting beside her bed, "I'm sorry they're not cold, you know how long traffic gets."