Differences

Chapter 54 - Luke

New Chapter!!! 📣📣📣

Warning: This chapter like the previous chapter explores illness and passing. Please read what is most comfortable for you.

Spoiler: (Cause we all need something a little lighter): this chapter ends on a much brighter note. And ngl, brought a tear (or a few - I mean a lot) to my eyes. 🥹🥲🥹

But anyways, I do hope you enjoy reading this chapter. 🩷💜🩵

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I was allowed to be discharged the week after I was brought in. Nine days and I was deemed good to go. And yet, she was still here. Still laid in her bed. Still attached to the various monitors and machines. Still unconscious.

Her condition hadn't improved in the past week.

But it hadn't worsened, so there was that.

I may have been discharged but I spent most of my hours here, by her side. I was way too damn paranoid about the 'what if's' to leave her side. The only time I left the place was when Mom pestered me to go home, shower, and change clothes.

Besides that, I was here.

Where I sat on the same chair.

Where I kept my fingers interlocked with hers.

Where I would talk just about anything and everything. It was easier believing that I was talking to her.

One could say I was losing my mind.

Maybe I was.

"Mom was tending the flowers yesterday. I don't really know how some flowers can thrive in this heat, and I wouldn't dare ask Mom. She would make my ears bleed. So, you'll have to explain them to me. You explain them better. Concise and straight to the point.", I say to her.

In my mind she would give me a little laugh, where her eyes twinkle and shine and her cheeks would take on a soft pink hue. In my mind, I would give a smile back and then she'll continue to tell me off for offending my own mother.

I was so desperate to hear her soft, silky voice, that I started making the voices in my own head. I was so desperate to feel her touch on me, rather than my touch on her. But most of all, I was desperate to see her smiles. All of her smiles. 

Seeing smiles on any other mother fucker's face right now made me want to punch the life out them. How dare they smile and live a comfortable life when she, who deserves every single happiness the world had to offer, have to indirectly live through machines to keep her alive?

It wasn't fair.

Nothing was fair.

But I chose to remain calm. She was still here. She was still living. Her heart was still beating. And as long as it was, I would stay here. But in the event if it . . . stops, then mine would too.

"I miss you" I whisper before brushing a kiss on her hand. Her fingers still interlocking with mine, I bring it my face, feeling the need to physically feel that her hands were in fact still warm. But then, something tingled and spasmed on my face.

It didn't feel like the touch was made by me. Was I so desperate that I was starting to feel things that doesn't exist?

Quite possible.

But as I return my attention to her hands, her fingers slowly wrap around mine. Her fingers. On their own accord.

I immediately turn my gaze onto her face.

"Alaina?" I softly call, "Alaina? Can you hear me?"

Her head cocks to the side as her eyes slowly start to open. And then close.

Please let it be because of those fucking lights, I hear myself pray out loud.

Not long after, her eyes reopen, those beautiful chocolate brown eyes wondering around the room and then lands on mine. Big swells of tears form, reason unknown but I couldn't care less.

"Alaina, can you hear me?"

She weakly squeeze my hands in response. 

She came back.

She came back to me.