To Keep You

Thirty: Olive

Love...even the word tastes beautiful upon the tongue. Through so many eyes it is so many different things. To a child it is when a prince and a princess ride off into the sunset. To a teenager it is perhaps a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower, or to a teenage boy it's a passionate make-out session in the backseat of his car. To a college student it's the way the cute football player smiled at her. And to a middle-aged woman it's a man who loves her for her soul and not for what her body can give him.

But to me...

To me, love is powerful and dangerous. It's so easy to get caught up in and before you know it, it's drowning you in its murky depths. How mentally deprived of a human I must be to love it even when it's slowly killing me. But if loving Seth is leading me towards death, then dead I shall be.

The sun was like an orange hue hanging above the earth, its glow was a warm welcoming upon the frozen ground and as I peered out the dirty window of the hospital, I wondered if it would ever appear like that again.

It was the following day since my late-night dinner with Jackson and it was hardly even the early afternoon yet as I stood in Stella's room, aimlessly stirring a spoon in a cup of tea that had long since lost its heat. His words, like a phantom wind, haunted my mind in a way I couldn't ignore.

He had walked me back to Seth's room and had since disappeared. I knew he was somewhere in the hospital but to where he was, I did not know. It was strange to desire to be close to a man that I hardly even knew, but deep down I knew it had nothing to do with how handsome Jackson Woods is or how mysterious he seems. But it has everything to do with him holding the answers to my questions.

"Are you going to stand there and sigh over a cup of bland tea all day? Cause if I wanted to listen to air leaving someone's body, I would go down the hall to room six, rumor has it the guy has a bad case of food poisoning."

My nose scrunched up at the mere mention of the man in room six, and so with a final yet heavy sigh, I turned away from the window to glance upon the pale teenager. She looked hardly better than she did yesterday when she first awoke. But it was the small details that helped give her the appearance that she was healing faster than she truly was. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun or whether as messy as Stella Brandit would ever allow her hair to be. It was styled even for a messy bun; it was smoothed back, and the strands caught in the hair-tie were placed neatly in angles that would allow her hair to appear thicker than it actually was. She'd somehow gotten her hands on makeup and during my absence, applied some light blush to her cheeks, a faint pink lip-gloss to her lips, and even trimmed her eyebrows as well as feathering up her eyelashes. In the time I spent staring at her, I figured she was trying to capture the natural beauty look as much as she could with bare basic make-up products.

"I'm sorry," I trailed off as my hands shook lightly, "I just got caught up in my thoughts." I'd spent the night in Seth's room again, and I'd barely slept a wink. The teaspoon of trust I once had in the nurses was completely gone. I trusted no one who worked here.

Their lips maybe red but their hearts are vacant of love.

Stella rolled her eyes, and picked at her nails, "I don't need a baby-sitter, you can go be with Seth."

Settling in a chair next to the bed, my lips pulled into a tight line. It wasn't that I thought she needed a babysitter, it was the opposite actually. I was scared to leave her alone with the rest of the hospital.

She is a danger to everyone.

I bite my lip to contain a sigh as the brief memory of the two nurses she sent running out of the room crying this morning flooded my mind. I should feel happy that she makes them cry, they are people who deserve to be put in their place. However, I didn't need any more drama in my life, and it isn't Godly to make others cry, even if they deserve it. I nearly laughed at that thought for what do I know about being Godly? Wasn't it just yesterday that I found myself hurtling over the nurse's station to attack a nurse who dared to cover up Seth's skin as it were a case of leprosy?