Pretentiously Simple | Kleo ✔️

24 | i see you through and through

—LEO—
...

the surgeon said the surgery was a success. that there were absolutely zero complications, bar none. that i should not worry. but how much of a coward would i be if i still did?

what if she didn't wake up? if she wasn't getting enough oxygen to her brain? if the baby inside her already beat up belly wouldn't make it through the night? maybe if she did wake up, she wouldn't be able to remember me. what happens then?

the surgeon had been long gone by the time my thoughts trailed into a whirlwind that would not stop unless someone else did. but i had a feeling it was only going to be just us for a while, kate and i. and so the only person who physically could stop me from these thoughts would be kate herself.

i sat by her bedside, my sweaty hand glued to her cold one, because i could not bear to let her go like i did many times before. it never ended good. the very first second my hand loosened its grip from hers whose skin i felt unworthy touching, every single time, it never once ended good.

maybe it was a warning sign. my thoughts continued to cascade, and perhaps for good reason. now was the only time i felt free to think. my thoughts were maybe quick and perpetual, but also alleviating and enlightening.

i felt my thoughts swirl through my head, all my beliefs and morals rising up from beneath its confined surfaces. kate got into a car crash. she called me before she left the house. i told her to stay there. she left.

i would be a little closed minded if i didn't blame myself just the tiniest bit. but i wasn't, so i blamed myself a lot.

how many days was it that i had left kate for the baby? how many days had i left her all alone, so vulnerable and so hurt? kate got into a car accident, and it was all because of me. all because i left her for a baby that i don't even know, all because i loved her too much and still let her go.

i watched her as she lay flat on the bed, machines hooked up to her helping her breathe. i replayed the phone call between the two of us just a few hours earlier, when she was alive and well, but unequivocally frantic. i recalled how she said she could not sleep for days. she could not breathe for days. i now understood, after a long while, that she needed me to live...to sleep and to breathe and the rest of the intervening parts. she needed me to live just as much as i needed her, and maybe a little bit more. i watched the machines that helped her breathe, closer this time, and internally picked up on the irony of the situation, as i was no longer the air she needed to breathe.

how stupid was i to have done it again? how much more selfish could i have been? but had i known how much this meant to her, how much our relationship did, i would've chosen her without any consideration. the love i can offer her for a whole lifetime, is to put it simply, otherworldly, even for me.

if the situation were different, i would've chosen her first. i would have, and i knew it.

after my actions, though, and after the accident that traced back to me, i would feel guilty for life. this damage may not be physically permanent, but definitely emotionally permanent, in every way possible.

but it was at this moment i realized, conceivably, that for this reason, our relationship wasn't difficult, and hasn't ever been. now i knew this before, and i knew it way before this so called relationship even began. but somewhere between the lines of then and now, it must've gotten lost in the midst of it all—from bar's pregnancy, the accident, kate's pregnancy. the truth of the matter was, the experience was difficult, like all experiences are. but the idea of it...the principle, our chemistry, what kate means to me and what i mean to kate. it was all so so easy. as plain as the nose on my face.