Despising Love

o n e

When I opened my eyes the ceiling looked kinda weird. It had tiles on it. I mean really, who in their right mind would put tiles on the ceiling.

I stared at the ceiling for a while, contemplating tiles until a large round face entered my view. I looked up into the startling blue eyes that peered down at me and smiled. A voice which belonged to the head said 'She's awake.'

I watched as that round faced person picked up a little remote thing and push a button which made the bed that I was lying in tilt up. The lady then looked at me and said, 'Hi, my name is Ruby and I'm one of the nurses in this ward.'

'Why am I here?' I asked her warily.

Ruby frowns and then says, 'Well, there was an accident and you sustained some injuries, so we brought you and your brother ER,' she replied carefully.

'Nick!' I said fearfully, 'Is he...is he alright?'

'He's in a stable condition,' she answered.

'What's that supposed to mean,' I almost yell, 'Where is he?'

Ruby sighed and said gently, 'He's in a coma, but he's fine.'

'How can he be fine when he's in a coma?' I whisper.

She pats my hand sympathetically and gives me a small smile.

~~~~~~~

They didn't tell me what happened to Aunt Heather until about a week later.

It was Monday and I was to leave my hospital ward for the first time since I was admitted there, that afternoon. I'm was kinda nervous, because as soon as I was released I was going to go straight to Nick's Intensive Care ward. If they let me in, I would get to see Nick.

The curtain to my hospital bed was pulled open and I looked up to see Ruby, some doctor person and a tall man wearing a neat suit. The man sat beside my bed in one of the plastic hospital chairs and laid his briefcase across his lap. Ruby sat carefully at the edge of my bed and smooths out the wrinkles on her nurses gown. I could tell that she was  nervous, because normally she was so happily and bubbly. The doctor meanwhile stood at the end of the bed.

I turned my attention back to the man in the suit as he cleared his throat. He frowned a bit and then shuffled through the papers in his briefcase, looking for something. He finally pulled out a large stack of papers paper clipped together. He cleared his throat yet again, which I think was completely unnecessary, as he obviously had everyone's attention already.

He looked me in the eye and then said, 'Hello Amber, my name is Richard Bayman and I am your family's trustee.' He looked down at his papers and then continued, 'I'm afraid I have some grave news. On the fourteenth August yourself, your aunt and your younger brother were in a car crash.'

I'm not stupid, so I had realised that already, so I wished that he would just get down to the whole point.

'During this accident, one entire side of your vehicle was crushed,' he continued very solemnly, 'And unfortunately your Aunt Heather was killed upon impact.' He looked up at me as if to observe my reaction to his simple statement.

I frowned at him. That couldn't be right. Aunt Heather couldn't be dead. She wouldn't just die, would she? I didn't think that was  possible. I watched the trustee carefully, waiting for him to tell me that it was all just some massive elaborate joke, and really she was  just sitting in the waiting room right now or at home making our favourite dinner.

But Mr Bayman just looked me straight back in the eye and said nothing about a joke.

I felt like I was dreaming, and that when I woke up nothing will have changed at all. I thought that I must have be imagining all of this, because it was all completely crazy. I'm not sure how long I thought about it all for, but it must have been a while.

When I came back to earth a bit I heard Nurse Ruby and Richard having a whispered argument. The doctor who had been standing at the end of my bed earlier was gone.

I listened in to the argument just as Ruby said, 'Still, you could have been nicer to her about it.'

Mr Bayman just grunted his reply. It was only then that I noticed an official document on the top of his stack of papers. The heading said: Certificate of Death. Underneath that, there was a box in which was the name Heather Seymour.

That was almost like a slap to the face. It meant that I wasn't dreaming or if I was then it was an extremely elaborate dream, which I highly doubted. Normally I wasn't not the biggest person to cry, but right now it didn't matter, nothing really mattered, because Aunt Heather was gone. The tears came streaming down and I covered my face with my hands and cried.

At this point, Mr Bayman got up to leave. I didn't blame him though. His job was to look after people's money and their estate and stuff, not their personal lives. Besides, I'm pretty sure that he didn't have kids from the way he was acting so he probably didn't know how to deal with a crying teenage girl. He nodded a goodbye and then left, hurriedly stuffing his papers into his briefcase.

Ruby on the other hand patted my back soothingly and passed me tissue after tissue. I was kinda glad that she was there and I don't really know what I'd have done without her.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"Don't be," she replied softly, "There's nothing to be sorry for at all."

"Don't you have better things to do than help me? No offense of course," I asked with a sniffle.

She sighed and gave me a small smile, "Not particularly, no."

Then I cried even harder, although I don't know why. Nurse Ruby stayed with me the whole time and held my hand. We stayed like that for quite a while, and even though there were probably more important things to do on the ward, she didn't make a move to leave at all.

Eventually I found myself lying down, with Ruby stroking my hair gently. I was still crying, which was sort of stupid, but the realisation hurt.

As I began to drift into a world of sleep she said softly "It'll be alright." I highly doubted that that fact was true, because I felt completely dismal, but I trusted her better judgement in that situation. I was almost completely asleep so it was most likely my brain being muddled, but I didn't really know at that stage, nor did I care.

I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be visiting any time soon.