The Circle of Life - Addicted Series - BOOK 4

17. Broken Hearts and Promises

I feel like I am opening my eyes from a heavy sleep.

"How do you feel?" the nurse asks.

"Surrounded." 

I look at Nikki who was standing behind her.

The nurse gives me a little cup with two tablets. "This is for the pain. If it gets too hard, you can take these. I am going home for the night. There are two nurses here on night shift. You can ring for them if you need anything." She tells me.

"Are you staying here?" she asks Nick.

"I got nowhere to go." He tells her.

~

"Need anything?" he asks me after she leaves.

"For you to go home..." I tell him.

"I am home." He tells me, as if stating a fact.

Aw, Nick!

"Why are you doing this?" I try to sit up.

He is silent. 

"Nikki..."

"Stop it." He scolds. "No more thinking. No more talking. You have one job to do for the next six month: Get healthy. That's all you are allowed to do."

"I heard Ria's voice in my sleep."

"She was here. You were sleeping. She will be back in the morning."

"Why are you getting everyone here?"

"I am not. They are all here on their own. They are all worried about you."

"Don't worry about me!"

"Enough."

"Please don't tell the kids, Nikki, please. I am not going to survive this. The sooner you accept it the better. Please let them go on with their lives. This is my decision as their mother. I have a right."

"You have exhausted your rights and decisions for the rest of your life, Lia. No more. I am deciding things from here on."

"Nikki!"

"If I was this sick, would you just leave me to my fate?" he asks me. "If the answer is Yes. I will leave right now."

I look at him lost for words."I am usually not this sick, Nikki, I don't know if it is the old medicines that I have stopped taking or the new medicines that I have started taking but I can take care of myself." Even as I utter those words I feel a surge of anger washing through him. 

"Like you took care of yourself when you were pregnant?" he asks in a calm, composed yet glaring anger.

"Nikki...please.Don't be angry."

"Tell me Lia, how did it feel when you had my twins? When you held them for the first time? Because there is no way for me find out ever, especially now that you are dying. How did it feel when they looked at you for the first time? when they walked towards you for the first time? When they asked for their father? Tell me, how did it feel raising them FOR EIGHT FUCKING YEARS, LIKE I WAS DEAD?" he screams at the top of his voice.

...

"How dare you, Lia? How dare you deny me of that? And you want me to take care of them now? Why? Why should I? Why do you think I will?" He shoots one question after the other as if he could not hold them in his chest anymore.

"Because you love them. You have to. They are your blood." I tell him calmly.

"Love? Please. Don't be speaking about love, baby. You don't know the first thing about it. You don't abandon your love, Lia, NOT FOR ANY REASON IN THE WORLD. NOT IF YOU ARE SICK! NOT IF YOU HAVE A HUNDRED DAGGERS DRILLED INTO YOU, NOT IF YOU ARE FUCKING DYING! Do you know how these eight years were for me?"