Time (A Harry Styles Fanfiction)

Chapter 1

I keep my focus on Jade, my eyes growing heavy of the sleep I've lost over the past few nights. I can't bring myself to even think of sleep, knowing that my sister is hurting. I listen to her even breathing, which somehow seems to calm me in the most sick, and twisted way. Her skin barely holds the radiance that it used to, her beautiful light brown hair only a memory.

She has to wake up. She's Jade. She has to wake up.

I can't help the tears that escape my dreary eyes before I lean back into the most uncomfortable of chairs in Jade's hollow hospital room, sleep taking me despite my feelings of guilt.

When I open my eyes, the sun shines through the window across the room way too bright, giving me a reason to stand wobbily and pull the shear white curtains over the hot window. That's one of the things that Jade hated; being woken that way. She would throw a fit when Dad would come into her room and open the curtains, waking her. I look in the doorway to see Mom here, which is only slightly reassuring since I have to drive to college and move my things into my dorm room today. I'll admit my nerves for starting college are endless, the never ending 'what ifs' swirling around my head.

"Gia..." my mom snaps me out of my thoughts, her eyes locked on mine while her hands run the surface of Jade's still ice cold face. I watch Jade's chest rise up and down slowly, short intervals passing between each movement. Her fingers are too pale, almost blue in the coolness of the hospital, and I let my eyes scan up her arm to the IV and wires hanging from her skin. I hate seeing her like this. Sure, Jade has had bad stretches of health before, but seeing her like this kills me. I need her to be okay.

"Gia, you should get going. The last thing you need is to be late to registration." My mom orders me harshly, furrowing her brows at me. She looks a mess, and she has the right to be. Her daughter is dying, her other daughter is starting college along with her son, and her husband is deployed overseas. She's handling more than enough.

"Yeah, I'm leaving now." I don't smile at her as I reach around her to grab my cross body and phone, being sure to kiss Jade on the forehead before leaving. Even if she can't feel it, she needs to know I'm here for her. "Call me if she wakes up." I order my mother before walking out coldly. I sling my bag over my shoulder and climb into my tiny Ford Focus, heading off to the college campus.

It isn't that I disrespect my mother, I love her very much. But she treats me like a child, and like I can't make my own decisions. She's always treated my brother and sister better than me, for a reason I will never know. Even if she is dealing with a lot, she chooses now to take responsibility over Jade like she had been doing it all along, when I've been doing it since Dad left.

I leave my consuming thoughts to cautiously text my older brother James, making sure he's meeting me at the campus, since he has my moving boxes in the bed of his huge truck.

James: 'Yeah I'm almost there, see ya in a few sis.'

His text assures me as I throw my phone into the passenger seat, taking note of the campus sign on the side of the road. As I begin pulling into the biggest parking lot, my mind is swarmed with thoughts. I'm really glad to be moving away from my mom, even though it is only a fifteen minute drive from her house in Tampa. I wanted to be as close to Jade's hospital as possible, and Jade is more important to me than getting away from my mom. I'm also overly afraid of coming to University of South Florida, since it is one of the biggest college campuses in the states. I want more than anything to belong here, something that I've always struggled with doing, especially throughout high school. With Jade's diagnosis of cancer, everything crumbled beneath me. Jade is my world.

"GEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I jump at the noise of my older brother knocking on my window, breaking me from my mind. He pouts as I laugh at him through the car window before pushing my door open and letting him wrap me in one of the biggest bear hugs he's ever given me.