Her Smiling Encounter

01.5

||Esmeralda||

His eyes held numbness and excruciating pain. And watching him like this held me with pain as well. I never saw Joshua cry, weep, or even hold sadness and negativity on his features ever before.

I was slouching in the lobby chair of Glendale hospital as my hand caressed his palm softly as tears bleed from his eyes, trailing down to his quivering lips. It pained me seeing him like this.

It was complete and utter torture.

"Josh. Everything will be okay, everything will we fine." I said in a whisper delicately cupping his cheeks and forcing his gaze to be upon me. But that was impossible, his puffy red eyes were focusing on the ground and a frown glued to his lips.

"No it won't, Don't you get it? My mother is in a comma and I can't do anything about it. I can't make her smile or laugh or even tell her myself that everything will be okay.... Because it won't. Nothing is okay nor will be fine, she's the only person I have left, because my coward of a father decided to bail on us last minute. When we needed him the most. You don't know what it's like to see your father leave while your own flesh and blood mother is being taken into an emergency room." He sobbed in anger causing me to flinch and prevent my own tears from falling. He needed someone.

I never did meet or know his mother, and he never really talked about her to me. But just seeing that pained expression possessing his facial expression gave me something about his mother to work with. She  was a very important person in his life and he loves her to death, I bet she was also the only person who persuaded his personality to be joyful and caring with his smiles . It was like being trapped in a tunnel  with no sigh of light at the end of the it. I just didn't know and understand what to do.

How would someone who makes even the bitterest quirk a smile ,smile themselves?

It was like an obvious yet difficult sight that made the frown on my lips twitch a bit.I knew what I was going to try to do and to be as honest as possible I didn't know if this plan of mine was going to work or help one single bit. But its worth a try to see him with at least a hint of hope and trust to reveal locked up feelings when most needed in a time like this.

I slowly slipped from his weak grasp on my left palm and looked down at him. "I'll be right back, I just need to go get something, don't worry I won't be long." Once I said those words it was as if to him I wasn't there, he wouldn't respond and sitting in a waiting room for three days straight since we left the park wasn't doing him any better.

I exhaled a shaky sigh and turned on the balls of my feet, heading towards what I thought would be best to do and kind of have a little hope that would change things. Once again the way that he made even the bitter or serious laugh, smile or grin would make him lighten up, right?Several minutes after I gathered the necessary, I paced back and fourth in my tracks before entering the waiting room once again with my occupied hands hidden from proper vision. I was a bit confident about what I did have planned but being as pessimistic as me things change.I spotted him in the same state he was in; sadness, sorrow, and just complete and utter emptiness, as his arms hung over the metal chair he was on and his honey blonde locks fell over his face as his head was pressed up against the wall.

I cautiously took a seat next to him and debated further on how to approach him with words. I cautiously interlaced my fingers with his and softly tightened my hand around his, which I guess got him to focus on my encounter.

"Joshua, please look at me." I asked as willingly as possible without the lump in my throat getting the best of me.

His gaze laid on mine and all I saw from him at that very moment was someone else, someone who wasn't Joshua Miller.