Jony: A Love Story

In the Hospital...

Jess opened her eyes to a fading, yet surprisingly bright setting. It was what she knew to be St. Charles hospital. She thought that she was in the hallway but that couldn't be true! She looked around at the doctors wheeling her away, probably to the E.R. I know I didn't fall that hard! Jess had been thinking. Tony, Ashton, and Jess' parents looked down on her, running with the gurney down the hospital, like you always see on T.V.

When she woke up again, Jess felt an IV in her arm, and she herd the heart monitor going off next to her. At least she knew she was alive.

Jess' hip was a stabbing pain that she could never get used to. She had been awake for 2 days now, apparently she had slept in a coma for 6 weeks, and the hospital was keeping her for good measure. They never said when she could leave, but Jess was hoping that they would let her go soon. Surprisingly, she missed school, with Ashton and.... Tony. She felt a sweet smell travel to her nostrils and turned to her right, finding a beautiful boquet of flowers. The smelled of Cali lilies, Jess' favorite.

She knew that Tony sent them because he was the only one that knew Cali lilies were Jess' favorite flower. He was so sweet, charming, and considerate. Tony was the most amazing person that Jess knew. When he was near her, she could hardly breathe, because being near perfection was too much for her to handle. That's what Tony was in Jess' eyes: perfect. He probably never saw it, but she did.

Her phone buzzed next to the flowers, and it pulled Jess out of her train of thought. She leaned over to see it was her 202 unread text. Checking her messages carefully, she saw that 40 were from Ashton, 36 were from her mom, another 36 from her dad's phone (probably still from her mom) then she saw the 90 from Tony. Over the past 6 weeks, because doctors wouldn't let him visit her, seeing as he wasn't her married spouse or blood relative, Tony hadn't seen her once. She went through Ashton's first, and most of them were asking if she was awake yet, or if she was okay. Her mom (and dad's) said things like: Where are you?! Are you okay?! What happened?!

Finally, Jess went through Tony's messages. She stared at the screen when she finished reading them, eyes watering from tears of joy, and sadness. Her hands shook to the point that she dropped her phone, and she started to silently cry, unaware of the nurse that had just walked in.

"Hello?" the woman said quizzically. Jess tried to say, "Hi" but her voice just wouldn't work. The nurse came up to her and said, "Can you talk?" Jess shook her head to indicate a 'no'. Jess saw that the nurse's name was Carrie, and tried to talk once more, "haa-Carrhhhee" is all that came out. Horrified, Carrie ran out of the door, hopefully to get a ENT.

This was starting to scare Jess. She checked her phone again, and Tony was calling her. Jess didn't know what to do, because she couldn't talk, but she couldn't ignore Tony's call.. He would think she was mad at him! Jess was panicking until she remembered something important. She sent the call to voicemail after 3 rings. This was her signal to Tony that she couldn't answer her phone at the moment. They had set it up for school when he was sick and she was at school, or vise versa.

Carrie walked back into the hospital room with an ENT, who told Jess to open her mouth and try to say 'ahh'. Jess did as she was told and the sound that came from her mouth sounded more like a croak than an ahh. The ENT, whose name was Kevin, looked at Carrie and mumbled something about tonsils. What Kevin did tell Jess, was that she had done something to her throat while she was screaming after her hip surgery. This terrified Jess because the last time she had strep throat, she almost died.

Besides losing Tony, death was really the only thing that Jess was afraid of. Not just the imminence of her death, but the death of all of those whom she cared for. She had always worried that the words she said to someone would be the last she ever spoke to them. It scared her to the point that sometimes she just had to let them know how she felt about them, however embarrassing it was. But Jess couldn't bare to tell Tony how she felt about him. She knew she would be rejected, or worse, he wouldn't speak to her ever again. So Jess would just say, "Love you!" in a joking manner, so that Tony wouldn't suspect anything, when in reality, Jess really did love Tony in a "more than friends" way. He almost always replied, "Love you too!".. the only exception was when he was really angry or really depressed. Jess loved it when he said he loved her. It was so adorable and sweet of him, even thought she knew he was kidding, maybe even being a little sarcastic.

When the nurse finally spoke to Jess again, it was to deliver news that Jess never would have imagined could happen. She cried for hours and hours after Carrie told her. It was one of her fears. Not a fear that all of her friends knew about, like how she feared spiders, snakes, or seawater. It was a fear that Jess didn't even acknowlege to herself about, because she didn't know it was there. It shattered her heart into a million pieces, like a broken mirror.

Carrie had told Jessica Claire Jones that she could never talk again. Not once would she ever say hi to her friends, or say I love you to her family. But what truly broke Jess' heart, was that now she really couldn't tell Tony how she felt.