Goals

"It's just a bruise."

My eyelids slowly flutter open, revealing a room that's so bright i have to close them again for a moment. Once my vision adapts to my surroundings, I can make out a defibrillator mounted on the white wall in front of me and a chart of the human anatomy next to it. A metal table is beside me, a small bowl holding swatches of bloody gauze placed on top of it. Two silver pairs of what look like tweezers and a needle lie next to it, their tips dyed red. A stethoscope and some other shiny tools are resting on a shelf in the corner of the room. The realization that I'm in a hospital hits me like a ton of bricks.

Then everything comes back to me at once. The sight of a car about to crush me, the feeling of Tobin's body tackling mine, the sound of sirens wailing as I lay damaged on a street I had crossed safely hundreds of times before. I should be lying in a morgue, but the universe lead me here instead.

I pull a shaky, dry breath into my lungs, and feel something hard encircling my mouth. I immediately panic and reach my hand up to tear the object off of me, only to feel a stinging sensation strike my inner elbow. Cursing and forcing myself to stay calm, I look down at my arm to find that I accidentally tore my own IV out. As soon as I look down to see this, the oxygen mask that I had felt on my face falls off, bouncing on the blue bed sheets before tumbling onto the floor. It shatters instantly, peices of it spreading across the floor just like my guts would've done on that road if I hadn't been saved.

"I don't care if you don't want to be here, Mom!"

I hadn't noticed that the door to the room I'm staying in has been left open just enough for me to see the hallway outside. I'm surprised when I spot Tobin through the small crack, looking angrier than I've ever seen her before. A woman wearing a blue blazer and a matching pencil skirt stands across from her with crossed arms and cold eyes. She's shaking her head at her daughter as if she's disappointed, causing her tight bun to shake slightly. I notice that while her style differs a lot from Tobin's, their physical features are so similar that it's obvious they come from the same gene pool.

Her mom shouts back at her, "Don't you dare talk to me like that!"

Tobin doesn't back down. "Then stop acting like this is all about you!"

"I had to leave work because you called and said there was an emergency! I drove for over an hour only to come home and see you sitting on your ass, perfectly fine!"

"Perfectly fine? I almost got hit by a car, Mom, I was shaking like crazy when you came in!"

Her mom actually laughs. "You expect me to feel bad for you when you're the one who willingly threw yourself in front of a truck?"

Tobin looks just as shocked as I am at how cruel what she's hearing is. "I saved Alex's life! I couldn't just let her get killed!"

"Oh god, please don't start talking about that Alex girl again. You can never do me a favor and just shut up about her when I ask you to."

This comment visibly hurts Tobin, and the sight of her eyes watering breaks my heart into a billion tiny peices. "I only wanted you to take me here so I could make sure she's okay. That wasn't much of me to ask."

Her mom rolls her eyes at how distressed Tobin seems. "All you did was go in there and watch her sleep for ten minutes like some desperate creep. Don't act like this wasn't a waste of both of our time."

At this point, I'm very aware that the situation unfolding in front of me is serious. There was something different about the way Tobin and her mom interacted with each other, something that just wasn't right. My mom and I never yelled at one another like the two of them were, and I hoped that we never would. The atmosphere around the mother and daughter was not warm and loving, but intense and uncomfortable. It was as if they both stood on the brink of exploding, their only goal being to cause as much harm to the other as they possibly could.