Catching Feelings [bwwm]

Chapter 26- Picture After Picture

please read the note at the end... I know it's long but it would mean a lot to me

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With my one good hand, I pushed the joystick on my electric wheelchair forward and began to move.

After the car accident, I was in the hospital for a week and a half. The doctors said it wasn't only because my injuries were so severe, but also because I kept crashing and they kept having to revive me. They wanted to keep an eye on me as best as they could because I was touch and go for a while.

Like one minute I was fine, and the next minute I'm being rushed into emergency surgery because a blood clot had formed from my initial surgery which could've killed me.

I exhausted from all of my injuries and I was exhausted over worrying about my loved ones.

I could tell it was really hard on James, Liv, Josie, and even Jonathan to see me there all broken into pieces, which I understood. They were used to seeing me burst into random dance sessions or cursing somebody out, not sitting in a hospital bed barely able to move.

But out of the four of them, I could tell it was really hard on James. He didn't come to see me as much as the others and when he did show up, he was really quiet and kind of distant.

I had asked Jonathan if he knew what was up with his brother but he just shrugged. All he said was James blamed himself for what happened to me. Apparently, he refused to talk to anybody or leave the house unless it was to come to visit me.

He was really beating himself up over the car accident.

But did I blame James?

No, I did not.

It was my decision to come home when he called me. I could've just ignored his pleas and stepped on that plane to New York without a care in the world.

But I knew what that would've done to him. James would have unraveled like an unending ball of yarn unable to be fully rolled back together.

The past couple of months when I had been parading around the house talking about how excited I was to finally get to spread my wings, I hadn't been paying much attention to James' opinion. Like I was hearing him, but it was like my excitement of the prospect that I was finally going to be famous overshadowed what he was saying.

So when I was at the airport two seconds from boarding my plane, and he called me, it was like every little comment he ever made and every little uneasy facial expression he exhibited replayed through my mind.

I realized that although he had been directly telling me he disapproved, he was also indirectly telling me.

And I had been ignoring him. James - the man I loved and was supposed to marry - was all but pleading with me not to continue on with the modeling job and I had brushed it under the rug.

But I realized I couldn't do that anymore. If I wanted our relationship to work and to last, I couldn't treat James and his opinion like they didn't matter.

And that's why I came home.

It's been a week since I was discharged from the hospital and things were going as expected.

Both of my legs were in casts. My left arm was broken in four places and also in a cast. I fractured a couple of ribs. I had been wearing a neck brace in the hospital because of the whiplash I had but didn't need it anymore. And last, my spleen had to be removed.

Trust me when I say it was hard to get around the house for the first couple of days as the hospital gave me a regular wheelchair.

James tried to help me as much as I would let him, but I wanted to be as independent as possible and not fully depend on him.