Degrees Of Separation

D e g r e e T w o

D e g r e e T w o

The weak girl wakes up to a striking pain in her head to the sound of a male voice. That was what had waked her up. She had been unconscious for what felt like too long and the thing that had brought her back was the voice of a male, the voice of a male that sounded like her best friend.

It was remarkable how just the similarity of their voices was what gave her the strength to finally awaken.

She pushed what little strength she has in her limbs to sit up and realize that she had been in these types of rooms many times before. This time though, she was the one with the needles and tubes under her skin.

The needles and tubes didn't scare her at all though, the fact that something was inside her didn't even faze her. What made her quiver was how she remembered that these had been under his skin as well.

Her attention shifted to the tube in her arm and didn't move away from the object at her arm piercing through her skin even when a female voice spoke from the corner of the room. "Doctor, she's awake!"

She felt the atmosphere change almost instantly as another presence graced the room, but she just stared at her arm emptily, refusing to let her attention move. She wouldn't have the angst to look up from it; it was like she couldn't because she depended on it.

The presence was the famous Doctor Young. He wore a white cloak over his clothes with an instrument over his shoulders and a clipboard in his hands. And despite the fact he has seen patients a lot worse off today, his eyebrows were pulled together in genuine worry for the girl in the hospital bed.

He had seen her many times before whether she had been tears from crying or whether she had crying from laughing too much which seemed too long ago. He had loved seeing her either way, he could see the passion she had.

He remembered how she had the most angst to stay with Eric King, the patient he had been tending to when she would visit daily. Andrea had always been the hardest to pull away from the hospital bed when visiting hours ended. Doctor Young knew that she had a strong heart and soul, so seeing her lost and empty was something hard for even him to comprehend seeing.

"Andrea?" he whispered to get her attention, she didn't look away from her arm though. Doctor Young pursed his lips together tightly, what had happened to the girl who ran into the hospital with dozens of balloons and was handing then out to the other children?

"Andrea?" he repeated again. He didn't know that she wasn't responding because she couldn't identify what he was saying, she only heard inaudible words in the distant and even if she had heard, she didn't want to reply to her name anymore.

The female voice who had called for Doctor Young was now the one to speak up. "Andrea, sweetheart, please talk. We care about you, please just say something." She was only met with more silence. "Andrea, please! I am your mother, you have to talk!"

The woman was in hysterics and was on the very verge of tears in her eyes. It had been too long since she had heard a word escape her daughter's lips and she missed it too much. She couldn't even see emotion in her daughter's eyes anymore; she only saw emptiness in the face that was once happy enough to pull a smile in the face of tragedy.

Andrea had not been happy for months now. She had not been happy since she had lost her friend, she had not been happy since she could do nothing as her world crumbled in front of her. Her mother had seen it all and she had though that seeing her daughter no longer happy was horrible, but it was now torture to see her daughter in an emotionless state.

The distraught woman was now clutching the bars on the hospital bed so hard that her knuckles whitened in effort, she looked straight at the girl who wore the face of her daughter, but apparently no longer the heart. She silently begged for her daughter to come back to her. She begged and she begged to no avail.