Dear Richie

Stay

Sometimes words fail to convey any feelings you have. 

"Leia."

Sometimes they aren't enough.

"Leia, are you okay?"

Leia had plenty of words to say, so many feelings bottled up inside, but nobody was willing to listen.

"Speak to me, please."

People are surprised by her actions, but they shouldn't be.

"I'm sorry, Leia. Please, just get up."

They knew what was happening. They knew that they were hurting her. With every single word, with every single rumor, with every single punch, throw, kick, they knew what their actions were leading to.

"Don't worry, baby, I'm here. Stay with Gramm."

"Is she gonna be okay, Gramma?"

"Leia is going to be fine, Lil."

If they knew what they were doing was so wrong, why didn't they stop?

Why did they do it in the first place?

"Stay with me, baby."

Family gathers around in the hospital waiting room, all with weeping eyes. Lily wanders to the doors labeled EMERGENCY ROOM. She is about to push them open when Liam takes her hand. His blond hair drapes across his sunken eyes. He simply shakes his head once for her to understand that it's no use.

Mother screams into the open air. "Why would my baby do this to herself?"

Father attempts to calm her, trying to act as if this isn't affecting him.

Gramma goes back in time to when her husband was alive, how his last days were spent in a hospital room. She recollects him holding her hand before he passed, his last words to her being, "Remember to always live, even when you feel like dying."

Hours later, Lucas arrives, hearing of the news. He came right as soon as he heard, being right in the middle of a test back at the university.

"Tell me that she's okay." He demanded to be lied to, but no one could do it.

How come now that she is gone, it's harder to lie?

With the woeful atmosphere, Lucas knew that there was no chance of being told that.

He collapses to the tile floor, his legs failing at keeping him up any longer. He drove all that way on spite, hoping that if he could at least make it, she would too.