our fall in may||BWS (completed)

Chapter Seventeen

May

"I'm hungry." I whined for the seventh time this hour.

"I know, sweetheart." My mom sounded sad she couldn't let me eat.

They had taken off the eye patches and let me take a shower, but I have to ingest sugar water through a needle? How cruel.

"Sneak me in some. I did that for Bradley." The pang in my chest went shaper at his name.

"But Bradley could eat food. You can't. You'll get sick." Her voice was sympathetic.

"When will he like me?" I mumbled to myself. The little hope I had of his ever talking to me again was handing from a string.

"He does care about you." She paused, as if deciding this was the proper thing to say. "Bradley has his own issues, baby. He left because he knows he can't help you how you need him to. I'm afraid he can't bring himself to come see you without staying."

"I want him to stay." My eyes stung.

My mother grabbed my hand and rubbed circles with her thumb "I know you do."

"I care about him...a lot." And there goes the tears.

"I know. I can't tell. He cares about you too. From what Linda told me, Bradley made eye contact with her the other day."

The strange noise rising in my throat diminished immediately. "H-He did?"

"Yup, but only for a second."

I felt happy, but also kind of jealous of Linda. I wanted him to get better, but I wanted to make eye contact with him. I know I won't be able to see him, but it's like I can when he's around. My senses are always more amplified, alive even, when he's near me. What if he's looked at my eyes before?

No of course he hasn't. They just stare blankly in front of them.

No matter my emotions, I've been told they won't move ever. When you sleep or dream, your eyes move until the lids. Since the blast damaged my optical nerves and mostly everything else, the surgeons had to tighten mine to keep them in place. I flat lined several times during that surgery.  But the constriction of the tightening made it so I can so my move my eyes a bit, but it's painful. When my nerves 'thread' as I call it, it's because my eyes moved too much. It's about as common as your neck locking in a painful way.

I remembered a time when I visited Bradley in the hospital.

I put my folded hands under my chin and smiled, knowing Bradley could see it. "Tell me another." I begged.

"Okay...when I was seven, Tristan, James and I went to the beach, and we almost drowned from a wave, but it was hilarious because Tristan came up and screamed like a little girl." Bradley laughed a little while I did a lot.

After I gained my breathing back, I tried to focus, thinking that I could, if I tried hard enough, see him.

"Woah." He gasped. "How'd you do that?"

I snapped out of it. "What?"

"Your eyes moved a little bit. Like you were looking to the left. Can you see anything?"

"No..." I frowned. Did my eyes actually move when I concentrated?

"Hey, don't be sad. I'll tell you about the time we pranked the English teacher." He suggested and I smiled weakly.

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Bradley is such a bean I wanna squish him and love him and hug him omg

-Rose