Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 19

Elliot almost claims that he's used to her being gone, and that's when Emma shows up again.

At first he thought he was daydreaming, but the clicking is all too loud, the breathing is much too haggard for it to be a mere daydream. The whirring of her oxygen tank comes along and he pictures it in his mind in an instant - the two blue hues that are what give it its name: Stitch.

Emma is aware she looks like the embodiment of her disease, a walking billboard of Cystic Fibrosis. Her eyes are red and blotchy, and her skin is as white as snow and pasty like the early stages of paper-mache. Her hair is frizzy and is put up haphazardly, and her body looks sharper. Her lips are cracked and blue, and she keeps fiddling with the nubs of the oxygen tubes.

"Hello, Elliot," she says. Her voice is one of a ghost's and twice as haunting. Elliot doesn't look up at her.

"Hi, Emma."

"Sorry, I haven't gotten the times right the past few days," she whispers. Elliot nods but doesn't look at her, and Emma just stares at him. He doesn't even seem to notice, he doesn't feel her eyes burning into him, he can't tell how shallow her breathing's gotten or how she won't sit down until he takes one glance at her.

He doesn't look at her. He doesn't think he can.

"I'm sorry," she says. It's almost enough to coax Elliot to look at her, but he continues sketching. Emma tries to peer at what he's drawing, but she can't make it out, and leaning forward too much makes her head spin.

"It's fine," Elliot says, but his grip on his pencil is shaky and his neck feels strained. He's not sure whether his body is fighting his want to look at her, or if her appearance makes him repel. He can't understand how he's feeling, he's ecstatic she's here but he can feel his pulse in his fingertips and the heat rise to his cheeks. He wants to yell, he wants to scream, and part of him wants to wrap his arms around her and yell thank God that she's still walking, but the other part of him wants to grab her shoulders and shake her.

"I don't think it is."

"Sure it is."

"Then why haven't you looked at me?" Emma asks, and she looks down at her shoes. A lot of people have been looking at her the past couple of days, all she's had around her are people who are looking at her; but when she finally gets to someone who she wants to look at her, he doesn't even lift up his head.

"You said that you thought I was a good artist because I focus," Elliot says, his voice monotonous. Emma sighs.

I also know how you take everything in like you already know it, like you knew I'd come today, like it's not horrible that I've been gone, and the fact that you're angry and you're trying to avoid it is absolute proof, Emma thinks, but she doesn't move.

After a couple of moments of waiting, Emma's machine clicks and she can feel herself getting tripped up on her feet. She doesn't know why she came here. She doesn't have to be here, but she came, because she wanted to - because she wanted to explain, or maybe not explain, but apologize, or maybe not even apologize, but have one thing of normalcy.

But clearly, she's ruined her last connection to normalcy with all this too. Elliot won't even look at her, Elliot is barely talking to her, and she deserves all of it - but it's not fair. It's not fair. What she deserves comes from things she doesn't deserve and in the end would any of this be happening if it wasn't for her damned illness?

She shakes her head and grimaces. Taking a deep breath in, she waits a few moments before she exhales, and it's a shaky and weak exhale. Elliot can hear every single quiver in her breath and it drives him absolutely insane, it's like a beckoning for him to look up, but he doesn't want to. She has not acknowledged his existence in so long, why does she deserve to be truly acknowledged?