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┏━━━━━ CHAPTER TWELVE ━━━━━┓ ★゜・。。・゜゜・destined to hurt ──── Chicago Rhee
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❝Take my mind And take my pain Like an empty bottle takes the rain And heal, heal, heal, heal ❞ — heal, tom odell
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MY HEARTBEAT WAS LIKE A SONG, serenading me with gentle beats after every breath I was grateful enough to have. I found myself counting every thump, memorizing the slight flutter whenever I was wracked by a cough and the steady lull whenever I was resting. It was a reminder that my body was still alive, that this sickness that infected and killed had not yet won. My heart still worked the way it should, that in itself was strength, and it made the world seem less scary. That I could go through hell and still claim my whispered song as my own, instead of hearing it fade away gradually over time.
Time had passed yet I did not know at what speed, for me, it was an excruciating wait. I had no means of knowing, for these four walls had no light to ignite our freezing bones. It could've been hours or even days and I would not catch the answer, though I found I yearned for the answer less and less. Would it make a difference? Yet at the same time, all of us in here were running on borrowed time, perhaps it mattered more than I realized.
Glenn sat beside me, our backs slumped against the concrete wall with no regard for our posture. My knees were curled up against my chest whereas Glenn's legs were stretched out in front of him. We found ourselves like this a majority of the time. I had not yet left his cell to claim my own, I didn't even want to. I couldn't be alone, couldn't leave him alone. What was the point when I'd just be in the same position? I had no will to move, mostly because I knew the moment I left the safety of this cell I'd see just how sick people were getting. It was one thing to hear the rattling of lungs heaving for oxygen but to see it was much more than I wanted. It would put me back into reality when I finally began to relish in the silence and lack of ruminating thoughts.
Glenn and I weren't the same people we used to be. However, maybe we were one of the only ones that still stored some bit of ourselves from the old world. Morals we've crafted since the moment we could comprehend reality—those didn't float away so easily. Unless you tried hard enough to detach yourself. I wondered why we were the ones then that were consumed by this sickness, why we were the ones that suffered when we had not allowed a single drop of malice to taint our fingertips. It was the age-old question; who truly suffered the most in this world? Were we merely wasting breath by trying to remain good when the world had already proven it was out to feast regardless? At this point, I don't think I'd be capable of tipping the other way.
