The Anatomy of a Broken Heart //Completed//

89. Caleb

Hospitals are like home to me. When I was younger, grandma spent most of my young life here, so Mom would bring me along with Sadie until grandma was too sick to see anyone. She had a blood condition and ended up bleeding out from a cut on her wrist, obtained accidentally by the hospital staff. How Mom even trusted Dad's hospital again is a wonder, because right now, I didn't trust anyone here. Especially because they wouldn't let me see Santana, even post-op. She had been in there for hours; grazed in the belly, Dad said, and fragments of other bullets lodged inside her everywhere else.

Snow was falling outside, like something from a movie. The picturesque scene did little to calm me as I paced the waiting room, walking to and fro, burning a trail into the floor. I was alone in the small room reserved for loved ones of people in the intensive care unit. I didn't consider myself a "loved one," but I wasn't just an arbitrary player in the game anymore, was I?

Maria and her father had been informed of what had happened. The call had been made personally by my dad, which had shocked me almost as much as seeing Santana bleed out on the dirty carpeted closet in Jasper's apartment. Dad had been nothing but kind and accommodating. He hadn't made a single jab at me about Santana since we got here. Even when he saw my bruised and bloody face, all he did was keep me calm and grounded while he reassured me that she was going to be taken care of. It was like he'd finally realized how much she meant to me. Like he finally realized what I meant to him.

Maria and Mr. Valencia got there and Maria rushed to me immediately, bombarding me with questions and forcing me to tell her everything I'd already tried to relate on the phone. Mr. Valencia sat down on one of the wooden chairs, clearly in pain, but his face was alert and listening to everything I was saying.

"Thank you, son, for what you've done for my daughter," he said when I was done. He didn't give me one of those forced smiles people usually do when they say thank you. He hadn't even looked me in the eye, but there was a heaviness in the way he spoke that I felt on my shoulders. He was grateful, and sorry, that this had happened. A conflicting battle between guilt and pride raged within me, but I quickly tried to quiet it down. I was being selfish.

"I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been there, Caleb." Maria's tone of voice echoed her father's. "You saved her. Not just tonight."

It wasn't true though. I only managed to find her tonight because I'd been looking. If I had truly saved her, she wouldn't have been with Jasper in the first place.

"Your sister would say she didn't need saving in the first place," I laughed a little to lighten the mood. Maria smiled and nodded.

"Sometimes, we all need saving. It isn't about being unable to save yourself, but about getting help even when you think you don't need it."

"Wise words for a fifteen-year-old," I replied.

She shrugged. "I get it from my dad." 

Mr. V gave her hand a squeeze and she sat down next to him to wait, just as I needed to, for news on Santana. Her friends came in pairs to see her, but most of them left before she was allowed visitors. The night was creeping into morning and the only ones left in the waiting room were Mr. Valencia, Zealand and Marlow, and me. Ansel had taken Maria home to sleep and would be back for her father.

Zealand sat next to me in silence and Marlow sat as far away from us as the small room allowed, curled up under a jacket with her eyes shut. I didn't know if she was truly sleeping, but her body was immobile.

"How're you holding up, man?" Zealand asked in that quiet way of his.

"By a miracle," I responded.