Will and Hope [Formerly Ro and Georgie, slowly editting]

Chapter 10

Ro Byrnes 2012

"Oh My Fucking GOD!!!" I yelled at the fat nurse, "Why don't you believe me?" She didn't respond, she stared up at me trying to stare me out, she wasn't going to win. "She said my name, she said: ROLAND! I'm that Roland. I don't like the name, I wouldn't have thought it up, and Georgie said it!"

"Roland, I have already said: You thought it up, you want Georgie to speak and so she did." The nurse spoke slowly to me like she thought I was slow. She patted me on the shoulder, I shrugged her off instinctively. I didn't want her sympathy; she thought I was going mad. Maybe I was.

I marched towards Georgie's room; she had a room to herself. As I got over the thresh hold though I calmed, I couldn't put stress on Georgie's parents, that'd be wrong.

I sat down next to Georgie and after a few minutes her parents both excused themselves, they trusted me with Georgie, the only one. If a nurse was in here she wouldn't be left alone - except obviously when cleaning the room.

I stared at her face, it was perfect; cold, still, cut but still beautiful and living, there was life inside of her that only I had witnessed. She never noticed that other boys did actually like her. I noticed and I would stare them down any time they advanced on her. The flirty way they spoke made my skin crawl, their creepy innuendos; they made me want to punch their faces in. But she never noticed, or blatantly ignored it; I hoped it was the latter.

The other thing she ignored or didn't know was that she was a popular girl; I always believed that she thought she hid in my shadow, but she never did. If that was the case why would I punch shit out of anyone who crossed her path? It wasn't just the boys who had an interest in her. The 'popular's' criticized her, but that was flattery for you. The quieter ones seemed to look up to her, or that is what I noticed as she walked down the school hall.

I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It tingled pressing my lips onto her frozen ones, they were chapped, that was one thing Georgie had an obsession with, she regularly had chapped lips and the Vaseline was always in her bag, she stroked her lips a lot absent-mindedly. That made me crave to touch them (in the most un-pervy way possible).

I found the Vaseline on the side table and smeared a bit on her lips. When I was done I smeared the oily residue onto her bed sheets. She put a lot of time into herself I thought. Her hair was her prize, and if she saw it now she would cringe and run to the nearest shower. The nurses cleaned the room and made her body clean as possible but they didn't have time to wash her hair.

The Doctor came in, I didn't know his name. He was quite old and that's why I trusted him, he had experience. There were white hairs around his ears and grey over his crown. He had crow feet around his eyes and as he saw me they enhanced as he smiled. "Hello son, is it okay if I run some checks?" The obvious thing I was going to say was yes, anything that got her here faster I would do, I would die for her to be alive.

I nodded "Can I stay?"

"Sure son."

"Thanks."

He worked around her bed so I went and sat in the cot on the other wall. He fiddled with wires, checking her hands and arms where the pipes had been inserted. He quickly checked the cuts on her face. She had needed twelve stitches on her face. When she had fell she hit the pavement, as the car crashed into her side the light's glass got smashed and landed everywhere on the floor. She cut her face on a piece of the glass.

"I'll need to look at her side son. Are you sure you want to stay?" the doctor said turning back towards me, he scanned his eyes down her clipboard and flinched when he read a piece of information.

"Yes. Is there anything the matter?"

He looked up and quickly flipped the page on the board "Uh, no. She just seemed to have hit her side pretty badly." He meant Georgie's broken ribs, right arm and shattered ankle. Her ankle got caught under the car's wheel.

He peeled back Georgie's sheets to show her pale blue papery gown and her bare legs, the right being ranges of purple, blue, black and green, she also had a plaster over her thigh where a piece of glass had landed on her. I cringed, the doctor eyed me, but I nodded, I needed to be here for her. Her arm was in a plaster cast thing, I had chosen lime green for her hoping that when she woke up she would appreciate it. But like her right leg bruises peeked out of the cast and went up her arm until hidden by the gown, which I liked as I had seen her shoulder already and that was the biggest of the bruisy messes.

He took a corner of the gown and pulled it back so that he could inspect her ribs. They were wrapped tightly with white gauze. He pulled out a pair of scissors from the equipment trolley in the corner of the room and cut the gauze away. Unlike the other brakes her ribs had funny red splodges, it was where the tarmac had kind of carpet burned her. He then inspected her ribs and then taped her back up.

He wrote some notes on the clipboard and pulled the sheets back. He went to the panel by her bed and adjusted the bed so that Georgie was sitting upright. He quickly checked her head. She had hit it pretty hard, luckily not hard enough to cause internal bleeding or a fracture but enough to knock her out. This sleeping thing was enforced by the doctors, they believed if she had this time she would come out better. But the medication had only been put to work yesterday and she'd been in the state naturally before then. They added the medication after I said she had said my name, probably for a just in case whilst the injuries faded.

Everything seemed to be okay and she was soon in the position she was when I'd first came into the room. "So...?" I started.

"She is fine, she is coming along nicely. She'll be back in your arms soon son." He hesitated, "Sorry, I assumed you were more than friends."

"We are." I just don't know how much more I thought. He left and I returned to my seat next to Georgie. I put Georgie's iPod on shuffle and the first song that came up was "Our Song" Taylor Swift. Georgie had a wide range of tastes; pop, rap, dub-step, country etc. Every category on the iPod she had at least two songs. I wasn't a big Taylor Swift fan, but I loved this song, I wanted it to be about us.

So I sat there playing with her limp fingers humming along to the good ones and hitting 'next' on the crappy ones until her parents came back. At that point I turned down the music but stayed close to her. After two hours it was ten and the fat nurse told me my mum had called asking for me to come home. Georgie's dad said he would give me a lift. I was pulled between saying yes or no; he hadn't left the hospital since his daughter came and he was about to leave to take me a few miles down the road?

In the end I was in the front seat of Georgie's dad's car. We road most of the twenty minute ride in silence, as we pulled into our town he talked, "So, you're relationship with Georgina?" her dad was the only one who used her full name.

"Um... Well...” this was uncomfortable. Her dad laughed next to me and I squirmed as I tried to make an answer. "It's complicated." I answered finally.

He laughed harder and as pulled into my road and by my house he stopped - the car and the laughing. "It can be sometimes. But I know my daughter, she idolises the ground you walk on. If you like her; you make the first move. You know Georgie; she'll be too frightened to ask you."

So I walked into the house with excitement; I'd just had the thumbs up by her dad, and had the task of the first thing I ask her is if she would go out with me.