Beat Of My Heart

Bridge (Three)

My parents coddling me got really old, really fast.  

As soon as Sebastian had left the hospital room after our...intimate interaction...my parents had gone to my side and stayed there ever since, regardless of the fact if I wanted them there or not. 

They didn't let the fact that I was there stop them from arguing, either.   Oh no.  If anything, it irked them even more, and I knew there was some secret they were hiding from me but I just couldn't figure it out. 

The worst part was that it felt like I already knew exactly what this secret was, I just couldn't put my damn finger on it no matter how hard I tried. 

We were sitting in the living room deciding on what type of food to order out to the house when I had had enough of their incessant fighting. 

"She doesn't need pizza, she's recuperating from a terrible fall!  She needs nutritious and balanced foods, not greasy cheesy heart attacks waiting to happen!" My mother yelled at him, and I cringed when she bashed on my favorite food. 

"Hey!  I happen to love pizza and-"

"See?  She doesn't want the kale you're trying to shove down her throat!"

"I just have her best interests at heart, John!  And what of you, hm?!"

"Oh don't you dare tell me I'm the one who doesn't have her best interests at heart!"

"Umm.  Guys?" I tried interrupting them. 

"Well, what else am I supposed to think from how you've been acting lately?  Don't think that just because of this emergency means that we'll forgive and forget you for what you said!"

I sighed.  There was no getting anywhere with those two. 

I left them be and stumbled up the stairs as best as I could, the both of them still fighting like cats and dogs behind me. 

I limped up the stairs, the aching hole of pain returning to my chest, although this time it was a bit easier to ignore with the excruciating pain in my left side where I assumed I had some bruised or broken ribs. 

I hadn't really paid attention to the long list of injuries my nurse had catalogued and recited back to me.  I didn't want to know just how broken and damaged Dylan had made me. 

I shivered in fear of returning back to school in a few days.  The doctors had cleared me to go back the next day after I got out of the hospital but I told my parents I wanted to wait.  They had tried to bring up talking to the police and having him arrested along with his friends but my father had put a stop to that as soon as it came out of my mom's mouth. 

I wondered why, what kind of stakes he had in the matter.  Maybe he was running for public office again and didn't want to make an enemy out of the chief of police and the mayor at the same time. 

But then I thought about it again.  Maybe he just wanted to protect me from the stress of a high profile trial in the middle of the media circus camped outside of our house. 

We had to throw a blanket over my entire body as I stepped outside of the hospital for the first time.  More like was wheeled out of there in the wheel chair, they wouldn't let me walk out of there myself, it was the hospital's policy or something stupid like that. 

The paparazzi had hounded me like there was no tomorrow, although it wasn't like it had never happened before, I had gone through it two times beforehand when I was with Sebastian.  But this was something totally different.  I was with my family!