His Paper Heart ✓

•15|His Little Visits

GUILT IS A VERY TRICKY FEELING. It's the bestial combination of sadness and anger. It is knowing you've done something terribly wrong or failing to do something important: like not telling my parents about fainting in Gray's shop once upon time, the feeling of guilt consumes you and eventually, it destroys you.

Grandma Juliet once said, "Guilt can be a teacher when it leads you, but a demon when it restricts you".

I have compromised my moral standards by a hundred percent. I lied several times to my parents and yet, I'm not willing to let the bitter emotion lead me to the truth. I choose to continue lying to them. After all, what they don't know won't hurt them.

Right?

In Sunday school, the priest teaches us that all of our sins, —past, present and future— has already been punished on the cross, we are never punished for the wrongs we do, voluntary or not but sometimes, the father needs to discipline his child. The Priest says if we continue to act in sinful ways and do not repent or turn from that sin, God brings His divine discipline upon us.

Hebrews 12:7 tells us, "As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Whoever heard of a child who was never disciplined?"

This doesn't feel divine quite yet. I don't feel disciplined. I feel worn out.

Black fills the edges of my vision, sweat coats my skin as I lay on the hospital bed, my breaths coming out in shallow, ragged gasps. The hospital isn't as warm as it was when my parents brought me in this morning, then again, I wasn't having so much trouble breathing and everything around me didn't look so vast and bleary. My chest is heavy, like a block of concrete has been placed on it. I'm breathing but the air won't go in, as if my throat is blocked by an invisible metal. Next comes the rising panic, the dizzying feeling as reality slowly shifts out of place.

Why aren't they doing anything?

Why do they all look so stagnant.

I can hear them but not feel them, and everything about my syndromes have taught me that is never a good sign.

"Where's that oxygen mask?" My doctor, Kenzie Tate yells. The distant beeping sound emitting from the heart monitor snaps me back to the present once in a while.

But slowly, I feel my being fade away and nothing else matters than the anticipation of hoping for a proper rest. An eternal one. Without suffering or hospitals or medications even but suddenly, I feel the cold rush of fresh air envelope my lungs when she puts the oxygen mask on my face and I close my eyes with a loud exhale.

"Check her vitals."

"Heart rate is slowing down," I hear a woman say, "but her temperature is still extremely high."

"Let's control that before it becomes a bigger problem," Kenzie says. "Get antiinflammatories. The last thing she needs is hyperthermia."

"Bigger problem? What is going on? What is wrong with my daughter?" My mother whimpers loudly yet I still can't open my eyes.

I was afraid of my doctor finding out what had been happening lately and now I have made it worse by being too afraid.

"Val, you should have brought her to the hospital the moment she started experiencing short breaths. It is most likely caused by an infection in her chest and if that isn't treated —"

"No no. Genevieve has never had trouble breathing nowadays." my mothers voice sounds strained and shaky, like she hasn't stopped crying.

"Kenzie, what's going on with her?" My father asks. And the worse part is, I know this is all my fault. I shouldn't have kept it from my parents.