Peanut Butter Fingerprints

Chapter Eight

Songs of this chapter:

Your Song by Ellie Goulding

Human by Christina Perri

Vanilla Twilight by Owl City

If you'd like to suggest songs to add to this list, write them in the comments.

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p.s. The next chapter will most likely not be posted until this Friday. Sorry guys :(

Enjoy this next chapter, see you guys Friday!

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Maxon's POV

I WATCHED HER BODY DEFLATE and rise sluggishly. They'd placed the rubber mask back over her nose and mouth, and her labored breaths created little puffs of fog against the mask. Nurses Lana and Rhine were putting the IVs back into her wrists and elbow crooks. I'd spent most of my time here to have learned the name of each doctor and nurse. We'd tried for the third time to see how she'd cope without the machines keeping her alive. She'd managed to breathe on her own for an hour or more-which was by far the longest she'd gotten on her own. But even so she struggled to stay alive, and so I never left her side.

It was evident how much time we had spent here with her and how much it had taken over our lives. May, the castle's designated hair stylist, had her scissors and comb on the base of the bed; Gerad's textbooks scattered throughout the room, some open, some closed. Her mother's knitting needles rested upon the desk atop some of Gerad's books, with a long line of soft blue yarn that trailed to a large mess of tangled yarn on the ground. Even I had bits of myself dispersed around the room: pieces of my gun that I was cleaning the night before rested on her sheets and blankets, documents Stavros, August, and I were speaking about, my plate full of untouched breakfast. The strawberry tarts didn't taste right in my mouth without America's smile or teasing. They tasted like nothing.

Everything seemed like nothing without America. Commander Leger told me, every day as he walked into America's room, that she was always a fighter. This morning, however, everything was different. I was running out of time, something I gave America endlessly. We brought numerous doctors in but nothing worked. Everything we tried just made her worse. And, as I turned my head towards where she lay, I finally saw that we were just hurting her. America needed time. I told her I'd give her all the time in the world, and I did. Or at least I tried.

It was five months into her coma and everyday she seemed to slip away from us more and more. It was clearly evident as I sat by her side in my chair and took her hand in mine. My thumb glided over her frigid, sheet white skin; I felt the ridges of each of her bones and veins, and her knuckles were like great mountains. Her veins, blue and green, crawled up her arms like vines and like flowers bruises of purple and green were splotched here and there from IVs. Her cheekbones jutted out of her face like the plateaus I once saw in Swendway, and her hollowed out cheeks were like scooping canyons.

The only piece of her still beating, still thriving with life was our unborn child, nestled inside of her where even a heart attack couldn't budge it. I smoothed my hand over the sheets and rested it on top of the small bump on her abdomen. Dr. Malia, America's "baby doctor", was insistent upon doing an ultrasound. "Don't you want to know if it's a boy or girl?" she pleaded with me. I told her no time after time that not until America wakes up do I want to do anything about the baby. I knew she hated not being a part of making decisions and this was one she had to have a say in.

Even in near death, she was stubborn as hell. I remembered the day I woke up from my sickness and saw her almost lifeless body laying there beside me with tubes and wires twisted around her like a cage. I stopped breathing; I ceased living for a moment. Nothing mattered anymore. She was my entire world and I watched it all fall down in a single glance. All I remembered after that was hitting the ground and crawling out of my hospital bed in the middle of the night to get under the blankets with her and wrap my arm around her waist. I talked to her like she was listening. I still did, and later that night when my watch told me it was long past two in the morning I snuck into the Infirmary and slipped underneath the blankets where she lay. I started off with the usual.