The Tales of a Future Hockey Wife

Chapter 31: Flee?

~Eleanor~

I wake up the next morning with a weird feeling in my chest. It's as if someone was sitting on my chest, creating a suffocating feeling making me feel oppressed and trapped. I get out of Ben's small hospital bed hopefully without waking him up. The further away I get from the room, the easier it is to breathe. I end up in the waiting room in which I met Mr. Freeman yesterday. How can it be yesterday? It feels like it was so long ago or maybe the night was too long. I sit on a chair in the last row. There is no one else but me in the waiting room this early in the morning. That's good, no one will bother me. No nurse doing her exam, no doctors evaluating his patients' general state. Tranquility is exactly what I need, and this is where I chose to get it. I focus on my breathing to try and settle it back into a normal rhythm.

I don't know for how long I sit there, my eyes straight on the door, half-thinking Ben will walk out the door because he was looking for me. I don't know when I made this decision either. It just came to me when I wasn't able to think straight even as far away from him as I am. He is still too near for me to have clear thoughts about our situation. I know who I need to talk to, and this person isn't in Windsor. In fact, she is about 5,000 kilometers away from here. Olive, I need to see Olive. I just bought a plane ticket leaving in three hours for Victoria from Windsor. $258 gone just like that. I know I have to leave soon, but I just can't bring myself to. I have to say goodbye, even if he doesn't know where I am going, even if he isn't conscious when I do. At least, I'll be able to tell myself that I said goodbye. I am going to go back home without telling him about it, I can't believe I was even able to make that decision. I need this time to think, and if he's there or if he knows where I am, I won't be able to. I know it's wrong, it kills me to have to lie to him like that, but it's what I need right now. He'll understand when I explain, right? I take a deep breath and finally get up from my chair.

He's still asleep when I get back into his room. I don't know if I would have preferred for him to be awake. I am an awful liar, if he would have seen my face, he would have known that something was up. Sure, I could've lied even more to make him believe me, but I don't think I have it in me today. I stare at his sleeping figure for quite some time until I don't have a choice anymore. If I don't leave now, I won't have enough time to go back home before catching my flight. I leave him a small note, telling him that I went back home to pick up some clothes for the both of us before he can come back home. I laugh at the irony. I get out of his room, before I change my mind.

I leave him another similar note on the kitchen table. I write that I am sorry but that I needed to take some time away to think through what we found out yesterday. I stash some clothes and some beauty supplies into a backpack before getting changed into more comfortable clothes. When I catch my eye in the bathroom mirror, I have to look away. The girl in the mirror doesn't look like me, I have no idea who she is, and it frightens me. She frightens me.

***

At a quarter past noon, they call out my flight. Even if there is no more crowded space than a plane, I feel like I can finally breathe when we take off. I took a deep breath when I felt the plane leave the ground, and it felt like I had left all my problems in Windsor. The higher the plane went, the smaller my problems looked, and the further we went, the better I felt about my decision.  

When the flight attendant announces that we can finally use our electronics, I get my laptop out of my backpack with my headphones. I downloaded a couple episodes of Gossip Girl before leaving the apartment, and it is finally time to watch them. I had taken a break from Gossip Girl when Serena was dating that teacher her mother sent to jail but knowing that Blair was engaged to a prince made me interested in the show again. That was until I got to the part where Blair learns that she is pregnant, of course. Seeing how happy she was, how good of a news it was to everyone made me so angry, I almost threw my computer in the alley. Maybe learning that you're pregnant at twenty when you are about to marry a prince or when you have more money than you will ever be able to spend is a good news, but when you live in a shitty two-room apartment with a guy gone half the time who earns roughly five-hundred dollars per month, it's everything but a good news. It's a world-shattering news. It's like seeing everything you've worked so hard for just crumble in front of you, and you can just watch. You cannot do anything to save it because you're tied to a chair and the only person who can help you is the one who tied you up in the first place. So, no Blair, it's not "amazing," I am not "so, so happy," and I am sure that Ben could've waited before becoming a father. We are not rich, he is not a prince, we don't live in a palace. The only thing Blair Waldorf and I have in common is that we are both twenty and pregnant.

I end up sleeping for the rest of the flight. Thankfully, no dreams about babies or pregnancies cloud my sleep. But I am stressed when my taxi stops at the Victoria General Hospital's main entrance. This conversation won't be fun, but I need to have it, and the only person I trust enough to do it is inside.