Taylor's Diary

Change

28.03.2013

I sneakily entered the room, hoping he was still asleep. I silently observed all the machines behind his bed, beeping. Telling the world that he was alive. Their's was the only sound disturbing the silence of the stark white room. I hadn't worn my apron now. I wasn't supposed to be on duty. Sky's shift had already begun. I know Sky wouldn't like me being here, but this room gave me an unknown peace. Of knowing that Sam was here. I stood next to his bed, looking at all the new technologies monitoring Sam's health. Keeping him alive.

"Taylor"

I heard him breathe my name. So much, after five long years.. Although every fibre in my body wanted to turn around and hug him, I didn't look at him. I stood still. Pretending that I didn't hear him.

"You've changed, Tay..." His weak voice added after a few moments. I still had my back at him, but I knew he was staring at me, wide eyed.

Medical school had surely made me undergo a transformation.

My curly bob was now grown into a long straight mop, which I had tied into a pony tail, it's ends falling way beyond my shoulders, upto the small of my back. Red strands adorned my brunettes, playing hide and seek with them. Yeah, being a doctor didn't change my quirkiness! Years of study and no swimming had me piling up the pounds, making me curvy. I couldn't call myself fat, though. I was healthy. That's what Sky had once said! I stood there wearing a pair of black trousers and baby pink shirt tucked in them, highlighting the curves.

So yeah, looking at me today, I knew I had come a long way from the curly, lanky, shorts clad crazy girl that I once was, when I was with Sam.

"Taylor. It's you, right?"

I turned to face his questioning gaze, fixed on my face now. He did have a shocked expression, which was now becoming a serious one as all of my transformation was sinking into his head.. He kept staring at me. His eyes moved from my face, to my body downwards, and back to my face again.

"Liked the view!" He said with a playful smile once our eyes met again.

As much as I wanted to return the smile and jab him in his arm, I couldn't. That sentence took me back to that day when I'd first asked him the same words as a question. I hated him then. All the events that followed that day played before my eyes like a movie I'd seen a zillion times, stopping on the day he had walked out on me. The person I loved the most had destroyed me. It had been 5 years since that day, and I was still picking up and fixing my shattered pieces back. It was hard. And it had become all the more difficult because fate had made us meet again. The person I had least expected to see again, was our patient. Because yesterday I realised, that after all these years, it was still him. He still affected me the same way he did 5 years back. That it was him that I was still in love with. He was the reason I couldn't return Sky's love back.

"Tay?"

I was jerked back to reality from my train of thoughts by his weak voice. He was now smiling at me, his sapphire blues sparkling, although they reflected his weakness from the trauma.

I just kept looking at them. It had been pretty long since I'd seen them shine, for me.

"How have you been, Tay?"

He still had a smile on his face. Waiting for my answer. I managed a small smile.

"There!" He said, pointing to my lips, " I missed it." He added.

That took me a bit by surprise. He was the one who broke us. He had walked out on us. It was him who had left me crying in that room, refusing to listen to my pleas to keep us going. It was him who had broken the promise we made.

Then how could he say, that he missed my smile?

I laughed bitterly as I recalled that day.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really." He said. He paused for a while, before adding -

"You've changed so much, Tay."

I added another bitter giggle.

"Yes. Change. People do change, Samuel Stephan Martin. Circumstances make them change. Persons make them change. In my case, both made me change. Change helps people get over unwanted sorrows in life, Sam. It helps get over unwanted people. People who've hurt you. Ruined you. Destroyed your very being. People who've challenged your survival. Change helps get over all of that. It helps people get up and start a new life, far from all this pain, all over again. It makes people who they really are. Makes them realise what they are capable of. It makes them stronger and better."

"And regarding the other part, of how I've been? Still healing."

I looked up to see guilt clouding his eyes. I knew I had been plain blunt with him. Kind of accused him for the way I had turned out to become right now. That it wasn't good for his health currently. But I needed him to know. He needed to know that he still affected me. The pain he'd given me years ago was still hurting me. That after all these years, it was still him that I was in love with. I was still in love with this man, who had once crippled my very being. And beneath all this 'change' that I had just bragged about, I was still the same Taylor - his Tay, who yearned his love.

"Tay, I'm - "

"It's Doctor. Taylor Margaret Jamieson, Mr. Samuel Stephan Martin. I'm your doctor now."

I looked away from him and stood up, ready to leave.

"Anyways, I had just come here to see your progress. Which, by far, seems to be good. I'll see you later."

That said, I rushed out of the room, without giving him a last glance.

The facade I'd put up before him was crumbling. And I didn't want him to see how vulnerable I was to him, even after all these years. And that, even after all these years, I was still his Tay.

*****