First Day of My Life

Chapter 2

"You're gonna fall down," I told Olive who kept moving in the bed next to me, not able to stay in the same place for a long time. The little girl giggled, rolling onto her tummy to look up at me. "I'm serious, Ollie," I said with a small smile.

"Where mommy?" Olive asked for the hundredth time. My heart kept pounding hurtfully every time she did that. I didn't know what to say. Charles had lied something about her going away for some time. I didn't want to lie. But there was no way to tell it either. She wouldn't have understood anyway.

"She went on a trip, baby," Charles said, earning both of our attention. His eyes moved onto mine, wordlessly warning me not to start crying, and then back to her. "We'll have to be without her for now."

"Want mommy," she murmured sadly, returning to her previous position. Tears crept in my eyes, but as the door opened, I turned my head away for a moment, wiping my tears away with the hand that I was free to move easily.

"Hey," I heard FP say, which made me look back at him and Jughead, both carrying two boxes of pizza. I gave him a small smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. He seemed to be happy to at least have gotten that. "You hungry?" he asked me.

"Yeah, kind of," I said with a raspy voice, swallowing at the idea of having to start talking with them. During the few days that I had actually woken up, I had never spoken to either of them, or even heard Jughead talking.

As my eyes moved to his face, his quickly turned away from mine and looked at my sister instead. "Hey kid," he said, voice lower than I remembered. "Look what I got you." He placed the pizzas down on a chair as Olive's face was half-hidden in my hospital gown, peeking out of it curiously. His hands worked to open the dark backpack he had been wearing, and when he pulled out a small cute grey teddy bear with a blue shirt on, Olive raised her head fully, smiling at it.

The corners of my mouth lifted when I saw how happy she got while accepting the toy, and then hugged it while placing her head back against my stomach. "Thank you," she said with her baby accent.

"You're welcome," Jughead chuckled. His eyes glimpsed at me for a moment before pulling out a pack of Jolly Ranchers and holding them up with a smirk, observing my happy face. "Still your favorite?"

When we were little and used to meet a few times in a year, I used to be obsessed with these candies. Still, am. How did he remember, I'm not sure? "Yeah," I said. He placed them on the empty place next to my pillows and pulled out a few more packs of them, plus some Sour Patch Kids and a few bars of Snickers. I raised my eyebrows while he walked to the table in the room and placed them on it. Seeing my surprise, he just winked at me, returning to the pizzas.

"What did you get?" Charles asked the two guys he had become used to with the two weeks they had spent here.

"We have a... Margherita, a Chicken-Bacon Parmesan, Pepperoni, and a Garden Veggie," FP explained. "You were vegetarian years ago, so we weren't sure..."

"Yeah, I'll take a slice from the last one," I smiled gratefully, happy that they had remembered.

"The doctor will be here in a minute," FP said carefully. "You need to sit up, he needs to make sure it doesn't hurt."

I nodded with a sad smile, understanding that. Doctor Cabello entered the room a few minutes later and FP lifted Olive onto his lap, off the bed. My little sister had never really been the one to cry or care about who was holding her, so she stayed quiet and accepted the slice of Margherita pizza that FP helped her to eat.

"Alright, Betty. How are you doing right now?"

"Okay I guess," I said timidly.

He gave me a small smile. "The oxygen helps you?"