Perhaps Someday // The Sequel to Life Ends, Love Says

Chapter 1: Only the Beginning

Joey's POV

It's been 9 days since Meghan was announced legaly dead for a total of 4 minutes and 43 seconds. Those few minutes of my life were single-handedly the worst 4 minutes of my entire life. With every passing second, it felt like another part of my ability to love and feel happiness was being ripped out of me, slowly and brutally. The only thing left was pain. A pain worse than anything I felt throughout Meghan's journey to death, a pain worse than any cut or break in or on my body. A pain so deep it couldn't be healed.

After those 4 longest minutes of my life, she opened her eyes. Her heart monitor started up again, slowly, then quickly after she took her first breaths of her "new life". I wasn't there to see it, I wasn't there to be by her side. And if the pain of her death didn't hurt enough, this was a new addition. There is so much guilt put into place when you couldn't be there for the one you love. I was too busy with my own problems, that I couldn't be there for her. And after another 30 seconds, she fell asleep again. And that's how she's been for the 9 days after. Unconscious. Unable to see the world around her, unable to know she was actually alive, unable to see me and listen to me. Listen to me tell her I love her, for the millionth time, and tell her I'll be there for her no matter what.

She would open her eyes sometimes. When the nurses would pump something into her blood that made her flinch and stir and she would open her eyes the slightest bit. She wouldn't say anything, she wouldn't move, but something inside of me knows she listens. Her eyes could only open half way, and the rest of it was crusted over. Her eyes were not her natural bright colour anymore, they were faded, and glazed over, but they were as beautiful as the stars gleaming in the night sky anyways. Those eyes almost always looked like they were staring through something, like they saw beyond what was really there in front of her. Although she would look at me sometimes, and it felt like she was looking at me the same way she did when we first met. So innocently, so purely, so effortlessly.

I stay with her at least 16 hours a day, never leaving her side. But there's days where I'll leave for 2, even 4 hours and it's because I have to visit my own doctor. My therapist says it's from shock, the shock of her being dead and shortly after, the shock of her miraculously being alive. That's what triggered the severe anxiety and depression. My psychiatrist says love breaks us. Our mind in connected to our heart with some sort of mental chain. They can't pull each other off one another, and my heart still hoped she was alive but my brain knew she was gone and they pulled each other back and forth. In the end, it was all too much.

The doctors say she has a 62% chance of surviving, and they tell me if she can't wake up fully in the next month then I'll have to agree to take her off of life support. She will die, just like she did for those 4 minutes and 43 seconds and I will go through the same pain and the same heartbreak all over again. And I don't know if I can handle it a second time. That 62%, that just above half, that number, is the only thing keeping my legs moving and my heart beating, everything else is numb. I feel like she can make it, I have that 'just above half' hope, but it's only the beginning.

Meghan's POV

I can't hear them. Sometimes I feel as if they're purposely whispering at such a low tone so that I can't hear them. But in the end, I know it's just my body that prevents me from hearing or seeing properly. I do hear them sometimes, "9 days." They'll say, after they come in and give me a few shots in my blood stream. I didn't know what it meant, but after a couple days, I figured it out. The first number I heard was 4, the next day it was 5, then 6, then 7, then 8, now 9. After some thinking, I realized that tomorrow will be 10, then 11, then 12, and so on. The number of days I've been alive.

Nurses are the only ones who come in and out of this room. No visitors, no smiles, except for Joey, who for the five seconds that I can stay awake, I watch him slump over with his head resting in his palm, elbow balanced on his knee. And when he sees me, in life, he springs up like a bird leaping from its best for its first attempt at flying. He'll look terrible, so much so that I wish I could just reach out and place my hand on the side of his face to tell him it's going to be alright, that I'm going to be alright. But he'll just smile, and when his eyes would open wider with realization that I was awake and his lips would curve up in a genuine smile, I would plunge right back into the deep sleep I was in before, unable to utter a sound. And just like a bird leaping from its nest, he'll fall too. Fall into sadness and sorrow once again, he'll land on rock bottom, all he needs is someone to bring him back up. But that someone, is half-dying.

I don't know how long I open my eyes for, but I know I can't see properly no matter what I do. My body feels ice cold and smoking hot all at the same time, making it absolutely impossible for me to move. If I could just rip these liquid filled wires off and run out of the room like they did in the movies, I would. Trust me. But I can't, and I tell myself that everyday, accompanied by nurses who tell me the exact same thing.

"Rest well," they'll say, checking my heart monitor and blood pressure, "Soon we can get you out of here," and I'll drift right back to sleep. Define soon. It's been 9 days of torture, and soon, it'll be 10. I want it to just end, not my life, but this situation. I want to be back at home, careless, free. But I can't, this won't end. Because it's only just the beginning.

A/N - There you go guys! Chapter 1! Sorry this is so boring but first chapters are generally really hard to write so I tried!! I'll stop annoying you guys but I just wanna remind you that this story will probably have really slow updates! But thanks for the support on this fanfiction, I can't even believe I'm writing a second one! You're all the best :D