"Not at all?" you asked the doctor a couple of days later, right when you'd come back to the land of living. Your voice a monotone. Luce was talking to my father and your mother outside, but I couldn't imagine what it was about. Right then, there was only you, Sam.
The doctor flipped your file and shook his head at you regretfully. "There's physical therapy you need to attend twice a week. With some work and time, we can make your left arm work the way it used to."
"But I'm not going to be able to play violin?" you insisted. Your right hand curled tightly around your cover. "Not at all?"
"You can still play, but I cannot promise you that you can do it as well as you did before. There are some adjustments we had to add to your left arm. Your bones were broken into seven parts, shattered in five places—"
"So, you're saying the pins and staples in my bones wouldn't allow me to play well?" From where I was sitting beside your bed, I touched your hand. The shaking stopped, but you wouldn't uncurl your fingers. Your eyes never left the doctor. They were more hazel now, close to yellow, and so void of any emotions which I wasn't used to. I used to be able to read your expressions well, but maybe it was because you thought there was no point in trying to hide from me. Seeing how cold you could be made something inside me twist. Perhaps, it was guilt.
The doctor looked a bit reluctant. I got it, of course. People did it all the time, giving other false hopes, and in his profession he wasn't supposed to do that. He was supposed to tell the fact as it was, albeit kindly. "We could try, but—"
"Then, that's all I need, doc. If there's a possibility, I'll take it."
He studied you the way people did when they heard you talking and thought of you as an enigma. I couldn't imagine why they would. For me, you had always been easy to understand. Finally, he nodded and patted your covered legs with a small sympathetic smile before he finally left to attend another patient.
You glanced at me after, looking at me but not quite seeing me. I could hear your mind working, your helplessness seeped into me like it was my own. I gripped your right hand until you focused back to me, then I smiled. I told you, "We'll make it work."
You gave me a small smile and I don't know why I'd missed that it had looked so very sad, because maybe even then, you'd known.
YOU ARE READING
Wearing My Smile | ✔
Teen Fiction"I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to." Having been together since forever, Roo struggles in...
