Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before (Girlxgirl)

Chapter # 20

Talia's POV

She lay there on the bed with her head to the side and her skin looking pale and paper thin. The white of the sheets made her look even paler and her cheeks, usually hollow, were puffed up and swollen.

An IV was in her arm, feeding her medicine and a heart rate monitor went off making my heart hurt with the heaviness of it.

The profound beep beep beep beep made me absolutely terrified of what would happen if I took those extra steps and I sat beside her in that sad, old chair and held her thin, frail hand.

No one ever talks about the chairs they sit on in the hospital. I guess that's because visiting their loved ones is more important. I guess its not what's on everybody's minds.

So I began to think of the chair.

It was a simple black chair. It looked uncomfortable and inexpensive. It had cushions on the seat part and on the back of it. There were no arm rests. It wasn't built for comfort. It was built to sit upon. Just to sit. I guess the developers didn't think of the people who would have to sit in those chairs. They didn't think of them staying in them for hours at a time trying to savor the few minutes, seconds, days, weeks, months they still had with their loved ones.

I should be trying to salvage this time with my mother. I wasn't completely heartless. I knew it was wrong of me to never be home. I had a family and it was my duty to be near them. Especially if my own mom was basically on her death bed but...

I wasn't strong enough. How could I lose my mom? How could I lose her and still feel alive? How could I lose her and still find something to live for? Forget how miserable I was. How miserable would I be afterwards?

So I stood in the doorway, looking everywhere but my mother with tears streaming down my face and my bag falling from my shoulder and sagging into the floor with my jacket in my arms. I looked like what I imagined a lost little kid would look like.

If I was artistic I would draw a picture illustrating this moment. If I was poetic I would write a poem about my feelings. If I was lyrical, I would write a song. If I was logical, I'd go to my mother's side and take hold of that hand that I had learned to love over the past 18 years.

But I was none of those things. I think its safe to say I was a lost little kid. I was just a kid. I wasn't ready to graduate and move out of my moms house and have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. I wasn't ready to go away to college and grow the hell up.

I was fucked up and I was lost and I was hurt and I was in need of my mom's arms.

I needed to tell her what Lucas did to me. I needed to tell her what he whispered to her baby girl while hitting her. I needed to tell her about Taylor and how lovely she was and how much she cared for me and how her baby girl was the gayest there ever was and how she was done hiding it. I needed to tell her that I didn't have everything figured out and I still had half my valedictorian speech to write and I was drawing blanks.

I needed to tell her I had yet to send in any more of my college applications. I needed to tell her I was a mess without her. I was a mess.

So I took a step into the room and was overwhelmed by the pain in my head, causing my world to go black and my body to drop like it weighed a metric-fuck-ton.

I crashed to the floor and wondered; would I ever get to tell her?

Taylor's POV

I drove around until the gas light came on. I drove around until my heart stopped pounding so loud and hard in my chest.