The Hunger Games - I'm Still Burning

Chapter 24

Four white walls. Sterile sheets. Fluorescent lighting. Uncomfortable visitor chairs. I hate hospitals at the best of times but especially now, watching my mother's frail chest rise and fall, fretting that each breath could be her last. Clear liquid feeds through a drip into her arm, trying to flush out the Morphling and repair any damage it might have done. The nurses had told us she was stable for now, that she'd been in and out of consciousness before we got here.

It shouldn't be this way; she shouldn't be in a hospital bed. My mother is the healer, not the patient. Rain patters on the window outside only adding to the dismal atmosphere inside this claustrophobic room.

My own hospital memories flood back and fast. I was in and out of the District 13's underground hospital with a band on my wrist labelling me as mentally disorientated. Where Peeta choked me, where I was treated for the District 2 bullet wound, where I lost my sanity. Coming to in the Capitol, the fire that had eaten away at my skin still fresh in my mind, knowing Prim would not be there to greet me. And of course there's the miscarriage and birth in District 12. All traumatic in their own ways. It should be me in the bed with mother holding my hand. Now I'm the one holding her hand feeling helpless. Useless.

Then I remember that she put herself here and the anger I'm holding at bay surfaces. I rub my eyes, trying to push everything away. The anger, the memories. A hand rubs my shoulder comfortingly.

"You okay?" Peeta asks.

I shake my head. "Why would she do this?"

"You know why, Katniss," he says, simply.

But I don't. I don't know why she would want to leave us, to leave Willow. I push myself up off the chair and start to pace the room, shaking out the nerves in my arms. Back and forth I stalk around the room, always moving to stop myself thinking. Until Peeta's muscled arms envelope me into one of his hugs. The kind where the faint scent of cinnamon rose from the folds in his shirt and soothed my too tense body.

"She will be okay, we'll get her through this," he says, stroking my hair down my back.

Willow moans in her carrier and I leave Peeta's embrace for the next best comforting thing.

"Hey sweet girl, did you have a nightmare?"

I take her in my arms, slowly rocking her from side to side. I run my finger along her chunky cheeks and she reaches out to grab it with her uncoordinated, little fist.

A groan from the bed tears my attention from Willow and my mother's confused eyes meet mine with a weariness that no medication could ever touch. The lines in her face are prominent as are the grey streaks running through her once fully blonde hair. It's as though I've blinked and she's aged twenty years.

"Why?" I demand. She says nothing, her face cast towards the ceiling as though it will provide the answers she can't. "Can you give me a reason?"

"Let her get her bearings, Katniss," Peeta says, squeezing my arm.

I know I should smile at her, hug her. Do anything that's remotely comforting. But my legs have turned to stone, immovable.

"Can we get you anything, Mrs-" Peeta starts but my mother finds her words.

"I feel nothing anymore. I go through each day feeling empty."

Her voice is glass. Fragile, delicate glass.

"Here," I say, placing Willow into her arms. "Hold her."

"Katniss I don't think she's ready for that," Peeta says. I ignore him watching my mother's face for something, anything.