I'm not a popular girl | ✔️

Nineteen - Life Changing...Again

Zoë

She was a wimp. Everyone was trying to be productive and make her feel good and "that everything was going to be okay." But somehow, deep down on the inside, Zoë knew it wasn't okay.

If Mom had to be transported to Los Angeles for cancer treatment, then it had to be way worse. Only really bad cases get moved to cities nearly two hours away.

"Family of Amelia Flynn."

Those four little words snapped her awake and out of her delirious haze.

She stood dizzily, Carden and Mrs. Ash attempting to steady her as she speed walked toward the nurse. "What happened to my mom?"

The nurse, her name tag read Alexi, sighed. "I feel like this should be a private conversation. Would you and your father like to follow me?"

Alec stepped forward gingerly and achingly slow, offered Zoë his hand. She wanted to slap him and tell him to get out of the hospital because he wasn't "her" family, but she took his hand anyway. She would fall if she didn't have any support if Carden couldn't come with.

But he was her boyfriend. Well, "boyfriend" if you wanted to get into the specifics.

"Can Carden come with?" He squeezed her hand as she looked at Alexi with big eyes. "Please?"

Alexi glanced behind her as if a doctor would appear and give her the Don't-break-protocol-even-if-it-is-her-boyfriend look but she reluctantly sighed. "Fine but follow me. Doctor Foster might start to get a little impatient if we don't hurry up."

Carden wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her walk forward as Alexi vanished through the bright white door that led into the actual hospital.

They walked silently through the bright white halls, the sound of Alexi's shoes squeaking on the tile and occasional coughing being the only filler. Alec gently squeezed his daughter's hand and Zoë realized he was sober for the first time in months.

Not even the smell of cigarette smoke that usually clung to his clothes was there.

"Daddy, is Mom going to be okay?" Zoë whispered quietly. She hadn't used that word since she was eight or nine years old and it tasted foreign on her tongue. He didn't deserve satisfaction in any form. But maybe Mom being in the hospital would change that.

"I...don't know, Zo. I really don't," he responded in a quiet tone.

She scrubbed away her tears with the back of her hand, Carden hugging her with confidence, as they came to a stop outside of a door with the number 132 on the front.

"Your mother is just past this door. But I'll warn you, it isn't a pretty sight in there." Alexi turned her focus onto Zoë. "You don't have to go in if you aren't ready, Miss Flynn. In fact, you don't have to go in at all. It's your choice."

"I," she swallowed her nerves, "I have too."

"Zo, listen to me." The way Carden was looking at her almost made her bawl her eyes out. He looked so caring and so loving...like he might actually have feelings for her. "Don't stress yourself out. If you don't want to go, you don't have too. I'll wait out here with you if you want."

But she shook her head.

"No, I have to see my mother." She ignored the loud voice crack and snatched one of the masks hanging from Alexi's finger. She charged into the room before someone, or maybe even herself, could change her mind.

The sight in front of her made her turn right around and bury her face in Carden's shirt. It flashed through her mind like Polaroid pictures.

Mom was hooked up to who knows what those machines were and what they were doing. IV's and tubes ran out of her body and into bags full of liquid. And that wasn't even the worst part. She looked so pale, as if she might die right then and there.