Sasha
Sleeping beside a hospital bed was no new thing for me. I had done it nearly a dozen times. The first time, it had taken some getting used to. They’d offered to bring me in a cot, but I wanted to be right at her side in case anything happened. That hadn’t gone away at all over the years. I still slept with my head on the side of her bed, listening to the gentle beeping of the machines and her breathing as I drifted away.
It wasn’t a peaceful or restful sleep. I woke up every time someone talked in the hallway outside. Every time mom stirred. Every time she died in my dreams. She died twice that night. I’d had nights the last time she was sick in which she’d died several times. I’d go back to sleep, only to have her die again. Always the same way too. She would be slipping away from me, fingers outstretched but just beyond my grip. The doctors would be at my side, telling me they had done everything they could—but I knew they were lying because she was drowning in front of me. A great, column of water built just big enough for her. I tried to lunge for it but couldn’t move. I tried to tell them she was just there—drowning silently—but they just told me they’d done everything they could.
The details would shift a little with each occurrence. Sometimes we were in the hospital. Sometimes it was at home. Sometimes she fell in the bayou. Those were the worst times—then I had to worry about gators too.
Tonight had been the classic—column of water, hospital room, and no less than three doctors. All faceless. All telling me it was over. She always looked so serene as she drowned that part of me wanted to accept it; to accept that I’d lost her and that it was just me now. But even in those moments, I knew I couldn’t live without her. Not yet. And so I struggled, and I screamed, and I woke up covered in my own saliva with my heart beating eighty miles a minute.
Today I woke up to something new.
A knock on the door rose me from my slumber. Mom was already up, watching me. She didn’t sleep much in hospitals. Without further prompting, the door opened, and people began filing in. I assumed they were people, at least, but their faces were completely blocked by the large bouquets of red roses they carried into the room.
Mom gasped, her hands covering her mouth, as she watched bouquet after bouquet being dropped down by the window. There had to be over three hundred flowers here. And all for my mom?
“Hey!” I said to the first guy to pass me. “Who are these from?”
Please don’t say Edward. Please don’t say Edward.
“Some Zane guy. There’s a note. I think Sharon has it.”
Oh, thank God.
He left without further ado, and I waited for whoever had the note to present it. The last person in the room was a middle aged blonde lady, who presented me with a smile and a note before she left. I thanked her and waved, but didn’t watch her leave. I was already ripping open the envelope.
Maria: Thank you for raising such a wonderful daughter. These roses are the least I can do to show my gratitude. I hope I can do more.
Sasha: We need to schedule another appointment with Asa. I also have something important to talk to you about.
That was all it said. I read out the part to my mom, and she nearly cried. “He’s a good boy,” she said.
I scoffed. “He can hardly be considered a boy, Mom.”
She sighed dreamily. “You’re right. That boy is all man.”
“Mom!” I smacked her lightly on the arm, and she giggled. God, how I loved that smile.
“Did he say anything to you in the note?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Just that he has something to talk to me about.” I wanted to ask her what she thought it meant, but it seemed such a petty thing to bring up when she was in a hospital bed. My dying mother did not need to hear about my boy drama.
But that was my main concern. Was it going to be boy drama? Was Zane going to break up with me? I’m not sure why that’s the first place my brain went, but it did. Maybe this was all too much for him. Maybe everything with Edward yesterday and all this with my mom had pulled him too deep into emotional territory, and he was ready to back out?
I felt like crying, but I cuddled up to my mom and rested my eyes a little longer. At least I had tasted the good life before losing it. Tasted the manliest of men. I just wished I’d gotten a little more of it.
I was being stupid! Of course, he wasn’t going to break up with me. Surely he wouldn’t have said such nice things about me in the section of the note to my mom, right? Unless he was trying to soften the blow? Oh Christ, how was I supposed to be anybody’s therapist when I couldn’t even figure out my own shit?
“Have I ever told you how much weight you carry?” Mom asked.
I frowned up at her. “That’s rude.”
She smiled lightly. “On your shoulders. Emotional weight.” She shifted slightly on her bed, drawing herself closer to me. “You’ve always been so good at figuring out what everyone else is thinking. I really admire that about you. But you don’t always realization the ramifications of such an obsession.”
An obsession? “You always used to call it a gift.”
She chuckled. “A gift is just an obsession we haven’t accepted yet.” Her kind eyes fluttered closed, and she leaned back. “I don’t think of it as a bad thing, necessarily.”
“Calling it an obsession makes it seem negative,” I grumbled.
She patted my hand, looking serene and still as she talked. “If it’s the first thing you think to consult when you meet a person, it’s an obsession. Much in the same way that the first thing I see is a person’s shoes.”
“So what you’re saying is I have a harmless obsession with reading people’s expressions?”
She opened her eyes and grimaced comically. “I never said harmless. But certainly not overly harmful when approached in a certain way.”
I screwed my mouth to the side in thought. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “So you’re saying that…?”
She chuckled and stroked my hand again. “I’m saying, Sasha, that you spend half of your life mired in other people’s emotions, and the other half trying to decode what you cannot possibly know. You’ve gotten so used to having the upper hand that you now stress way too much anytime you feel you’re in the dark. But you know what most people call what you call “in the dark”?”
I shook my head. “What do they call it?”
She settled back and fixed me with a knowing smile. “Normal.”
I narrowed my eyes at her in mock indignation. “Where do you get off, being so wise?”
She shrugged and closed her eyes again. “When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
I hoped I would. For now, it was one thing Mom telling me I needed to relax and another thing entirely to actually relax. I wondered if I’d ever relax about Zane, or if I’d always be feeling like I was more in this than him. I hated how much I cared! When he was showing me affection, it was the best feeling I’d ever felt. When I bullied myself like this into thinking something was wrong, it was like my world had stopped turning on its axis.
As if on cue, my phone vibrated. I would have ignored it if I hadn’t been so stressed about the whole Zane thing. I wanted desperately for it to be him.
It wasn’t.
I had a few missed emails, but nothing important. And one text from Edward.
I don’t think I can write you a letter of recommendation anymore. Tell your meathead boyfriend I’ll be pressing charges.
Sweet and simple. At least he didn’t bother with flowery language to hide his intent. God, what a prick! I ignored the text and slipped my phone back into my pocket, looking over at the roses by the wall in an attempt to muster up some iota of happiness. Why was everything going to shit?
Was I upset at Zane for tossing Edward out yesterday? No. If he hadn’t have done it, I likely would have. Things had gone too far with my advisor. Way too far. I doubted there was any way him dropping my recommendation could have been avoided, bar me actually sleeping with him.
Screw. That.
Maybe in my first year of university, when I’d had stars in my eyes and been eager to please everyone, that shit might have worked on me. Maybe he was used to getting his jollies with the undergrads. That thought made me sick. Whatever it was, I didn’t regret yesterday at all. And I’d be filing a formal complaint with the university too. That wouldn’t help get my letter of recommendation. I doubt I’d ever fix that. But at least then I’d get a little justice.
It would be my word against his, but I highly doubted this was the first time a situation like this had happened with the aging douchebag.
“Everything okay?” Mom asked.
I nodded. “Everything’s fine, Mom. Everything’s going to be just fine.”