Joy & Misery

The hospital bed is uncomfortable against your back, digging into all the entirely wrong places and making you sore all over. It doesn’t help the headache thrumming in your head, either. You are hyper aware of everything: from your breathing being in time with the beeping machine next to you to the rushed words and footsteps outside the closed door.

You close your eyes (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 – stop), feeling the air conditioning on your skin and keeping you away from the darkness that you can feel lingering at the edges.

The boy across from you is rigid, his shoulder square as he stares up at the ceiling, both hands fisted tightly in the sheets. He’s beautiful only in the way broken people are, full of shadows and cracks, fragility still seeping through. You want to be him.

Finally, your eyes travel away from his face to his clenched fists, noticing the bandage wrapped around one of them. His breathing fills your ears – fast and shallow.

“Are you all right?” you ask, your voice softer than you remembered, as if dust has gathered on it from lack of use, muffling the sounds. He looks at you in surprise and almost disbelief (stupid question), but after a while the reply of, “Too tight,” comes creeping out of his mouth.

You get up, putting most of your weight on the machine that rolls next to you, feeling unsteady and your head feeling all too heavy, and try to focus on the cold floor against your feet. You feel his eyes on you but don’t look up, only watching your fingers as they travel slowly and softly over his hands, his skin cold and his fingertips blue. The bandage is extra rough compared to his skin, your fingers unravelling it quickly and with practised ease, hands moving just as you reach the end – touching his pulse, feeli...

... middle of paper ...

... gone to grip his hair, and you can’t quite breathe or think properly and you’re doubtful that it’s even real, because good things don’t really ever happen to you and this, this is the better the doctors talk about.

Adam pulls away and you find that your hand has moved from his hip to his wrist, pressing lightly over the pillowed patch that’s replaced the bandage. He pushes some of your hair away from your forehead and doesn’t break eye contact. His voice is soft when he says,

“Perhaps, we should try. Just to see.”

You nod and slide your fingers back up his arm to tangle your fingers with his.

.

(You think, perhaps, that you’d do anything for this boy, and it’s ridiculous and illogical and everything else you hate, but you’re desperate and the only strand of will power that still wants you to live says, that maybe,

You could live for this boy. Just maybe.)