The Heartbroken - S01 E147

Story 2 years ago

The Heartbroken - S01 E147

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 147

I woke up at past one a.m., feeling as if the

dream had drained all my energy.

It wasn’t that it was scary or anything, but it

wasn’t the first time I had it, and that was

what bothered me.

I had the same dream when I was younger,

right around the time my father died, and I

figured it must have had something to do

with the fact that I’d just gone to the

hospital earlier.

Hail wouldn’t stop thanking me for visiting

Lauren. She knew, of course she knew, that

I had always hated going to the hospital. It

reminded me of those few short weeks

when we had to rush to the hospital

because Dad fainted, when he threw up so

violently, Mom had to make me go out of

the room, and since then, we had to stay in

the hospital because Dad was too weak to

go home.

I’d skipped school during those last few

days, and one night, I woke up to hear Mom

talking to my adviser over the phone. “It

could be any minute now,” I heard her say.

“I just want her to spend every last moment

with him.”

It scared me.

She kept telling me he’d get better, that

there was nothing to worry about because

he loved us and he would fight this and

everything would be back to normal. And I

must have known that she was lying, but I

believed in her because it was too painful

to believe otherwise.

Since then, I spent nearly every day

watching Dad, fighting off sleep in case he

woke up long enough to talk to me.

When he died, I steered clear of hospitals,

and when I walked into the hospital room

to see Lauren sleeping in that god awful

hospital bed earlier, I almost ran out.

The look on Hail’s face stopped me and I

knew I had to stay with her.

It was the same look on Mom’s face

whenever she saw Dad in that drugged

slumber that was supposed to take his pain

away, and I knew Hail needed me there.

When I left, she hugged me so tightly it

wasn’t difficult to imagine just how shaken

up she really was about all this.

Now, at one in the morning, I realized that

the dream must have meant something like

me chasing my Dad. The white corridor

might as well be the hospital and the bird I

was running after was Dad.

I tried to go back to sleep, tossing and

turning in my bed.

Whenever I closed my eyes, images of my

dad in the hospital kept coming back to me:

images that reminded me most of his death

—nurses running into the room, him

coughing blood out, my mom trying to be

strong for all of us.

Before I could think better of it, I found

myself reaching for my phone from under

my pillow, dialing Seth like it was nothing

out of the ordinary.

I thought back to what Hail had told me

earlier. Surely, she must have been reading

things the wrong way. I knew Seth and I

had grown closer than I could have ever

expected, and it would be pointless to deny

that I didn’t care about him, but I didn’t like

him in that way.

I couldn’t possibly.

“Kyla?”

Upon hearing his groggy voice, I knew I’d

woken him up. Pushing down the guilt I

felt, I said, “Hi.”

There was a rustle over the static. “What’s

wrong?”

“Why are you assuming that something’s

wrong?”

“One does not simply call at… one in the

morning for nothing important.” There was

more rustling, making me wonder what on

earth he was doing there. “So, what’s up?”