The Heartbroken - S01 E198

Story 2 years ago

The Heartbroken - S01 E198

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 198

It was the night they finally told me what was going

on.

It was the night Mom and I began to find the hospital

as something that resembled more of our home

than our house did, because by being in the hospital,

Dad had taken more than half of our home with him.

It was the night we stopped having proper dinners,

replacing those with Chinese takeout or pizza instead.

Somehow, I felt as if I was brought back to that

night, being shaken out of sleep by Mom. Only this

time, it was Hail’s call that woke me up, and it was

Seth sitting behind the steering wheel.

I curled into myself on the passenger seat, bringing

my feet up so I could hug my knees close to me, as

if doing this would shield me from whatever lay

ahead us.

There were too many things trying to break my shell

at that moment. There were the memories of my

dad, Seth’s physical proximity but emotional

distance, Cedric’s fainting. I could feel something

threatening to give out; and I knew that just the

slightest bit of pressure would cause everything to

collapse.

Maybe there was a part of me that still trusted Seth—

a part of me that still longed to depend on him for

help. It was a pathetic part of me, a weakness of

some sort. That thing that was barely keeping me

together was breaking, and I was afraid that I might

burst at the seams.

I needed something to hold on to—something to

grasp to keep me up, to lessen the pressure on

myself, and at that that moment, telling Seth seemed

like the right thing to do.

So when he asked me why Cedric was in the

hospital, I took a shaky breath, trying to ignore the

possible consequences that telling him would entail.

His eyes were focused on the road, but something

told me his ears were all mine, that he was going to

listen to whatever I had to say if I wanted to talk.

“He fainted,” I told him, swallowing past the lump in

my throat.

He dared a quick glance at me. “He was brought to

the hospital for fainting?”

I cast my gaze down, tearing my eyes from him and

focusing on my knees instead. “It’s complicated.”

It was almost ironic how I resorted to using that line,

not when I hated Cedric for a while because of it, and

only now that I knew the truth did I realize that it was

true. It really was too f-----g complicated.

“Complicated… how?” he prompted when I didn’t

elaborate.

Letting out a sigh, I buried my head between my

knees.

“Cancer,” I choked out. “He has f-----g cancer.”

—

There was a certain kind of sadness in the way that

white hospital corridors held different stories behind

the closed doors of each room. I’d never been

claustrophobic, but the sight of the white-washed

walls and the nurses walking here and there as each

story behind the doors continued to unfold made me

feel as if the walls were closing in around me.

I almost didn’t want to go in.

It was different when Hail and I visited her mom. She

had been admitted to the smaller hospital that was

closer to our neighborhood.

St. John’s Medical Center, however, was where my

dad had lived much of his last moments.

There had been some changes for the past eight

years; the walls from the exterior of the building had

been repainted, the lobby refurnished, the computers

more updated. But it was the same and nothing—

nothing at all—could change the fact that this place

held unpleasant memories for me.