by Mia Archer
I was pretty sure it was a black hole named Tiffany.
I took a deep breath. I needed to do something. Doing something was why I was here in the first place. I’d gone up to her floor a few times over the past couple of weeks, but her mom was always in there. It seemed the shifts she was taking with Alyssa’s dad weren’t happening anymore.
Well tonight was the night I was going to do something. I was going into that room and damn the consequences. I just hoped Alyssa was awake enough that she could tell me to stay. Otherwise it was going to be a short visit.
I felt like I was a criminal coming into someone’s home to rob them as I walked through the hospital lobby. The security guard at the front desk looked at me and I nearly crapped my pants, but then he smiled and nodded. Of course he would. There was no reason for him to stop me. I was just a college girl visiting the hospital. Nothing wrong with that.
Not yet.
I got more nervous as I hopped onto the elevator and rode up to Alyssa’s floor on the oncology ward. I felt more and more sick to my stomach as I got closer. Not because I was worried about a confrontation, I welcomed that, but because I worried this might not work.
I stepped onto the hall and nodded to the nurse, that pretty blonde, and walked down towards Alyssa’s room. I paused for a moment at the entrance and looked in. She was asleep, damn it. It seemed like she was asleep a lot of the time. At least whenever I walked past. And her mom was right there next to her reading a book just like she always was. A watchful guarding. A gargoyle sitting there making sure no crazy lesbian girlfriends came into the room and stirred up trouble.
Well it was time to stir up some trouble. It had been too long since I saw Alyssa. I ached to hold her hand. I needed to hear her voice, even if it was hazy because of the medicine. Looking at her I could tell that she must be having trouble eating because she looked skinnier than usual in the face.
My poor beautiful Alyssa.
I stepped into the room. Her mom looked up and blinked. It seemed to take a moment for it to register who I was, then her face became a thundercloud of fury. She snapped her book shut and she was up from her chair and across the room faster than I thought a woman of her size could move.
Alyssa’s dad was nowhere to be found. Damn it. I’d hoped he might be able to back me up, but no such luck.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed. At the same time she used her body to block me from moving any further into the room. I thought she wouldn’t be ballsy enough to get close to me, but she bumped right up against me and I stumbled back out of the room.
“I’m going to see Alyssa,” I said.
“Like hell you are! My baby girl has her mother and that’s all she needs! You stay away from her, you hear?”
I glanced up and down the hall hoping that maybe her dad was down at the vending machines and he’d hear the commotion and come running, but he was nowhere to be found. I hoped Alyssa might wake up and hear what was going on and rip her mom a new one like she had a couple of times before, but glancing in the room she sat there peacefully asleep and oblivious to the world.
Whatever they were doing to her must’ve really taken it out of her if she could sleep through this.
Someone appeared at my side. I looked and saw a nurse standing there with a not-so-friendly expression plastered on her face.
“Is there a problem here?”
“Yes there’s a problem,” Alyssa’s mom said. She pointed at me and her finger came to rest squarely on my chest. “This girl tried to sneak into my daughter’s room and she is not welcome. I want her out of here.”
“Please,” I said, pleading with the nurse. “She’s not letting me in to see my girlfriend. You have to let me in there. It’s what she’d want.”
The lady looked like she didn’t like the situation, but her lips thinned out and she looked between the two of us. Sighed.
“I’m sorry, but if she doesn’t want you in there and you’re not family then you’re going to have to leave.”
“That’s right you are!”
I turned and jabbed a finger at Alyssa’s mom. “Alyssa is going to wake up one of these days and ask where I am. You’re going to regret everything you’re doing right now on that day.”
The smile that crept across her face was not pleasant at all. It was so self-satisfied.
“She’s already been awake plenty of times,” she said. “And she thinks you couldn’t handle the pressure. Now get out of here before I have you arrested!”
“Ma’am,” the nurse started to say. “You can’t…”
I didn’t hear anything else the nurse said. I saw red. I was furious. I felt like I’d completely lost control. Hell, I had completely lost control. It was like the world went dark around me and when it came back I had my hands on Tiffany’s shirt and I was trying to push my way into the room while the poor nurse was yelling and holing me back. Meanwhile Tiffany had a look of fear on her face as though she’d realized she’d finally gone too far but still couldn’t believe this was happening.
Push someone far enough…
“Let me see her!” I shouted, not really caring who heard me. I’d reached the breaking point and I wasn’t leaving until I got to see my girlfriend, damn it.
“You’re a whore and you stay away from my daughter!” she shouted back at me. “She’s going through enough without you confusing her!”
It wasn’t long after that before security came and pulled me off of her. Then I had the singularly interesting experience of being dragged down the hall away from Alyssa’s room. They were pulling me away from her. Away from my love. Away from the girl who needed me so much right now.
“You can’t keep me away forever!” I shouted.
Only security could drag me to an elevator. Once we were in there I calmed down a little. Stopped struggling. They kept their hands on my arms to make sure I didn’t try anything, but once the doors to the elevator closed and we were on our way down they relaxed their grip just a little.
“So what happens now?” I asked. “Will the cops be waiting for me or something?”
One of the security guys gave me a sidelong glance. “Care to tell me what was going on there?”
“My girlfriend’s bitch of a mom figured out that she can keep me out of her daughter’s room while her daughter is so hopped up on chemo that she can’t form a coherent thought,” I growled.
“Huh. That seems like a pretty bitchy thing to do,” the other one said.
“You have no idea,” I replied.
“I think under the circumstances we don’t have to call anyone,” the first guard said, winking at me.
I blinked. “You’re serious?”
“As long as this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” the second one said. “That lady might be a bitch on wheels, but that doesn’t mean we won’t do our jobs if we have to. You’re getting a mulligan on this one.”
I sighed and deflated. Everything that just happened really took it out of me. Getting in a fight with someone was exhausting, even if it was an old lady who didn’t look like she could fight for herself.
I was also exhausted by my circumstances. I’d gone up there and all this had happened and I was still no closer to seeing Alyssa than I’d been before I went up there. It wasn’t fair. I figured if I was going to get in trouble and come close to getting arrested then the least the universe could do was throw me a bone and let me talk to Alyssa for a couple of minutes.
I brushed myself off as I stepped off the elevator and security escorted me over to the door. I paused in front of the rotating doors and turned to each of them.
“Do I really have to go? I could just stay down here and do some homework or something,” I said.
“Nope,” guard number one said. “I’m afraid after that little outburst we are going to have to ask you to leave the facility for the evening.”
“But feel free to come back tomorrow if you want,” guard number two said. “Just make sure you don’t have any si
tuations like what happened back there or you will be meeting with us or some of our coworkers, and they might not go as easy on you as we did.”
I sighed and made my way through the revolving door. Talk about the perfect ending to a perfect evening. Sarcasm very much intended. I guess I could look on the bright side though. I could come back to the hospital tomorrow, and I also wasn’t leaving the place with a criminal record or anything.
That would’ve been a fun one to try and explain to Coach. I could see his face turning bright red right now, and it wasn’t a fun image.
I put my hands in my pockets and walked into the night. I’d be back here tomorrow, though. Tomorrow and every other day until I finally got in to see Alyssa. Until we got all of this cleared up. I was going to make sure she knew I wasn’t abandoning her, and I figured time was on my side. She’d wake up eventually and have a clear enough head to really ask some questions.
At least I hoped she’d be around long enough for that to happen. Damn it. I spent the rest of the walk back to our dorm room blinking tears away and trying not to break down in the middle of campus.
27: Abandoned
Alyssa:
The dream came again. Sarah was trying to get into my room and there was a horrible monster keeping her out. It was big and dark and it had a cruel laugh but it tried to sound so sweet. I shouted out for it to stop and when it turned around the monster was my mom looking down at me with false concern stroking my forehead and telling me that everything was going to be all right. That she’d chased the bad girl away.
I screamed and that scream pulled me back into the waking world of my hospital room where my scream wasn’t a scream so much as a pathetic whimper. It was all I could manage.
It took me a moment to make that transition from the dark and twisted hospital room in my dream to the pristine white hospital room around me. The lights were burning bright overhead and mom was next to me reading a book like she always was. I was so doped up on everything that I could sleep even with the lights on which was something I could never do before.
I regretted waking up. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I spent so much time asleep. While I was asleep I had to deal with the nightmares, but that was nothing like the pain twisting my body. I felt like I’d just gone swimming for the first time in months and my muscles were protesting. My mouth was dry, but thankfully I didn’t have any sores in there.
The doctors warned me that was one of the many unpleasant side effects I could look forward to.
The thing that bothered me the most was the fog that had settled on my brain. It was hard to hold a thought together for more than a few seconds. It was difficult sometimes to tell what was reality and what was part of that nightmarish dream world I seemed to live in ever since starting this damned medicine.
Mom didn’t even put her book down. She hadn’t noticed I was awake. I looked up at the TV. It was playing some old sitcom from the ‘90s that I used to watch as a little girl, but I couldn’t tell someone the name if my life depended on it even though I used to watch it all the time.
Something was missing from the room, too. Someone was missing. My dad wasn’t out there, but that’s not who I was thinking of. It distressed me that I couldn’t think of whoever it was that was so important I felt like they needed to be here but I couldn’t even remember.
I looked over to my mom again. Then it hit me. The monster in the dream. Keeping her out.
“Where’s Sarah?” I croaked.
Mom finally closed her book at the mention of Sarah. She looked up at me and she seemed irritated for some reason. She sighed but then a moment later her face was schooled to that same false concern she’d shown ever since I got admitted to this place. I remembered that brief scowl, though.
It was always there. Always lurking under the surface.
“What are you talking about darling?” she asked. “There’s no Sarah here.”
I frowned. Narrowed my eyes. Yeah, that made sense. There was no Sarah here. Why did I think there should be someone named Sarah? The fog set in again and something about what my mom said seemed wrong. Felt wrong. Sarah was important, even if I hadn’t seen her around.
My mind wandered. I wondered what the swim team was doing right now. I ached to be back in the pool. To be surrounded by the familiar sounds of a bunch of people slicing through the water back and forth. To smell the chlorinated water all around me. To have Sarah smiling at me and encouraging me like she always did.
Sarah. There we were again. Her face rose through that mental fog and I remembered. How could I forget? Why would I forget?
I frowned. Because my mom was trying to make me forget. She was acting as though Sarah didn’t exist. She knew how I was and she was taking advantage of it. I wanted to get angry about that, but it was difficult to summon much of any emotion other than despair over the pain shooting through my body.
Damn it.
“Sarah isn’t here,” I said. “My girlfriend. Stop lying to me mom.”
I pushed down a wave of nausea that washed over me. It wasn’t pleasant, but I was pretty sure it was the medication and not the disgust I felt for my mom in that moment. At least I hoped that was the case. She was still my mother, after all, even if she was acting terribly right now. I’d hate for this to forever ruin our relationship.
Because that seemed to be where we were going.
Mom sighed. She rolled her eyes. Well then. We were going from concern to anger. A classic tactic if there ever was one, and it wasn’t going to work on me now any more than it had in the past few months since I met Sarah and started caring less and less about what my mom thought.
Funny. Most people went through their rebellious teenager phase when they were younger. I guess I was hitting mine at a slightly older age.
“Honey, I already explained all of this to you,” she said in a patient voice that didn’t show any of the anger that had been there moments ago. She was all over the place emotionally today. “Sarah told me that she couldn’t handle it. That she didn’t want to be around you right now while you were going through this. I didn’t want to have to tell you, but you insist on asking about her every time you wake up.”
She sounded almost sorry. Except that never quite reached her eyes. No, her eyes danced with glee at the idea that Sarah wasn’t around to interrupt her ability to mother me and baby me.
“You’re lying,” I said. “I want to see Sarah. I want to see her now. I don’t care how you do it.”
The sadness and commiseration was gone in a flash. Amazing how quickly she could turn that on and off when she wanted to.
“That girl isn’t coming in here, and that’s final. You’re going through enough without dealing with her confusing you,” she said.
I opened my mouth to respond but nothing came out. The only thing confusing me was whatever the hell medicine they had me on. It didn’t feel pleasant. I was still having a hell of a lot of trouble putting two thoughts together and I wasn’t equipped for an argument with my mom.
I was pissed off though. What was she saying? Something about being confused. The medicine was confusing me? Yeah, it sure as hell was confusing me. No, there was something else I was confused about.
Sarah. Right. She thought I was confused because I wanted to date Sarah. I came back into lucidity for a brief moment.
“You’re wrong mom,” I said. “I’m not confused about Sarah. She’s the girl I want in my life, and you can’t stop that.”
“We’ll see about that. The sooner you accept that Sarah girl is wrong for you the better everything will be. Now go back to sleep.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d summoned up the willpower to stand up to her and it wasn’t going to do me a damn bit of good. Nothing was going to change. Sarah wasn’t going to suddenly magically appear and everything would be all right like we were in some cheesy romance or something.
Damn it. I wished I was living in a cheesy romance. Life would be so much easier.
I fell back agai
nst my pillow again. It was so comfortable. The only part of my body that felt comfortable. My stomach felt like it was constantly on the verge of throwing up anything I ate. The rest of my body was so sore. It wasn’t a pleasant place to live, but at least I was still alive.
That was something. As long as I was alive and fighting this there was a chance. I would see Sarah again.
Right now, though? I needed rest. If I was going to beat this then I needed to be rested and in shape. That was how I did everything. Attack it like it was the enemy, whether that enemy was getting my time down or fighting a stupid fucking disease that was doing its best to ruin my life.
“You’re wrong,” I whispered.
“I told you we’ll see about that,” she said. “Either way that girl isn’t coming back here. I told you she’s no good for you.”
Darkness moved in around me and I felt some of the pain going away. That was good. Sleep was good. It was a place where I didn’t have to worry about things.
Only when I fell asleep the nightmares were back. This time it was a very vivid dream about my mom and Sarah fighting with each other and hospital security dragging her away. I kept trying to call out to her, but it was like I couldn’t fight through the fog in my brain long enough to tell them that I wanted her here in the room with me more than I wanted my mom around making me miserable.
Tears ran down my face. I wasn’t sure if it was in the dream or in the real world, but it didn’t really matter. The feeling was there and I wanted this misery to go away. I wanted Sarah back. I knew that meant being awake when she came around, if she was coming around, but I wasn’t strong enough.
No. I would see her again. The nightmare went away and then I was in the grassy area in front of the natatorium with the sun shining down and Sarah’s hand in mine and no pain wanting me to constantly cry.
Yeah, that was a much better dream. I’d stick with that and hope that it was the sort of dream that would come true someday.
28: Sneaking In