Thanks to girlnextdoor14 for reviewing! To everybody who's reading this – please review. I love hearing what you think! Thanks! ~Moore12~
Alone
Sitting in the hospital that night, he tried to think back to a time when his family was genuinely happy but found that he couldn't. I know we had to have been happy once, he thought, as he sat in the waiting area of the hospital, a cup of lukewarm coffee in his hand. I just can't remember it. Exhausted, though unable to sleep himself, he glanced over at his sister's room and saw that both Kate and his dad were fast asleep. To Jesse, it felt like this was the first moment in too long that his family was actually sharing a peaceful moment.
He had to wonder, though, if the peace would last (even though he already knew that this peace wasn't real anyway—but at least it was something). When they first entered Kate's room, she was murmuring something about wanting to go to the beach—which the nurse said she had been doing all day. His dad, staring down at his sister with an expression of love and sadness on his face, had decided right then to take her to the beach—regardless of any of the consequences—Jesse knew. He could tell by the look on his face—that firm, resolute and sad look—and he could tell because he knew his father well enough to know that he'd spring to do anything he could to help his daughter. Even if it could tear the family apart…
Everything was quiet and oddly still which made Jesse feel even more uncomfortable than he already felt. He hated silence, hated how, in the middle of the night, the hospital could feel so much like a morgue, and he wanted to run away so badly—just escape everything like he usually was able to by going into the city. A nurse walked by, not even stopping to glance at him, on her way to check on Kate, and he shifted in his seat, glad that he wasn't the only person awake at this ungodly hour. The silence, he felt, was slowly killing him.
But we had to have been happy once, Jesse thought, racking his memory for something that could prove this. We just had to. Part of him realized why he couldn't think of anything while the other part struggled to comprehend why no happy memories surfaced right away. When being honest, he knew instantly why he couldn't think of anything.
He was scared. He was scared because he hated hospitals because, to him, all they represented was death. He was scared because the family was in town, and they never saw them unless a tragedy was looming. He was scared because he couldn't do anything to stop it from happening—he never had any control of anything, including his own life, he felt—and because he felt so damn helpless. The fear was preventing him from seeing the light in their situation.
He was torn from his thoughts when a group of nurses rushed by, and a knot formed in his throat. For a moment, he thought they were on their way to his sister's room—that this was finally it, she was going to die—but they passed the room by and kept running. Sighing with genuine relief, he slowly opened his bag that he brought with him whenever he went to the hospital—or anywhere where he would be left alone, actually—and took out the painting he was working on.
When he took it out and looked it over, he couldn't help but think back to the moment he first presented it to Kate. In a rare moment of courage—fostered by the fact his mom wasn't in the room with her—he had gone into her hospital room. It was something he rarely did because he couldn't bear to see her like that, but, for some reason, he knew he had to do it; he had to show her what he had been working on for so long.
Kate had looked very surprised to see him, but he had been relieved to see that she was happy to see him and that his presence wasn't alarming her—sometimes he felt that his being in the room must upset her because he only entered if something was really wrong because it made him so damn uncomfortable. "Jesse?" she said, a smile beginning to form on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"I made you something," he had said, retrieving the painting from his bag and handing to her, trying to hide how uneasy he was feeling and be strong for her. He just knew, somehow, that this gesture was very important, and he wasn't about to let his fear stand in his way—he would be strong even if he was scared.
"Is this me?" she asked, looking at his work with a glowing smile on her face—a smile, Jesse thought, with a pang of regret, he would be able to see more often if she was normal like him.
"Yeah," Jesse smiled at her—a real, genuine smile because he was so happy she liked it, that he had finally found a way to brighten her day—and continued, "I'm not done with it yet but…"
The memory felt so real that, for a moment, he felt less alone. But the memory slowly faded as he sat there, alone as always, and—to counteract this feeling that was threatening to swallow him—he took out some of his pencils carefully and began to work on his piece again.
By the time the sun was rising—he could just barely see it out the small window at the end of the hall but it still looked so beautiful to him, so hopeful—he had finished his work and realized why his dad wanted to take Kate to the beach so badly. It made perfect sense to him all of a sudden because he knew he was doing the same thing by painting her the picture, by offering her the one thing he could possibly offer her—his one talent—to make her feel better.
And, as he sat there all alone waiting for Dr. Chance to arrive so he could tell him his dad's plan and play his bit in making Kate happy, he felt less alone and less helpless than ever.
