Disclaimer - I do not own DragonBall Z, so please do not sue me
A/N: Well, here it is. Finally. It took me a little less than a month, and it took me about two and a half hours to write this chapter. After careful reconsiderations and whatnot, this is it. I hope that I do not disappoint you. This ending was planned out before the story was even written, I based my story around my ending. Thank you so much all of you, I really could not have finished it without so much positive feedback. Also, I had to do some research on this last chapter, so that I wouldn't look like an idiot when I was describing things. If you really want a sequel, then please, please, review and tell me. If I do write one, it will probably be within the next month or so, depending on how busy my schedule is.
Here it is. The final or dare I say last chapter of Last Straw.
Chapter 12: Last Straw
Dear Love,
I never thought that you truly existed after seeing so many people fall apart because they thought they were in love. But, now I think that I have found you. I know it must be unbelievable after I have lost so many to my heart, but from this day forward, I will not have it happen again.
I awoke with a start the morning after he had held me strongly in his arms last night. I could not get him off my mind, and my dream from last night was proof. In the dream, he kissed me tenderly on my lips, told me not to worry, and promised me that nothing would tear us apart, not even death. I could not comprehend what my mind was trying to tell me, but the thought of him made me smile.
As I went into the kitchen, my blue eyed friend was already awake. He recognized my presence and smiled up at me as I entered the room. I found myself sitting on the couch and he came to my side with a mug in his left hand.
"Care for something to drink?" he asked quietly. I nodded my head and accepted the mug; it was coffee, its black, rich and pungent taste filled my mouth with an aroma of sorts. I quickly finished it off, and thanked him silently for getting it for me.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I quirked my eyebrow. The telephone was ringing? In the whole time that we had stayed at my grandpa's home, I had only heard the phone ring twice, and once was to arrange his tragic funeral. I eyed the phone suspiciously and I motioned for my lavender haired friend to answer it. He obliged and casually picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" he inquired, not knowing what to expect. "I'm sorry? Yes, of course. It is a 1991. Yes sir, the engine is working fine. We changed it about two weeks ago. Our initial offer is five grand, after all it is rather old. Hold on, let me check."
He put his hand on the receiver to block out whoever was on the phone and he glanced at me with a pleading look in his eye.
"Hm?" I asked.
"A man is on the phone asking about your grandfather's car. He wants to know if you would take fourty five hundred for it."
"Tell him it would be the lowest that we can go to sell it." I said. I knew how people tried to lower prices down, I was not completely oblivious.
"Okay, thanks." he said. He took his hand off of the receiver and continued his conversation. "Are you still there sir? Well, the owner says that the lowest they will go is forty five hundred. You will? That's great! When will you come by to pick it up? Oh, well I'm sorry about that. Yeah, sure, that is not a problem in the least. Where would you like for me to bring it? Hold on just a moment, let me write this down."
He sat the phone down on the coffee table and I watched as he dashed into the kitchen, obviously looking for a piece of paper and pen. He came back and for the last time, picked up the receiver.
"I'm back. Okay, what was the address? You said you'll be on the corner of Woodland Avenue and Florence Street? About an hour. Thank you sir." He hung up the phone with a sense of gratification on his features.
"So?" I asked, waiting for him to tell me something.
"I think I sold your grandpa's car!" he said. I smiled and hugged him tight.
"Thank you, I probably could not have done it without you." I said. I pulled away from him. "Did you say he was going to meet you on Woodland Avenue?"
"Yes, why?" he asked, bewilderment upon his handsome features.
"That means you have to go into the city?" I asked. I gave him a weary look. I did not have very good experiences with being in the city full of damned people. A great proportion of them were homicidal.
"Don't worry about it. Okay?" he asked. My mind clicked and it triggered a mental image of the dream I had last night. I shook the image out of my head and found myself back in the conversation with my blue eyed friend.
"Yeah, okay." I said, crossing my arms over my chest. "But, I really don't want to go with you. I have had terrible experiences with going to that wretched city."
He smiled at me coyly. The look on his face told me that he was up to something, but I did not know what it was. I gave him a quizzical brow and he pulled me back into his arms, kissing me lightly on the cheek.
"If you insist." he whispered. He slowly let me out of his embrace, his warm embrace that I loved to be in so much. I watched as he grabbed the keys to my grandpa's car off of the kitchen counter. As he turned his back away from me, I felt a twinge of guilt pulling at my heart. It was telling me, go with him, go with him or you will regret it, I ignored this sudden turn of emotions of my heart, and simply smiled when he turned around and waved goodbye.
The front door shut and it emitted the loudest silence. I stared around the kitchen blankly and felt my fingers tingle from being dormant at my side. The sound of my grandpa's old car revving up startled me and I twitched slightly. My eyes peered out the window and I caught one last glimpse of him before he sped off into a whole new world.
I let out a breath of air I did not realize I was holding in. My shoulders were tense, and I could not understand the reasons why. I shook myself to try to relax, but standing at the front door waiting for my friend was not the way for me to do it.
I sighed as I found myself in the living room; planting myself on the couch for the second time that day, I picked up a book under the coffee table next to me. It was titled, "The Little Mermaid." I had never noticed it there before, and I began to read the fairy tale. The beginning seemed so light and happy, that it made all my worries and troubles go away. I drifted into a light sleep from reading the book.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I jolted out of my sleep. That was the second time that stupid phone rang in one day. Half afraid and half anxious to answer the phone, I nervously picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" I asked, my voice cracked from just waking.
"Yes, I was given this number by the young man who is staying in our hospital. He said that you are the only contact that he knows of."
"Please, describe him." I begged, my stomach sinking.
"He is about 5'9'', blue eyes, and his hair looks almost purp-"
"I'll be down there shortly." I said. I slammed the phone down, nearly breaking it. My heart raced rapidly and I could not fathom what had happened to my friend, my caretaker.
I put some shoes on and stormed out of the house. I began walking up the road, my heart nearly beating out of my chest, until I found a bus stop. I glanced around, making sure there were no suspicious characters, and quietly sat down on the bench. As I waited, I dug around in my left pocket for some change; all I managed to muster up was about two dollars and fifty cents. I prayed to God that it would be enough.
The bus finally came and when the doors opened for entry, I got on and looked at the toll,
'A dollar twenty-five. Oh thank you Lord.' I thought. I found a seat next to a sullen woman and waited anxiously for the bus to get to the hospital.
When I finally arrived, after countless of bus stops, and seeing a man who looked vaguely familiar, I dashed to the front desk of the hospital. I told them who I was, and who I was there to see. The woman looked at me with a tinge of sorrow in her eyes.
"He is located in the ICU, you will need to talk to one of the clerks there to get permission to go back." she said barely above a whisper. I opened my mouth to ask her a question, but she stopped me "And I am not allowed to disclose any information, so you will have to wait until you get up to the ICU to find out what is wrong."
I fumed as I walked over to an elevator. 'How can she not give me any information!' I growled inwardly. As I entered the elevator, there were two male doctors in it, who were also going up.
"Did you get the blood test?" the dark haired man asked.
"Yes, his blood is AB negative, it's very rare, and I hope that we have enough." the other man, with reddish hair replied.
"It's a tragedy really. The poor kid does not even have a family to turn to."
"But, we still have to do everything we can for him, God made doctor's for a reason."
"Yeah, you're right..." the dark haired man pondered for a moment and ruffled his hair lightly. "Then again, Camden is not the best place to be making any kind of deals on street corners, even if they are legal."
I gasped, catching the men's attention.
"Excuse me." I whispered, trying not to look as though I was eavesdropping. "Was he making a car deal?"
"Actually, I believe so." The reddish haired man said, he seemed quite shocked that I had an inkling of what he was talking about. "How do you know ma'am?"
"I-I'm his friend. I'm here to see him." I said a little louder than my last statement.
"Oh my." The doctor's face turned as red as his hair. "We'll take you to his room right away."
The elevator doors opened on command.
I followed the two doctors down the hallway and the reddish haired man turned to me.
"Would you like to know what happened to him?" he asked. I nodded my head, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the dark-haired man disappear down a different hallway then we were going. "An eye-witness said that she saw him get out of the car and as soon as he did a man came up to him and put a gun to his head."
I stared at the man wide-eyed in disbelief.
"Unfortunately, even though someone tried to stop the man from shooting him, the man still managed to shoot. The wound was in the head." he said quietly. "The odds that he'll survive are not very high, only five percent of people survive a gunshot to the head."
I bit my lower lip.
"How could this have happened?" I asked more to myself than the doctor. He patted my shoulder and lead me down the hallway.
"There is a little bit of good news." he offered. I nodded for him to go on. "Luckily, the gunshot was from the front of his skull to the back, his odds of survival are higher because if it would have fractured his skull from side to side, the odds would have been drastically low."
We turned a corner and as we walked a few feet we finally stopped. He continued talking,
"The only problem is, he has not responded to anything. He is in a coma, we are uncertain of how deep the coma is and if we do not see any signs of life within a certain time period, there is a probability to discontinue life-support."
"No!" I exclaimed. 'He can't, he can't do that!'
"We'll discuss matters for it later." the red haired man said. He opened the door, room 318, and lead me in. "For now, you can sit in here with him as late as you wish. I understand the seriousness of this situation."
I slowly entered the room, my eyes began to fill with tears as I glanced at his lifeless body on the gurney. I choked on my breath and took a hold of my friend's hand; he felt cold and numb. As my eyes surveyed his entire body, I felt myself go rigid as I glanced at his head. His beautiful locks of lavender hair were hidden under countless of wraps around his head. I grew weak as I stood there watching him, and finally found myself a seat in the chair directly next to the bed.
'Please, please don't leave me.' I thought as I drifted into a somber sleep. 'You're the only thing that I have left.'
--
Weeks went by, and there was no signs of life from my friend still. Each day my heart ached for him, and I prayed for him more than I had ever prayed for anyone else in my life. The doctors would give me updates, telling me about how they were removing dead tissue from his brain, how the gunshot had not affected his spinal cord, and he pinpointed where the bullet was - his right mind.
I grew accustomed to eating the cafeteria lunches they served, due to the fact that I did not have much money. Each day, I would tell him how everything was, and how he was getting better. I would also ask him in the sweetest of voices to wake up, so that the doctors could see that he was just fine.
The door opened and it startled me out of a daydream. The familiar red-headed doctor was standing there and he had a disappointing look upon his features. I stared at him intently, waiting for what he was about to say.
"It has been a month now ma'am," he began. "And we still have not seen any signs of life from him. With comas like these, the odds of him waking are...well, they are nearly non-existent. I hate to say this, but next week, we will have to take him off life support."
"What?" I asked.
"It is the only choice," he stated. "the boy has no medical care, no history, no family. All he has is you, and you are no blood relative." The doctor sighed heavily. He saw the look of disdain upon my features. "I am so sorry."
"No you're not!" I exclaimed.
He did not say anything back, he merely left the room; leaving me to be all alone, forever.
Couldn't this doctor see that my lavender haired friend was the only thing that I had left in this world. My dad went and killed himself, my mom abandoned me, my grandpa died of a heart attack, and -even though I despised his entire being- I also lost a step dad!
This was the last straw.
I was not going to lose him, I was not going to lose the last person on this earth that I loved.
Love? Was it?
I curled myself up into the chair, allowing fresh tears to fall off of my face. My body was trembling from fear and anxiety. I couldn't lose him. No! As I covered my face to hide my anguish, I felt something cool graze my arm. Startled, I pulled myself out of my hands, and when I looked up, shock washed over my features.
He was awake. He was alive. He was not going to be taken off of life support. I felt my heart leap, I thought it nearly fell out of my chest it leaped so hard. I wiped away my tears. The last thing I had on this earth was looking at me straight in the eyes, his eyes were the most beautiful blue I had ever seen.
I gently grasped him in a hug. He leaned in closely and whispered something in my ear.
"Thank you for being there for me."
I believed in miracles from this day forward.
