Other than to have her baby, Lil hadn't imagined any other reason she'd be restrained in a hospital. She was surrounded by machines, dreary walls, sick patients, doctors and nurses. Her cramps were severe, and she didn't have to wait long to be placed in a hospital room. There, she was hooked up to various machines and her head spinned as she attempted to keep up with what was going on. Once they took a look at the questionnaire, it didn't take long for the doctors to identify the problem, and they met Tommy at the waiting room to tell him, so that he could tell her.
Tommy shook his head. "Are you sure?" he asked.
One of the doctors nodded. "It seems as though she had been spotting for some time now, but because she hadn't been seeing a doctor regularly, I don't think she suspected anything was out of the ordinary."
"Can you tell her why? Like, was there a reason?"
"Not yet," the other doctor responded, "but after running some tests and looking at her family history, hopefully we'll be able to come up with a reason. However, we realize that she's young and hasn't really gone to a doctor. Now would probably be a good time to reach her parents."
"Can I go talk to her?" Tommy asked.
The two doctors looked at each other, before the first one nodded. "Yes, I think that will be a good idea."
From there, Tommy followed the two doctors down the corridors leading to Lil's bedside. Dimly lit and empty, it was like the scene of a movie, with Tommy's heart pounding after each step he made. He stopped himself from thinking; he just concentrated on forming the words to tell Lil of her misfortune. He didn't want to wind up blaming himself and thinking about all that he could have done to prevent that situation. All Lil wanted…was him, and he was too selfish to spare her the heartache when he had the chance, instead choosing to use her to his advantage whenever things got tough with his girlfriend.
Once they arrived outside her room, the two doctors stood there, wished him the best of luck, and then promised a nurse would be in there shortly to check on her. "Try and convince her to call her parents," the doctors said. "She didn't want to tell us how to reach them, but she's a minor; we can only do so much before needing them to come out here." And with that, Tommy knocked on Lil's door, and then walked inside.
The room was small, divided into two sections for another person, but lacked a lot of spade to move around. There was a curtain up to separate each patient's area; however the curtain was pulled back because Lil was the only one inside. With her bed the closest to the door, Tommy found himself facing her back as she laid on her side in fetal position, facing the window and looking out. She didn't turn when she heard the door open. She didn't even flinch as Tommy's footsteps crept closer to her, or even as he found his hand stroking her arm affectionately.
Although the monitors alarmed Tommy at first, it wasn't as difficult as he thought it would be for him to ignore them. Instead he concentrated on his nervousness…and finally he cleared his throat. "How's your stomach?" he asked her.
Without mustering any type of emotion, Lil replied dryly, "I'm okay."
Her skin turned cold then and Tommy stopped touching her, taken aback by her sudden temperature change. He was used to her soft flesh having a relaxing feeling when he came in contact with it. He put his hands in his pockets and then glanced around, hoping to discover a chair nearby, like in a corner or something. He saw one clear across the room by the side of the unoccupied bed, but by going to get it, Tommy knew that he would have to face Lil. After debating, he decided that he'd eventually have to see her anyway, so he might as well get it over with immediately. And at least, hopefully he could use this opportunity to make up for all he put her though.
Awkwardly Tommy strode across the room to grab the chair, and then sat it down in front of the side Lil was facing. He heard her sigh, glanced at her, and saw the tears streaming down her face. He wasn't surprised, but the sight broke his heart, because he blamed himself, for obvious reasons. "Shit Lil…don't cry."
"I'm sorry," she said. She took a deep breath. "I'm just…you know. This isn't how I expected I'd end my night."
Tommy nodded. "Yeah, me either. I figured we were gonna be cuddled up on the couch watching whatever movie and eating snacks." I was gonna tell you everything you wanted to hear about the baby, and then we were going to fill each other's voids. "And you know how things get when it's just us…"
Lil forced a smile, but her eyes held an unfamiliar look of turmoil. "Yeah, I know. We always wind up playing house or something." She laughed then, but Tommy could tell that the laugh also wasn't natural.
He fought himself from touching her again; from reaching out to her and holding her in his arms. He wanted to then…he wanted to kiss her and erase all of her pain, like he used to do when they were kids and the most complicated thing they experienced involved making a mess on the floor, which immediately was okay once it got cleaned up. Now things were going to be much harder to heal, because all of their tragedies cut deeper than that. And this time, he wanted to mean every single promise he made. He wanted to intertwine his fingers in her brown hair because he loved doing it as much as she loved the feeling, or even go back in time and stop this all from happening. He could've kept himself away from her and preyed on some other unsuspecting girl, where hurting her wouldn't weigh as heavily on his conscious as it had with Lil because no matter what, they had grew up together, and he had a special kind of love for her.
"I'm sorry Lil…I'm sorry for doing this to you."
At first, he got no reply. Lil just stared blankly, almost as if she hadn't heard him. Then she whispered, "Tommy, it's okay. I did this to myself."
"No, you didn't. I'm just…my head's just so fucked up. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me."
She shook her head then, and reached out to him, slowly, as if she had been unsure about doing it herself. Her cold fingertips caressed Tommy's cheek softly, as if he was the one needing to be comforted. "Tommy…I know you don't love me. I always knew you didn't love me; you can't love me when you have somebody as wonderful as Kimi on your right arm. And I mean…despite how much it hurt, I'd rather have half of you, then none of you at all. I chose to be number two…or number three…or number five…whatever. I always knew…but I didn't care. The flowers…I know they weren't for me either. But I know that when I got home, I would've went on pretending, and they would have been cherished as if they were my own."
The guilt weighing on Tommy's shoulders caused him to grab her hand, and hold it in his to warm it up. "Lil…"
She bit her bottom lip and shook her head in emotional pain. "Without you…I wouldn't have my baby. And now nobody's telling me if my baby is okay…that's all I wanna know. The doctors didn't tell you anything?"
Tommy hesitated. Now wasn't the time to tell her…he didn't want to have to be the one always breaking her heart. "Lil…the baby's…you were having the cramps because you were…"
His voice trailed off.
And if you were just watching the room with no sound, the first thing you would've noticed was the change in Lil's eyes. The change was drastic; the color drained from her face. "No," Lil murmured. She struggled to sit up and wiped her eyes on the thin hospital blanket in her possession. "No…Tommy, no." The tears were coming down faster as she looked down at her stomach and then touched it with her ice cold hands. For some reason, even though she hadn't let began showing, she knew something was wrong. She knew something was missing…her eyes told her that things weren't the same as they had been earlier that day. Then she made eye contact with Tommy, the tears streaming silently down her cheeks, and when he turned away, she knew that she wasn't going to be a mother anymore. And that was the catalyst to her screams. Her rage. Her emotional breakdown.
People in the rooms close to her asked the doctors what was going on while newborn children in the emergency rooms burst into tears as well. Doctors felt uncomfortable as they tried tending to other patients, struggling to maintain their professional composure, feeling sorry for whoever was in the room with the young teenager who had just gone through a miscarriage. Silently they thanked God for not being the ones to break the news, and then sent up a prayer in her behalf.
Tommy watched her gather her thoughts and she continued to scream no, unsure of what to do, or how to comfort her. She looked at him then, and for the first time in his life, he saw something else besides love or hurt directed towards him. "Lil…please, calm down," he managed to let out, because those were the only words he could think up.
"No," she snapped. "Get out! Get out of here, you bastard! You did this to me and now you just…you think you can tell me to calm down?"
"I didn't mean it like—"
"Shut the fuck up talking to me," she screamed. "Get the hell out of here; stay out of my life. I bet you're happy too. I bet when they told you my baby died, you held the hugest smile on your face, and couldn't wait to tell me because you thought I'd be as happy as you are!"
"Please Lil, don't think that. I'd never want to see you hurting like this."
"The hell you wouldn't. You're always hurting me anyway; this time saved your ass. Now you don't have to tell anybody you're gonna be a father, because my baby's dead. They're gonna know I'm pregnant, or at least that I was…but you won't have to tell a soul anything."
"I will, Lil. I'll tell them everything if that'll make you happy."
She laughed then, a maniacal one. She was in hysteria, fighting her tears from stopping her from speaking all together. "Whatever Tommy, we've already established that you didn't care about me. Can you please just do me a favor and leave me alone now?"
He didn't want to leave her, especially like that, but the desperation in her voice he knew she was covering…she needed to cope with this without him. He brought her into this and her mind was made up; she blamed him as much as he blamed himself. There was nothing he could do to make things better, especially with him being the one who caused it all.