It had been fairly easy for Gilbert to get into the hospital with Lizzy, but getting back in to see her proved more difficult. No matter how many times he insisted that all he wanted to do was see her, they continued to stress that her condition was too unstable; she was in ICU.
Not even to just see her, maybe one more time.
"Can I at least know how she's doing?" He asked.
"She's unstable. We'll call you if anything changes." The detached voice over the phone said, before hanging up.
Gilbert looked back at his wall. It was ugly, and the whole place smelled like cigarette smoke, and then air freshener subsequently sprayed around the room to hide the smell of smoke. It only succeed in combining the two scents into one more putrid, and still hanging thickly present in the air. Gilbert lowered his expectations, but it didn't help. He blamed his inability to sleep on the poor mattress, but it had more to do with the massive clot of thoughts that was sitting in his head.
He hadn't thought much about what Lizzy had looked like when he had found her, but now he could see it all again, and choked on the painful memories, bleeding and grasping them like the broken glass on her floor, and the tears on her face, the fact that she must have put the pills back into the cabinet because he hadn't seen them on the counter or ground. He shuddered, and pulled the blankets up, closing his eyes. Lizzy broadened on the floor, her hair falling like rays of the sun around her still head.
He opened his eyes to escape the horrible image, even if it meant staring at the burnt orange wall.
This whole place is a purgatory. He thought that he would suffocate on his thoughts, if not the air. Please. It was too late to stop tears from wetting the pillow.
It was too early to feel guilt, like he hadn't saved her life. But he hadn't, because whether she recovered or note, she had still attempted suicide. Why? She didn't tell me it would kill her. It evidenced his failure as a friend.
He positioned his phone beside his bed and turned the volume up, in case the hospital called.
Gilbert had to remind himself that it was still summer. Even if it seemed like an impossibly long summer, and the motel had freezing air-conditioning pumping through the room. He could remember sweating in his backyard, weeding his garden, wishing that he was inside with a fan. Summer had a different meaning now. It meant heat, and the way tears got sticky on your cheeks after a few minutes of soaking on them. It meant that the sidewalk was too hot to go out on barefoot. And wearing flip-flops. More than anything, summer was supposed to be good. But it didn't feel like summer, from where Gilbert lay, a mildewing yellow ceiling above him, instead of a star studded sky, or even scorching sunlight. Summer didn't touch Gilbert, where the whole room was dark, and his friend might be dying. As a whole the summer had started out promisingly, and then been cut down like the harvest by his own mentality.
The phone rang. He picked it up so fast that it had probably broken a record, somewhere. "Hello, this is Gilbert Beilschmidt." he rasped.
"Elizaveta Hedevary is in a coma. She isn't currently stable enough for visitors, but we will call you if anything changes. Thank you." said a hospital employee.
Each word was like a stab-wound.
Nothing changed, like the summer of immobile seasons.
Thank you for reading and please review!
I had a pretty terrible week: my guinea pig died, I went through a lot of anxiety, and I had to do a 24-hour blood pressure study. But I'm mostly okay now :)
Can I just say how much it hurt to write this? Poor Gilbert :'(
Guest Review
Guest: Thank you for reviewing! I understand how you feel. Editing is very stressful for me because I have to read all of the sad things they suffer (and my cringey, horrendous mistakes).