Chapter Fifty One: Memory Lapse
The balance between being asleep and actually being awake is a thin line. Foggy figures of men in white, yelling and screaming, the cries of a little girl, moaning in pain and the banging of a man giving into a heart attack. He knows he's in a hospital. He can feel it in his broken bones. The only thing he wasn't sure of was who he was. What was he doing here? Why was there oblivion of empty space where his memories should be?
Why was he in so much pain?
"Is he ever going to be able to remember?" Taylor pressed the doctor, glancing at Eric's sleeping form another time. So frail and weak, wires and the beeping of cold machinery distorting the lie she made up to stop herself from truly panicking.
"Head injuries are tough to predict," the man scratched his bald head, "You're just going to have to hope for the best."
"Hope for the best?" She lowered her gaze to her trembling body covered in a thin hospital gown. How could she hope for the best when she was so sick of hoping for the best in herself she tried to… Taylor sighed, running a hand through her greasy hair.
"There has to be something better you can give me than that Doctor," Taylor finally spoke.
"I'm sorry," The doctor put a hand on her shoulder, "I know you have been going through a tough time but everyone goes through it. You need to be strong for him."
"Everyone goes through this?" She repeats, feeling like the idiot she pretended to be. Everyone can't go through this. The crushing blow of darkness eating away at your sanity in till there's nothing left.
"Look, maybe you should go back to your room."
"No!" Taylor cried, stiffening, "No, please don't make me be alone."
The doctor looks the trembling girl over, the girl who had protested that she hadn't tried to kill herself. It had been an accident. Her mother even tried to bribe the hospital.
"Cody Jackson is awake. Why don't you go talk to him before they pick him up?" he told her, steering her away from Eric.
"But I want to be with him! What if he wakes up?" Taylor squirmed out of his grasp.
The doctor was becoming less and less pitiful and more and more annoyed. "He won't be awake for hours Miss."
"I don't care!" Taylor insisted, planting herself on the seat she had occupied since she heard Eric came out of surgery.
He gave her a hard look but decided it wasn't worth it. He just wanted to go for his lunch break. "Just don't touch anything."
She nods, staring at the sleeping boy with a look that made the doctor suddenly understand.
"Young love," he mumbled, slamming the door behind him.
