The hospital always had a sick smell to it, no matter what floor Julia was on.
She shuffled in front of the receptionists' desk, eyes puffy and red from a three day crying binge. The blonde woman, bags under her eyes and way too much violet eye shadow around her lids, looked up at Julia with a bored and aggravated look. Julia didn't blame her whole heartedly, for being aggravated with the teary eyed mechanic, Julia was having a hard time lifting her voice high enough for anyone to hear.
"Speak up again, sweetheart," the receptionist – her name plate said Rebecca Dedaux – repeated for perhaps the third time in the past minute. "I have other people waiting behind you."
Julia looked over her shoulder, seeing a few disgruntled patients waiting in the crunchy, sea foam blue waiting chairs. She jumped a little and looked back to the receptionist. "I came to see Debra Westwick. Room 77 I think."
The receptionist nodded, turning to her computer and typing away for a moment. "She just had her medication delivered," she turned back to Julia. "You can head on up, just check in right here," she pulled out a wooden clipboard and laid it in front of Julia, placing a pen in her hand. "And then we have all we need."
Julia nodded mutely and signed her name in perfect print, leaving behind a tear drop before she turned around the oval shaped desk and started towards the elevators. She waited behind to overweight women who were prattling on about their atrocious hair styles, until the elevator to their right opened up. Julia hung behind while they climbed into the elevator; she wanted to be by herself so she could weep for a moment alone before she went to her mother's room. The doctor, Steven Malloy, said her mother only had – at most – a week left in the hospital before she would be moved to a retirement home where she could pass away peacefully. It was set for the very act of letting someone die. He hadn't called it a retirement home, but that was how Julia saw it and that was what it seemed like. Well, it really seemed like a morgue, a waiting room for the dead, and Julia wouldn't go. This was the last time Julia would see her mother, her mother's care taker for the past three months, Elizabeth, would be coming tomorrow to pick her up and wait with her mother in the home.
They were almost friends, if Debra remembered her.
Julia looked up through the tears when she heard a ding and an elevator opened in front of her. It was empty and cold. She stepped into it and pressed the button that would take her to the fourth floor. Where they kept the elderly. Her mother wasn't an old woman, she had just turned 42, that wasn't old. To everyone here, it was apparently. To everyone but her, it was. So what she had dementia? It ran early in her family, Julia wished her own family could see that. Her aunt Cassie was beginning to succumb to it. She was only 33. Julia was waiting for it to come for her. She was waiting for that horrible thing to come for her. She wouldn't fight it like her mother tried to, she would just kill herself.
She let her head hand and watched a few tears hit against the toe of her boot. When the doors opened, she swiped away the tears on the cuff of her jumpsuit and she pointed her chin higher, stepping out of the elevator. She didn't have to put on a show here, everyone tried when they visited their loved ones, they could see through a façade like hers.
Julia smiled at the worn nurse that left her mother's room. She didn't have a name tag, her scrubs had been replaced with a dark patterned dress and she had black hair with fresh wrinkles in her face. Julia's heart almost stopped. For a moment, the nurse was an angel of death. Julia watched the woman wheel away the medication cart and then she looked into the room, seeing her mother seated on the edge of her bed, staring at the curtains of her window. Julia swallowed around the painful lump in her throat, pinching her cheeks a few times to get the color going again, and then she stepped into the room.
She shut the door quietly behind her and unzipped the top of her jumpsuit, tying the sleeves together around her waist and she walked over to the curtains. She gripped the edges and pushed them open, seeing the bustling city of Atlanta beneath them. She smiled a forced smile and turned around to her mother, who was staring at her in confusion. Julia was a mirror image of her mother.
Deeply freckled, sun kissed skin. Vibrant copper hair, big blue-green eyes. A pointed nose. She was beautiful, her mother, but Julia always thought there was nothing truly special about herself. She didn't have the same charisma her mother had with other people. She didn't have that same buoyant laugh that got everyone else going.
But her mother had lost those things since the dementia set in. She looked worn, tired, and clueless to what was going on, who she was or where she was. Julia clasped her fingers in front of her and then dropped her hands to her sides, sitting in front of her mother in the chair she had put there during her last visit.
"Hey momma," Julia whispered, reaching out and taking a hold of her cold hands. "They need to turn up the heat in here," she muttered more to herself than her mother. "Today's Mother's Day, ya know," her mother still just stared at her. Julia bit her lip and looked down at her mother's hands, rubbing her thumbs of the back of her right hand. "I had to come today…I had to tell you happy Mother's Day," she licked the corner of her mouth and stared at the door. "Think they have Mother's Day in heaven?"
Julia looked back to her mother, seeing no recognition in her eyes and almost started crying. No, she had made it a point to not cry in front of her mother. It would only upset her. Julia kissed her mother's thumb and set her hands back in her lap, pushing herself back to her feet. She approached the window again, staring down at the streets.
"I shouldn't have come today," she whispered. "I'm just hurting myself," she felt a tear slip down her cheek.
Silence went through the room; Julia could faintly hear the beeping of a pager in the room next door. "I'm happy you came today, Julia."
Julia turned around to her mother. "Momma?"
Her mother stared at her and then pat the spot beside her on the bed. "Come sit beside me here," Julia nodded and did as she was told, taking a hold of her mother's hand. Her mother stared at the floor for the longest time. "Julia…I can't remember a lot of what I know these days…" she shook her head and looked over to Julia. "I can't remember your fathers face, I can't remember what I ate for breakfast, I can't remember the old home in Florida…but I will never forget you. You have to know that before I pass away."
Julia stared at her mother, wanting to cry. "Momma," she whispered before she hugged her mother, right cheek pressed against the side of her mother's breast.
Her mother stroked her hair gently with boney hands. "I love you Julia…and don't you ever forget that."
Julia opened her eyes to a moldy ceiling.
She felt so stuffed, like she had a head cold. She groaned as she sat up, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles and then she dropped her hands in front of her. After looked around for a moment, noticing her father slouched in a chair behind the front desk through the hippie beads he had tacked up, she pushed herself out of bed and headed towards the bathroom. She yawned as she shut the door and lowered the toilet seat; men were so gross, they couldn't just put down a damn toilet seat? After she did her business in the bathroom she found her jumpsuit under the bed and tugged it on. She tied her hair up and walked into the main part of the store, pulling her cigarette pack from her back pocket.
She opened the front door and stepped outside, letting it slam shut as she lit a cigarette. She flicked away the match she had used and stared out to the desert. The sun was barely up, only enough for a deep purple hue to settle across the sand. She sat in the crunchy folding chair Jeb had sitting out at all times, blowing out smoke from her nose. She wondered when Goggle was going to be up, he was probably watching her right now.
"Julia."
She didn't even jump when he said her name, just looked over at him. He was waiting on the corner of the building, sitting in the sand. "You are so fucking creepy," she took another drag from her cigarette and then she smiled. "How long have you been out here?"
He stared at her with those alien eyes for a moment and then he shrugged, looking down at the ground. "Sin' midnight," he muttered.
Julia nodded, closing her left eye as it was suddenly assaulted by cigarette smoke. "Well, you ready to take me to the village?"
Goggle looked back up to her, his warped face almost conveying some sort of innocence and then he nodded. "Wheneva you ready."
Julia stared at him for a moment before she nodded and bent over, putting on the cigarette against the ground beside her right boot. She stuffed the half burnt cigarette into the pack and then stood, dropping the pack into her back pocket. "Well then lets goooo."
He stood slowly, letting her get to his side before he started walking towards the desert. Jules looked up to the blazing sky and then squinted, stuffing her hands into her back pockets. They walked in silence for a long time, just the howl of the wind and the shuffle of sand under their boots. Jules eyes ran over Goggles back as she began to linger behind him and then she noticed him repeatedly trying to look back at her.
"What's up, Goggle?"
He jumped and then looked forward again. "Ya real quiet today…"
Jules shrugged, but he couldn't see her. "Didn't sleep so good. All I could feel were springs in my back the whole night. Bed is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever slept on."
Goggle hummed for a moment and then looked to their right, squinting his already beady eyes against the sun. "Bein watched," he muttered.
Jules didn't look up, didn't try to see if he was right. She trusted him. "By who though?"
"Lizar'," he continued to mutter. "Don' know what he wants."
"Maybe he's just a nosey mother fucker," Jules griped, finally deciding to look up. She couldn't see anything though, the sun was too bright. "Can he hear us?"
Goggle shook his head and looked forward again. "Nah. Long as we don' talk too loud."
Jules rolled her eyes. That didn't really answer her question. "That's um…that's sort of an obvious answer."
When he said nothing else, Jules peered around Goggle and to the path ahead. She noticed the dark curve of a cave and her heart gave an involuntary thump. Where the hell was he leading her? Her brow furrowed and then she reached out, taking a hold of the right elbow of his jumpsuit. He froze mid-step and then looked back at her, his beady eyes full of panic and confusion. For a crazy mutant, he sure was jumpy.
"Wait a minute, why are we headed towards a cave," she shook her head a little, letting go of his arm. "Why can't we just go through the desert?"
He shook his head. "Take too long," he pointed to the tunnel. "Quicka."
Jules stared at him. "I would rather take the long way around because of how creepy that tunnel looks."
He shook his head again and started walking. "No' really."
Jules sighed in exasperation, aggravated with his response and, at this point, him in general. But she followed behind him dutifully, her throat growing more and more dry the closer they got to the entrance. Once they were bathed in the cool coverage of the tunnel, she sighed at the relief from the burning sun, but then she squeaked when she realized how dark it was. She jumped forward a little, taking a hold of Goggle's had through the dark. He grunted at the contact and tried to shake her off, but she wouldn't let go and her fingers simply tightened to a painful hold every time he tried to pull away.
"Le' go."
Jules shook her head fiercely, her feet shuffling just behind his against the rocks beneath their feet. "No, you wanted to drag me in here, I get to hold your hand. Shut up and deal with it."
He didn't protest any further, but he wasn't exactly comfortable with the force she was pushing onto him. Jules could smell the dampness around them and it wasn't exactly a pleasing smell. That, mixed with the pungent odor of Goggle and Jules was plunged into intervals of held breath. She wandered if she did this enough, would she pass out? It sure as hell felt like it. But after her suffering, Jules saw the end of the tunnel. Ow she was worried about the bright ass son burning her eyes.
"God, I wish I had my shades," she muttered against the shoulder of his jumpsuit.
"Shades? We in shades…"
Jules chuckled. "No, not like shade. Sunglasses, so the sun doesn't burn my eyes."
He hummed in his throat but said nothing else, nothing to comfort or warn her when the sun hit her eyes. It was harsh, it burned and made her sort of sick but Jules just closed her eyes tightly and forced Goggle to a stop. She kept her eyes closed for a long time, holding onto his arm and waiting for the stinging to go away before she blinked her way through the rays. It was interesting, to gaze down over a village almost untouched by time since the fifties. It looked like a small town from the actual fifties. Only there were broken down cars and blood stains through the sand.
"You know," Jules finally let go of Goggles and swaggered on her feet for a moment. "If it wasn't so creepy out here, I would say your home town is real quaint."
Goggle looked at her incredulously but then shook his head and started down the rocks again. "Come…"
Beautiful romance will come, just you wait. It won't be much long.