Disclaimer: I don't own anything. This whole ditty is something I plagiarized by some crazy lady. Seriously, someone should get her help. Okay, so it's not plagiarized, but if you don't like this here ending, we'll just pretend it is.
Chapter VIII: Panic At The Hospice
I managed to deflect Sunny's questions by putting on her favorite CD and turning it up. As we arrived at the hospice 'The Wheels on The Bus' was playing for the fourth time. I momentarily considered throwing the CD under the wheels of a bus.
By the time I'd helped Sunny out of her seat, Johnny was standing at the front of my car. I locked up and grabbed Sunny's hand. She held out her other hand to Johnny. He took it, as if holding some strange woman's kid's hand was a daily occurrence, and we made our way to Aunt Alice's room together like some kind of dysfunctional family.
When Aunt Alice's room was only two doors down, Sunny took off at a run. I heard Aunt Alice laugh and tell Sunny she'd missed her before we entered. Aunt Alice looked up at us and beamed. My heart ached as I took in her fragile features.
"Johnny boy, come here, let me look at you!" Aunt Alice spoke as if she'd met him a hundred times before. I felt a cool chill run down my spine when I saw Johnny smile and approach Aunt Alice without inhibition.
I watched her take his face between her fragile hands and the whole scene seemed so surreal, yet familiar. It was almost a sense of déjà vu.
"Just as I remember," she declared before letting him go.
I couldn't see his face from where I stood, but I heard the laughter in his voice when he replied. "I'm glad."
Once Johnny had moved away, I gave her a hug and breathed in the familiar scent of her lavender soap.
"I missed you, dear," she whispered into my ear as I held her tightly.
"I missed you, too," I replied.
It was just as we did every week. Whether she was aware of that fact, I'm not quite sure. She was so muddled up these days no one knew what was a vision and what was some memory she'd dredged up from inside that mind of hers.
We all sat down and talked about Sunny and her trip to see Igglepiggle the day before. I tried not to show my fury at the mention of his name, but Johnny had noticed it. I flinched as his hand wrapped around mine, but his touch made me giddy and I instantly forgot about Igglepiggle and Skanky Daisy.
Before long, it was time to head home. Johnny was flavor of the day when he suggested we go to the beach. He spent hours goofing around with Sunny at the playground by the foreshore before we went home for dinner, which Sunny was adamant that Johnny should join us for. After seeking silent approval from me, he agreed.
We made homemade pizzas and devoured them while watching Sleeping Beauty, Sunny's favorite movie.
Over the following weeks Johnny came with us every Sunday to meet with Aunt Alice and would then spend the night at our place. It was Johnny's fourth week visiting Aunt Alice when things went wayside. So far to the wayside in fact that it had me feeling as if I had fallen from the edge of the Earth.
I was watching Alice and Sunny as they discussed what Sunny had been up to during the week. Upon Sunny bringing up an altercation she'd had with another kid in the playground just days before, I began to feel an intense feeling of déjà vu. It was so real that I began to scream silently for it all to stop so I could look ahead to see what happens next. Only it kept on going and it all seemed to be going faster. Their voices became muted as I concentrated on how fast the world was spinning. It all seemed to be getting out of control. I grew scared as I realized that I couldn't see ahead of time, yet I could feel that surreal sense of living this moment before.
The world seemed to slow just as quickly as it had sped up and I realized then that my hand was laced with Johnny's. Voices seemed to come back into focus as though I were swimming to the surface of a pool after sitting at the bottom.
"…right, Bella?.. Bella!"
I jumped at the sound of Aunt Alice calling me and shifted my leg so that Johnny's hand fell away from mine. I suddenly didn't want Sunny seeing his gesture of affection. I couldn't even tell you why.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. "Huh?" I asked, looking at Aunt Alice in confusion.
"I was just telling Sunny how one day Johnny would be moving in with you and she'd get to sing the bed time song with him every night."
Ice cold air seemed to blow across the back of my neck as a mixture of fear, anxiousness and embarrassment rolled over me. I stood up so quickly that the floor felt as if it were coming up to meet me. I stepped toward the door and held steadfast onto the handle.
"I … Alice, you can't say things like that. Sunny …" I looked at my daughter. Her sweet, rounded face looked up at me expectantly. She was waiting for what I had to say to her, and when I said nothing she turned back to look at Alice.
"What's wrong with mummy?" she asked in a small voice.
"She's having a panic attack, dear. She misheard me, you see. I said 'one day' not tomorrow…"
More was being said, but I couldn't hear it. It was as if by her saying I was having a panic attack, my body suddenly decided that that was indeed what was happening. I felt the air being pushed from my lungs and tried desperately to get it back. I even tried fanning it into my mouth as if it made perfect sense to scoop up oxygen and put it in my opened gob. Everything started to become blurry and I could barely make out Johnny's face when he was suddenly standing in front of me.
I realized then that he was talking to me, but I couldn't make out the muffled words. His arm wrapped around me and I was vaguely aware of him walking me out of the room. The moment we stepped outside the harsh sun began making the prickly heat of embarrassment that much more intense. I flinched and stepped back to move out of the sunlight. I only succeeded in stepping on Johnny's foot and losing my balance. He held me tighter and led me to the garden bench by the door. With his arm still around me, I heard his muffled encouragement to relax.
The moment I sat down, oxygen began to rush back into my lungs. I gasped as the sensation of my lungs filling up and the blood flowing through my body with intense speed, made me heady.
"What just happened?"
I felt Johnny's fingertips brush up and down my upper arm before he finally answered. "You had a panic attack." He said it so casually that he sounded like Aunt Alice had moments before.
I gazed up at him. I was so confused that I could literally feel my eyebrows meet in the middle. "How can you not be freaked out by that? The things she says, the things she … does …" My voice petered out as a small smile began to spread over his face, making his dimples come out to play.
I was so shocked by his reaction that I wanted to rip off my eyebrows and hold them up high, just so my face could match the shock I felt inside.
"So she says one day we'll live together, it's hardly an atrocity is it?"
"But to say that to Sunny? That's just giving her false hope!"
"Is it?" He looked at me questioningly. His voice was level as he spoke and it took me a second to notice that he was serious, despite the small smile he sported.
"We … just … met." I tried to find words to explain how absurd this all was. "I barely know you!" My oxygen levels were depleting again. I couldn't force another word out.
Those dimples again. "Well, I'm a Gemini. I like horror movies, long walks along the beach-" I playfully punched him in the leg.
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
His laugh relaxed me a little. I allowed my head to rest on his chest for a moment, and he pulled me into him in response. "We'll just take this a day at a time, but there's something you should know."
"I hope it's not that you're wanted for murder in another state," I mumbled into his shirt.
"Well there was that one time –" I looked up at him, mouth agape. He laughed and shook his head. "I'm joking, I promise. But you need to know this." He held my gaze imploringly. "I'm not going anywhere. My Wonder World and your Adventure World are meant for each other. It'd just be cruel to cancel their play dates because you're unsure about the future."
"Am I that easy to read?"
"You make it very clear that Sunny is your main priority and you don't want her future to be marred by your bad decisions. You're a good mother; it's what every good mother wants. I just hoped that eventually you'd see that I'm not the worst decision you could make." He was only half teasing me, but I smiled at him none the less.
"I suppose it would be a bad decision on my part to separate Adventure and Wonder World, wouldn't it?" I replied as calmly as possible. I tried my best to hide the fact that my insides wanted to be on the outside.
He hummed in agreement before replying. "Catastrophic," he agreed as he smiled at me. His perfectly shaped dimples made an appearance and I scowled at him. His dimples got deeper and I scowled at him harder. Eventually he broke into laughter and I laughed along with him.
For once I felt truly relaxed with my life and where I was within it. What's more, I couldn't wait to see what my future held. I vowed that from that day forward, I would be more accepting of Aunt Alice's cryptic messages.
Oh, and for the record, from the day our worlds collided, I couldn't watch Johnny on television anymore without smiling secretly and daydreaming about tearing off his purple and orange outfit, as we have done plenty of times. Though, Sunny will gladly tell anyone who's willing to listen that Johnny Chuck is her mommy's boyfriend. Yeah, okay, sometimes it's me telling the world that I'm dating Johnny Chuck and that we have our own bedtime song we like to sing.
The Fire Trucking End
I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much to everyone that has read this and big love back to those that reviewed on top of reading it.
In other news AoC will be updating and finishing soon. I have made a promise to myself, no more stories until AoC is complete. So to all my AoC supporters, who inadvertently support my lazy ass, bless you and thank you, from the bottom of my heart xx
Aunt Alice just told me that those that didn't review the story would rec it to their friends instead. Boy, I hope she's right! :D