"Emmy, you don't really have to go to this if your not feeling up to it. No one would be mad at you. We would all understand." Wayne said to his daughter
"I have to go. I have to show my respects, what she ment to me. I will be fine. I wanted to speak anyway." Emily said to her fathers reflection in her bathroom mirror.
"Can't really argue with that, can I?" Wayne said with a sad smile on his face.
"How do you get over something like this, dad? I had everything in my life figured out." Emily said, lowering her head and letting her tears fall.
"Honestly? You never really have your life figured out Emily. Things like this, tragic things, they will happen. Things that you can't really plan on. And it is hard, but you learn to live with it, accept it." Wayne told his daughter as he pulled her into a tight hug.
"I love her. Loved her." Emily said.
"I know you did, baby girl. This will get better, I promise. One day you will wake up and this won't be so sad and terrible." Wayne said.
And he was right. Things got better for Emily. She graduated and moved on from Maya, and her untimely death. She loved being on her own in college and really did find herself. Then one day Alison showed up at her apartment steps and played Emily's heart the way she always did. But the girl was too blinded by what she thought was love to realize the lies that Ali was feeding her. The year they broke up, when Emily moved to the beach, she lost herself again. Only this time, on her own, she had no one to pick up her pieces. She threw her anger and her hurt into her career and into the beach house she bought. The visits from her father and the girls are what kept her going. The food her mother sent to her or with her father kept her alive at times when she would be so busy she forgot to eat and take care of herself.
But there was no one there to console her now. She wouldn't let anyone in. The girls tried to get her to communicate in any way that they could. Her mother sat food in front of her, hoping that she would at least acknowledge it. The only thing that Emily really payed attention to was the beeping of Paige's machines. She would count the seconds between Paige's breaths as she let out a breath. No amount of swimming practice taught her to hold her breath as long as she did when her machines made a new noise, or when the girls heart rate would go down before it settled. It was like Paige was dreaming, her heart still active. Her eyes moving behind the lids wildly at some moments. Emily would crawl into bed and lay beside her, calming Paige down while stroking her face.
It took Paige ten days to wake Emily would swear that time stopped when she heard the noise that shook her from her thoughts. She was sitting in the chair by Paige's bed, the one that had become a home to her, holding Paige's hand. The girls machines beeped like they usually did, her heart rate going up slightly. Only this time Emily noticed that the girls face was scrunched up, like she was trying to block the sun from her eyes. She sat up in her seat and squeezed the girls hand tightly.
"Em." She heard Paige mumble, voice raspy from having been dry for days.
"Open your eyes." Emily whispered to the girl as she leaned up out of the chair so her face was inches from Paige's.
"Em." Paige repeated along with some other words Emily didn't understand. Paige gave a grunt of frustration when Emily didn't respond.
"Paige, honey, please open your eyes and look at me." Emily said as tears escaped her eyes. Paige did as Emily asked and opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the beautiful girl in front of her.
"Say it again." Paige rasped out in a whisper.
"Say what again?" Emily questioned her, thinking that Paige must have been confused.
"Say that you love me again." Paige said, a small smile playing at her lips.
"I love you, you idiot." Emily said with a crying laugh as she leaned in to give Paige a soft kiss on the forehead.
"I love you too." Paige said. "How long have I been here?"
"Ten days." Emily said, fully crying now as she held Paige's face in her hands.
"And how long have you been here?" Paige asked.
"Ten long days." Emily admitted.
"Em." Paige began, Emily cutting her off.
"I wasn't going to leave you Paige. You weren't leaving me, so I wasn't leaving you." Emily said as she climbed into bed beside Paige as the doctor and a nurse came in to examine her. The doctor pulled down Paige's gown enough to look at the insicion that he had done to do her surgerys when she was first brought in. It was the first time that Emily had seen them to, and she broke down in Paige's bed upon seeing it.
"She is awake now. She is going strong." The doctor said, with his hand on Emily's shoulder, before he walked out of the room after telling Paige what had happened and what he had done. Emily slept soundly that night, tightly wrapped around Paige as the girl watched her sleep.
