I do not own Doritos, or Hershey's. for some reason, i had a LOT of fun with this chapter. i should make it more of the dialogue-y kind of chapter i guess. i should like to hear your feed back on that. its just because feel like i haven't been adding enough dialogue to this story.
disclaim, disclaim, disclaim...
Meg nodded. A wave of rejection flowed over Christine and she found herself bawling even more; her shoulders jerking as her silent sobs racked her frail body. Meg instinctively sat down on Christine's bed and wrapped an arm around her, trying to soothe her sick friend. Christine was so into crying that she didn't even noticed Raoul creep into the room and sit down in Erik's usual seat. He sympathetically eyed Christine but allowed the two girls their moment. He then brought out a business periodical and settled into the armchair quietly.
After what seemed like an eternity, Christine finally calmed down. Meg handed her a cup of water and Christine sullenly drank everything. She hiccuped a bit and she placed a hand over her heart that was palpitating.
"He's coming back, you know." Meg whispered. She'd adjusted her position so that she was also lying on the bed, stroking Christine's hair.
"How do you know that? Even I don't know that and you've never even met the guy." Christine answered crossly. It was true and Christine felt immature for acting so indifferently but she couldn't help what she felt inside.
"True. But I know what's in his heart."
Silence. The sun was setting lowly, casting a soft orange glow into the sky that seeped into Christine's room. She vaguely wondered what Erik was doing at that moment but then she remembered that she should be angry with him for leaving her. Now, she wasn't going to be able to concentrate on anything else without him by her side supporting her through everything. It was quiet in the room save for the quiet beeping of the EKG monitor and the 'swoosh' of glossy magazine paper.
"It would've been better if I didn't ever meet Erik, wouldn't it?" Christine wondered aloud. If she hadn't fallen in love then she would be saved of all this hospital trouble—and the pain.
"Yeah, but think about it, C, you'd never know what it feels like to actually fall in love. You'd be living a pretty bleak life, don't you think? It's a wonderful thing to fall in love, C."
"In my case, it's the worst thing. But I guess you're kind of right. It's worth everything to be able to hold a man's hand, savoring that moment because he's, well, your everything."
"Are you girls going to keep talking all gooey like that? Because if so, I'll be waiting outside." Raoul looked up from his magazine, a smug grin on his face. It was apathetic of him to say something like that but he was trying to lighten up the mood and both of the girls understood. They responded by laughing.
"Oh, Christine, I've been having these horrible menstrual cramps! I swear, I've had to switch to jumbo tampons." Meg mockingly said, coyly looking at Raoul who had his index fingers in both ears, humming "Pop Goes the Weasel!"
Christine laughed even harder as Meg lifted off of the bed and moved to sit on one of the arms of the chair that Raoul was sitting on. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the head. Christine was watching them but she casually turned to the window that overlooked the hallway and nurse's station, suddenly eager to see what was happening outside.
"Hey, I'm going to go get some chips from the vending machine outside. You girls want anything?" Raoul asked, already getting up from his seat.
"Get me Doritos, babe! And a soda, oh, and a bar of Hershey's!" Meg called out as Raoul grabbed the door knob. He glanced at Christine who shook her head. He smiled and walked out of the room.
"So tell me, are you going to marry him, or what?" Christine turned her head to address Meg whom she caught day dreaming—a gooey smile and glassy eyes, with her head cocked to the side.
"Oh, I don't know. I just know that I love him a lot!" Meg snapped out of her reverie, stretching her arms and back. Christine laughed.
"You guys look really happy together and it looks pretty much sown up from what I can see. Meg, have you—uhm—slept together? Because if you have, I totally support you but I just don't want you to get hurt."
"Well, we haven't gotten to that point but we're getting there pretty quickly. Christine, I think he's the one for me. He's the only one that can make me smile by just hearing his voice through the phone."
Christine knew that Meg had been with a lot of other guys but this time, she looked really serious and happy. She was genuinely pleased to see her best friend find true love. Christine just didn't realize how selfless she really was until Erik's emerald eyes popped into her head.
They were both caught up in their own thoughts and day dreams until Meg spoke up a little while later.
"Do you want me to talk to him for you, C?" Christine knew who she was pertaining to and she had to seriously think about what she was going to say.
Raoul came into the room at that moment, juggling food items in his arms. He laid them onto the table across from Christine's bed completely occupied.
After thinking hard about it, Christine spoke in a small voice.
"I don't know."
-oOo-
"Christine, if you want me to help you get better, you're going to have actually participate here." Dr. Andres sighed, speaking through the intercom. He sat back onto his seat and ran a hand through his thinning hair, wearily monitoring the readings on the screen in front of him. Christine was in the other room, hooked up to a lot of cords and machines, looking rebellious and tired.
She and her doctor were up all morning trying to find some good results from the tests that Dr. Andres had her perform. It was all in preparation for the operation that she was to have but at this point, all they had was research and luck. It had been a few days since Erik left and since then, all they'd been doing were tests and tests again.
"Remind me again why I'm doing this?" Christine called out, fuming mad at her doctor but mostly at herself. She crossed her arms in front of her and glared through the glass window.
"Because you and I both know I'm your only chance at hitting 50 and right now you're making that extremely difficult. Christine, you know that your condition is worsening. Your heart is reacting to even the slightest stimuli. Could you please be more cooperative?"
Christine felt like she was being chided by her father. Well, in retrospect, Dr. Andres was more of a father to her than her own was. Still, she continued to glare, not allowing the bitter truth to sink into her bones and fragile heart.
"Now, will you please, breathe in for me and let's try this again?"
She sucked in a big breath and held it in.
"You're meant to exhale afterward, Christine." Dr. Andres
Letting her breath go, she shook her head, chuckling to herself as Dr. Andres exasperated.
He waited for the monitor to reboot so that they could try it again and he just stared at his patient; it wasn't like her at all to be this difficult.
"Why are you doing this?" Dr. Andres asked over the intercom. Christine hesitated to answer, knowing that the real reason was because she was bitter about Erik leaving her and she just needed an outlet to vent out her negative feelings. She certainly couldn't do it to Meg. She'd slap her silly if anyone vented out on her.
"There! Right there! What ever you're doing, keep doing it! I'm finally getting positive readings. This is amazing." Dr. Andres hovered over the monitor, replacing his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
In the other room, Christine wondered what she had done to make the test work. She hadn't moved at all. All she had thought about was—
"Remarkable! Christine, this is a breakthrough." Dr. Andres stepped out of the control room and entered the testing room. He walked over to his patient and began to detach the cords off of her body.
"Your results are telling me a lot. I won't show you the 'nitty gritty' of it—you probably won't be able to understand, anyway—so I'll just summarize for you. I've discovered the cause of your heart palpitation. Apparently, your case of PCC is merely aggravating your heart's current condition."
He finished unhooking her from the various machines surrounding her seat and she waited quietly for him to continue. She didn't feel like anything else he might have discovered could make her feel any worse knowing that she could die at any moment anyway.
"You've got a harsh congenital abnormality. It's been causing some of the blood pumped to your heart to flow backwards hence the palpitations. I've also discovered a place in your heart valve that has formed rather differently—probably during your development in your mother's womb. Most cases can be cured with certain medicines but in your case, surgery should fix the problem. We can replace—,"
"You found all that out with this test?" Christine asked indifferently, eyeing the numerous machines in the room.
"I know this is hard for you—,"
"No! Stop trying to empathize! You do not know how hard this is for me!" Christine stood up, although much shorter than her doctor, she looked up at him indignantly.
"You have absolutely no idea what it feels like to watch your friends play soccer, wishing you could kick a goal yourself! You have absolutely no idea how hard it is to wake up every morning like you're out of breath and dizzy because your heart is beating too fast. And you have no idea how much it hurts to love someone you literally cannot love!"
Dr. Andres' expression softened as Christine's face became flooded with tears.
"So don't you dare tell me you know how goddamned hard this is for me because you don't! You don't! You don't!" Christine was sobbing harder now, choking on her words. She sank to the floor, leaning against the wall and for the first time, she truly felt like a patient with an incurable heart disease.
Dr. Andres didn't know what to do. He had to stop being her doctor for a minute and be her friend, her father. He quietly sat down beside her and put his arm around her weak body. She leaned against him, fascinated to hear the sound of a strong heart beating normally wishing everything would just disappear except that heartbeat.
-oOo-
"Seriously, stop this bull crap and come over here. You know she needs you." Meg said into her Bluetooth ear piece while fixing some of Christine's stuff in the bathroom.
"Meg, really, you think that this is any easier for me? To watch her life slip away while I stand back and let it happen?" Erik's deep voice filtered through the bad connection and Meg pressed her Bluetooth more firmly to her ear.
"Oh, so you think that this is any easier for her? Uh, reality check, she has the heart problem, not you. So can you please suck up your male ego—,"
"My male ego?" Erik chuckled. "Meg,that is the last thing on my mind right now. I just spent the last 20 minutes crying my eyes—okay that was beside the point. The point is, if I stayed there, it'd only make her condition worse! You—I—look, I can't just go in there expecting everything to be alright."
"But if I knew Christine, which I do, she'd only want to be with you. So think about it—oh, I got to go—," Meg pressed a button on her ear piece as she heard the door creak open and saw a tired Christine crawl into her bed and roll up into the covers.
"Who were you talking to?" Christine called out from the bed.
"Oh, just a girl from my History class asking about some homework." Meg replied, arranging their toothbrushes in a cup on the sink.
College. Christine thought about how much she was missing at school and wondered if she would ever be able to finish her course. But she couldn't worry about that for the time being. Both she and Dr. Andres were busy all morning with the tests and everything that she decided to reward herself with sleep.
-oOo-
"…she'd only want to be with you." These were the last words that registered into Erik's mind. After that, all that he could hear was the dial tone on the other line. He put his cell phone away and rubbed his nape.
Erik never really was much of a drinker but at the moment, he was nursing his second bottle for the day believing that this is what people do when they are really depressed. As he took a swig of his beer, he removed his mask and started to clean the soft contours inside.
He wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing. He thought about why he couldn't find the courage to be with Christine. The very thought of her dying was enough to make Erik feel insane but for the time being, he would've been able to handle it. He wasn't afraid of commitment, was he?
Blinking into realization, he stopped wiping his mask and shook his head. He was terrified of commitment. All those things that he'd said to Christine the day before were what he truly felt inside but really, he didn't know how he was going to do it. It was a huge shocker that someone would reciprocate his feelings. Who knew that someone would want to love a distorted man? From that point, he didn't know what to do next.
What does your heart tell you to do? A small voice chirped in Erik's head. He almost laughed at himself for hearing voices in his head, but these times were getting stranger and stranger for him. He got up from his seat, threw his bottle into the trash and put his mask on.
He was being ridiculous; of course he had to be with Christine. He wouldn't want to miss anything that happened to Christine for the world. He stuck his key into the ignition and revved the car to life. Careful not to push the speed limit, Erik stayed under it but just enough to keep his sanity.
Finally making it to the hospital, he walked through the doors, barely noticing the nurses greeting him whom he'd befriended while he was there. He took the stairwell to Christine's room; the elevator wasn't fast enough for him. In his anxiety, he almost ran into an emergency that was crowded by a lot of doctors trying to get their patient to the OR. But at last, he got to her room.
Thinking that it would be a dramatic entrance if he swung the door open, he did just that. With a wide smile on his face, he opened the door.
"Christine, I—," Erik's heart stopped when he realized that she wasn't there. The machines were gone; not even Meg was there. The room was empty.
PLEASE review. if u had as much fun reading this as me making it, then u'll do me the favor of pressing that green button :)