When he opened his eyes again he was sitting upright, wiping a bead of sweat away from his forehead. He set down his novel and sighed, pressing the button that signaled the nurses' station. It sent back a string of static that woke up Elaine, and she sat up in her bed to rub her swollen eyelids.
"How can we help you, Mrs. Phillips?"
"Ah, no. This is her husband. But she's up now thanks to that static I told you to fix an hour ago."
"We're so sorry sir." the nurse on the other end faltered. "We've still been assisting to issues on the power and AC with other patients..."
"I'm calling about the AC. It's a fucking sauna in here. If it's the ER it's no big deal, right?"
"Of course not, sir. We'll have it fixed right away."
The other end went silent and Dan ended the call. He watched his wife stir back into a comfortable position, shifting her casted leg. Finally she lay on her back, pulling the blanket up over her chest. "It's not that warm in here, is it?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Tired…"
"I see...and do you remember anything yet?"
She shook her head and shut her eyes. Dan stood up and proclaimed "I'll pick up dinner for you, what would you like?"
"I'm not really hungry, I'm alright." Elaine responded through closed eyes.
"You haven't eaten all day."
"Oh, fine. I'm just so tired…"
"I'll pick you up something and you can have it whenever you'd like, okay?"
Dan retrieved her order and headed down the overheated hospital halls. The reign of summer was beginning to take toll on the city, and they struggled to keep up with the rising temperatures. He had been looking forward to summer. It had been his favorite time of year, and that year he had been planning a vacation with his family. Now that his son was gone, he could no longer stomach the idea of a family vacation.
He paused in the middle of an empty hall when the resurfaced thought knotted his insides. A group of nurses rushed his way, wheeling a patient to an open room. In the moment his chest swelled and his panic approached, the hospital staff nearly ran into him from behind. He stepped out of the way and into a young woman beside him, who let out a yelp.
He turned to apologize. The woman had her nose covered instead of her eyes which leaked faster than broken water pipes.
"I didn't mean to bump into you," Dan mumbled, flabbergasted. "I'm sorry, don't cry."
The young blond shook her head aggressively either way and held her palms to him. "Oh, no. It—it's not your fault."
He blinked and looked her down. "Weren't you here this morning, too?"
Indeed she struck him as familiar. He had seen her wandering the ER earlier; once in front of the nurses' station and again in the lobby out front. She wiped her eyes with her tattered sleeve, leaned toward him and said "Please don't tell security. I'm just—I'm looking for someone."
"Ah, um, well then." Dan nodded. "Erm, are you sure you'll be okay?"
"I don't know." The woman uttered. "I feel like the worst. I just wish that..."
Tears apprehended her cheeks again, and having seen the same behavior in his sessions, Dan was able to piece together the rest her sentence. She turned back the way she had been heading, hiding her face with her hands.
He observed in apprehension. There was a small chance he was wrong, however he couldn't risk letting her go as she was. In the time he concluded to say something, she was some ways down the hall.
"I don't mean to intrude," Dan shot her way, and she stopped to hear him out. "Nor do I know what you've been through. But stay strong, nobody deserves to die."
He wasn't sure if he had come through to her. She quivered and fumbled away, her back unreadable. To hell with it! Why was he trying to save a complete stranger? Still, he eyed her until she exited the hall, wishing for her safety. Death was frequent enough on its own accord, so to him it was cruel that one would take their own life.
As for the woman, she could not cleanse the man's words from her mind. Nobody deserves to die. Nobody deserves to die. Nobody deserves—
No! Anyone claiming such a thing was ignorant. Many people deserve to die for things they've done. Why was she listening to a stranger in the first place?
The automatic doors jostled open and rays of sunlight pelted the hospital parking lot. The words played back again. Nobody deserves to die...
The corners of her lips arched upwards. She thought of Weston. 'Nobody deserves to die.' That's exactly what he would say, too. She reached into her pocket and without another thought, her thin fingers dialed vigorously. Her smile faded as the other line rang into her ear. What could she possibly say to him? She hadn't talked to him in almost a year! But what if she told him the truth? How would he take it?
Click.
"Hello, Weston Moore speaking! If you're calling about tutoring, I actually just ran out of spots."
Shit, it was really him! She was startled to hear him again after so long. He sounded the same, but oh! She couldn't do it. "Pardon," she whispered. "Wrong number."
"Err—huh? Lin—"
Click.
Weston lowered the phone from his ear. Could that have really been her? He set the phone down and waited several minutes, assuming it would begin ringing again. It didn't. Why would she be calling him? For what he could tell she wanted nothing to do with him after their break-up. He sighed. He would never truly live without her in his life.
...Or so he had always thought. Even then, years after Lindsay's death, it would occasionally sift into his daily thoughts: I'm not alive and I never will be. Although he was so often drowning in work that the idea seldom found itself his primary concern, one morning the thought became so heavy that he purchased a plane ticket out of state that very hour. He called his office to cancel all of the appointments he had lined up over the next few days. While he was waiting in a line at the airport, his boss called, infuriated.
"You think you can just cancel all those appointments for no reason? You may be Weston Moore, but I still have no problem firing you!"
"You won't fire me." Weston replied, half asleep. "I bring your place publicity. You won't do a thing."
"You arrogant little—"
And so, by the time the flight was ready to be boarded, Weston Moore was jobless. He hated that job, anyway. The therapists there only had half of their brains functioning. During his plane ride and most of the taxi ride, he was scribbling away on a spare notepad. He was forced to put his cellphone on silent after the seventh time it rang. It was important that he find the right words; the rest of the world didn't matter anymore.
He stepped out of the taxi, paid the driver, and gandered at the half-filled parking lot. He exhaled through his nose and straightened his tie and the bag that hung around his shoulder, meandering to the front entrance. The AC inside the building was refreshing enough to keep him there although nothing was as he remembered it (especially the packed lobby).
Weston got into line at the secretary's desk and three people later, it was his turn to be seen. The blinds fell out of nowhere, veiling the secretary's glass window. He frowned in confusion and knocked on the glass. "Excuse me, miss, erm..."
What was her name again? He wracked the back of his mind but couldn't locate it. He sighed and cleared his throat. "Listen, I understand if you're pissed at me, so...I want to apologize for hitting on you all the time back when I worked here. It's just that you got so cute and flustered, it was hard to resist..."
The blinds shot upwards to reveal a gorgeous long-haired beauty. Her messy waves fell down past her gently tanned shoulders, and her dark irises consulted him in disgust. "You hit on me? When?"
She certainly wasn't the same secretary he remembered. He took a breath and glanced her over once more. "Uh…huh?"
"How could you hit on a kid? What's your problem?"
"Ash…?"
She emitted a vexed groan and slammed the blinds back down over the window. Weston jumped up and leaned against the glass, knocking feverishly. "Woah, hold up! Come back! You've got it all wrong! I thought you were someone else!"
He pulled away after noticing half the lobby was gaping as if he had threatened to hurt the secretary. He scratched his head and sat down in the lobby, and the crowd's gazes averted back to their original activities (most of which was magazine reading).
Soon enough a young psychologist opened the door to the lobby to see her patient out. As soon as the patient was out the door, Weston left his seat in the lobby to talk to her.
The therapist identified him right away and excitedly rambled on about his work. Weston played along well, and it was almost as if he was meeting the first person to ever praise him. By the end of their conversation when Weston asked for permission to go back into the halls, the therapist obliged without a single question.
She unlocked the hall door and let him in, then called for her next patient waiting in the lobby. Weston knocked on the secretary's door and didn't wait for an answer, barging in and shutting the door behind him.
Ash veered around in her seat, and Weston almost tripped over a child near the door. The young girl dodged his feet and squirmed her way under the secretary's desk, but several of her toys weren't as lucky and met destruction by the soles of Weston's shoes.
He mumbled a few obscenities and carefully tinkered around the toys on the floor. He then gazed onto Ash. She glared at him, nostrils somewhat flared in irritation, but he didn't notice. He was much too occupied taking in that Ash had aged. A grin crossed his face when he saw the mole under her eye remained. He recalled her mentioning during one of their sessions that as soon as she was of age she would have it removed, yet there it was now, untouched.
"Who let you back here?" the young woman demanded.
He shrugged.
"Leave before I call the police!"
"I just wanted to have a word with Dan."
"Oh yeah? Well I'm not going to let you hurt him!"
Of course that had to come up, didn't it? He smiled and held back delighted chuckles. "I bet you would stop me again if I tried something like that now, huh? I never got to thank you for last time. I don't think I would have been able to forgive myself for hurting him if I had..."
She blushed and whirled her seat around to face her desk, and silence filled the void until Ash's stoic tone broke it. "Why did you disappear?"
"Disappear—?"
"We didn't know where you ran off to until you hit fame...you made no attempt to contact any of us, besides Elaine a few years back..."
He stared. "I didn't mean to worry you...but if I can be honest, that was the last thing I expected you to say."
"Don't play it off like you think I could have ever hated you."
"You always used to kick me, what else would I assume?"
She froze for a few moments and then spun around to face him. She stood up and stepped around the toys to embrace him in a hug. They had, given his previous occupation as her psychologist, never hugged before. Her arms around him was blissful, yet he couldn't return it. He didn't know what to think. She rested her head against him as if it was somewhere she had forever longed to be.
Was this really the same girl? He knew it was; she hadn't changed, and yet her appearance had. She was taller, her hair longer and more defined with age.
Even her grip was stronger than he remembered, but every word she spoke now was no different than it would have been if it was spoken years before.
He lifted a hand to brush some hair away from her face, tucking it behind one of her pointed elf-like ears. She lifted her head, and looked to be compiling a thought to verbalize. He was afraid to hear it. Was she going to break away from him now? He didn't even get the chance to return her embrace!
And just as he expected, she began to break away from him, and she intended for that to be that. Unable to let the chance pass him, Weston stepped forward to fill the space she had emptied and kissed her. She gasped slightly in surprise and pulled away, but he pulled her back to steal several more kisses from her lips.
"Weston!" Ash finally freed herself, her face crimson. "There's a little kid here!"
"A kid—? Oh." he glanced down to the small child under the desk who had been watching them. "Why's she under there, anyway?"
"She's a little bit shy around strangers. She lightens up if you introduce—"
The door swung open and a different therapist was at the door, whining that Ash had better do her job or else he would tell their boss. She rushed back to her desk and whipped the curtain over the window away to serve the single patient waiting. Weston slipped out of the room before the therapist could ask who he was and how he had been let back.
The hallway was different only in that almost all the rooms along it were filled. He passed by a few doors that were cracked open and glanced inside as he strode by. Every single room was now office space to a therapist. When he got to Dan's door he couldn't resist looking to see who occupied his old room across the hall, but the door was cracked and the light off. It was empty.
He turned and knocked on the door, and he heard Dan permit his visitor entry. He opened the door and stood at the entrance. Dan had a cup of coffee tilted back to his lips while his free hand tackled the keyboard.
There was slight age visible in his face, but his stocky dark-blond hair was the same, and possibly by a trick of the light, appeared more coarse than Weston recalled; it skewed the appearance of any obvious aging. He stopped typing and lowered his coffee mug to greet his guest, but as soon as he saw Weston he spit out his drink, sending the freshly brewed coffee to puddle among the papers on his desk.
"Uhh..." he wiped the coffee from his lips. "'Morning..."
"Are you busy?"
He shook his head and set down his mug to toss out the wet papers. "No, no. Come on in."
Weston settled onto the red couch across from Dan's desk. Dan settled back down in his seat once the papers were trashed and smiled softly in a manner that did not suit him. "How have you been?"
Weston said nothing. Dan edged onwards. "I liked the paper you did a few months ago. It was great research in Developmental psych..."
Dan silenced, nervously fiddling with his coffee mug. A call attempted to come in from his phone, wailing out for a mere moment before Dan hit the button to ignore the call.
"I thought you said you weren't busy?" Weston pondered aloud.
"I think can spare a few minutes for now. Did you ever...I mean, I sent you a letter, so I was curious if it got to you."
"I got it."
"Ah, right...well..."
"It doesn't fix anything."
"Neither did my court rulings. That doesn't mean I won't try to make it right."
Weston nodded. "I know that you're trying. It's more than I can say for myself. How has Ash been holding up?"
"She's okay...maybe you should talk to her. She's always felt bad about what happened..."
"It wasn't her fault."
"Of course not, but given the circumstances..."
Dan's phone started ringing once more. He hesitated and abruptly clicked ignore. Weston stood up from the couch, walked up to Dan's desk and opened his bag, pulling out the notepad he had written on during the flight there. "I'll talk to her about it. I still don't know why Lindsay saved her, especially when Ash had been trying to hurt her. I suppose she thought someone else's life was more important than her own..."
Weston tore a handful of pages away from the notepad and handed them to Dan, "Read this when you have the time. It's a response to your letter. I just want it to be clear that I forgive you."
At first it was as if he hadn't heard a thing, his hazel eyes glued onto Weston's letter. Then at the speed of a sloth, he extended his hand out to take the letter. He did not quite read it, but only looked onto the first page in disbelief. He hid his regret to answer his phone as it began to whine for the third time. "Hello? ...Oh—yeah, yeah. Patch her through."
Weston nodded to excuse himself, but Dan gestured him to stop. "Ah, yes ma'am I understand. Just give me one moment."
He reached into his drawer, shuffling about, pulling out a form for Weston. He took it and Dan covered the phone receiver so that only Weston could hear. "I know you could work anywhere if you wanted to—given your impressive resume and all—but if you ever need a place there's always one here for you."
Weston grinned, but since Dan had returned to his phone call, sorting through patient files, he failed to notice. He folded the application, slid it into his bag and started down the hall he had come down. He didn't know how to explain it, but having forgiven Dan made him feel alive.
He was almost back at the secretary's office when the floor below him cracked. He jumped back, stunned, and let his eyes fall down to the girl and the toys she had spread across the hallway.
The girl was devastated to have another toy ruined by Weston's careless saunter. Her eyes watered and tears dribbled down her pale face.
"Damn..." he mumbled under his breath in frustration and got to his knees in front of her to see the damaged toy. He recognized the toy too well, and right as he did he glanced over the others scattered around. They were all the same toys that sat on his desk, intended to keep his child patients happy if they ever felt unnerved by the environment therapy entailed. After Lindsay's death Weston had quit his job so fast he had left many things behind in his office, including the toys.
"I'm sorry I broke it." Weston chose his words with caution. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings..."
The child hid her tearful face with the help of her long, wavy dirty-blond hair. "It's okay...I forgive you."
"My name's Weston. What's yours?"
She sniffed and nervously tapped one of her feet. "Emma…"
"That's a very pretty name, Emma. Did you know you look just as beautiful as your mother?"
The child blushed at the compliment, but didn't seem to find it unusual that the stranger knew who her mother was. Weston chuckled and picked up one of the toys several feet to his right. "This one was always my favorite."
Emma's eyes lit up. "Me too!"
The secretary's door opened a few doors down and Ash hurried towards the child, exasperated. "Emma you can't be in the hall, how many times do I have to say it? You know how mad the therapists get when you play out here!"
"But dad said—"
"I know what he said, trust me. Come on now; let's bring your toys back in my room."
Weston helped them gather up the toys, and in one handful Emma hurried them back to the secretary's desk. As soon as the child was out of sight, Ash faced Weston in curiosity. "Did you talk to him?"
"Yeah. Guess I'll be on my way."
"Where are you going?"
"Job searching."
"Well, if you need work, Dan's looking for therapists."
"He told me. I'm considering it. I do miss this place.
"I'm sorry…"
"Huh? For what?"
Dan's words about Ash came to him in that moment. He frowned and watched her dark eyebrows tense and the faint smile vanish from her soft lips.
"You really mean it?"
Her eyes jolted to his with suspense. "I—I do mean it! I regret it; I regret everything I did that night. I'm so sorry..."
If she wanted to feel at guilt, he couldn't convince her otherwise. After all, it had been her who went after Lindsay; it had been her who trapped Lindsay against the pavement with her hands.
Weston smiled. "If you're sorry then I guess I've got to forgive you."
"…Just like that?"
"I think Lindsay did the right thing. It wouldn't be the same without you around."
She reddened and stomped on his foot, nearly sending him toppling backwards. "Shit, Ash! This is exactly what I mean!"
She laughed loudly and it bounced against the hallway walls that enclosed them, sure enough to disturb any sessions underway. She leaned forward and stole a kiss from him so fast that before he realized she had done so she had dashed away and was almost back to her office door.
The faint tingle against his lips was all that remained to prove Ash had been there. If he thought he couldn't feel more alive minutes ago, he wasn't sure how he should have felt then. He filled out the application before he left, slipped it under Dan's door, and did his best to make the next flight home.
First of all hats off to your amazing performance. I must say its really great. The grammar and all is kind of okay only but why don't you go through your story once more? So that you could catch up with any mistakes you have made and correct them. You have great talent and i hope you keep writing more. I felt this line to be a little awkward "wiping a bead of sweat away" Sweat is an uncountable thing. So how can you say that a bead of sweat. Yeah Okay rest all fine. Keep Going .. Keep Writing 
Points: 257
Reviews: 109
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