***
I couldn’t fully open my eyes but I knew right away that I was in a hospital room again. The hospitals I’ve always stayed at had an odd smell; active visitors might know what I mean. And their pillows had an odd feel to it. It was a cotton ball away from being super soft or being super hard.
“We found a hazardous amount of drugs in her system,” I overheard a doctor say.
“I knew it! That explains everything,” I heard Kathy say.
“She needs help,” Paul said.
“Major help! You are supposed to help her, Paul, and look at her now! It’s her second time in the hospital in just some weeks,” Jason said.
It hurt to open my eyes, but I tried to anyway. I looked around the room with my eyes squinted. I didn’t see them, I could only hear them arguing.
“Hey! Well I’m not the one who—”
Kathy cut Paul off. “Okay ladies, where’d she get the drugs from?”
“Why don’t you ask her, you crazy old woman!” Paul said.
“Bring it on, tubs!” I heard a slap sound and assumed Kathy slapped Paul. She had done it before, so it didn’t startle me.
“All I know is that she has been taking her anti-psychotic medication that Dr. Summings prescribed her. And she's been acting normal since then, besides this incident,” Paul said.
“Bullshit!” Kathy said.
“Okay! It doesn’t matter, we’re all in this together,” Paul’s voice cracked.
“No, we’re not. When she is eighteen in four months, she is out of here. We are leaving the hell you call home. My wife, my property!” Jason said.
His words gave me chills down my back. With my thumb, I slid the engagement ring off my finger a bit.
“Oh shut up!” I heard Kathy come into my hospital room. I assumed she saw the ring already, so I slid it back on.
“Mum?” I said as if I had a British accent.
“Yes honey?” I could feel her breath over my face. “What is it?” Her voice didn’t sound so familiar anymore—she sounded like a serene deep smoker.
“Where am I?” I said with such a low voice I didn’t think she could hear me.
“In California; in the hospital.”
“Huh? What’s today?”
“The…March the sixteenth.”
“The sixteenth? It’s been two days?”
She leaned over me and the scent of her perfume burned my nose. “Yeah, you remember?”
“Yeah, I remember everything. Time goes by fast.”
“It does,” she muttered as she brushed my hair out my face. I could feel her pause, maybe looking at my ring. It felt like heat was coming out my ring finger as the silence went on.
“Are you sure you want to?”
“To what?” I opened my eyes wider to read her face.
“Marry? At eighteen?”
“Yes I am sure…now I am.”
“But, we barely know him!”
“I know him.”
“Well, I don’t. And I know what it’s like to marry at a young age, like when I married your daddy, Frank.”
“Me and Jason are different.”
“I want you to research him when you get the chance.”
“Research him? Why would I do that?”
“Just so you can know who you are marrying. I have Mike Durling’s number if you need it.”
“I don’t need that.”
“I love you, Lily.” She kissed my hand and then walked out the room and slammed the door before I could reply.
Paul walked in next as he ate a bag of chips. “Baby?”
“Yeah?”
“Oh Lily! You scared me so,” he ran to hug me and gave me kisses with his onion breath.
“Really?”
“Yes! I didn’t think you were going to wake up.”
“Why would you think that?” I said as I pushed him off me.
“Why do you do it, baby?”
“What do I do?”
“The drugs, why do it? Don’t be like all those other Hollywood chicks. We talked about this. Where you lying to me when you had told me you quit taking the XANAX?”
“I do not do drugs, Paul.”
“That’s what they all say,” he mumbled.
“You’re with me every day! When would I ever have time to do drugs?”
“Druggies have their ways.”
“Well, I’m not a druggie.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later.”
I closed my eyes expecting Jason to come in next, but he did not. I waited but ended up falling asleep. A part of me was happy he didn’t come in, I didn’t want to see him anyway.
The next day when I returned home, I was almost certain I was dreaming because Kathy was being beyond polite to me.
“Let me fluff your pillow for you,” she said as she yanked my pillow from under my head.
“Stop it!” I pulled it out her hands. “You’re really annoying me; can’t you go throw crap in your room around—”
It hit me that I did the same things Kathy always did. Not the pillow fluffing, but the fits she threw at least once a day. The mood swings, the tantrums, everything. I was she in the making. “Nothing,” I whispered to her, changing my thought.
She left the room in confusion, talking to herself.
“Knock! Knock!” Ana came into my room with a huge box—probably full of junk food.
“Ana?” I said.
“Hey,” she closed the door behind her. “So, how do you feel?” She closed my drapes in secrecy.
“Um…annoyed.”
“Yeah…so you’re still getting married to him?” She threw me a stack of tabloid magazines with me as their headlines.
“I guess,” I sighed. “I am.”
She jumped on my bed as if I invited her. “Really? After all that?”
“Yeah, I mean it was one time.”
“No, you shouldn’t though. He could have killed you. I wouldn’t, but then again no one has ever proposed to me.” She opened a bag of chips and shoved them in my face to eat some.
“But, you said not to dump him!”
“I changed my mind. It’s a really bad idea.”
“Yeah but it’s the past, so let’s get over it!” I felt the stone in my heart return for the millionth time. “He wouldn’t do it again, plus I think it was just a dream.”
“It was no dream, how would I know your dream?” she said with a mouth full of chips. “Believe what you want, I know what I saw.”
“Well, forget what you saw. I don’t want you to ever talk about it again…to me or anyone else. If you’re my friend, you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Fine, I won’t ever speak of that night again,” she said.
“You promise?”
“Promise what?”
“To not talk about that night!”
“What night? What are you talking about?” she winked.
“Oh, Ana.”
Kathy came back into the room with a plate full of hot fresh cookies and sat them on the bed. “So, will you be going to school next week? Or shall I call a tutor?”
“Um…mom, I’m not in school anymore. Plus, if so that would be Paul’s job,” I laughed at how she tried to act as if she cared about me.
“Really? You’re not in school?” She walked out the room mumbling to herself again.
“Funny,” Ana began to choke on the chips.
“What?”
“You claim how you hate your mom and how crazy she is. Ha, but so far, like no offense, everything you said about her, describes you. Or just the things I’ve seen you do in the past weeks.”
“No, she must be tamed; she usually isn’t this nice. I mean, six weeks ago if I told her I was getting married, she would have bit my head off…literally.”
“Ha, still funny though.”
Ana and I talked for about half an hour—mainly about Jason and me. She had many theories on him—I mean tons.
“But he loves you right?” she asked for th
e millionth time.
“Yeah of course, duh,” I flashed my ring.
“But don’t you ever think outside the box, like, I don’t know, Lily. It’s just something about him that worries me,” Ana complained. “Well, I’ve known him for a while and there are some things about him that are questionable.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Like he’s going to try to murder me and steal all my money or something. I mean come on now, Ana. Too many Lifetime movies for you.”
“I know right, but just imagine,” she laughed. “It’s just you two have been together for no more than six months and he proposes?”
“Big deal, Ana! A lot of people do that!”
“Okay, I don’t know. Maybe I’m a bit of a drama queen.”
“No maybe you’re just jealous,” I said. “Admit it, you want Jason all for yourself,” I said with kissing sounds.
“No,” she laughed nearly choking. “Okay we’ll see.”
“See what?” I snorted.
“If you have love with no endings,” her voice got serious.
“What does that mean?”
“Love with no endings…it’s like love that will never end. No matter what you do or say, you will always love each other no matter what. You would kill for that person if you had to.”
***
April
May
June
July