Chapter 34.

Just For Today by Clairo

"What do you need, H." Sarah held out her one free hand and placed it on my back. "Great question. I can't answer."

"Only like 2 more hours, then you can get all of your emotions out." She tried to comfort me.

"I don't think the people want a show like that." I chuckled, knowing a ball of tears and dissociation wasn't what they paid for. I thought maybe I'd be okay by now? Being in Florence again and all. I drove past the florist the other day and... well, it was bad.

"I'll take him if you want, Sarah." Mitch came from around the corner and she passed the baby over to him.

"You know you're more exhausting to take care of than him." Mitch grunted in my direction as he took their baby in his arms.

I simply can't stand hospitals. Something about the crumbly and badly-chosen paint colors rip me apart. And I hate waiting rooms. They're too cramped and I don't like watching people cry. It's always too cold, you never think to bring a jacket with you to the emergency room.

I must be evil for thinking it was annoying when other people cried. For a person that cares very much for artistic vulnerability, other people have been very much on my nerves lately. It's insensitive, I know, I'm very aware. I'm not very okay so I'll excuse it. My head hurts.

"A stroke, ma'am." I snapped out of my head to find a doctor standing directly in front of me. He was looking down on me like I was a cool insect to look at. "I'm sorry, what did you... say?" I asked.

"Your grandmother had a stroke. It'll take a bit of recovery time, though she'll never be fully recovered from such a thing. We're very sorry to inform you so." He was speaking in Italian, and I understood perfectly what he meant.

"She's okay, yes? Yes-" I replied. "She's alive." She's alive... but not much more.

I should be the one crying. The lack of tears manifested itself in pretty dark numbness. My head was crashing loud, the pressure that built up making me feel like someone was squeezing it hard from both sides of my temples. I'm not sure why I kept taking deeper and deeper breaths, it felt like I was telling myself to start panicking for attention or something. Why I would do such a thing for attention, I could never answer.

I didn't know when I was allowed to leave. I might as well stay forever to spare myself the embarrassment. Another case of my toxic selfishness in a serious situation. I'm too out of it... I'm completely detached from everything. It makes me angry. I feel like I can only speak in simple sentences. Anna is... she's... she's in pain and I am still thinking about myself. To be quite honest I'm not sure I'm thinking anything at all right now. This hospital room looks like it's taken the sickness of every soul in this place upon its shoulders.

People like to tell you that things get better, and I agree. Oddly enough, they do. It's a wonder people ever reach a point in life where they are stagnant in happiness. Or satisfaction. I can't imagine, or think of, a time where I felt happiness in my fingers and didn't break them all whilst gripping too tight. I think it's Nathaniel Hawthorne, the one quote about butterflies. "Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

Time makes you more unstable, and keeping yourself alive with more breaths only makes you hyperventilate. I love and hate coming to conclusions but living consists only of walking on lines. I'm hyperventilating just trying to remember what it feels like to not have a headache, and it's leaving me empty. I called my mom twice already. She's going to try to come to Florence as soon as possible. Anna is in her room and I'm not allowed in to be with her. I don't have anyone else, which sounds pretty sad, and I know I'm only saying it to make myself more sad. Sad is addicting. And I said I hate conclusions.

Cartwheel by Lucy Dacus

Happiness being a butterfly feels like a disgustingly basic metaphor. But I like it.

I came to, remembering that I was sitting alone in a frigid, cool toned waiting room, doing exactly what it called for me to do. I wasn't sure what exactly I was waiting for, of course. Maybe a filled seat to my left.

He sat down quietly, not acknowledging my presence. My eyes were tied to the tiles on the floor, soon after distracted by a pair of shoes at the end of their lifeline. Really, they were next to falling apart, obviously a very separate color from what they once were. I like them.

A soft presence, one far from unfamiliar. It was too quiet, I could hear him breathing. He seemed comfortable, like hospitals didn't make him choke up in fear. I didn't feel the need to look at him, just the need to be close to him. I pursued happiness for a long time, but I can't say it ever brought me anything that could last. Happiness personified must be some sort of paradox. It's the root of evil, and in all of my blind selfishness I wish to believe that.

"You look anxious, you know. Sickly almost."

"You don't look so good yourself." I whispered as my throat tightened with tears.

"Is she doing alright." I hated the way his voice sounded ringing through my head. Tainted with sadistic raspiness and care at the same time.

"She is. They won't let me see her."

He didn't answer me from then on. When I needed it. I needed him to answer me. He wasn't even there.

"You need something, sweetie?" A receptionist asked me, her hand behind my back as I found myself standing up, breathing too hard as I searched for real words again.

"Did you- see him?" I slowed my breathing after asking, giving in. I was shaking again, just slightly. "No one else is here right now, sweets."

I turned around to look at my chair, the empty chair to the now right of me. "One moment, I'm sorry. Mi scusi." I excused myself. My phone shook in my unstable hands.

I couldn't do it. Not now.

"H- hello?" The voice stuttered as it echoed through my mind again, and I nearly dropped to the floor with anger directed at myself. I'd thought it'd occur to me at a sooner time than this moment now. But of course as my contradicting narrative must continue, I realized that I was truly alone when I lost control over my imagination filling the space.

"You ready for tonight, mate?" Someone around me said, but I couldn't put a face to it. It felt abnormally stuffy in the dressing room. Today didn't necessarily feel like a great day for this, huh.

Sarah came rushing into the room, my phone in her hand. "H." She said, too seriously.

I went into some sort of emergency panic mode when she handed me my own phone.

Evermore (feat. Bon Iver) by Taylor Swift

There was a new stillness in the air. Not stillborn humidity, not frozen silence. It felt like a ring echoed through every limb, like a peace I hadn't felt in enough time to forget how to recognize it. In exactly the same moment it left.

"Darby-"

"Hm?" I hummed to answer, raising a shaking hand to my ear. It didn't take much longer for me to go into shock, the tears lodging in the worst spot in my throat. If I was making this up, if this was still in my head, I wasn't sure how much more of it I could stand. He kept saying my name like it was going to kill him just the same, but he wouldn't stop trying to reach me.

"Darby? You've gotta answer me, Darby, what happened?"

I blinked a couple of times.

"Answer my simple questions, okay? Just try." He could tell I was breathing too hard.

"Is something wrong?" He said, clearly. "Anna..." I mustered, my voice scratchier than I remember it being. "Now what is wrong with Anna?" And his voice was alarmingly steady. He could mask his worry now. We all learn to cope over time. I don't think time is indefinitely the remedy to pain. I do think that we need time to adapt to pain. Adaptation is the closest thing to a remedy. Nothing fixes pain, but forgetting comes with finding ways to mask it. That doesn't take time, it takes pure willpower. I think it's funny how numbness is a stranger we're tempted to love when we feel unbearable pain. Time plays its part in forgetting, which is why we're so prone to wishing numbness upon ourselves, just to then desire even being broken over being lonely.

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