Chapter Tags: No sex, story
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This story now has a proper ending I'm happy with.
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Chapter 10 Waiting
Hospital time was not real time. The minutes slowly slithered. It was never truly quiet. Hannah’s parents sat with me as we silently waited. I hated being in the hospital, but I wasn’t going to leave her aside from bathroom and shower breaks. One nurse suggested to “go to my room and rest.” I refused. Hannah’s parents backed me up. I dozed in a recliner by her bed.
My best friend, Zoe Morgan, entered the room like a tornado. Her blonde hair looked windblown and her eyes were already glistening before she said a word. “You look like a bag of hammered shit,” she managed, her voice sounded like she was as exhausted as me. I burst out crying. She was across the room in a second, hugging me so tight the air whooshed out of my lungs. I cried into her shoulder and tightly hugged her back. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” Zoe whispered in my ear.
When our embrace broke I noticed Hannah’s best friend, Aisha Grant, had entered the room. Aisha’s presence was less like a tornado and more like a negative space, a force of quiet that seemed to suck everything else inward. She gave me a reserved, soft look, then wrapped me in a much gentler hug. “I’m so glad you’re both alive,” she said simply.
A nurse poked her head in and said, “Only three visitors at a time, I’m afraid.” The nurse glanced at Zoe, then at Aisha, and then at me, the one who’d barely left the room in three days. “I’ll make a schedule,” Aisha offered, “Give me a few minutes?” The nurse nodded and looked satisfied. Aisha wrote names and times on a whiteboard in the neatest block letters I’d ever seen. She was like Hannah in a lot of ways.
Diane approached me, voice soft. “Would you like to go get some air, Wendy?” The idea of leaving Hannah’s side was a sharp, physical pain. I shook my head. “I’ll stay.” She gave me an understanding smile. “I’d stay too if it were Frank,” she simply said. Frank hovered by the window with Aisha, the two of them exchanging silent, complex looks. Neither were talkers, but I sensed a deep communication in the way they stood, the way they’d learned to shoulder hope and grief side by side.
A doctor came in when Zoe, Aisha, and I were in the room. “She’s looking better every day, it’s all up to her now.” I looked at him and asked “What can I do to help?” The doctor said, “Talk to her. Play music. Anything familiar can help.” He paused and said, “It looks like you’re doing that already.” After the doctor left, Aisha sat next to me. “You look like hell, Wen.” “I feel like it,” I said, and surprised myself by smiling a little.
Aisha looked at the engagement ring on my finger, then back at me. “She would want you to rest.” I shrugged. “She’d want me here. And I’m not leaving her.” Aisha leaned in, her hand cool on my arm. “You don’t have to be the strong one all the time.” I said nothing, but my body shuddered with the effort of not falling apart. Aisha let the silence stretch, then said “She would do the same for you.”
Zoe added, “Han would probably want you to set the world record for loudest public meltdown, then demand the whole hospital staff throw a party when she wakes up,” I laughed, but it came out as a wet, broken sound.
***
The visitor rotation became our ritual. Diane in the mornings, Frank in the afternoons, Zoe and Aisha switching off evenings and nights. Everyone would bring me food or drinks so I wouldn’t have to leave. I was the constant. And every few hours, I would tell Hannah “Yes I’ll marry you.”
On the third day of sitting by Hannah’s bedside, Zoe poked my shoulder. “You need to eat something that doesn’t come from a vending machine.” She pressed a greasy paper bag into my palm. “I made it myself. It’s called a McMorgen. I broke every health code in the county making it for you.”
I peeled open the bag and was hit with the stench of eggs, cheap cheese, and an ambiguous third odor that could have been love or sabotage. I took a huge bite and let it melt down into my atomized bones. “I love you,” I mumbled around the food. “Not as much as Han,” Zoe replied, “but I’ll allow it.”
Halfway into the McMorgan, Hannah stirred. Her eyelids flickered, lashes trembling the way they sometimes did when she was on the edge of a brilliant thought. At first I thought I was hallucinating. But Zoe saw it too, “She’s waking up,” she whispered, as if afraid to break the spell.
I put my food back in the bag, hit my knees beside the bed, and watched Hannah’s pale lips shape themselves around a single syllable. “Wen.” My name, so soft. I grabbed her hand and poured all my grief and love straight into the bruised knuckles. “I’m here, Han. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
The next ten minutes blurred. A rush of white coats, the stutter of shoes on the floor, voices layered and overlapping, a fog of medicalese. They checked her eyes, her breath, her memory. All news was good news, Hannah was going to make a full recovery. The medical staff left as quick as they came.
Hannah was exhausted, but her grip on my hand was iron. We sat in the quiet, the machine noise now a lullaby. Her gaze drifted down to my hand, to the ring. She blinked, tried to lift her hand, and with effort, brought it up to her face. She croaked, voice thin and dry: “This isn’t how I planned to propose.” I grinned, “Well, you’re stuck with me now. Sorry, no refunds on fiancées.” I heard Zoe’s stifled laugh behind me.
Hannah’s lips stretched into a crooked smile. “You did say yes, right?” she teased. “I said yes so many times the hospital staff started threatening a psych consult,” I replied. She coughed, then whispered, “I’m going to plan our wedding myself. It will be perfect. Every detail.” I nodded, “You’ll probably plan down to the type of ink used in the invitations.” Hannah replied without hesitation, “Obviously.”
Hannah’s eyes softened. “Both or neither,” she murmured. I nodded, and I knew what she meant. I felt the promise pass between us like a current, a code under the ordinary words. I lifted her hand and kissed it gently. “Both,” I said. “Always.” The machines still hummed. The hospital still moved around us. But the air felt different now, lighter. Hannah was still here, we were still us. Whatever came next, we would face it together.
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Let me know if you like this ending to the story. I know in the last chapter it was a pretty sudden abrupt end due to running out of time for a story contest. I've since edited the last bits of the prior chapter to be more in line with this one. Also, it helps out
@Shocker because the introduction to Zoe in this story allows him to use her in the upcoming spinoff contest
