Page 165 of Tell Me I'm Enough

I feel drained.

I can’t stop staring at Lydia’s face. A face I don’t even feel like I recognize in this moment.

Her head falls to the side as her eyes flutter open for a moment. Bash is close enough that Lydia’s gaze lands on his face. He mouths something I can’t make out before they load her onto the stretcher, and it tugs on my heartstrings for some reason. It’s like I can feel the way he cares…even when he barely knows her.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Lani and Sandro going back and forth from looking at Lydia to looking over at where Bash’s friend is standing. They look pissed, especially Lani, but I don’t have the time or strength right now to piece together what that’s about.

Riding over to the hospital in the back of the ambulance, watching her unconscious body just lying there…my heart starts to fully break with the reality of just how bad her pain had to have gotten.

The smell in here is all I can focus on. It’s so sterile and clean, and it makes me want to gag.

I don’t understand why life has had to be so cruel to her, why someone I love so much has been dealt such shitty cards in life.

“Hey,” I whisper, leaning down close to her face. “Hey, I’m here. I’m right here.”

My voice is shaky, and barely comes out, so I try again, try to steady myself for her. “You don’t get to leave me,” I tell her, and I know how selfish it sounds, but I can’t make myself care. “You hear me? You can’t leave me, Lydia.”

I just sit there and watch the slow rise and fall of her chest, because it’s the only thing I have to steady my panic, to tell me she’s still here.

The medic glances at me, and something soft and caring washes over her expression—just this human response to watching someone else’s pain.

I wipe my face with my sleeve, and it does nothing. The tears come faster, and any attempt to stop them is pointless.

I try to talk to Lydia the whole way there, trying to force her to hold on. I tell her stupid things; I tell her I’m not mad; I tell her I love her, and I tell her over and over again that she’s going to be okay, even though I don’t know if that’s true or not.

We don’t know what damage has been done. We don’t know if the guy found her in time. We don’t know if the last conversation I ever had with her will be us fighting.

When we arrive, they wheel her in quickly as the doctors and nurses all talk over each other in clipped voices, yelling out codes and big words I don’t understand.

I’m guided into a waiting area that makes me feel trapped and helpless now, as I have to wait all alone until Lani gets here.

* * *

The days pass by excruciatingly slowly in the hospital, waiting for her to wake up.

I’ve never felt this useless in my life. All I can do is sit here and talk to my best friend, who may or may not be able to hear me—a girl who didn’twantto be here.

The longer I have to process everything, the more it hurts, the more I don’t understand how she ended up here. I mean…I know. I know what got her here. I hate it, but I know. I just don’t understand it.

I don’t want to do anything but rot away in this room with her.

If she goes…hell, God, you’re gonna have to take me too.

I haven’t been able to leave her—not once. Not when Lani begged me to come back to the dorm with her, not when Sarahand Mark arrived, not even when the nurses told me I needed to get some rest and go home for a little while, give myself a break.

I can’t leave. I can’t go anywhere until she wakes up.

I’m all alone in the room this morning while Sarah and Mark are out grabbing breakfast, and Lani is back at school finishing up her last class of the semester.

I scoot my chair closer to her bed, holding her hand and talking to her like I do every morning, like she’s listening to every word I’m saying.

I hear someone clear their throat and turn to see Mason at the door of the hospital room. It takes me a minute to process it’s him, and that he’s really here.

“What—what are you doing here?”

He’s wearing a hoodie, hands shoved in the pocket, eyes bloodshot like he hasn’t slept. When he steps closer, I smell the alcohol on him.

“You drove here?” I ask, cautiously.