He Belongs to Her

~ Mask

Fallon's POV

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I slowly open my eyes and I immediately regret it. I'm blinded by bright light's. I quickly close them again before blinking rapidly, trying to get my eyes to adjust. When they did, I looked around the room at all of the familiar faces.

Spencer was standing there with his hand over his mouth, Kaia was crying into Brad's shoulder, and Dalton was giving me a shit eating grin. All of my friends are here, but he's not. Where the hell is Ethan?!

"Welcome back to the land of the living." I hear Dalton say. I don't respond though. I just start craning my neck, still whipping around looking for him. I start to slightly panic and I hear a machine start beeping faster as my heart rate goes up.

"I'll go get the doctor." I hear Spencer mumble. He walks out of the room and comes back with a young brunette in black scrubs. She gives me a kind smile.

"Hi, Fallon, I'm Taylor, your nurse." She says gently as she walks over to me. "How are you feeling?"

"Where is he? Where's Ethan?" Is all I ask. They all look around, worriedly. I look to Spencer and he finally speaks up.

"We don't know."

"Well fucking find him!" I yell a little too harshly. They all look at me like I'm crazy. All of them but Taylor.

"I guess I was right." She sighed. "You can hear in a coma."

"Bits and pieces." I tell her. "But enough to understand what people are saying, what he was saying. I need to find him." I try to get up but am quickly laid back down.

"Fallon, you can't get up. You haven't used your muscles in almost 6 days. You're gonna be fine, but your legs will feel like jello right now. You also have a gunshot wound that needs to heal, and it can't if you tear open your stitches."

"I don't care, you didn't hear him." I looked at her, pleadingly. 

"I did hear him." She gives me a sympathetic look."He left two or three hours ago, though, and he's probably long gone by now. The best thing you can do it wait until you're healed."

Everyone was silent as Taylor and I silently communicated. She heard him, she knew what happened. I was silently begging her to just let me go, and she looked close to doing just that, but her nurse side took over and she refused.

"I'll be back, I'm going to get your doctor." Taylor said before walking out. Everyone looked to me.

"Fal, what happened?" Kaia asked.

"He left. He said he was running one last time and he wasn't going to come back." I paused as I started to choke back tears. "He said I'd be okay without him, safer."

Everyone was dead silent. No one knew what to say or do. Whether they should comfort me or leave me to myself. I needed to get out of this fucking hospital so I could go find him before it's too late. Before he's gone for good. I need him. Ethan doesn't think I need him, but I do. I wouldn't have made it this far without him. Without him I have nothing.

I heard everything he said. About my future. A future that sounded like heaven, but it would easily be hell if it wasn't a future that I had with him. I don't want to reminisce to my kids about some guy I fell for in my 20's. I want to reminisce to them about the crazy and fun times I had with their father, my husband. The only man I have ever and will ever truly love in my entire life.

The doctor came in and made everyone leave the room. He gave me a quick exam and told me more about what happened and my conditions. He said the coma was my body's way of forcing me to rest and heal. My wound from the gunshot was looking good and would be completely healed in a few days. It would take a couple of months of physical therapy for me to be fully recovered, but I would be able to leave and go home in a week, when they removed my stitches.

I wasn't sure if I could wait a week. I needed to get out of here and I needed to get out of here now. I don't care if I have to crawl my way until I find him, I just need Ethan. He's the reason I woke up. Apparently they came to check on me when he left and my hand twitched. From there, I slowly started to wake up.

Everyone came back in when the doctors left and told me everything that happened while I was out. Blake and Keaton, who were officially back together, came to see me. Cassidy and Paul came to see me, also. Some people from work sent me flowers, and Ellie made me a 'get well soon' card and a bunch of other drawings that were hanging around the room. 

They also said Ethan never left my side. He was so busy fretting over me that he didn't take care of himself. He wouldn't eat or sleep. Spencer said he had to force him to eat and Dalton said Taylor was going to give him an IV of fluids if he didn't start hydrating.

They asked me what it was like being in a coma. I told them it was already starting to be a fuzzy memory, but it was kind of like a dream. I saw past memories and experiences, but I also heard whenever people were in the room or talking to me. I heard Adam when he was here and it scared the living hell out of me.

Around midnight they all left. I was starting to feel tired too, but I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep knowing that he was gone and there was absolutely nothing I could do. I couldn't even get out of this fucking bed. 

I heard a knock on the door and looked up to see Taylor walk in with a kind smile. I thought she was hear to do more checks or exams but she assured me I was done being poked and prodded for the night and sat down in the chair next to my bed. We were both silent for a moment before she finally spoke.

"I tried to get him to stay." She tells me sadly. "I went to High School with Ethan. This was the first time I saw him since we graduated. He was a lot different."

"How?" Ethan didn't talk much about his life from when he was in high school. I knew he was a football player, and a player player, but I didn't know much else.

"In High School, Ethan didn't care about shit. He hated football, he didn't like any of the girls for more than their boobs, he even hated his friends. He was one of the most popular people in our school, yet he was the loneliest person alive." Please don't tell me I'm dealing with an ex...

"Were you two close?" 

"No." She laughed and quickly shook her head. "I was just more of the quiet, observant type. It's easy to hide how you feel in high school. Nobody really cares how you're actually feeling or what's going on in your life, everyone is to self absorbed and wrapped up in their own. All it takes is a mask, a fake smile and a dirty joke or two and people think you're happy, living your best life. 

"Just like now, Ethan wasn't too bad to look at in high school. I had a crush on him so I would always look for him and creepily watch him. He would always be laughing or goofing off with his friends. There were these slight moments, though, when his friends would look away for a moment and he'd take off that happy mask. These small moments where you could see how miserable he actually was."

"Wow." Was all I said. It was all I could say. 

I knew Ethan was like that before we met, always wearing a mask. We're all like that in some form or another. With Ethan, though, I got him to take off that mask and reveal his true self to me. I got him to share his burdens with me. He thought it was killing me, that I was drowning in his problems, but I wasn't. I wanted him to share his burdens with me, not so he could put them onto me, but so that we could work through them together.

"When he came to the hospital the night you were shot. I didn't see the same guy I knew in high school, the player who didn't care about anything. I saw the man who was torn to pieces, not knowing if the girl he loved was going to make it. I thought he was going to collapse when they told him you were in a coma. Until now, he hasn't left your side. I've never seen him like that. I've never seen him care so much about someone else, that the thought of them dying nearly killed him.

"I also talked to him. It seemed as if his whole life had been turned around, as if he was whole. It was all because of you. He was on edge but, for the most part, he was kind and respectful to all of the nurses and doctors. He also told me about how he quit smoking and drank more than alcohol now. 

"That mask he always wore in high school was no longer there, but he didn't seem miserable anymore..."

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