Is it Fate?

12

Lisa cried the entire night. She couldn't stop the tears from flowing. Yong-Sun had found her in hysterics at some point in the middle of the night as she walked in to do her rounds and rushed over to Lisa, the worry very evident on her face.

"Lisa, what's wrong? Are you hurting anywhere." Her trained eyes inspected Lisa, glancing at the machine that monitored Lisa's vitals. Trained hands checked Lisa's body and the I.V.

Lisa shook her head and sobbed some more, not wanting to worry her nurse more than she already had so Lisa managed to choke out "J- j- jenni -e."

She started gasping for breath as she said her name, still uncontrollably crying. Yong-Sun finally understood that Lisa wasn't physically hurt and pulled Lisa into her arms and rocked her, trying to calm her down.

Eventually, after hours and hours of crying, Lisa found restless sleep.

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She woke up the next morning with her heart in her throat. She had hardly slept and though she was exhausted she couldn't go back to sleep anymore, there were just too many feelings for her to deal with.

She was heartbroken. Hearing Jennie's voicemails, begging her to come home, to wake up. Hearing how Jennie found solace in calling Lisa, who would never be able to answer, just to tell her about how Ella was growing up. Hearing how upset and lonely Jennie was but still managed to raise a beautiful daughter. Hearing Jennie take out her anger at the world for being so cruel to them on Lisa. Hearing the desperation in her voice when the doctors tried to rip her hope away that Lisa would ever wake up but daring to hope anyway. Every time she heard those things her heart had broken so much Lisa wasn't sure how she had any heart left.

Lisa's heart had completely given out, completely shattered the worst the moment she heard Jennie confess she still loved her, that she had gotten married to someone else in a moment of weakness. Lisa knew that had been the moment Jennie had given up hope that Lisa would ever come back. She could hear the sincerity in Jennie's voice when she had said that she would always love Lisa the most. She could hear the guilt Jennie felt. She could hear how Jennie hated herself.

Lisa had thought Jennie had moved on. She thought Jennie had fallen in love with someone else after all that time and decided to marry him. It almost felt worse knowing Jennie married him even though she was still in love with Lisa. The thought that she could have still had Jennie if she had just woken up a little earlier tortured her.

She wondered if what Jennie had said was still true. She wondered if Jennie had grown to love her husband more than Lisa. She forced herself to stop that train of thought, Jennie still belonged to someone else.

Lisa felt guilty for assuming Jennie had moved on so quickly. She didn't realize that Jennie hadn't been married for even a year. She felt anger and betrayal but it stung a lot less, knowing how much Jennie had suffered, knowing Jennie never stopped loving her even when she was making her vows. She felt longing for Jennie the most, and the feeling was suffocating her.

The voicemails had jarred her out of her currently reality, the one where Jennie wasn't hers anymore. The Jennie in those voicemails was Lisa's Jennie, the one she had spent her entire life pining over and getting to know and finally winning her heart.

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Lisa remembered when she had finally gathered the courage to confess her feelings to Jennie for the first time. Jennie was about to graduate and go to college. Since Lisa was a year younger, she was leaving Lisa behind. Jennie kept promising Lisa that that would never happen anytime somebody at school joked about it. Everyone knew Jennie and Lisa were pretty much inseparable and they liked to joke around that Jennie was going to find herself a new best friend once she went to college.