Olifina: Love And Trouble

29. Drips.

I covered my face with my hands and sobbed. Rodas stood up from his chair and sat on the bed, wrapping his arms around me in a comforting manner.

"I'm so sorry, Fina."

I continued to shake under his hold. "It's all my fault," I cried. "If only I had jumped earlier. If only I had listened!"

I could not live with the guilt. It ate deep into my heart and whispered constantly in my mind that it was my fault. Rodas kept brushing my hair with his hands as he tried to uplift my broken soul.

A knock came on the door and we both looked up to see the door open and a nurse come in.

She was dressed in her white scrubs with her hair packed up in a bun and a tray in her hands. "Hope I'm not intruding?" she asked in a soft tone.

"No, no," Rodas replied as he withdrew from me. I faced the nurse who was now beside the bed.

"You didn't tell me she was awake." The nurse directed her question to Rodas.

"She said she wanted some time to recover before having any other person around."

"Oh... Okay, so how are you now?" she asked me.

"I'm good."

"Okay. Let me remove these empty drip bags."

I looked up at the empty drip bags which hung on a pole. The nurse replaced them with a new drip bag.

"When would I be leaving?"

"Uh... This Drip bag has to get exhausted first," she said, pointing to the new Drip bag. "After that, the doctor would see you and decide if you're going to be discharged or not."

"So how long would it take for it to get exhausted?"

"A couple of hours. You can still leave here today if you don't mind going by midnight though."

"Okay." I turned to Rodas. He had been quiet since the nurse entered. It wasn't the way he behaved normally.

"I'll go now. If there's anything you need alert me or any of the nurses."

She glanced from me to Rodas and back to me again.

"You'll be fine, Rufina," she said, flashing me a warm smile. She packed up the empty drip bags coupled with some other equipment she had used in taking my vitals, and left the room.

I looked over at Rodas who was still sitting quietly in his chair and staring at me.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

"Why did you suddenly go quiet?"

He sighed as he stood up from his chair with a smile on his face. "Nothing."

"Okay. Did you notice how that nurse looked at you?"

"Me? No, I didn't."

"Seems she's into you."

"Rufina, I don't expect you to be saying things like this especially when you're in this mood."

"In what mood?" I retorted and he went silent. "You don't expect me to remain moody, do you? I'm still hurt down in my heart but that doesn't mean I won't live. I would live. That's what Dad would've wanted. That's what he always told me."

My gaze lingered on nothing in particular as I reminisced about those warm sunny evenings. Dad would sit outside on the front porch with me and tell me about his experiences in life. There was one thing he kept repeating to me. He always told me to keep moving forward and not look back and dwell in the past. I was surely going to miss him.