A Love Like War (Jalex)

Confusion

THE STORY IS NEARING ITS END AND I HAVE FINALLY DECIDED ON AN ENDING AND I AM PHYSICALLY CRYING OKAY

also this chapter kind of sucks wHOOPS

Chapter 22

Alex's POV

I swallowed the food that the nurse gave me. I answered her when she spoke to me. I even gave her a fake smile when she told me that she wished I would smile more, because I didn't want to make her feel bad. She was trying really hard and I understood that she wanted to make me feel better, but honestly, I just wanted to be left alone to cry and eat shitty hospital ice cream. Was that so much to ask?

She was currently trying to engage me in a game of Monopoly that I honestly couldn't care less about, but I was playing along anyway. She was talking about her kids, and I was listening. Until she mentioned the name of one of them. Jack. She wasn't Jack's mother, but the name was enough to trigger that giant black cloud of sadness that took me over every time I thought of him anymore, and she seemed to notice that my face fell right away.

"Alex?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head. "It's nothing," I said. "Go on."

She didn't buy it. She left her side of the table and went outside for a moment, then came back in with a pen and paper. This had become her way of asking me about things that made me sad, as the one time that I actually decided to talk about it, I broke down sobbing in my hospital bed, and it took two hours for her to calm me down. I picked up the pen.

I basically just told her that was his name, and it triggered some sad thoughts and whatever, but as soon as she read it, I could tell she regretted even saying it in the first place. She kept apologizing, and I really didn't want her to apologize for me being so extremely sensitive, so I assured her that it wasn't her fault.

"No no," I said as she returned to her seat. "You seemed happy. You can go on."

"Okay," she said quietly, and moved her piece on the board. "Your turn."

As I moved my piece on the board, I saw her stand up. "Where are you-" I didn't even get my last word out as she walked out of the room, completely ignoring me. It seemed as though she didn't even realize I was there.

I stood up from my place at the table and sat down at my bed, waiting for her to come back. When it had been about thirty minutes, I realized that she wasn't coming back to our game and decided to go out into the lobby, as they'd been letting me walk around there a bit recently.

When I got into the lobby area, I was expecting the normal view. People asleep in chairs, a couple children playing in the middle of the floor, maybe even someone crying silently, but no.

There was no one.

I looked behind me at the hallways that were normally filled with people, either overjoyed to see that someone was okay or looking heartbroken to hear that someone was in the ICU or something, but just as the lobby had been, it was completely empty.

There wasn't any other sound in the hallway other than my shoes hitting against the floor as I went from door to door, peeking in each window to see empty room after empty room after empty room. The rooms had been full just a moment before, hadn't they? I was sure they had.

I went up to the receptionist desk in the middle of the lobby, and seeing as no one could stop me, I went behind it and looked through the files for my name. But each file was empty.

Each piece of paper was blank, and the computer? The computer didn't even turn on. I looked at the dry erase boards that had previously kept the names of patients and what rooms they were in, but they were so white that they looked as though they had never been written on before at all. But my nurse had told me that they'd been using those for years.

Speaking of my nurse, where had she gone?

She seemed to have totally disappeared.

Dare I go past the doors that had previously seemed like a comfortingly secure place for me, yet now seemed like an ominous obstacle that would be extremely hard to get past? I went over to the doors and attempted to pull them open. I did not succeed.

I looked at the two doors for a very long amount of time before finally realising that where the lock would normally be was now joined together. It looked like it had been melted together. I turned around. What the fuck?

I then ran around the hospital and attempted to open each door, but each one was the same as the one in the lobby. Even the emergency exits.

I finally decided that I would just go to my room, and walked straight over to the window to look out. Just as I expected, the parking lot was empty. But I still had no idea what was going on.

And then I saw him.

At first I thought it was just a glare in the glass, but the more I looked, the more I realised that it was him. It was his reflection. I spun around. 

It was Jack.

He was there. He was actually there. The hospital was completely void of people yet he was there, and I was overjoyed. But almost more than that, I was extremely confused.

"Jack?" I asked. I could feel myself already starting to cry, and there was no point in trying to stop it. Jack was dead. Or at least he was supposed to be. What was he doing here?

"How are you-" I didn't get to finish my sentence. He didn't respond to me. He did, however, basically throw me onto my hospital bed, climb on top of me, and connect his lips to mine.

I, of course, being the needy little bitch I am, kissed back instantly, and wrapped my hand around his neck. "Please don't ever leave me alone again," I whispered, breaking away for just a moment to look into his eyes. The eyes that I loved to death.

He nodded. "I promise. But, Alex. If you really want to stay with me, I need you to go to sleep. Right now."

"But I don't want to go to sleep," I protested. "I want to stay up all night with you, because I missed you so much, and I want to know what's going on, and how you're here, and-"

He shut me up in the same way he had previously done, and pulled away from me a couple of seconds later, a smile on his lips. "Go to sleep, Alex."

I sighed, but gave up, as I was actually very tired out by today's events somehow. "But will you stay with me?"

He responded by wrapping the blanket around the two of us, and letting me grab him and hold him with me, as I stared into his eyes. He smiled at me, and kissed me one last time, before finally my vision started to fade to black.

And as I blinked one last time, Jack was no longer there, and I was holding onto thin air, as my vision was no longer seeing the hospital, or Jack.

And I was staring into nothingness as I lost consciousness.