Let Her Go (girlxgirl) (lesbian story)

Chapter Sixty-eight

Robyn

Cold plastic chair. Strong bleach filling nostrils, gleaming white floors assaulting eyes and reflecting Nika, pacing, gaunt and pale.

'It's ten times harder for her,' I thought, trying to convince myself. But imagining anyone bearing a heartbreak worse than mine without collapsing themselves was impossible.

Couldn't think of that. Pushed the thought away, turned towards something else. But there was nothing else. Had to think of her, not to would be betrayal, would allow her to slip away. Had to.

'You're going to be okay, baby, they know what they're doing,' I chanted. 'They're going to save you. Make sure you're okay.' If I repeated it often enough it'd be true. She wasn't gone, couldn't be gone; they'd bring her back, back to me, back to where she belonged. Not gone.

But there was a hole in my heart, a piece of me missing. What did that mean?

Suddenly, an arm around me, new pressure on shoulders and neck already heavy and aching. Jolt of fright - a fraction of a panic-filled second forgetting everything. But too soon, not soon enough, sickening pain swept back in. This wasn't her arm. The only one who could comfort me now was she whose name I could not utter. The being I had never truly appreciated, from whom I'd just been distracted in that fragment of time controlled by base instinct. Anything could have happened: the bond that kept us together could have broken. I would never forgive myself. 

I sprang up and sprinted to the bathroom. Threw up. Wiped my mouth and slumped down. There were brown patches on the ceiling. I stared at them. Wasn't this a hospital? Brown stains? But my thoughts had already drifted away. 

Do you believe in God?

I hadn't. Up until that moment on the floor of a hospital bathroom with the love of my life... Up until that moment, I had never prayed. But then and there I began. Vowed my life for hers. Anything, I begged, I'll give anything. I offered the world. My soul. The lives of every child born this side of the century. Every second of happiness had by anyone ever in exchange for just five more minutes with her. I was selfish, I was greedy, I would have done every horrible, awful, terrible thing you can think of if only it meant she wouldn't be gone. She was goodness itself, she was everything in my life; without her, I was a shell, I was nothing. So I offered it all. But bartering doesn't work when fate has already decided. I didn't know that. I prayed so hard and long that Zoey came into the bathroom to find me, worried I'd done something idiotic no doubt.

She called my name. Hearing it, I jumped up. How could I have been so stupid? There might have been news and here I was talking to an ethereal being I'd never before believed in. I threw open the stall door.

"There's news? She's okay?" Zoey's hands were white under my grip. "Please tell me she's okay." Zoey looked afraid, tears budding in the corners of her eyes. "She's not?" My own tear ducts sprang into action.

"We haven't heard anything, I came to see if you were okay. Are you?"

I laughed bitterly, "You're concerned about me? I'm not the one in trouble. Don't worry about me, don't even think about me. She needs everyone's prayers right now, you can't waste a single second, don't you see, how could you be so dumb as to worry about my stupid, insignificant emotions? They don't fucking matter, I don't matter, all that matters is her; can't you see that you fucking dimwit?" I'd started shouting somewhere and tears stung cheeks already raw from so many. "Oh, God, she has to be okay, Zoey," I sobbed, crumpling.

She caught me, "I know," she shushed, "I know." She stroked my hair, rubbed my back, trying to calm me. But the floodgates were open and I didn't sense a bottom to this well.