What You Missed, While You Were Away.

Prologue, Day 1. I Miss you!

I continuously pace back and forth in the waiting room of a lonely dimmed hospital, praying for her to be okay. I notice other people are checking in and sitting down, so I quickly sit down and try to gather myself as I wait for my family to arrive. As I wait, I notice nurses rushing around the empty halls of the hospital, as if they were racing towards their next break. There were so many sounds in the hospital... The beeping of patients' IV pumps, elevators dinging, call lights beeping, and unhealthy coughing and hacking .... All I keep thinking about is when shelby hit the ground...everything has been so anxious and stressed-out...

I begin to feel very impatient about the lack of information about my friend from the staff here. I get up from my seat and walk up toward the front desk for the 2nd time tonight. The lady at the desk looks up in my direction with her glasses slightly tilted down her nose. "May I help you?" She asks. I lose my train of thought while focusing on her glasses, waiting for them to fall off the tip of her nose. "ma'am? Are you alright?" I snap back into reality and quickly gather my thoughts and remember the reason I was up there.

"Um...Hi, I'm Mackenzie Hills, I'm checking in again on Shelby Summers. I'm really worried and I need to know that she'll be okay...she's my best friend...could you please help me.." The nurse adjusts her glasses and looks down at her computer screen. She rapidly types in Shelby's name, at least I think and then she begins to read the screen,

"Your friend is in the ER unresponsive, we'll let you know if anything changes. Okay, ma'am?" She smiles at me.

"Okay, thank you." She smiles and goes back to doing paperwork. I turn around and go to walk back to where I was sitting. Just as I'm about to sit down her parents walk in, along with my mom. They go up to the nice desk lady and check-in. Once the pen left the clipboard, they rush over to comfort me with hugs. We all greet each other with hugs and sit down where I was sitting earlier. Her mother sits down right next to me on a loveseat and turns toward me.

"Kenz, please tell me she's okay..." I looked deeply into her mother's worried, teared-filled eyes and thought to myself that this wouldn't have happened if we weren't so stupid....if I weren't so stupid...

*I sigh* I close my eyes and try to picture the last time I saw Shelby, without curling up into a ball and crying my eyes out on the dirt-filled hospital floor. I clear my throat. " The last time I saw Shelby, was when she was zoning in and out on the stretcher and was bleeding a lot from her head and had a lot of scrapes and cuts. I never saw her stomach... But before the ambulance took her she was still breathing and holding onto her head like she had a really bad headache. " Her mother glances down at the floor to gather her thoughts. A few seconds later she looks up at me again and cups her warm hands around my hands and smiles. Her hands reminded me so much of Shelby, but her mother's hands were so warm and soft and Shelby's were always so cold, just like ice, they were so light, like feathers... I zone out into the distance...

"Honey... you did what you could and it was the right thing to do. If you weren't with her, something more serious could've happened or worse, she could've died. So thank you for being her buddy and staying with her." Shelby and her mom always knew how to get others to smile even when times were rough and dark.

"She's my best friend... we've been through everything together....of course, I'd be with her after a break up like that...I just wish we didn't go out, I should've known he would've broken out of jail to find her!"...god I'm so f*cking stupid...I'm so sorry..." I get cut off by my eyes filling up with tears, I collapse onto her mother's shoulder. She grabs ahold of me and hugs me tight. I feel the pressure build up in my face. "I'm really scared Aunt Michelle, I can't help but feel like we're going to lose her..." I mumble in between sobs. The hug tightens and the warmth grows.