Peyton's P.O.V.
I’m lying on my side, trying to get comfortable with my IV when I have a sudden desire to ask Cody something.
“Cody?” I whisper, as it’s pretty late, nearing closing hours.
“Yeah?” he answers; his voice heavy and husky with sleep.
I suddenly feel guilty. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” Cody lies, yawning and stretching. He reaches out and touches my face gently. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answer. “I just have a question.”
“Ask away,” he says.
“Why did you come, that first day?” I ask, my voice trembling slightly.
As it’s very dark in my room, I hear Cody get up and shuffle before he sinks onto my bed, pulling me into his side.
“Why?” I ask again, feeling vulnerable and glad for the darkness.
Cody presses a kiss to my temple before answering. “I was… well, you know how I’m an alcoholic?”
I nod before realizing he can’t see me. “Yeah.”
“Well, I was arrested for drunk driving. Since it was my first offense, I wasn’t put in jail, just fined and made to do community service.”
I see where this was going. “You only came because you had to?” I don’t cry a lot, but this has my lip trembling and a tear falling.
Cody touches my cheek, making me turn to him. He wipes the tear off my face with his thumb. “No. They made me come to see someone, an older man who was just there for surgery and didn’t have any family left. Most of the people they could have made me see where older people who didn’t have family. You weren’t on the list.”
“I was leaving the first day, as I only had to spend an hour with them, and I saw you, sitting there on your bed, staring out of the window. You didn’t have anyone visiting you, and you were my age. I thought that was strange, and I really didn’t want to go home because I knew all I would do was start drinking again, and all that old man did was sleep, so I went over to talk to you.,” Cody whispers, finishing his story.
“And you just talked to me out of pity?” I ask, trying to make sense of why he came over to me.
“No, I talked to you because you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,” Cody corrects me.
I blush. “Well, I had actual hair then.”
“You’re still beautiful now,” Cody says.
I feel my cheeks turning red. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” Cody asks, acting clueless.
“Complementing me, I’m not that beautiful,” I say.
“Yes you are,” Cody insists, kissing me.
I close my eyes and loose myself in the kiss. We keep kissing until my nurse flips on the lights and we break apart from each other, blinking and shielding our eyes from the sudden brightness.
“Oh sorry,” my nurse, Bridget, says with her hands over her mouth. “Was I interrupting something?”
“No,” Cody says, getting off my bed and grabbing his things. “I was just about to leave.”
“Bye, Cody,” I say quietly as he starts to walk over by the door.
Cody pauses and runs back by me and gives me a quick kiss. “Bye, Peyton.”
Then he’s gone.
We sit there in silence for a second, until Bridget speaks. “You’re lucky, Peyton.”
“What?” I ask, having missed her statement.
“You’re lucky, to have him,” Bridget says, still looking outside my door. “Not many people have people with them all day.”
“Of course they do,” I say. “People have family with them all the time.”
Bridget shakes her head. “From the second visiting hours start to the minute they end? No they don’t. He really loves you.”
I stare out of my door into the bustling hospital. “I know,” I hear myself say.
And I’m scared of what will happen when I die.
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Cover on side by @Disaster_Dia
