hospital beds {remington leith short story}

three

To me, my parents are estranged creatures. Their visits often leave me confused, especially when my mental state becomes altered. I don't see them as often as a youth of my age should. Despite having to grow up so quickly due to my illness, I am still but nineteen....but I have not had the parental support I crave in two years. Once the reality of how severe and life-altering my cancer was, they backed off. Remington is my listed healthcare proxy even; he holds the right to make all decisions for me if I find myself unconscious or greeting death. 

The room is silent, even my heart monitor sounding quiet. I am off oxygen now, so that is one less sound clouding the air. The repetitive, churning swirls I hear are the loudest sounds. The G tube in my stomach is hooked up to a bag now....nutrients being pumped into my body by the second. I cannot eat, and with the vomiting chemotherapy and all the other lovely things that come with the bitch named cancer plagues me with, NG and NJ tubes were not good choices to nutrition me. 

On my seventeenth birthday, I found myself unable to swallow at all anymore. For the year before that, drinks and soft foods such as potatoes and applesauce went down easily....and a NG tube helped give me the nutrients I was otherwise lacking. The creme-colored tube ran down my nose, snaked through my throat, and eventually found home in my stomach. I can still remember crying every time I puked it up, balling my fists in the back of Remington's shirt and wailing with defeat. Placement of the tube was the worst part....and somehow it got even worse when I realized the cause of me needing a new placement was only myself. 

About five months ago my G tube was placed. It sticks out my stomach and to be honest, the patterns of the padding surrounding it really clash with this hospital gown. The pads are supposed to prevent chafing, but I feel it doesn't do much. The tube enters my stomach directly, and there's no possible way I can puke this one up. I get feedings every other day, with streams of saline fluids on the days in between. I don't really even notice it's presence anymore, though at the start I struggled greatly with it. I thought it made me unattractive, Remington assured me otherwise.

Tension in the room is high. Nobody speaks; my parents have hardly spoken a word since arriving. It's like pulling teeth to get them to speak with me. Remington holds my hand, running his thumb over my knuckles and giving it the occasional squeeze. Not a day passes where I do not find myself thankful for his constant support. 

Mom and Dad leave, due to me finding myself increasingly tired. It is only seven in the evening, but the constant medication stream I find myself on fatigues me greatly. My unconventional parents, people I feel I do not even know anymore, hug me goodbye and kiss my paled cheeks. They never have much color to them nowadays, though I wish for the opposite. I want to look beautiful again. Remington can comment on my appearance in a positive light as much as he wants, calling me stunning, beautiful, pretty, even a goddess, but until I see myself as anything other than unattractive....I will not believe it. 

Once they exit the room, I feel myself physically relax against the bed. Remington's shoulders seem to drop as well. Though the encounter only lasted a mere two hours, it drained us both. Almost immediately, he stands and presses his lips to mine. I kiss back, grateful for the contact we did not have access to with my parents present. I grab the back of his head and exhale into the bed, all the anxieties and every negative emotion harvested in my petite body. 

"I love you," I tell him, truth in every word. He smiles and kisses my forehead. 

"I love you too, bunny." Remington hums. His brown eyes seem to be glowing, as if the sun was striking his face. He looks at me in such a way that makes my heart do flips within my chest. My blood is swimming with emotion, his love touching every part of me. I smile against his soft lips, reveling in their voluptuous feel. He ends up grinning as well, and we are a mess of ragged breaths and teeth clinking against one another. 

I am happy as my hands trail his sides. I place quick kisses to his neck, my tired eyes floating closed as I squeeze his hips. Giggling, I drop my head onto his shoulder, trying to catch my breath as I rack my hands back up his ribcage, underneath his black muscle shirt with my fingernails dragging along his skin. Remington lets out a laugh, turning to kiss my temple.

A nurse appears in the window of the door to my room, holding an oxygen mask in her hand. We make eye contact, and I sigh, placing my hand on Remington's chest to push him away. However, once the nurse sees the state myself and my boyfriend find ourselves in, she winks and leaves....deciding what is true, that my struggling to breathe is caused by these events and not my lungs overworking themselves. I decide to leave my hand on his chest, tracing over his muscles. 

"You're so beautiful," He says, voice barely a whisper as he leans down to kiss me once again. 

"Thank you" I say, though I do not think it is true. I respond that way just to make him happy, which is the same reason I do most things....to keep the light of my life, my only love in this World, happy.