Insecure {AUGUST ALSINA}

55.

Time. It flies by, it waits for no one, and once you lose it you can't get it back. It's the most important aspect of a forlorn little lives: without it, we can't do anything. We take it for granted—time— we never consider it and we don't appreciate it enough. Thats the reason we're late all the time and mad whenever we're too early, we never think that we'll run out of time. 'It goes by slow' when you don't appreciate it. It doesn't stop for anyone, even if the world freezes around you.

The world has, in fact, frozen around me. Time stands still, but that's the only that happens to me. As I watch him rolled into the metal doors that slam belligerently, I wait to feel something other than shock. I expect my heart to drop, I expect my stomach to shrivel up, or to feel the tingly sensation of tears—none of that happens. I just stand still, staring at the doors like a bewildered mannequin.

"Ow!" I'm snapped back into reality when someone hard as a rock bumps into me, making my shoulder lurch forward.

"I'm sorry...sorry." I turn around to see Ashton rushing behind the metal doors as he hurriedly tries to slip a used pair of blue gloves off of his hands.

He's in such a rush that he doesn't even turn around to see who he bumped into, and I'm in such a state of shock that I can't even say anything so that he notices me. I want to tell him to please not let him die and to make sure they do everything they can, but my words are delayed. I'm still staring at the doors when they slam in my face a second time.

I turn around to walk towards the seats in the waiting room. I do it because I'm not in the right headspace to go home. Plus, I'm one of those people who just have to know things, my impulse won't allow me to go home if my brain is telling me to stay.

I sit and wait. If he'd died they wouldn't take this long, right? Or maybe he died and they moved on to the next person behind those doors.

I never thought about how I'd feel if he died and it wasn't my blood who had killed him. It makes me angry in a twisted way, that I had done all of this to keep my family from killing him just for someone else to do it. All the pain he had caused us, and we never got the chance to inflict that same pain, only for someone else to do it. Funny how the universe works...

I don't want him in my life, truly, but I don't want him dead either. Especially since he was just starting to have a life of his own, he met someone he likes.

I hear the booming click made by the doors when someone opens them and I look up to see Ashton. He doesn't look happy, or proud, he looks uncertain. That's always a bad sign for someone who just attempted to save a person's life.

A different one, wearing an orange scrub cap comes out from behind him. He looks exactly like the people who come to tell you that they did everything they can and they're sorry. I watch him walk in the opposite direction with a distant look in his eyes. I trail his foot steps all the way until he reaches the white, schedule board. I stare at his hands as they grip the eraser and he erases August's name from those in surgery. Immediately, I think that he's dead.

"Are you okay?" Ashton stands up in front of me while the other guy walks towards the front desk.

"Trick question?" I try to joke, but it isn't funny. I'm just afraid to say what I really mean, because I'm afraid of the answer

"No, I'm being genuine. Are you?" He sits next to me.

"Yes." It'd make me feel like a better person if that weren't true, but it is.

I am okay, I'm not upset or scared. I couldn't leave him here alone though. No one else is going to come, at least not anyone he wants to see. I know what he did to me, but he was mutilated and I'm not as mean as I seem to be.