Do You Remember...

Prologue

        While he toyed with her golden caramel ringlets, he sighed. He allowed his fingers to cease their dancing in her silk hair to watch her breathing, slow and steady- how he imagined the beat of her heart. Her eyes flickered under closed lids, darting left then right as his hand caressed the curled lock.

        She had been here a week, and he blamed himself. So he didn't leave her side in fear she would disappear. He remembered the painful call he received from the girls mother. At that moment, his mind had been trained on eating.

        When his phone rang, he answered nonchalantly with a hello, then put another forkful of chicken and pasta into his mouth. The voice on the other line had stayed calm until she had said her daughters name, and as the boy listened to the woman on the other line, his hand dropped the fork he held. The bad news had been broken to him, but his mind still swam in the way this woman had choked on her daughters name. The way this woman cried, and how loud her sobbing was. He felt deep sorrow for the woman.

        This had been the call to bring him where he was now, sitting in a blue chair with glossy wooden arm rests next to this blonde girl. This girl who was his best friend and someone who he had grown very close to in the last month. She had been the first one he could open up to. But for now, he watched her in this long sleeping state with his hand tangled in in hers for the comforting knowledge that she was still still alive.

        The blonde girls mother sat on the other side of her daughter, stroking her right arm as though touching her too roughly would cause her to crumble like a wilted flower. The boy watched the mothers gentle hand move away from her daughters arm and spread flat on the crisp white bed sheets.

        With a heavy sigh, the boy leaned back in his chair and allowed his eyes to focus on the ceiling, his hand pulling away from the bed-ridden girl. "This place is depressing," he mumbled to himself, forgetting the older woman's presence in his exhaustion. "And stupid. I don't get why she did it."

        "You know she was sad," the older woman's voice lulled the boy from his trance and brought his gaze to her. Her blue eyes focused lazily at the foot of the bed as if she couldn't bring herself to look at her comatose daughter, and then she resumed her talking. "She was just... Sad..."

        "I didn't ask her, y'know." The boy stated, his eyes boring into the wall behind the older woman's head. She turned her head to look at the boy whose thought had drawn him to ponder beside the window. "Never asked if she was okay, or what was going on in her life..." he watched several cars go by below them. "Hell, I was so wrapped up in my own life that it never crossed my mind to ask about hers..." Bored of watching cars, the boy turned back to the girls mother only to find tears in her old eyes.

        "Sebastian..." The older woman referred to the boy by his first name while pulling a tissue from her pocket to Dan just below her eyes with. "It was never your job to check on her," her voice cracked and she closed her eyes, her lips tightening into a thin line, then shortly resumed, choking on her words. "Th-that was m-my job as her m-mother," the just shook his head and moved back to the wool chair. She pursued her words, tears beginning to pour from her eyes. "And her fathers job as a father to pick up on the fact that our baby was hurting." The older woman began to wail, her hands covering her face. Her cries sent pain to the boys chest, followed by a surge of helplessness to course strongly through him.

        Sebastian knew this woman was losing not only her daughter, but her husband as well. The boy could do nothing to help ease her pain, instead sat idly, wanting to find a source of hope in this woman's life. Anything for her to grip onto. But he just stared at his fingers laced together on the white sheets in front of him. As her cries grew louder, Sebastian could only feel as if a full knife was stabbing repeatedly into his chest.