The Devil's Deal

chapter fifteen

sorry for the wait! here's a chapter to makeup for me missing so many days... hope you like it.

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Penny

His chest is rising and falling slowly to the incessant beeping sound of the heart-rate monitor. His skin is so pale it looks almost as if he is already a ghost.

I shift on the uncomfortable metal hospital chair, crossing one leg over the other while keeping my hands clasped on my lap. My eyes pan the room, pausing on all of the flowers and cards that clutter the table standing by the far left wall. Written on them are messages of reassurance and of hope, filled with scribbles of different tacky quotes,

We hope you wake up soon!

Get well soon!

Sending you and your family wishes and prayers.

Along with all of the flowers, cards and half-deflated balloons that hover close to the ceiling, with the words,  Get Well Soon printed in big colorful letters. I bet the people who bought those gifts didn't even realize what was written on them before dropping them off to sit in a room for a man currently unconscious in a coma. It's not like he's a child who caught a bad cold, theres no way to know if he's even getting better.

I sigh resting my head on my palm, my eyes drifting away from the balloons down to Connor, back to the steady rising and falling of his chest. His lungs Inflating and deflating—like those balloons hovering above him—from the constant cycle of the oxygen machine pumping his lungs up with air.  I try not to notice all of the other wires connected to him, like the ones running up his nose or the ones plugged into his wrists, drawing blood into a bag that's hanging off of the side of the bed. And I definitely try not to notice the tube that disappears underneath the sheets, the tubes that have to help him go to the bathroom.

My chest hurts, my eyes well up with unshed tears and I need to look up at the ceiling to keep them from falling. This isn't what Connor would have wanted for his life. Being in this hospital bed, he's not living, he's not even awake.

The doctors keep telling his parents that there is still a likely chance for him to wake up within the next couple of months. I guess I should be hopeful, follow the mantra of the dozens of fake get well soon cards that litter the tabletop. In a way, I think having people send those to Connor makes his parents feel better like maybe they haven't been forgotten in the big metropolis that is New York City. Especially since his parents are pretty big socialites, the gratitude they feel when all of their famous friends shower their comatose son with tacky flowers, cards and balloons makes them feel important and thought of, kind of inflating their already huge egos.

I guess I'd like that too.

Connor never mentioned his parents much and some part of me wonders if he actually likes them or only deals with them to keep the money flowing into his bank account.

I try not to think about the wealth that my friends have. Most of them are from successful families so I try not to let it get to me that I don't even have any sort of healthy relationship with my mother.

She basically abandoned the idea of being a mother the moment she met my step-father. With his old money and his fancy cars, she was stolen away from me. After we moved from my childhood house into his ginormous mansion, sold my dog and got used to the come and go of being known in town my old life was gone.

And my Dad?

He left along with everything else from my childhood, he was here one day and then after a big fight, he never came back. Sometimes I think about him, but not for long before I make myself sick and return to the present, back to the blooming problems that have bubbled before me.