Ok here are two stories for you...one is (somewhat) based off reality, but mostly fiction and the other is TOTALLY true NO JOKE. So I'll tell you Dissolution, which is the short story I wrote for English (see last post)
Dissolution
I opened my eyes wide, without really thinking about it. I was just so surprised to see the man, standing at the end of my bed. It wasn’t so much that he was standing there – so many people had stood at that exact same spot so many, many times in the last few weeks, I’d lost count. Heck, I couldn’t even tell you how many people had stood there today – or was it yesterday? I couldn’t be sure because there was no clock anywhere in my line of vision, so I had no way of knowing whether it was before or after midnight. What I was surprised about was that it was him that was standing there. I never thought he would come. I hadn’t heard from him in what felt like ages, though it was only a month. He had seemed so awkward, that one time we’d seen each other after we had our “talk”
“Hey,” he whispered, “You’re awake.”
“Yes, Daniel,” I whispered back, “I am. What are you doing here?”
“I…I…I came to see you. I didn’t come before, but, uh, I didn’t know if you wanted to see me or not,” he stuttered.
I gave him a weak smile that I wasn’t quite sure he saw by the few pale rays of moonlight filtering in from the windows behind me. “Of course I wanted to see you, why wouldn’t I?”
I could see that he was growing more and more uncomfortable by the second, and my questions had not helped things. “Well…well…um…I know that after, um, we talked things between us have been…” As he searched for the right word, I studied his face. Those clear blue eyes I knew so well were now set in a concentrating and confused state. His nostrils were flaring, as they always did when he was thinking. And, his mouth was set, his lips pressed firmly into a line. I could think back to a time when I had never seen his face contort into such an expression. The first time I had seen that face was not long ago, not long at all. It was that day he sat me down on my bed and told me…
But then, he found the word, interrupting my thoughts. “…strained. But we’ve been friends so long that I felt I had to come and drop by.” He tired to smile, but it only came out as a grimace. Before I said anything else, I motioned to the chair next to my bed, which had been recently vacated by my mom. He sat and waited for me to say something.
“Daniel, now, I know you don’t like talking about this but we have to,” I started as I watched his lips press into a thinner line. “I love you, I really do. Just not the way you want me to. When you told me that you cared for me – in more that just a friend sorta way – I was shocked, speechless. That’s why I told you to leave. I didn’t know what to say.”
We sat in silence for a moment, as he contemplated what he wanted to say and I looked over at the clock on the wall to my right – 11:45. “Rebecca, I love you too. You know that, but, well, it’s just I don’t want to pressure you, and I want us to stay friends, at least. Can we do that?”
I nodded, vigorously. “Of course that’s all I want.” He smiled, and just like that I had my old Daniel back. I smiled back, sat up and wrapped my hands around him. He put his face in my hair, burying all of our awkwardness in the many strands. I felt his lips on the top of my head just before he pulled back, just slightly. We both still had our arms around each other, but our heads were pulled away – starring at the other. I looked into those aqua eyes, while he stared into my own chestnut eyes. I don’t know for certain what he saw in my eyes, but what I saw in his were extraordinary – unlike anything I’d ever seen. Through his eyes I saw all the love he felt for me, but also saw something else. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was at first. But once I had determined what it was that I saw in those deep eyes my eyes welled up with tears and spilled over.
Daniel touched my face, where I knew a tear or two was trailing. “You’re crying,” he murmured, as if it wasn’t obvious. “Why?”
“I, I, It’s just…” I couldn’t finish – I had realized something. But that realization, that awareness, made me a liar. “I’m sorry, so, so sorry.”
“What? Why? Why are you sorry?”
“I’m a liar, a big fat liar.” I was blubbering now, but I didn’t care. I was just so upset that I could be so stupid.
“No, no you’re not,” he replied, as he wrapped his arms tighter around me. I nodded, unable to talk. “Why? Why are you a liar?”
He waited while I wiped away the tears and snot from my face and composed myself enough to talk. When I had I mumbled, “Because I told you something that was a lie.”
He looked at me with a perplexed look on his face – he had no idea. I took his hands in my own looked him straight in the eye for a second, before leaning in to, tentatively, touch my lips to his own. I lifted my head for a millisecond to check his reaction – taken aback – before leaning down again. This time I kept my lips on his for several seconds, and then he reacted. Either he bounced out of his shock or he decided that I wasn’t kidding, because he moved his hands slightly up my back and pulled me closer. After several more seconds of kissing him, my heart rate slowly climbed, making various machines I was attached to sing. I pulled away, not wanting to bring the nurses into the room.
Daniel slowly lifted his head, licking his lips, eyes closed. “Hmmm,” he said, “wow, umm, why did you do that?”
I laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. No, it was a nervous laugh, something I hadn’t done in a long while. “I was trying to make up for lying to you.”
“You, uh,” he chuckled, opening his eyes, “certainly made up for whatever it was you were trying to make up for. What exactly was that?”
“Lying to you.”
He sighed, exasperated. “Yes, I know,” he said, a slight hint of impatience crawling into his voice, “what exactly were you lying about?”
I looked down as I said, “About not loving you the way you want me to. I do, I really truly do.” I looked at him; he looked confused, like he didn’t get what I was trying to say to him. But then, he took a hold of my chin and pulled my mouth to his. This time I didn’t pull away when the machines behind me stated beeping, as my heart rate skyrocketed.
The nurse that came must have thought she would find something else than she did. She came in the room, calmly looking at my chart, but when she looked up and found me fused to Daniel she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Miss Poole,” she screeched. I dragged my face away from Daniel’s and looked up at my nurse as if she hadn’t just walked in on a less than appropriate moment.
“Yes,” I asked sweetly.
“You should not,” she shrieked, “share moments like you have just finished sharing, not in your condition.” Oh, the reason I was in here – the disease – right. How could I be so stupid? I looked over at Daniel, my stomach gave a lurch, while my face drained, sure to make my already pale complexion that much paler. I could give Daniel the exact thing that I had now, this horrible, horrible disease that had hospitalized me for three and a half weeks.
“I…I…” I tried to say something; what, I’m not exactly sure. But I never got to say it because at that exact moment everything went black.
When I opened my eyes again sunlight was streaming in the small window above my head. Small? But hadn’t I had a huge wall length window before? I heard a groan from my right and looked over. A curtain had been pulled closed, so the two-person room could give privacy to the two different occupants. Two-person room? But hadn’t I had a single-person room? Yes, yes I had. So they had moved me while I had been out.
Just then a nurse walked in, saw I was awake and said, “Miss Poole, nice to see you awake.” But then I heard her say, “Finally,” under her breath.
“Umm,” I said, sorry to interrupt her since she was obviously not happy with me, “how long was I unconscious?” She held up three fingers up – three days. “Umm, where is Daniel? Is he alright?” She didn’t answer the second question but pointed to the other side of the curtain in answer to my first one. So I had hospitalized him. It took a few moments for that to sink in, but when it did an overwhelming sense of self-loathing and pain, though the pain was for Daniel.
It was unlike anything I had experienced. My heart felt like it was being wretched out of my chest. My stomach seemed empty and twisted. My eyes watered, wanting to cry – for Daniel, for me, for my parents and family, for everyone. How had I let this happen? As soon as the nurse made her exit I jumped out of bed, I slowly made my way of to the curtain, dragging my various tubes and IV pole along behind me. I pulled aside the curtain with such force that it nearly fell off the track on the ceiling, but when I did get it open the sight I saw was so forlorn that I nearly fainted. When I felt my knees were strong enough I took a few hesitant steps towards the bed. Daniel’s face was ashen and pale, just has mine had been the first week I was here, before they figured out what I had. Did that mean they didn’t know what it was yet? No, that can’t be right, they knew I had given it to him and he had what I have. His once clear blue eyes were now murky and foggy, but open. Slowly, they moved in my direction and rested on my face. Still just as slowly, he licked his lips.
“Hi. Rebecca. You’re. Awake.” He word sounded like it took every ounce of strength he had. How could I do this do him? I collapsed onto my knees. Now kneeling, I buried my face in the sheets and started to cry. I don’t know how long I sat there kneeling at his bed, crying, but after awhile I felt his arm wrap around my back. I looked up into his face, still horribly pallid, but full of hope, which is more than I had – much more. I crawled up onto his bed and lay next to him, my head on his chest. He and I laid there for who knows how long, me in his arms and me on his chest, listening to his steady breathing.
After what must have been hours, the breathing slowed and stopped completely. I was too far-gone to comprehend what this meant, even so when I heard the beeping of one his machines, when he flat lined. So there I was, in the arms of the love of my life, who was now no longer alive and all I could think about is that if I were to die right in that moment, it would be the best way to go. And just as I thought this I floated into darkness…
I hoped you liked that...tell me what you thought (and please be honest, I haven't turned this in yet, so I can change it)
Now, the New York Story...even though this has NOTHING to do with New York, expect that I was coming there. A few things you have to know before I tell this story:
- When this story starts it is June 28, 2007.
- I live in Portland, Oregon, USA
- Both my parents were with me, as was my brother, Noah.
- Time is key in this story
- It was supposed to be a two plane trip(new york to denver connection in denver, denver to portland)
- We'd just been to Denver the month before for my dad's graduation from CSU with his MBA
I think you'll be able to get by with just that. Ok, here we go:
After a week in New York, I was excited to go home to so I could get some "in my own bed" time, before going to my beach house for the 4th. Our plane didn't leave till noon, so we talked around New York one last time before getting a cab to the airport. There we went through sercutiy alright...well as alright as you can in New York now. And we got to your gate with twenty minutes to half a hour to spare. Finally, we boarded the plane and got to our seats. We were sitting on the plane for about 15 minutes when over the loud-speaker a flight-attendent said, "I'm sorry we're having some problems with the plane. Maitnence is coming and we'll tell you more when we know more." We sat on the plane for two hours before they came over the loud-speaker again and said, "We've decided we can't fix the plane so we we're going to deplane you and get you all on a new plane. So we gathered all our things and headed onto the new plane. At that point we hadn't yet miss our connection, and we wouldn't if we left RIGHT NOW. So we get on the plane and all systems are go. We think that the the two hour blimp was just something minor -- not something that really mattered in the long run. Boy were we wrong. We got out onto the runway(or whatever that call it) and were SET TO TAKE OFF, when the skies just open up. AND IT POURS RAIN.Thunder and lightling and everything. It was beauitful, but we couldn't fly in those condictions. We had to wait out the storm...we had to wait TWO HOURS. We had been on a plane for four hours now and we HADN'T EVEN TAKEN OFF. We totally missed our plane in Denver, but when the storm FINALLY cleared, we took off and had realitivly nice flight. When we got to Denver it was 10 there(11 Eastern, which I was used to) and they told us to wait in line at customer service so they could get us where we were going. Nothing was open and I was starving..there hadn't been any food on the plane EVER. Anyways, we waited in line(it was a long line and each person took like ten mintues) for a hour. When we finally got up to the desk we told them where were trying to go: Portland. They told us they didn't have an flights, from any airline, from anywhere in the country till July 2nd. We asked if we could go to Seatle, at least from there we could drive home. No to that too. We sure didn't want to stay in Denver, not saying that Denver is bad or anything, but we'd just been there a month ago for two weeks. We jst wanted to go home. So we asked where the closest was they could get us to Portland -- hopefully we could get to the West Coast at least. The closet was LA. We were like WE'LL TAKE IT. The flight to LA didn't leave until 9 the next morning so they put us up in a hotel over night(I did not like this hotel, they gave me bed bugs). We got up early and went back to the Denver airport. We got on the plane to LA and were sitting there for 10-15 mintues when over the loud-speaker (yes, I'm seriuous) they said, "I'm sorry we're having troble with the plane. We're trying to fix it. At 9:45 we'll decide if want to get you on a new plane or take off. (this was at 9) If you need to make a phone call or check your connection in LA you can get off the plane an we'll make an annocment for you to get back on if we take off." So my dad got off the the plane with 5 other people(who were traveling alone) to make a phone call. At 9:30 they said, "ok, we're gonna take off." And closed the doors and took off at 9:35....without my dad. Yes, that's right we flew to LA without my dad and to make matters worse, we got to LA and my mom's phone died. So we couldn't call my dad. Though it had had just enough battery that we heard a message from my dad that said he was on a plane to LA. So we get and ran all around LAX looking for incoming planes from Denver. After two hours of searching...and not finding my dad, we heard my mom's name of the loud-speaker and that "her party was ready to meet her at baggage claim." so we went down there and my dad had landed and gotten our bags. They gave us a hotel room in LA and meal passes for the resuarant at the hotel. Instead of useing them for meals though, we bought water bottles and had them freeze it and brought it with us to Disneyland for two days before we, FIANLLY, went home, THANKFULLY, uneventfully.
And that is the New York Story
So yeah...
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lazy
busy
giddy
chipper
tired
awake
frustrated
relaxed