We held our breaths as we watched the doctor step deeper into the tense room, holding the file with all the details of my mother in his hands as though a fragile rose. I didn't know whether to prepare my heart for the coming down or to faint to avoid the news that were coming.
She felt her entire body go cold and still and it made her body shiver with fear. The doctor's face had sweat gather around his forehead and he seemed tired as though he had been up for a very long time delivering bad news for all his patients to stomach forcefully.
She felt tears gather in her eyes as she replayed memories of her mother being the only person there to hold her hand as she took her first steps. As she remembered her mother smiling for her when she won an award for the first time in middle school. When her mother had been the one to tend her wounds when she had been first bullied, and attacked by a bunch of school girls.
She remembered the smell of her mother's fragrance when she had always read her a bedtime story, her body seeming to clutch onto her mother's shirt, hoping that she would stay and chase away the nightmares that brought pain in the middle of the night and left her tossing and turning as though she was nothing but a vessel of hell.
She remembered her mother's angry voice when she had first gotten a boyfriend and the boy had done nothing but turn Aria into a goth chick. She had never known how angry she had been at life until that moment and now that she looked back she understood why.
She had had so many father issues that she had searched for those qualities in boys that were still high from the adrenaline of having fun and living wild and free. Leaving the broken girl to figure out what life really was and not being blinded by the words that were constantly sold to her.
Words that boys seemed to perfect more and more as though a magic trick, leading them to get the gifts that they thought would make the man but actually turned them into a heartless men.
All having to learn the hard way what life and love truly were. She remembered it all, her first kiss with a boy who had thought that cigarettes made him more manly, but all it did was create a distaste and dislike in her mouth. She had never loved a man that smoked after that.
She remembered the touch of the man she thought she had loved entirely with her heart but had only used her to seem cool. She had been glad that she hadn't given him her innocence but the entire school had believed something entirely different and it had changed her entire perspective on school life.
Basic preparation of what life would be like. Judgmental and opinionated towards everything that didn't go in their ideology and ways. Always prepared to break down and destroy something different and innocent and she had been glad that she had learned that way, even though it had been different and much more painful.
So when she stared at the doctor with tears rolling down her cheeks, holding onto James' shirt, she closed her eyes, preparing her heart to hear the god-awful news that words bestow themselves onto her ears. And whether she was prepared to hear them or not, she knew that life would not prepare her but do what was necessary.
"She's doing way more better," she let out a sob then stopped, wait what-
"What?" came James' voice, filled with confusion and yet an underlying tone of hope.
"She's doing much better than before, it's like a miracle honestly, we had been running around trying to figure everything out and thought that there was no way to save her. Until we checked her vitals again and ran tests again.
She is honestly doing way better than we anticipated, we will be keeping her for a few more days, just to check that everything continues going the right way, and then she should be discharged probably after a week or so" he said with a smile.
Aria could finally feel herself breathe again, having not expected the news, she rushed forward and pulled the doctor into a tight hug, gripping his coat tightly and she let out a quiet sob, "Thank you, thank you," she whispered repeatedly
"Not an issue Ma'am," he reassured her "I do recommend-"
She couldn't hear him anymore as she caught sight of two men walking into the room, dressed in black robes, and she looked up to see two other men enter the room with them.
Locking eyes with the one man in the middle, she was met with golden eyes, staring at her with a small growing evil smile.
It wasn't a dream.