Scene 8
It was somewhere around 4 am when Lexa shuffled under the blanket pulling her dormant self closer to it. Sleep driven eyes were barely open and hastily Lexa moved her left arm open to the blonde’s side only to find it empty. The side of the bed was cold. Too eerily cold.
There was haziness in her vision to some degree when she mildly crashed into the night stand before calling out her name. Only she didn’t reply. Lexa thought that maybe Clarke was in the living room but the room was as dead as it could be.
“Clarke?”
No answer came to Lexa’s third call. Finally, she knocked on the wooden board of her bathroom. The sign “Knock Knock” with smiley face and a tongue poking out was mocking Lexa.
“Clarke?” Lexa waited until she called again. Frantically, she tried on the door knob which was locked. The signs of the upcoming scenario was paling the insides of Lexa. It was becoming vaguely and vaguely too familiar. Almost banging on the door on the last time, Lexa decided to break it open.
It didn’t break on the first try but desperation was making Lexa’s mind ran havoc. On the second time she finally wrecked through the door, running to the unconscious blonde who lay splattered on the ground. Emerald eyes flew to the empty container of bleach, her suspicions proved true. She cradled Clarke’s head on her lap, erasing he white face of her blonde locks. Lexa was no doctor but she looked for any sign of pulse. She checked her wrist, her throat but she found none.
“What the fuck, Clarke? Fuck you.” She felt saltiness in her vision but jerked her head out of her reverie. Now wasn’t the time for tears.
She ran out for her phone dialling in 911 but the same monotone reply was barring her ear lobes out. “Please hold. We’ll get to you as soon as …..” Lexa clenched her jaw in frustration, throwing her phone to the nearest concrete. Time was ticking, and every second she wasted Clarke was nearing to her permanent sleep.
Lexa was still in her boxers, when she cradled Clarke in her arms, like a mother does to her child sheltering her away from all harm, as she bolted out of the front door car keys fisted in her palms. The flight of stairs felt endless and she felt her legs and arms almost give up on the excessive weight that now lay asleep in her arms but Lexa wasn’t the one to give up. Not when Clarke was at stake.
Lexa bitched Ark mercilessly when it didn’t start on the first try. Her thought immediately went to Clarke who might have actually killed her if she saw Lexa bitching in such an unsavoury way to her precious baby. Red eyes peeled themselves off the road, and trailed for a minute second to the tugged in blonde before getting in to locate the nearest hospital.
The white lights. The chloroform reeking air. Green scrubs. The zeal rush of doctors and nurses screaming Emergency at the top of their lungs, cramping around the patient. And their consolation. Everything made Lexa nauseous. Families standing, waiting in front of OTs in endless corridors. Everything made Lexa relive her mother’s death again and again. It was like an itch on her skin, a jump in every step of her footing whenever the door of an OT would open and the doctors would come out bearing news that might actually shatter her stance.
The doctor, a woman who would be treating Clarke and assured Lexa, a squeeze on her shoulder, with a “She’s in good hands.” before stalling Lexa behind and disappearing somewhere behind those hefty grey doors.
And Lexa waited. It takes as long as it takes.
Ice blue eyes flicked open after being asleep under some endless enchantment, but they felt heavy. Too heavy to open for more than just a few seconds. But it those few seconds, she saw a blurred imagery of her familiar brunette. Snoring lightly on the couch. Her presence acted as some sort of a silent promise that made Clarke grin, even her smallest ones. It felt …. Good.
She barely heard a distant third voice say, “She’ll be here. Sleep.”
The stimulation of the drugs in her system was tempting her to fall into another sleep but Clarke was fighting it. She wanted to look at Lexa properly for the last time, even though she didn’t realize it wasn’t a dream.
Under her breathe she mumbled two words. “Thank God …” Her voice slurred as slumber final stole her.
The following time she woke up, she didn’t feel the dizziness nor the throbbing of veins inside her. But her near coward act from the previous night had left her hallow in the core. Her vision finally drifted to the other occupants on her room.
She first looked upto Lexa who had a sudden stiffness in her posture. Her back was acutely straightened, both of her hands were tugged behind her. There was a clouded redness in those fluorescent green, almost cold in her stare. As if she was looking at her, just looking. Lexa didn’t even bother to close the distance between them, just maintaining her ground from afar. Clarke didn’t know why the hell was she disappointed at her demeanour but the hurt was cringing through her features with ease.
“Are you alright, Miss Griffin.” Inquired the other occupant. The doctor. Burnette in a far darker shade, somewhere in her 30’s.
“Just Clarke.” Clarke say nonchalantly, her mind and eyes still stuck on Lexa’s. “I’m fine.”
After undergoing all the minimal left over preliminary tests, the doctor addressed Lexa to head off to the pharmacy for a few meds just in case Clarke’s wellbeing didn’t go smoothly. Lexa didn’t hesitate in her stance, ordering the nurse to accompany her in case Lexa forgot something. Clarke watched with great amusement as the big man scowled before her demands but under her sonar beam of a glare, he hardly stood any chance.
“Your ….. “ the doctor began, her finger trailing behind the slim brunette, waiting for further acknowledgement from Clarke since the doctor herself didn’t want to assume any form of relationship between the two girls. Clarke, on the other hand, confusingly added, “Friend?”
“Aww, friend.” The slyness in her tone muttered a ruddiness in Clarke’s cheeks who ducked her head.
“Your friend is ….. very hardcore. She literally fought the nurse, Jordan when she wasn’t allowed to stay any further. I have never seen Jordan shiver against a girl half his size, but I have to say it was very interesting.”
“She loves commanding people. Second nature.” They shared a short lasted laugh over the commandeering nature of the brunette.
“So what was it?” The doctor was still scribbling on the final documents on her clipboard, very likely signing off the release papers for Clarke. Her abrupt question caught Clarke off guard who reeled back in her bed.
“Excuse me?”
“I meant what made you want to commit suicide? What was it? Lost your dream job? Abusive parents? Heart break? Didn’t stand up to your expectations? What was it?”
“Does it matter?” Clarke snapped at the matter-of –fact tone of her doctor.
“It doesn’t since you are alive. But it should matter because you wouldn’t have made it if not for your friend.” The said doctor pulled a seat next to Clarke.
“I have seen people wishing to die for worst reasons but I have also seen people want to live despite their worst reasons. Life can be very harsh when it wants to be. Despite all shortcomings, life is a rare and beautiful thing which many fail to see. Until the very end.”
“I guess, the irony is most people is just happy to somehow make it through the day. To survive.” The melancholy in the blonde’s voice struck the doctor who offered her a gentle words.
“Shouldn’t life be more than just surviving, Clarke?”
Clarke didn’t know the answer to that. Theoretically, yes, life should be more than just surviving. But the want, that want to live you need a reason for that. A reason that was eluding Clarke. She needed a reason to live and right now she couldn’t find any.
Lexa nudged Clarke out of her boulevard of day dreams, placing a ring on her lap. It was her ring. Clarke’s residual breathe clogged inside her. She barely responded when Lexa told her, she had found on carelessly lying on her bedside. And reasons on why she had been here in the first place flushed through her mind. Her eyes were saucer shaped, jerking to the brunette who stood at an arm’s length away from her. Unwanted, hardened tears again broke through her lashes.
“I need to tell you.” She sniffed her words.
“You are not ready to tell me.” Lexa was impassive. Too unflappable in her approach. She nodded in a no.
“But you deserve to know.” Clarke almost implored.
“That doesn’t matter. When … if you are ready, I’ll be here to listen.”
The ride home was vexed in silence and so was the coming evening. They didn’t talk at all until it was necessary. This diversity in Lexa’s demeanour was chewing in Clarke’s bones but she couldn’t come forth with anything, or something that wouldn’t end in tears.
Lexa lay snoring awkwardly on the grey couch, the pages of her withered book open on her chest. Clarke remembered the visible bags under toning her eyes, she had even pointed them out but Lexa paid no heed. She said she was alright. But she wasn’t. Clarke could see her struggling under her mask of indifference and it didn’t help when she was keeping Clarke miles away from her.
August of 2003
The silence reeked of dead silence. Her father was somewhere around, probably on the phone with some doctor. That was what he did all the time, in his spare time anyway. Pulling his hair out, tongue tying his incoherent tears so nobody would hear him, but sometimes his daughter would stole those moments, wishing silently if she could ever take away those pain.
Somewhere in the old kitchen of her house, an 11 year old Lexa was gingerly moving the steamed noodles out of the stove, whisking away the hotness that was burning her tiny finger tips. She poured the hot liquid into her bowl, finally satisfied with her meagre success she headed from her mother’s room.
Her mother lay on her head, fragile, too thin, and almost transparent. There was a dampness underneath her eyes, her head mostly bereft of any hair and oh the croaked and chapped lips and those broken muscles in her cheekbones. It was a pitiful sight but yet there was that same ever radiant smile, that undiminished light in those green eyes.
Lexa was pretty short for her age, so she curled on her toes and placed the plate on her bedside, slowly starting to devour out her self made meal.
“Did your father make it for you?” asked the hoarse voice from beside her.
Lexa had proudly nodded. “No, mama. I made it.”
Her mother against all her creaking bones and shallow stolen breaths tried to get up in a sitting position. But the voicing in her head were igniting her in painful horrors shouting at her to stop it. Instead she subsided them, sat up and engulfed her child in her embrace.
When watery tears hit her clothing, Lexa had pushed back her mother, washing away her tears in anguish.
“Are you hurt, mama?”
But blissful tears were already pouring. “I’m so sorry … my sweet Lexa for …”
Sorry for not being a mother you needed, you deserved.
Sorry for contracting brain tumour.
Sorry for making Jonathan and you, go through this again and again.
And then started that rib breaking, throat tearing coughs. Dry coughs that urged her to pull her contents of her stomach, forcing her to halt midway. She was struggling to breathe but even in that shortness of breath, she told Lexa the one, perhaps the most important thing in life.
“Don’t be afraid to love, Lexa.”
But the muted child back then didn’t understand the weight behind those final words who jumped on her feet to call her father.
Her mother’s eyes were clipped shut. She lay on the bed silent when her father rushed it. Her father had desperately screamed her mother’s name that awful night, jerked her head, checked for pulse but he couldn’t find any. He didn’t give up then. Instead, he begged Lexa to stay strong as they sat in the back of the ambulance beside the almost lifeless body of her mother.
The white lights. The chloroform reeking air. Green scrubs. The zeal rush of doctors and nurses screaming Emergency at the top of their lungs, cramping around the patient. And their consolation. There hushed and hurried whispers that her mother wasn’t anymore, that she had gone without any hurt.
She didn’t cry or scream. She just ran out that day. She ran and ran, pushing past long legs until she was outside the hospital doors. Her own shadows heaving to match her speed and so was her father. Whose shrill cries muffed her ears.
“Lexa, please. Lexa. Lexa ….. “
“Lexa, Lexa ….?”
She trembled under the approaching touch of Clarke, almost toppling out of the couch. Perspiration mixed with salt tears had wetted her face.
Clarke hadn’t realized what she had drawn until the vague black outlines were done scratching through the lengths of braided curls. But there were still certain minute details that needed emphasis. With a content smile, she went back to draw her muse when hurried, uncoordinated breathes stopped her. Clarke rushed from her seat to the struggling brunette who was reliving her own nightmare.
The outstretched hand of Clarke’s touched her clothed arm.
“Hey, hey … you are okay.”
Lexa’s unsettled gaze finally fell the blonde. Who forwarded her a glass of water. She didn’t question Clarke who ran soothing circles atop her shirt, they were long strides on her arm, long and gentle and she found herself leaning into her touch.
“You are okay?”
Lexa sighed in agreement and it was then she saw the parchment paper lying callously on the table. It was a painting of hers, draw acutely right and astonishingly beautiful. Her features had been magnified by degrees and the mere thought that the blonde artist had drawn her, out of all, made her heart skip a beat.
“You make me look too beautiful.”
Lexa was so engrossed admiring the masterpiece lain in charcoal that she didn’t notice the shortness of breath that tightened Clarke’s insides who eyes trailed lazily against every feature of the brunette, nor the reddening of her ears at the underlying compliment.
“You are.”
With almost flushed cheeks, Lexa looked back to the blonde artisan who evaded her eyes, but very goodly the brunette could see crystal clear a thunder hidden behind those shadowy eyelashes.
Don’t be afraid to love.