Chapter 193 I will

Chapter 193 I will
I did end up getting admitted for three days.
The moment Parsons said it, something inside me had gone very still. Three days didn't sound like much. Three days was a long weekend. A badly timed visit. A handful of mornings and nights. But in a hospital, three days had a different weight.
It meant three nights under those fluorescent lights. Three mornings waking up and having to remember where I was. Three days of nurses coming in and checking numbers that had started to feel more important than I was.
And, perhaps most of all, it meant my parents finding out. I asked Michael not to tell them. He'd been sitting beside my bed, elbows resting on his knees, listening to me with that expression he wore whenever he was trying very hard not to look frightened.
"They'll worry," I said.
"They're going to worry anyway."
"They'll picture the worst."
"I know."
I looked down at my hands. There was an IV taped to the back of one, the skin around it already beginning to bruise.
"I don't want them to."
Michael was quiet for a moment, then he called my name and when I looked at him, he said, "It's only right that they know."
I sighed. He reached for my hand. "And if they call," he continued gently, "they'll know something's wrong. I'm not going to be able to sit there and pretend everything's normal."
I knew he was right, so I called them myself. It was difficult, but not in the catastrophic way I'd imagined. My mind had spent hours constructing the conversation into something enormous and irreversible, but once my mum answered, it became just a conversation.
A painful one.
There were pauses. Too many questions. My dad went very quiet at one point, which somehow felt worse than anything he could have said. But they didn't fall apart and neither did I. At least not while they could hear me. By the end, my mum made me promise I'd call again the next morning.
I promised.
When I hung up, I stared at the phone for a while.
"That wasn't too bad," Michael said as he squeezed my hand.
"No."
"You're allowed to be wrong about the future sometimes."
At some point during the second day, Michael asked me if he should tell Chloe. My first instinct was no. It came immediately, almost automatically. She was sixteen. She was my student. She had already seen enough hospitals, enough things that children shouldn't have to understand before they're old enough to drive. She didn't need this. But I looked at Michael, and there was something in his face.
A quiet understanding that she would want to know, so I nodded. He sent her a very brief text. Less than two hours later, she called and asked which room I was in, then she was at the door. She stood there for a second as though she'd forgotten how doors worked. Then she walked in.
"Hi," she said in that way she always did.
She glanced at Michael, gave him a small nod, then looked at me again. Her eyes immediately dropped to the IV, then back to my face.
She didn't comment on any of it. Instead, she pulled the chair closer and sat. For a while, she watched me read. I was halfway through a page when she pointed at my head.
"You shaved your hair."
I looked up.
"Apparently."
She nodded thoughtfully. Then she leaned slightly closer and studied my face. "And your eyebrows. Did you shave those?"
Something about the seriousness with which she asked it caught me completely off guard.
I laughed. It hurt my stomach, which made me laugh again. Chloe smiled faintly.
"Sorry."
"It's okay."
"I just thought you looked different."
"I do."
She looked at me for another moment. "You look okay."
I wasn't sure whether she meant it as reassurance or observation. But it sounded genuine, so I thanked her regardless. Michael eventually went home to pack a bag for me, leaving Chloe and me alone. She didn't talk much. But after a while, I noticed her looking toward window. Then at me.
"You want to go outside?"
I followed her gaze. The hospital garden was a short walk from the ward. I considered it for a second before I nodded. The walk took longer than it should have. My body wasn't particularly interested in cooperating, and Chloe unconsciously slowed her pace to match mine without mentioning it. That kindness stayed with me.
Outside, the air felt different. The garden wasn't particularly spectacular. A few benches, flower beds. Trees and a winding path. But after spending hours surrounded by white walls and medical equipment, it felt almost unreal. The silence was different too. Inside, silence belonged to hospitals. Out here, it belonged to everything else.
We sat on a bench beneath a tree. After a while, Chloe spoke. "Do you think I could be a teacher? When I grow up."
I turned to her.
"I think so."
She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "Even someone like me?"
"What does that mean?"
She shrugged. "I don't know."
"You can be a teacher."
She looked at me. "You really think so?"
"I do."
"What if I'm bad at it?"
"Then you'll learn."
"What if I'm not smart enough?"
"Then you'll work harder."
"What if I'm—"
"Chloe. You can be anything you want to be."
She looked down, then nodded and said “okay.” There was something fragile about the way she said it. Like she'd put the possibility somewhere inside herself and wasn't quite sure whether she was allowed to keep it. We sat quietly for another few minutes. Then she said, "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
She hesitated.
"Are you and Michael like...boyfriends?"
I smiled.
"We are."
She looked toward the flowers. “I like him.”
I laughed softly. "I do too."
"He seems nice."
"He's wonderful."
She nodded, as if she'd been collecting evidence and had finally reached a conclusion. And Michael proved just how wonderful he was when he appeared a little while later carrying takeout and another bag. Then he pulled out skeins of yarn in red, blue, cream, green, yellow....
Then came several little packets of crochet markers and hooks.
"The woman at the store said these were apparently important."
Chloe stared, then she told him he didn't have to. And Michael said he knew, he'd wanted to. She'd mentioned earlier that she was out of yarn when Michael pointed out she wasn't crocheting today. She touched one of the skeins carefully, her fingers lingered on the red. And then she looked away. I saw her wipe quickly beneath one eye. She tried to pretend she hadn't. Michael pretended not to notice, I did too. For a moment, none of us said anything.
Then Chloe's voice came quietly. "I want you to get better." I looked at her and she was still staring at the yarn. "I really hope you get better, Mr. Ashbrook."
There were a hundred things I could have said. That I hoped so too. That the doctors were working on it. That she shouldn't worry. All the usual things people said when they didn't know what else to offer someone. But something about the garden made those words feel too small.
Maybe it was simply that she was looking at me with the kind of hope I remembered having before hope became something I had to work at.
So I nodded, and with certainty that scared even me, I said, "I will."