He Chose Her Best Friend Over Her Dying Breath

2: 2

2

When I woke again, three hours had passed.

I found myself lying in a hospital room.

An IV catheter was still taped into the back of my hand.

Cold fluid crept down the transparent line, drop by drop, into my veins.

The suffocating pressure in my chest had faded, replaced by a raw, tearing ache.

The room was quiet.

So quiet I could almost hear the fluid dripping through the line.

While changing my IV bag, the nurse asked,

"Miss, where's your boyfriend? Why isn't he here with you?"

Just then a familiar woman's voice came from beyond the door.

"You don't have to hold me up, I'm fine now, I can walk on my own."

It was Corinne.

Jayden sighed, the way you'd coax a child who wouldn't listen.

"Still, you can't be careless. Low blood sugar isn't something to take lightly. You're Jeanette's best friend. If something happened to you, how would I ever face her?"

The two voices drifted farther and farther away.

A bitter laugh rose in me. I never thought Jayden would remember I existed at a time like this.

I tugged at the cracked corner of my mouth, mocking myself.

"He's busy."

Busy taking care of his girlfriend's best friend.

The nurse sighed, a flicker of pity in her eyes, then turned and walked out.

I turned my head toward the nightstand.

My phone was sitting on it.

I lifted it with effort and opened my messages.

In Jayden's thread, one unread message waited.

*Corinne needs a while longer for observation. Be good, just grab a cab home yourself.*

It had been sent two hours ago.

Back then I was still in the emergency room, fighting to breathe.

I stared at that line of text and suddenly it all felt absurd.

"Be good" again.

That was what Jayden said to me most.

In his eyes I didn't seem like his girlfriend. More like a pet dog he kept around, there or not, it didn't matter.

Something to tease when he was bored and happened to think of me.

He hadn't asked how I was.

Hadn't asked if it was serious.

So it turned out that, somewhere underneath it all, Jayden considered my life and death of no importance at all.

I set the phone down and didn't reply.

After the IV finished, they observed me another half hour.

Only once the doctor was sure I was truly fine did he write me a prescription and let me go.

I grabbed a cab home.

I pushed open the door, and the first thing I saw was the little shelf by the entrance.

That was where my medicine kit used to sit.

My asthma inhaler was inside it.

But now, in its place, stood a clear glass jar.

Full of brightly colored lollipops.

My medicine kit had been shoved into the far corner, buried under a thick layer of dust.

From the living room came the hum of a hair dryer.

"Ow, be gentle, are you trying to scald me to death?"

Corinne sat cross-legged on the rug, scolding him with a pout.

"Fine, fine, gentler. You're impossible to please."

Jayden sat on the couch behind her, holding the dryer and moving it back and forth in slow sweeps.

His long fingers threaded through Corinne's half-damp hair, again and again.

His mouth complained, but his hands were unmistakably gentler than his words.

His expression was focused, serious, as if he were handling some fragile, priceless treasure.

It was like countless fine, long needles driving straight into my heart.

A dense, prickling pain spread through my chest.

Once, during my period, my stomach was cramping and I asked Jayden for a little help.

What had he said then?

"I'm a grown man. I can't dry a woman's hair right."

He'd frowned and taken the dryer with visible impatience, waving it over my head a couple of careless times.

The hot air burned my scalp, and he blamed me for being too delicate.

Only now do I understand.

It wasn't that he couldn't dry a woman's hair.

He just didn't want to dry mine.