Disclaimer: I don’t own MLP FiM, and I don’t make money off of it. Please see Hasbro for that sort of thing.
Un-beta’d, but triple checked. Edited on 8/17/12.
I don’t know how many times I’ve stood here. Over you. Waiting. Watching your broken bandaged body breath. Listening to the beeping machines and the wheezing pumps as they labor back and forth to keep you going. Again. I’ve stood here and watched the IV drip, those little clear drops falling soundlessly and I’ve wondered so many times if this is how it will away be. If this is how it will all end; with me watching over you.
They wrap you up in thick white gauze and thin green gowns, and the bed sheets are cotton and pink. The plastic bars keep me from getting close to you, so I stand nearby waiting for you to wake up. And I know someday you won’t, I’ll just be there watching you die and not know it until you’ve gone.
I swung the little table top off to the side so that you can leap out of this plastic bed if you feel like it. You never do right at first, but eventually you will. This is how I stay ahead of the game, by just one step. I have to stay ahead by one step or else I will fall so far behind that I’ll never catch up. You never do anything slow. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even possible for you to go slow.
Your breathing is so slow and smooth. The drugs keep you sleeping so that you can recover. For a moment I let my eyes drop as an almost green liquid goes through a tube away from you and into the bag hanging on the side of your little plastic bed. My gaze drifts to look at the tubes in your arm. That tube keeps you hydrated so that other tube will have yellow-green liquid to take away. Plastic tubes all over you, little extra limbs that snake away from you. It’s disgusting. I am disgusted to see you here. You should be outside in the sun and the rain, with your face turned up; smiling as the wind blasts past you. You love to be outside so much, you don’t say it but I know you love nature so much. It disgusts me to see you here with all this sterile, plastic, beeping crap.
If it didn’t keep you alive I would tear it right out of you.
I take a deep breath and grind my teeth.
I don’t cry when I’m here. Just in case you’ll wake up when I am, I don’t want you to see me crying. It would break your heart and you can’t afford to have nothing else broken. …but I want to cry so badly. You know, it almost hurts worse to know that I can stop those tears. I feel guilty that I’m not hurting so much that I can’t help it. I can stop myself and that scares me a little. I’m worried that I don’t care for you as much as I think I do. When someone loves you don’t they weep uncontrollably, inconsolably? I don’t. I just stand here, eyes dry, and watch you breathe.
A nurse comes in to works around me. She checks your bags and vitals and changes things as they’re needed. She unwraps your bandages revealing the now discolored gashes, and then she wraps you up again in clean white ones. The red and brown strips are discarded somewhere. You are on those scraps forever, your blood, and they have so little trouble throwing part of you away. She works around me because I’m a fixture here.
I want to tell you how I’m here every fucking time, how every time I stay when everyone else leaves. How every single time I leave when you show signs of waking up, but only when you are gonna wake. You don’t like to be coddled and I don’t want you to think I am. I’m not here to treat you like a child. I’m here because I’m scared that every breath I watch you take will be your last.
I hate this place and I hate you for putting yourself here. I hope that thrill you get is worth it; I wish they’d just clip your damn wings and force you to stay safe. I hate that you go back to flying after every crash. I hate seeing you hurt. I don’t even care if it’s just a skinned knee, when I see you crash I think of this place. When I see your blood, I think of this place. When I see the bruises, I think of this place. You see a mild scratch. I see you in this little room wrapped up like the dead waiting for angels to come for you. And I hate you for that.
But I’m here for you.
The nurse leaves. My eyes stay dry as I watch you sleeping. And I wait for you to wake up.