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There’s balloons in the hospital room; floating at the ceiling around the bed, new and fresh and lively, their colors breaking up the monotone clean-white hospital look. Flowers, too, but way less than Victoria knows should be there. It knots something up in her chest.
All this would make for a pretty photograph, she thinks. The contrast, the colors, the misery. Kate Marsh still has dark circles under her eyes.
(Maybe she always will. Victoria wonders when she’ll stop seeing Kate’s face whenever she closes her eyes.)
Hey, Katie, Victoria wants to say. It’s what she planned on saying, this morning while staring into the mirror and rehearsing how to keep her face normal while speaking. Rehearsing how to smile in a way that doesn’t look mocking. Her hand is sweating where she’s clutching her letter, the one that took a dozen drafts and half a mental breakdown to finish writing.
Hey, Katie, Victoria wants to say, but instead, nothing makes it out of her mouth at all. It’s dry, there’s a knot in her throat, and she can’t breathe; can only watch how Kate’s head turns, how she looks directly at her, how something she doesn’t recognize goes over Kate’s face when she sees who’s standing there.
Victoria is in no way religious—not really, never really has been—but suddenly, she feels like she’s standing in a church. Like she’s in confession, like Kate is a priest. Perhaps even like Kate is God herself; judging her.
I’m sorry, Victoria wants to say, like she rehearsed this morning in front of the mirror, again and again and again, over and over and over, but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t.
“Victoria,” Kate says, and Victoria sucks in a breath that almost feels violent at her name now hanging in the air. It almost feels like a slap to the face. “Hello.”
The thing is: Kate Marsh’s face has been haunting Victoria for much longer than she’s felt guilty about all of this. Much longer than just Kate’s suicide attempt—and just the thought makes a dizzy spell wash through Victoria’s whole body, makes her stomach flip and flip, glimpses of the rain and the roof so far above flickering through her almost violently, like she’s going to pass out, like she’s going to die—longer even than the day that stupid video was taken, but not by much.
Maybe that’s why Victoria did it. Maybe that’s why she’s always done it; because part of her has always been haunted by girls.
(With Rachel, with Max, and even her distaste for Chloe. Maybe it’s always, always been about the same thing. Maybe it’s always been about this pit in Victoria’s stomach, filled with tar, maybe it’s always been because she feels gross and she hates herself and she dreams about girls so often she wants to tear her hair out and scream.
It’s much easier to tear a girl down than to kiss her, really. Even now, even right here, even after everything.)
“Hello,” she finally manages to get out, and there’s a strange squeak in her voice, her face flushing hotly immediately, every muscle in her body going rigid.
It takes a few moments of Kate simply looking at her silently—her face not really betraying much of anything, perhaps some timid sort of curiosity, but not the hatred or disgust or something like that, somethingVictoria has perhaps expected to see—that Victoria realizes she’s not going to laugh at her for not even being able to speak properly.
Weird that that was her first assumption, anyway. She’s the one out of the two of them who’s a nasty, cruel bitch, after all. She’s the one who would do something like that. She’s the one who treats everyone around her like this.
“Um,” she adds, the silence around them so deafening that her ears are ringing, that her heart is racing, that something inside of her skull seems to be spinning around and around and around. “Uh, can I come in?”
She can barely see Kate anymore. Her vision is blurring, colorful spots bleeding into each other until she feels a little nauseous with it, until she hears Kate’s voice again.
“…Sure.”
There’s so much hesitation in Kate’s voice, but really, it’s not like Victoria can blame her. Now that she thinks about it, if she were in Kate’s shoes, she wouldn’t want to talk to her at all. Probably would have tried to kill her instead of trying to kill herself or something.
God, God, God. She can barely stand. What the fuck is going on with her all of a sudden?
Somehow, she manages to get over to the hospital bed. Somehow, she manages to sit down on the chair next to it with minimal fumbling, even when she almost knocks over what she thinks are some flowers in a vase. Even when she almost sends them tumbling down, to shatter into a million porcelain shards.
Slowly, her breathing returns to something resembling normal, and her vision unblurs to Kate sitting on her bed, her legs disappearing under the blanket, in her white pajamas shirt. Kate with a small furrow between her brows, like she’s concerned about something. Kate, Kate, Kate.
“Are you okay?” she asks, voice so soft it feels like it’s lighting something inside of Victoria on fire like lighter fluid. “…Did you take something?”
Victoria lifts her head, and the ringing fades out so suddenly her head hurts with it. It feels like she’s being kicked back into her body, into the present, so suddenly it’s almost violent. So suddenly she feels like she has whiplash. Her mouth is dry.
“What?”
Blinking, Kate parts her lips like she’s going to repeat her question, and suddenly, the fire in Victoria’s belly turns angry.
She always ends up angry.
“I’m not on fucking drugs,” she spits out, and there’s a small twist in her chest when Kate presses her lips together so tightly they go white. “Why the fuck would I go to the hospital on fucking drugs?”
Silence wraps around them again, as sticky and uncomfortable as the first, and the fire burns out as quickly as it came, leaving Victoria as hollow and miserable as always. God, she’s so fucked up.
She watches how Kate’s throat bobs, how she nods, slowly, how she seemingly doesn’t really know where to look, her eyes fixed somewhere around Victoria’s shoulder. It’s funny, really; the only reason why Victoria can look at Kate’s face is because Kate isn’t looking back.
Hey, Katie, Victoria thinks, almost bitterly. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I really, really fucking am. Not that it means anything, probably, because I’m still fucking terrible. Because I’ll never change.
“I’m sorry,” she says, finally, squeezing her eyes shut and rubbing the heels of her palms into them until she feels a little more steady. Until her hands have almost stopped shaking. She drops her hands into her lap and clamps them together, fingernails digging into her palms, just to…
She doesn’t know. Keep her there, maybe. Whatever.
Kate hums in reply, and Victoria sighs. Why did she ever think any of this could be easy? That she could just say that and be done with it? That it would just make everything alright?
This is going to haunt her forever, isn’t it?
“No, I mean it,” she continues, and now, she doesn’t manage to look at Kate’s face at all anymore. It swims somewhere in her subconscious anyway, the dirty blonde hair in that messy bun, her big, doleful eyes under her bangs, the pale skin and the dark circles. “I’m sorry, Kay—Kate. For…”
The hospital blanket starts spinning slowly where she’s staring at it. The words are stuck in Victoria’s throat, and by now, both the panic and the anger are gone, and she just feels… well, again, miserable. Part of her wants to run away; wants to ignore all of these feelings like she always does.
But isn’t that exactly what this is? Trying to change, or at least… something like that?
God, she thinks she’s about to cry. Wouldn’t that just be the absolute worst? Making… whatever this is, all about herself? Maybe she really should leave. Maybe that would be the nice thing to do.
There’s another pit opening in her stomach all of a sudden: just her sitting here probably hurts Kate more than… more than she can imagine. What is she doing this for anyway? For her own feeling of redemption? For all she knows, Kate doesn’t want her to—
“Victoria,” Kate says, impossibly soft still, her voice exhausted, and Victoria’s head throbs with how her eyes are burning, her hands so tense she can barely feel them anymore. She feels so out of place in this hospital room with her Chanel boots and the expensive haircut. “Why are you here?”
And as much as it pisses her off—though this time, she manages to bite it back, to swallow it like bile, to keep herself from snapping at Kate again—it’s… it’s a good question. Unfortunately, it’s a good question.
Why is she here? To find some sort of relief for herself, or because she thinks she might be able to help?
(Laughable. Everything is always about herself.)
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully, still staring at the blurring blanket, hunched over like she never ever sits at all. She’s a mess. She’s a wreck. What does Kate see when she looks at her anyway? What does anyone see? “I don’t… I don’t know. I felt like I would…”
Her voice dies out in her throat again. She’s never liked hospitals much.
Kate’s voice is still soft, and when Victoria closes her eyes, it’s almost soothing. “Yes?”
“I felt like I would die if I didn’t see you,” she whispers, floating in a black void with her eyes closed. There’s just her and Kate Marsh in the world, and she’s never been particularly religious, but this feels like judgment day nonetheless. “I’m sorry.”
It’s probably not a very tactful thing to say at all, especially considering Kate actually tried to die. Especially considering that—that everything Kate’s been through, it could never compare—and she’s so selfish, isn’t she?
“Okay,” Kate says, and Victoria can’t read anything in her tone. “Okay.”
Then there’s Victoria’s old friend silence again, but this time, somehow, it isn’t so bad. Her head is still hurting, sure, and there’s still that knot in her throat that tells her she’s literally about to cry, yeah, but it’s…
Calmer, somehow. She feels… calmer. Not at ease—she’d probably not deserve that feeling anyway—but, well, again, calmer. It’s kind of nice, and she sniffles, blinking rapidly to keep the tears away, ducking her head to glance at Kate.
It short-circuits something in her chest, because Kate is looking back at her. Because Kate is already looking at her, eyes big and light brown and… maybe not as sad as when Victoria came into the room. Maybe. If she can let herself believe it.
Not that Kate looks happy; more, like, curious, Victoria supposes. At ease, as well, at least somewhat.
She thinks there’s some weird sort of steel in Kate’s eyes now, something she’s never seen there before, and she also thinks that Kate would kick her out if she didn’t want to see her at all. Thinks Kate is way too nice for her own good. Thinks someone as kind and quiet as Kate Marsh is just going to be taken advantage of for the rest of her life.
(The thought bothers her a little bit, somehow. Makes something in her chest itch, something like… protectiveness, which is just the most twisted feeling in the universe, because it was Victoria who did this to her in the first place. It’ll always be her.)
It’s strange, the way she can’t really look away anymore. The way she feels frozen in place, but not even necessarily in a bad way. It’s strange, the way she feels right now. The way she supposes she’s always felt.
“I brought a letter,” she says, both because she does need to remember to drop off the letter, and also because she needs something to say to fill the silence, to fill the space between their eyes, where they’re looking at each other, when they probably… shouldn’t be looking at each other. Or something. “Uh, I’m not good at… I—I had an easier time writing it down than I’d have trying to say it out loud. But—it’s, it’s, uh in the letter too—if there’s anything I can do to help, I will, okay? Just—just tell me. Yeah.”
Kate is smiling, just a little bit, Victoria thinks. The edges of her mouth digging into her cheeks just a little, softening the lines of her—gaunt, Victoria thinks, horribly—face, and it makes something inside of her stumble and fall.
“Okay.”
She can’t do it right, she thinks. Maybe she’ll never be able to do it right.
She puts the letter on Kate’s nightstand with mechanical movements anyway, and then she sits there in silence until a nurse kicks her out.
It isn’t so bad. She cries in her car parked in front of the hospital, anyway, until her eyes are burning and swollen and she has such a bad headache she has to take an aspirin from her purse. It isn’t so bad.