Remember That Day

Chapter 20

Jayda checked the hallway for other people who could possibly help her with Damek, but it was too tiring to go down and ask someone for assistance.

“Is he drunk?” she asked herself as she slowly inched towards him.

“I need to pee. Where’s the bathroom...”

Sitting near, Jayda looked at him with wonder in her eyes. She whispered, “I wonder how many bottles of alcohol have you taken down for you to look so devastated like that. Don’t you have shame to ask a woman to help you pee?”

Jayda noticed the key card almost half-seen in his pocket. She took it to open the door for him.

“I could just let you or ignore you, but for the sake of humanity you say, I’ll help you and to return the favor as well for helping and taking care of me last night,” she whispered.

Jayda grabbed his arm, and with all her strength, she pulled him up and took him inside the room.

“Oh?” Damek mumbled when he glanced to her. “You look like the girl... the girl who broke my heart.”

Damek smiled upon saying it. His voice was still as hoarse as it was earlier and his eyes were too lazy to remain open.

Jayda, who wasn’t aware that she was the one that Damek was talking about replied, “She looks like me? What a coincidence.”

“Um. But she’s a bad woman, not like you. You are kind. You are helping me to pee, right?” he asked.

When they finally reached the bathroom, Jayda almost throw him inside it. She said, “That’s your bathroom. Go ahead and pee, you disgusting punk! Try to wash yourself too. You stinks! No wonder why you got heartbroken. That girl made the right decision to dump you. You’re a headache!”

After the nagging, Jayda shut the door and let Damek do his ritual inside. She was not just annoyed, but confused as well about why was she helping a guy she didn’t actually know.

Jayda was tempted to leave the room, but she ended quite worried for him as he was too wasted to look for himself alone. He was totally drunk and he actually couldn’t do anything right with his current state.

She put the food on the table, and sat on a chair as she waited for him to finish inside the bathroom. Until she noticed that his room was quite a mess especially on his working table.

Scratched papers were scattered on both table and floor and books of different sizes were not organized. To kill her time, she started to clean his table. She threw the trash and wiped it with some tissue. There she noticed that he was really a Webtoon artist. She accidentally moved the computer mouse only to see some illustrations flashed on the screen.

Fifteen minutes had passed and she automatically turned her head to the bathroom. Damek was not yet stepping out from there.

“What did take him so long?” she had whispered before she marched near the bathroom.

She heard nothing, but only the flowing water from the shower. When worried started to eat her, she knocked on the door twice.

“Damek?” she called, but she got nothing in return.

After thrice of calling him without any response, she twisted the knob only to see him unconscious inside under the shower.

“Damek? Damek!” she yelled and almost run to get him.

That moment was the only time she noticed that Damek already got a fever. She assumed that it was probably because of letting himself returned from where he had been without changing his wet clothes she didn’t have any idea why it was in the first place.

“I’m so... so cold,” Damek whispered and it was obvious how he hugged himself while Jayda walked him to his bed.

“I know. It’s obvious,” Jayda nagged.

When she had finally taken him to his bed, a sudden thought wondered her.

“You look like the girl... the girl who broke my heart.”

“You look like the girl... the girl who broke my heart.”

“You look like the girl... the girl who broke my heart.”

“No, she’s not me,” she whispered and stared at him. She wagged her head to erase it from her head, but it got worse when she heard Damek spoke again.

“Jayda...” he mumbled, turned to his side and accidentally touched her hand with his hand.

Jayda’s reflex was fast. She stood up and inched to the closet and took a deep breath.

“Just this night, Jayda. You can do it. He wouldn’t remember it anyway.”

Ignoring all what was inside her head, she tried focus to just help him. Although she was a little awkward to remove his clothes, she did it anyway with a blanket to cover him.

After a couple of trying, Jayda finally changed him with fresh clothes without her eyes seeing anything. It was not her first time to change a guy’s clothes. She had a little knowledge on how to do it when Faris got drunk and couldn’t take care of himself.

The clock struck at nine, but Damek was still unconscious. Jayda was just beside her, silently staring at him, still wondering when she got a little surprised when Damek mumbled something again.

“If only a cardiologist like me could ease a broken heart with heart transplant, I would be willing to do your surgery right away. But unfortunately, it will never be the way to move on,” he whispered then chuckled. “I clearly remembered it Gon, but I just couldn’t think anything about how to move on.”

“Does he always do sleep talking when he’s sick?” Jayda wondered.

But nothing could’ve had prepared her about what she heard next.

“I know she have a boyfriend, but I didn’t expect that she would slap it to my face? I was dumped without even telling her that I like her. Am I too obvious? How dare she trampled my heart to death after I took care of her? My first heartbreak...” he whispered and grinned. “It is like a grief that comes in waves, gruelling, stealing appetite and sleep alike. It is a fragment in my guts that never leaves, though perhaps in time, the edges will dull. It feels like death just as the same as bereavement. In quiet moments like this, it is like it chokes the breath from my body and short circuits my mind. Ah, it kept on repeating inside my head...”

Jayda let out a sigh after those words from him almost made her heart skip a beat.

“How could you fall that easily to a woman like me you just met only a week ago?”