She Can Do It Herself
1039 Words
Maximus
I ASK LEON WHO he can call. If she has any family or friends, anyone who can be with her.
He shakes his head sadly, using the hand not holding mini-Red to push up his glasses. Penny is impatient to see her Mother, but Leon's occupying her with juice and toys for now.
The ambulance comes and takes Killian, and I call Bash and tell him to keep Josh for a couple hours more. He obliges, telling me he wasn’t going to give him back anyway.
I completely believe him.
Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in th.e waiting room of the ER. Finally a doctor comes out; an older man with a kind face, frowns sadly at Leon.
"Leon, this the third time this month. What is going on with her?"
Leon looks around. "She's working herself to death. Every time I try and talk to her about it, she does the same thing."
"What is that?" I ask.
Leon looks at the doctor for permission.
"Go on in. She's up, so you know how goes."
Leon nods.
"C'mon, you'll see."
We walk down the hall in a private room. We open the door, seeing Sloane look up and grin.
"Leo!"
He shakes his head, disappointedly, pushing up his wire framed glasses in a way that seems to make them look disappointed too.
"Sloan, why do you keep doing this?"
"The room of course," She chuckles, laying her head back and closing her eyes, "Who doesn't want to pay a month's rent worth of money for a hospital room?"
"This isn't funny, Sloan," The doctor says solemnly.
This makes her open her eyes. It’s like her lids are a mine and when she opens them, you can see those emeralds, glittering and gleaming.
"This isn't something you can play off anymore. You're going to have brain damage if you keep at it. Why don't you go out with some friends or date or—”
"Okay, Doc," she puts her hands up with a smirk. "I'll go to a club and do the first guy I see."
The doctor gives a stern fatherly look.
"Sloan. Get out there. Settle down. Find someone else—"
Sloan 's eyes sharpen, but her grin doesn't fade. "You can stop now, Doc."
But Doc doesn’t stop.
"Sloan. You're stressed. You're depressed. You need to take a break."
"No, I don't."
"You have enough money to be happy."
"My mother told me we've all got pay to have a good life. Well I've paid Doc, I'm still not happy. I've been poor, got rich and I still don't what is to be happy."
Sloan closes her eyes once more.
Leon speaks up cautiously. "Why don't you just take a vacation?”
She doesn't respond. These people know her, and she is stubbornly ignoring them.
But she’s intelligent; it’s no question. Maybe if someone who doesn’t know her that well says the same thing she’ll listen.
"Killian, maybe they're right. Why don't you just take a break?"
She opens her eyes, sitting up. Perhaps...that was the wrong thing to do.
"Apparently everybody knows what I need, but do me a favor,"
Her eyes spit fire, she's so mad. "Why don't you all worry about yourselves, and I'll worry about me? Like I always have?”
"Sometimes," I suggest quietly, "It’s good to have someone to worry for you-"
She erupts.
"I don't need anyone worrying for me. I’m on the ground it’s not much lower I get.”
Slowly the monitors increase their speed, indicating how much pressure she’s putting on herself.
"Sloan—" She shouts over me, and I figure I might as well shut the hell up.
"And I don't need anyone to sit beside me and tell me I’m beautiful. Or tell me they love me. I don’t need anyone but me."
The beeping gets faster, like a symphony. The music builds up—
"Ms. Killian, please calm d-"
"No. I can do it myself. I've been doing it since I was 10 years old. I don't need anyone else. I can do it myself!"
And then it hits a crescendo—
The heart monitor starts going crazy, the baby starts crying and screaming, Sloan is crying and yelling over and over and over again that she can do it all by herself.
The room is in chaos. Leon tries to talk over the baby to calm her, the heart monitor beeps faster, the doctor yells for a nurse to get a sedative.
—And then music slows, until abruptly comes to an end.
Then the heart monitor slows and stops. Flat line.
Yelling gets louder, nurses filter in with equipment, yelling things I don't understand.
All I can do is which her in horror, really. My eyes flicker between her, monitor and my watch.
30 seconds. Still flat.
45 seconds still flat.
65 seconds still flat.
70 seconds still flat.
75 seconds still flat.
The doctors start slowing, start preparing to call it quits, call her dead.
90 seconds still flat.
They stop shocking her, stop trying.
"Try again!" I order them.
"There's nothing we ca—”
100 seconds still flat.
"Try again!"
"Mr. K—"
120 seconds still flat.
"Try again! I will give you enough money to buy this hospital three times over. Just try again!"
The doctor nods at the nurse.
130 seconds still flat.
They power up the pads.
145 seconds flat.
"Clear!"
I watch her body jolt and fall limp.
160 seconds flat.
They try once more.
"Clear!"
Her body arches off the table, convulsing and falls lifeless and limp.
170 seconds flat.
Everything muffles around me. I see them unhooking the pads, see nurses leaving.
She lies there, just limp, her red hair dull, her eyes closed, her skin ashen. Vaguely, I feel the doctor put his hand on my shoulder.
"I'm so sorry, son."
I begin to ask him what he's sorry for. And that's when I realize why he's apologizing.
"It's not your fault," I hear myself say, feel myself shrug, smile, "She did it all by herself."
- Writer
