Borrowed Air

CHAPTER 1 : HER POV

I learned the sound of machines before I learned how to breathe again.

They beeped when I slept.

They hummed when I woke.

Sometimes they screamed when my lungs decided they were tired of pretending.

The doctors call it chronic rejection.

I call it betrayal.

Four years.

Four years of ceilings I could map with my eyes closed. Four years of needles, tubes, masks, and nurses who tried not to look too sorry for me. Four years of pretending I wasn’t counting how many times a body could fail before it finally gave up.

I’ve been in this hospital longer than I was ever meant to be.

Two years in a coma.

Two years awake.

I woke up to a world that had already moved on.

The first thing I asked wasn’t about my lungs.

It wasn’t about the scars or the machines or the reason my chest felt like it had forgotten how to rise on its own.

I asked, “Did I graduate?”

No one answered right away.Mom looked away,words caught on her tongue I could see it - the way she bit her lip and tears that did hide and seek at the corner of her eye .

That silence hurt more than the truth.

Later, when my hands were steady enough to hold a phone, I watched videos I wasn’t in. My classmates in caps and gowns. My name read out loud by a stranger who didn’t know I was watching from a hospital bed with an oxygen mask fogging up my screen.

I had a job offer waiting for me once.

An email that expired while I slept._"20th September job appointment expired " .

Life didn’t pause because I did.it went on .

I run a channel now.

It wasn’t planned. It just… happened.

At first, it was only for me — proof that I was still here. Then strangers started watching. Asking questions. Calling me brave. Calling me strong.

They don’t see me when the lights go out.Sure there are people like me out there but for them ...they don't.. really...make it ...

so I'm called a ...lucky one ..They tell how brave and strong i am ,I'm not surprised , heard it lots of times from the doctors and even strangers.

They don’t hear me crying into my pillow because my body refuses to cooperate.

Ava does.

Ava is my nurse, but she’s more than that. She Combs my hair when my arms hurt. She yells at doctors when they forget I’m a person. She tells me stories about the outside world like it still belongs to me. but the question is ...does it still ?.

She says I’m unique.

I don’t know about that.

I just know my lungs don’t work. Not properly. Not anymore.

I’ve had surgeries so many times that the number blurs together. New lungs that didn’t stay. Hope that didn’t last. Promises that cracked under pressure.

Still, every morning, I wake up.

That has to count for something. I wanted air ...so I got out ...and there that's when I met him .

I met him on the roof.

The hospital roof isn’t special. Concrete floor. Metal railing. A view that makes the city look far enough away to pretend it’s another universe.

I go there after visiting the newborn wing.

It’s strange — watching life begin when mine feels like it’s constantly on pause. But I like it. It reminds me that breathing can be effortless. That hearts can start strong.i stand there...hours just whispering ...it seems like I'm whispering to the air but I'm whispering to the babies ....out the window

I've been warned ..warned by Ava not to go to places like that and that I always have to be in sight so if anything happens to me she would know _

so I leave as soon as her warnings come back to me _ even when I don't want to .

That’s where I saw him.

He was standing too close to the edge.

I didn’t know his name.

All I knew was that something about the way he stood made my chest tighten — and not because of my lungs.

“Hey,” I said, my voice sharper than I meant it to be. “You shouldn’t stand there.”

He turned like I’d insulted him.

“What do you know?” he snapped. “About anything?”

I should’ve walked away. Ava always says I don’t know when to stop caring.

But I stayed.

“You’re wrong,” I told him. “About whatever you think you’re right about.”

That made him laugh — a short, bitter sound.

He called me annoying.

Called me reckless.

Said I had no idea what pain really was.

I told him pain wasn’t a competition.

He stared at the oxygen tube at my nose, then looked away like he’d lost.

We didn’t exchange names.

But when he walked past me, I noticed his hands were shaking.

After that, I started seeing him everywhere.

In the halls.

By the elevators.

Outside a room I later ask about and learned his grandfather was there .

He never smiled. Not really.

And when he saw me, he acted like I was an inconvenience he couldn’t shake.

I told myself I didn’t care.

didn’t like him.

He was rude, sharp-edged, and looked at the world like it had already disappointed him.

And yet, after that night on the roof, I started noticing him — not because I wanted to, but because my mind kept circling back to the way his hands had shaken when he walked away.

We didn’t talk again. Not really.

Sometimes I’d see him down the hall, sometimes by the elevator, sometimes outside a room he never stayed in for long.

He never smiled at me.

But every time our eyes met, it felt like something unfinished passed between us.

I didn’t know his name.

I didn’t know his story.

I only knew that he looked like someone who was standing on the edge of something — and hadn’t decided whether to step back or fall.

Some nights, when the machines quiet down, my mind drifts backward.

To headlights.

To metal screaming.

To blood and a voice calling my name like it was trying to hold me here.

I don’t remember the face. My mom on the other side calling my name through the noise.

Just the sound.

I wake up gasping, fingers clutching my sheets, heart racing like it’s trying to outrun the past.

Ava tells me to focus on the present.

So I do. .....maybe ...but I try .

Ava notices it before I do.

“You’re frowning again,” she says, adjusting the tube at my nose.

I hesitate, then tell her about the boy on the roof — the way he snapped at me, the way his hands shook when he walked away, the way the night didn’t feel finished after he left.

Ava listens without interrupting.

When I’m done, she sighs.

“Don’t think about him,” she says gently.

I nod, even though my mind hasn’t agreed yet.

We didn’t exchange names.

We didn’t promise anything...why would we.

He walked away like someone who didn’t intend to come back.

And yet, days later, when I catch a glimpse of him down the hall, my heart stutters — not with hope, but with the uneasy feeling that some meetings don’t end when people leave.

They linger.

Quietly.

Like unanswered questions.