Insufficient

Chapter 29 - Attention Seeker

Sooo... I'm going to start this chapter by warning you that I may or may not have gotten a wee bit carried away.
This chapter is currently clocking in at around 8,305 words. So if it feels like it's taking forever to end... I'm sorry.

Juliana's POV 

"Either come in or fuck off." I grumble into my pillow, prying my eyes open to see Gino standing in the doorway of my room.

"Sorry." He apologises, shutting the door and cutting off the loud noises of the hospital. I swear, people never shut up.

He just stands there by the door, staring at me. Feeling awkward, and a little too tired to care, I just lay my head back into my pillow.

There's really no comfortable way for me to sleep. I have broken ribs on both sides, majorly on the left, I can't roll to my right side for obvious reasons, and even with the boot the added weight hurts my ankle.

And if you're annoyed at my complaining, too damn bad because this shit hurts.

I can't tell if I love or hate Patricia for agreeing to give me a sleeping pill last night. Uncle Stefano was more than wrong, I in fact did not sleep, even with my parents absence. So ha. I was right.

It was maybe Patricia's second round coming into my room when I broke down and begged her for a sleeping pill.

You know that feeling, when you're exhausted, your head hurts, your eyes are literally crossing from exhaustion, and you still can't fucking sleep?

That's what happened to me last night.

And baby let me tell you hospitals don't mess around with their hypnotics.

So while it is well past my usual wake up time of 7 am, aka when our day nurse starts her shift, I, most definitely, still feel every ounce of that drug.

"You look like shit." Gino says to me, his voice is that deep raspy voice that most boys have post puberty after they've just woken up.

"Thanks. You've always known how to make a girl feel her best." I reply dryly, voice muffled from my face down, scare-the-shit-out-of-your-nurse position.

It's silent, and while I know for a fact that he's still in the room, it surprises me. Gino hates the silence. I think it reminds him of when things got bad with Jameson.

We didn't always just sit there and take it.

The older we got, the sneaker we became. Sometimes, if there was ever a day he came home absolutely pissed, we'd hide.

Throughout the years we had tried and true spots that we referred to as 'safe spots.' Spots that nobody but us knew about. Especially Jameson.

And sometimes, we just didn't want to talk about it. As Jameson started integrating his friends into our 'punishments', or playtimes as he referred to them, the harsher everything got.

Sometimes, we just wanted the comfort of having someone else who understood what we were going through.

So yeah. Gino avoided the silence every chance he got. Which was why it was so troublesome that he was so quiet right now.

I could hear his breathing though. Since when has he breathed so heavily? Has he always done that? It's quite annoying, mind you.

He disturbed the peace by taking a step. It's not a loud step, it's quite soft in comparison. But against the still air of the room he might as well have been stomping.