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THIS PEN IS absolutely terrible and the ink is slowly fading out, but i'm going to attempt this anyway and just hope for the best since i've gotten pretty good at that lately. i'm not really worried since i don't think i actually have the ability to be worried, but nobody knows what the next few days will bring for us. more than anything, i hope that we'll be okay - all of us. we don't have to be safe or happy, just alive. we can worry about other things later, i just don't want to lose anybody. or see anyone lose themselves. i have a feeling that'll happen if we're not careful, because i used to always hear the stories (mostly from tv shows) about how people weren't the same after traumatic or life-threatening events. i hope we stay alive and i hope we stay the same.
Parker's shoes padded against the hardwood floor as he haltingly entered the living room. Adelaide, lounging in the recliner across the room, glanced up at him from the book that lied in her lap; the pen loosely held in her hand came to a stop just as she fully fixated her eyes on him. As she did so, his eyes diverted and immediately shot to Ellie's lithe frame lying unconscious on the couch.
The worry grew with every moment he stared at her, but it was a worry he couldn't seem to fathom. He hardly knew her, had just met her the day before. And yet, he still felt the need to check for her pulse every time her eyes slid shut for longer than a second. He presumed it was just because he was finally able to take care of someone in the way his mother would never allow him to care for her; he'd just mention the word "rehab" and she'd be gone the next morning, only leaving behind a small note telling him to be good while she's gone.
"She's sleeping," Adelaide softly spoke up, drawing Parker from the thoughts that were beginning to consume him. He was brought back to reality, back to the creaky floorboards beneath his feet, back to the sound that her pen made as she began to write again. "I'll let you know when she wakes up," she added, eyes glued to the journal before her, "so you can give her the medicine yourself. I know you want to."
"I just..." Whatever sentence he was attempting to form trailed off, lost in oblivion, and he only ended up looking down at the way he nervously rubbed his thumb back and forth across the width of the side of his index finger. However much of a nervous habit it might have been, it was nevertheless calming. It brought him back down to earth as if the weight of the world on his shoulders wasn't enough to hold him down. "I just want to, uh, make sure that we're all..." his timid voice stopped for a moment, as did the motions of his hand, and he looked back up at her, "that we're all okay."
Her hand slowed to a stop and a small, assuring smile graced her lips as she looked up at him. "You don't have to worry," she told him - almost like a promise. All the promises he'd ever been told were utterly empty and carried no weight, but he couldn't help but take her word for it. It seemed almost like a skill she had perfected, being able to tell anybody anything and they'd believe it. She could tell him that the sky was a shade of purple and he'd take her word for it.
