Broken Hearts

         Winter sat in her room staring at the wall. She had been here a year now, it had been over a year since her life ended. Everyone told her that he wasn’t worth it. They hadn’t known him though, they hadn’t seen the pain he went through, or known why he’d done it. She did though. Winter had been a bright young girl when she’d met him. They fell in love quickly and had become each other’s everything. He was older and she thought he was the greatest thing in her life. He’d been through a lot in his life and asked her to be there for him. She told him she would but knew in her heart he needed more. She wanted to give him everything she was and take away his pain but knew she couldn’t.

         One day she got home and when she turned on her computer, she saw that she had a message, she opened it thinking he had sent her something and discovered her worst nightmare had come true, he was dead. He’d ended it that day while she had been at school. Winter broke down, she cried and when her tears dried up she just sat there. Her mom found her sitting like that a few hours later. She refused to talk to anyone and would just stare off into space for hours. Her family tried getting her to talk or eat but she just sat unmoving.

         Finally after two weeks her family became desperate, they took her into the psychiatric ward of the nearby hospital and had her committed. The nurses there began giving her note books and letting her write, she still wouldn’t talk but she would spend hours writing. It took her about a week to fill each note book. She kept them all by her bed, stacked against the wall. They alone held her emotion and told exactly what she felt. None of the nurses ever tried reading them, a few had asked if they could but she always shook her head no.

         Winter wakes up from her thoughts and grabs the note book she had started writing in that morning. She walks out into the main room and sits down at a table immediately starting to write. Her pencil begins racing across the page and her mind gets lost in the words she writes. As Winter almost reaches the point when nothing can distract her, she hears a sound and she realizes someone has sat down next to her. Winter looks up and sees a guy her age. “Hi” he says when he sees she’s noticed him.

          “hello” she says cautiously not completely realizing yet that she’s talked.

         “I’m Aidan” he says holding out his hand

         “Winter Dawn” she says quietly and takes his hand

         “How long have you been here Winter? I’ve never seen you before”

         “A year” she says softly “He’s been gone over a year and I’ve been here exactly a year” a tear slides down her cheek as she says the last.

         Aidan looks at her kindly “who is he? A relative?”

         “He was my love” Winter says wiping the tears from her cheek “He was but now he’s gone and he’s never coming back” Winter gets up and runs to her room. She sits on the bed and gently rocks back and forth crying silently all the while thinking ‘he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone’ Aidan follows her and stands at her door watching her, wishing he could do something. Finally he turns away and leaves Winter to her pain. A nurse comes into her room later and she’s fallen asleep, the stains on her cheeks showing the evidence of her tears. All the nurses had found Winter like this at some point in the past year, this one was not any different, she just covered Winter with the blanket and turned out the lights.

         When Winter finally woke it was dark outside and the halls were silent. That’s one thing she had never minded about being here, in the silence no one bothered her or asked her to talk. This was the time when she could talk and no one would hear her, this was when she could be sane and no one would know. Winter turns to the table beside her bed and looks for her notebook. When she sees it isn’t there she starts to panic, she runs into the main room and begins looking. She knows if one of the nurses had found it they would have brought it to her room. She searches the whole room until finally she realizes it isn’t there. She thinks back on her day trying to remember where it could be and her mind goes back to the boy, Aidan. She wonders if he could have grabbed it.

         She walks back to her bed and sits down, the past popping into her mind. He was her everything, her love, her Raven. He lighted her darkest nights, gave her a reason to live. “why did you leave?” she asks as if he can hear her “Why?” she asks again as a tear slides down her cheek. She beats her hands against the bed screaming in her mind ‘Why?’ she breaks down crying and rocks herself to sleep again.

         When Winter wakes her notebook is lying beside her on the bed, she grabs it and clutches it to her chest. She looks up and sees Aidan sleeping in the chair by her wall. Getting up she walks over and gently shakes him awake “You probably shouldn’t be in here” she says softly and walks out of the room. Winter walks down the hall and goes outside sitting in the garden, staring at the water in the fountain.

         She still remembered the first time she saw him, they had been talking for months and he showed up at her door with 13 red roses. They spent all day together, talking and holding each other. He told her she was his everything and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. It was the best day of her life and now his words could never come true. She had lost her everything and he took her future with him.

          Winter walked back into the building and went to her room, grabbing her pencil she started writing again. She wrote her dreams in these notebooks, her hopes for what she could have shared with him. She wrote of the future he had told her they would share. She had filled so many notebooks with her thoughts, their dreams and plans. How could she hold this much in her mind. She wondered what they would do with her notebooks after she left, they would probably put them in a box, stash them away in an office.

         Winter flips through the pages of her note book, inside the cover she had written her name, but instead of her last name being there it was his. She was his even if he was dead, no one could take his spot in her heart. More then a year had passed and she still found herself thinking of herself as his other half. All she wanted right now was to fall asleep and wake up before this all happened. Wake up thinking about how she hated school and not being able to wait till she could talk to her boyfriend again. She wanted to wake up before he was lying cold beneath the ground and she woke up every morning surrounded by people who thought she was crazy. She wanted her life back. Only in her dreams was the world right, she hated the nightmares she had sometimes though. She’d wake up crying because she relived that afternoon again in her mind.

         Winter shuts the book and listens for sounds. She’d written all day and now everyone was asleep. Silently she gets up, grabbing her notebook she walks outside. She sits in the garden watching the fountain and thinking. In the morning Aidan finds her, frozen with tears on her face. Her notebook open in her lap. Picking it up he reads ‘I just wanted my happy ending’.