"Emily! Don't you ever run off like that again, you hear me?!" Emily's mother scolded as she cautiously walked back into the hospital room.

"Sorry mom I-"
"Sorry is not enough you b-" "Kade!!!" The mom interrupted Emily's step father from completing his sentence.

Emily looked down at her feet and clenched her hands into small fists as her mom, Rachael, and her step father Kade began to bicker rather loudly till two nurses and a doctor had to send them out.

With a sigh of relief Emily walked over to the hospital bed lying in the far corner closest to the window and took a seat in old creaky wooden chair the hospital staff had provided her with.

She looked at the human vegetable laying down in the bed. An old woman in her 70s, nothing but a ghost of the ambitious and mischievous lovable grandma she had once been.

The grandma that had once taught her how to hotwire a vehicle then feigned memory loss when an officer of the law approached them. The very Grandmother that had taken her camping way up in the mountains just a month prior. 

"Please wake up grandma" Emily  took her grandmas wrinkly old callused hand into hers. "I need you."
Tears began to fill her eyes but she quickly blinked them away.
Grandma had told her not to cry.
Crying made you vulnerable and life was too short to be sad all the time.

"Never let them see you cry" she had once said. One of the last things she'd said to her for that matter. 

She had been on her way to a friend's house when the accident  happened. But then that storm happened, one minute she was struggling to get the wipers working and then the next...

She shook her head, dragging herself out of the nightmares plaguing her head. At first they only haunted her at night, but recently they came to haunt her even during the daytime.

She didn't see the accident in person but she remembered the officer at her doorstep, drenched from the storm. And that had been enough to break her.

Smiling and feigning happiness became increasingly difficult. But she would do it anyways, for grandma... she  could be strong for her grandma. Maybe then she would wake up and tell her it was all a prank.

But deep down, she knew that wasn't the case.  Food began to lose it's flavor to the point she barely touched it. The only time she really ate anything was when the nurses would slip her a 10 dollar bill and tell her to head down to the cafeteria  to eat something.

Not that she ever went.

Either Kade stole the money from her or she spent it on rock candy before he got there.

Why he ever bothered to visit grandma was beyond her. He neve cared for her. Not really, he was nice to her face, the model son in law, but behind her back...

Safe to say he held no real affections towards her.

"I think I made a new friend today grandma..." said Emily as she leaned down with her upper body on the bed while folding her arms.
"I really think you'd like him so can you please wake up? I think you two would get along pretty well."
Without even realizing it, Emily dozed off by her grandma's bedside.

***

"Mr Miller, I strongly recommend not eating those. They are not good for your heart!"
Avery rolled his eyes as Darlene rolled him down the corridor.
"If I recall correctly there's a girl about your age always here visiting her grandmother, why don't you give them to her?"

A girl his age? Could it be Em? She seemed too energetic to be in a hospital as a patient.

"Okay." Avery agreed with a small sigh.
What room number did she say she was in? Number 9? No... it was 119.

"Here, I think it's this one" Darlene temporarily left his wheelchair to go and knock on the door but no one answered.
"Perhaps we should come back later..."

While his nurse kept rambling Avery leaned forward in his wheelchair and looked through the window to see if the room was empty or not and spotted a familiar mop of curly brown hair.
Em!
She appeared to be sleeping in a rickety old chair by someone's bedside.

"Looks like her sugar high ended" he chuckled to himself.
"What?" Darlene interrupted her monologue as she heard Avery say something.

"Oh err... Nothing. I'll just leave one by her bedside."
"Alrighty then" Darlene opened the door for him as he wheeled his way inside.
Avery took a brief minute to examine the room.

There was a small door that led out onto a sunshine filled balcony and fresh flowers in a vase with a small card saying: "to grandma".

Avery smiled to himself.
This Emily seemed to be a very caring and loving person.

"Hey Em, almost forgot I can't have these." He laid one down on the bed right next to her mass of curly hair.
"Take it easy on the sugar though, huh?"
Avery then slumped back into his wheelchair exhausted while scrunching up his face in pain.

"Looks like it's time for you to head back to bed hun." Said Darlene as she moved away from the doorway that she had been leaning on to observe what was the first time she had ever seen him be so gentle and caring towards another human being. Or any living being for that matter.

Just as they closed the door and started their way back to Avery's room, Emily's mother came walking down the hallway muttering a steady stream of curses before barging into the hospital room they had just exited.

"Emily wake up! We're going home!"
Avery winced at the harshness in her voice as the elevator dinged and Darlene rolled him in just as the doors began to close, shutting out the woman's angry yelling.