Color Me Pretty

fucking inquisition? May as well be in jail.
    “How are you feeling, Claire?” she asks for the hundredth time that day. It's pretty much the only question she ever directs to me. I shrug and keep my face turned away from her, gaze focused on the beige walls of my room. The paint is so shiny and perfect, it's like I'm not even in a hospital but a hotel room. I can't even imagine what the bill looks like. And therein lies my conundrum. If I want to stay on my father's insurance, I'm stuck with the rights of a minor. Some bullshit loophole about me being barely eighteen and blah blah blah. To fully be treated like an adult, I have to pay for all of this. With no job. Shit.
    Dr. Banerjee shifts and sighs, letting out a small puff of air like she's being terribly troubled by having to check in on me.
    “You have a visitor,” she says, and my head snaps over to her so fast that I get dizzy and have to close my eyes for a moment. I know before she says the name who it is. “Emmett Sinclair.” Smirk, MD pauses and looks to the side, like she's trying to figure out exactly what it is she wants to say to me. “Your parents specifically requested that he not be allowed to see you.”
    “Yeah. And I'm eighteen years old,” I repeat. Maybe if I say it enough, they'll get it. They let me call him anyway. I touch a hand to my chest. Already, it's beating away at my ribs, desperate to get out and soar. Why? Am I love with Emmett? I don't know. It hasn't been long enough. But I know that right now, I need him.
    “Claire … ” she begins, and I jump in before she can say anything else. I get the feeling that Dr. Banerjee is the type of person that, once she's said something aloud, never changes her mind. Even if she's wrong. Even if she wants to. So, even though I don't think she likes me, thinks I'm nuttier than a bag of cashews, I let my heart out for a second and see what it has to say.
    “If it wasn't for Emmett, I'd be dead right now,” I promise her and forge on before she can make any judgments on the meaning of that phrase. “Not because I meant to die or tried to kill myself, but because I would've never realized that anything was wrong, not even with something like this. When I woke up yesterday, I was a different person. I was reborn, Dr. Banerjee. Without Emmett Sinclair, I would've just been lucky. Had a second chance to screw things up.” I swallow hard. This isn't easy for me to say, and in all honesty, I don't believe with my mind half the things my heart is saying, but I let it keeping talking. If it'll bring Emmett in here, I don't care. “I need him. Please.”
    I stare into her dark eyes and hold on, hoping she'll see how important this is to me, maybe stop being a bureaucratic doctor for a second and be a person. The smirk drops away and her expression falters. I don't know if she feels sorry for me, standing up there in her pristine, perfect coat with her beautiful olive skin that glows, even under the harsh florescent lighting, if she sees me laying here pale and sallow and ugly. Hideous. A freak.
    I realize absently that I hate myself. Maybe that's my problem? I just hate my own soul. How fucked up is that?
    “Since you are technically an adult, I suppose I can't in good conscious refuse him.” Dr. Banerjee checks her tablet again and shakes her head. She isn't happy about it, but she'll do it. Thank God. I sit up straight and try to smile. When she looks up and sees my expression, her eyes get wider and her sharp, curvy brows raise substantially. Wow. Looks like even the good doctor has the ability to be surprised. “I'll tell the nurse to bring him in.” Dr. Banerjee reaches down for the door handle and then pauses, shaking her head like she can't quite figure something out. At first, I think she's going to ask me something, but instead, she just walks away and leaves me with sweaty palms and two round, gray eyes full of tears.
    I try to hold them back as I wait, but I can't. And then I'm ugly crying big time, sobbing and balling with liquid soaking into the top of my hospital gown, crashing down to the crisp, white sheets. I lift my hands to my eyes, catch sight of my bandages and start to wail. It's sad and kind of pathetic, but it just happens and I don't know why. Maybe it's that circle of pain, cutting into my heart just a little bit, bleeding some of my melancholy out of me.
    If anyone needs proof of life outside this small realm of being that we call existence, then they need look