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Then darkness overtook me again and I slipped back into a slumber.
In and out I went until I didn’t know what day it was. What week it was. What month it was. And every single time I came to, just for a moment, I could hear my mother and my sister grilling Grace.
And she was answering every question in stride.
“So he’s your first private patient?”
“Is this what you want to do with the rest of your life?”
“Really? We should change those flowers? I never knew. I might give it a shot.”
I wanted to jump in and tell them to stop throwing questions at her. I knew what they were doing. They were trying to dig up information on me, or push her away, or try to convince her she wasn’t needed any longer. But I wasn’t about to go back into the care of my mother and my sister.
I’d rather burn in Hell than experience that again.
“He’s been dead for a few years,” my mother said.
“Ironically enough, he died in a car accident,” my sister said.
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said. “What happened?”
My father’s accident.
They were talking about my father’s accident.
I didn’t want to be awake for that conversation. I’d relived that horror enough in my life. I slowed down my mind and stopped fighting the darkness creeping at the corners of my mind. I allowed the slumber to take me back under as images of him swirled around in my mind.
But when my mind stopped, it wasn’t on my father.
It was on Grace.
She was smiling and laughing as she reached for my hand. The two of us were running up a hill. Towards a massive tree covered in snow even though the sun was shining bright in the sky. She pulled us underneath the cool shade of it and wrapped her arms around me, and I could feel her soft body pressed against mine. I watched her lips fall to my chest as my hand stroked through her hair, but then I lost my balance.
Tumbled backwards.
Cried out for her as her hands reached out for me.
I jolted awake and started breathing heavily. The room was dark and the beeping of the monitors filled my ears. I fumbled around for the morphine button I’d felt Grace searching for before. The pain was excruciating and it was hard to breathe. My hand moved around as tears welled again in my eyes, and for a moment I thought I was alone. I thought she had done what I’d asked and left.
And I panicked.
“It’s okay. I’m right here. Settle down, Hayden. Hold on.”
Her voice. Filled with so much sleep and so much worry. I felt her breath pulsing against my ear. I pressed my head against her, feeling the warmth of her lips as she reached for the control in my hands. The beeping of the button rang out into the room, and I quickly felt sleeping taking me under again.
I turned my face towards her and our eyes connected, and for a brief moment I debated on whether or not to kiss her.
She was here. And my heart soared at that fact.
“Sleep, Hayden,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
That was the phrase she kept chanting to me. Over and over again, every time I woke up. My recuperation in the hospital took two weeks because of complications, but I weathered every single one of them with her at my side. The onset of infection, the draining of fluid. The fear of my body rejecting the implant. All of it, weighing on my mind. And all of it fought head-on with her hand slid delicately into the palm of mine.
My sister and my mother were there frequently, but she was the one staying with me at night.
And for some reason, that gave me peace.
After three weeks of lying in a hospital bed, my physical therapy started. It was almost unfathomable that they wanted me already up on my feet at this point, and it was frustrating. If the pain wasn’t blinding, then it was my leg. Wobbly and unstable, and nothing like I thought it would be. It was like I was having to retrain myself how to walk. Like I was some idiotic toddler who was struggling with the basics of moving.
