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Chapter Three
The next time Jessica opened her eyes, she thought for a moment she might be dreaming. Or perhaps dead. Maybe this is what heaven looks like, she considered for a second. Jess eyed the flowers surrounding her bed. There was every kind of flower imaginable. She winced, knowing instantly that she wasn’t dead as soon as she attempted to turn her head and the pain took over. And then Jessica remembered.
It is funny how there’s always that moment just after you wake that nothing seems real, and you forget that something terrible has happened—when for the slightest period of time it seems that things are the same as before. In the moment right before you remember, all is peaceful and all is as it should be. It’s fleeting but sometimes these certain moments last longer than others. Some days, it might be minutes, while others it’s just a few seconds, when your mind tricks you and allows you this blissful reverie. If only you could buy those minutes, Jess thinks.
She tried to move her legs and attempted to use her arms to push upright, but the pain was too much to bear. She shifted slightly and her eye caught something in the corner. Not something, she realized. Someone. Spencer. His eyes met hers and he looked relieved. She wanted to speak, but simply stared instead. Seconds passed, maybe minutes, before he set his laptop down and walked to her.
“How do you feel?” he whispered.
She shifted her gaze toward the flowers and nods at the pitcher of water.
Spencer reached for a cup at her bedside, placed the straw between her lips, and watched her gulp down as much as she could before he pulled it away. “Not too much,” he said. “We don’t want you getting sick again.”
Jess frowned. “How long have I been here?”
“Fourteen days.”
Fourteen days? Jess considered. That’s two whole weeks. “Where are the kids? How are the kids?”
Spencer pursed his lips. “They’re fine. Your mother is with them. They know about the accident… that you’re hurt and have had a few surgeries but that you’re in here getting all fixed up and that you’ll be home with them soon.”
“How many surgeries?”
Spencer looked away as he spoke. “Three so far. But you’re doing great. The doctors are very pleased with how things are coming along.”
Jess felt the tears sting at the corner of her eyelids. She knew her husband’s tone and what his unwillingness to look her in the eye meant.
“Spencer?” He turned and Jess saw that fake smile she knew so well. “How long am I going to be here?”
His smile faded slowly at first and then all at once. “I don’t know.” He sighed.
And finally, they were getting somewhere, Jess thought.
The following week went by in a foggy haze with more flower deliveries and more nurses than she could count. There were a few visitors here and there. Addison was there every day, sometimes twice a day, as was Jess’s mother. Spencer came in the evenings, and this became how Jess marked her day, based upon who was there and when.
The days in the hospital that immediately followed the accident seemed to drag on as the pain increased ever more with each passing day. Jessica tried to stay on top of the pain, just as the doctors advised, but she didn’t like the way the drugs made her feel. Without them though, she found the nagging pain she endured was more than she could bear. The d
octors told her she needed to accept that it was going to take her body some time to heal and that she needed the narcotics to help facilitate the process. But Jess found it to be a double-edged sword as she was either in pain—or out of it all together, and she couldn’t be sure which was the lesser evil.
In turn, she found that sleep was the only safe place, so she did a lot of it, and when she couldn’t slip into the oblivion she so desperately craved, she pretended to. At first, Jess loved having visitors come. It broke up the day and it was nice to have company for a little while. But as the days wore on, and the reality that Jess could do almost nothing to care for herself, the visitors only served as a reminder of how bad things for her actually were. They left. They went back to their lives. They exited the hospital. They were able to see the blue expanse of the sky and the leaves on the trees. All Jess saw were four white walls, pity, and flowers—who, like her, had been plucked from their lives and set upon a different path altogether.
The more this new path was revealed to her, the more Jess found herself pressing the button attached to the automatic pump that delivered her pain meds. She began sleeping more, or at least pretending to, when Addison, her mother, or Spencer would visit, and before long, the visits slowed some. She still had yet to see her children, but that was because ICU didn’t allow children under the age of twelve to visit. She’d argued once with Spencer over this, knowing that surely a few strings could be pulled, but he refused, saying it was best that they see her when she was feeling a bit more like herself. Jessica hadn’t the strength to press the matter any further, for it was enough to try to make the pain go away. It wasn’t long before the lines became blurred, and she couldn’t determine which was worse—the physical pain she felt each day or the emotional pain of what she had become.
Sometime in the third week of her stay, there was a fourth surgery, which would place pins in her right leg. Jess remembers wondering in the seconds before they put her under if she might be better off not waking up.
Later, when Jess awoke, she felt the slightest bit of disappointment followed by an incredible amount of guilt. She quickly did a double take as she took in the two tiny faces peering back at her. Jess felt someone squeeze her hand. She shifted her gaze downward. Addison.
“Hey, there.” Addison grinned. “We’ve got two people here who are very anxious to see their mom.”
Jess studied her children’s faces. They looked so grown up.
She reached up and touched her daughter’s face. Then she let her gaze shift to Jonathan, unable to ignore the worried expression he wore. She smiled. “Hey, you guys, wanna see how they fixed up my leg? They say I have so much metal in me that I’m practically a robot now.”
Catherine’s eyes widened. Her face had gone pale. “There’s blood on the sheet.”
A booming voice interrupted her. “Maybe some other time, Jessica. We can’t stay too long.”
Jess turned to see Addison’s husband William standing above her bed and suddenly felt self-conscious.
