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CHAPTER 2
BLAKE
It was a tremendous feeling of fear that roused me. It hit me like a freight train – one minute everything was dark and peaceful, and the next, consciousness hit me and filled me with the overriding sense that something very bad was happening.
The pain was the next warning, pain throughout my entire body. My limbs ached, every breath felt like torture and my head was throbbing like it was being compressed in a vice. I fought to open my eyes, needing to know where I was, what I was facing. How could I protect myself if I couldn’t even open my eyes?
Panic started to consume me as scenarios ran through my fuzzy brain. Was I back in that cellar? Had I ever even left?
I tried to calm myself as confused memories whirled around in my mind. I remembered the hospital, waking up feeling just like this. I remembered nurses and doctors prodding and poking at me, and police demanding to know what had happened. I remembered the terror of not being able to speak, to move.
My heartbeat sped up to a terrifying rate as the thought that I was back there sent me spiralling. How could it all be happening again? How could I be back there?
Every breath I gasped became shorter and shorter as I realised I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t survive everything that had happened to me, since that nightmare day I awoke in that hospital, all over again.
In my desperate panic I had completely shut out everything else around me, but when I felt a hand firmly grip mine, surrounding it in warm heat, it pulled me back a little.
“Blake, can you hear me, baby?” I knew that voice. Grey. The soothing tone brought more memories rushing back of him and of the guys. My Dad and Trent – it all came back. They had found me and saved me. My body seemed to relax little by little, and breathing became slightly easier with every image that flashed through my thoughts – memories of loving hugs, and laughter. Memories of feeling safe and cared for.
“That’s it…just rest now. I’m here Blake. I’m right here,” Grey soothed as the sound of my pounding heart quietened in my ears. The fog in my head seemed to thicken as the sounds around me started to fade out. I thought I heard a whispered ‘I love you’ but darkness descended before I could process the words.
GREY
I stood watching on, her hand clutched in mine as the doctor adjusted Blake’s I.V. and spoke quietly to the nurse who was assisting him.
“That was a good sign, right?” I asked, unable to hold it in any more. “I mean, she heard my voice and she knew me, right? She calmed down. She knew it was me.” I sounded as desperate as I felt inside. Blake had been in a coma for ten days and to say we were all starting to lose our minds was a serious understatement.
Her doctors had assured us they had seen brain activity in the tests they were running, and that we just needed to give her brain time to repair itself and reboot. They were relatively confident she was going to wake up. The concern was that she could have deficits and brain damage when that happened.
“We’ll monitor her closely. She should wake more and more now,” the doctor replied, hedging around what I had actually asked him.
I leant close and placed a kiss on Blake’s cheek as he and the nurse left the room.
“You’re going to be okay; I know you are,” I whispered to her. I knew what I had just seen. She had woken up terrified and panicked, but as soon as I held her hand and spoke to her, she recognized me and calmed. She was still in there; I knew she was.
I took a few minutes to make sure she was settled, not wanting her to become scared again if I let her hand go. I checked the heart monitor beside me and was relieved to see her racing heartbeat had calmed once again.
Reluctantly, I released her hand and walked over to the window as I pulled my cell from my pocket. I needed to let everyone know she had finally woken. It was the news we had all been desperate for.
For the first week we had all been at the hospital night and day, the four of us, plus Trent, Simon, and Nan. We’d camped out in the ICU waiting room, switching out two at a time to sit with Blake. We had all been a mess, hoping for the best but fearing the worst with every moment that passed that she still didn’t wake. We were worried for her safety too. We still had no idea who had hit Blake, despite the police having been investigating. We didn’t have any proof that the hit had been intentional, but Declan was pretty sure it was, and we all tended to agree. It seemed too much of a coincidence that Simons car brakes had been messed with – causing his and Trent’s accident, just weeks before an attempt on Blake’s life.
The police had notified Simon just a few days ago that techs had done an inspection on the wreckage of his Range Rover, and found evidence that the brakes had been tampered with, but no forensics to suggest who could have done it.
So we feared Blake’s life was in danger, and we refused to leave her so vulnerable. We had no idea who was doing it, but it seemed plausible that they would take their opportunity to finish what they had started while Blake lay in a hospital bed, unconscious. We weren’t willing to take that risk for even a second.
Eventually the staff had enough of us being under their feet constantly though, and an administrator had turned up and very politely, but firmly told us we could no longer be there night and day, taking up the waiting room. Of course, Declan had jumped down the poor woman’s throat and told her where to go, but Nan’s wisdom had won out in the end.
She pointed out that Blake could be in the coma for weeks, or months, and we couldn’t let our lives fall down around us while we waited. None of us liked it, but we knew she was right. When Blake eventually woke up we needed to have incomes to be able to support her through whatever came next; to create the beautiful future we were all so desperate to give her. So we had all returned to our lives, creating a schedule so someone was always with Blake at every moment, every one of us determined she would not be alone when she finally came back to us.
I hit Declan’s contact; pretty sure everyone would be at Simon’s place eating dinner at that time. We had all been staying there, needing each other to lean on in order to keep our shit together. Nan had been cooking and making sure we all ate and kept going, even though we were like walking zombies. None of us were really sleeping, and between working and being with Blake, we were exhausted, but none of it mattered to any of us. Only Blake mattered.
“Grey?” Declan picked up on the first ring, that one word filled with panic and anguish.
“She woke up,” I told him, my voice filled with the first hint of happiness I heard since that terrible night. “Not fully, but she moved, Dec. She held my hand.”
“Fuck,” he whispered, and I could hear everyone around him demanding to know what had happened. “She woke up,” he told them and I heard a tremble in his words. We had been so scared we were going to lose her.
“The doctor says she’ll start to wake up more and more now,” I added.
