Cold-Blooded Beautiful (25 page)

Then the dickbag walked out of the door like his life depended on it.

“Kade,” Jen spoke softly, “we’re going to need to listen to what those doctor’s say, because…”

“No.” I shook my head at her vehemently.  “No, I’m not listening to them tell me to make plans for her dying,” I said, rubbing my hands over the back of my neck.  My eyes blurred, and thousands of rainbows reflected across my vision.  “I don’t want to say goodbye to her.  I don’t want to let her go.  I can’t breathe without her.”  I walked out of the small office, ready to see her, ready to do whatever was needed to have her come back to me.

Doctor Barns was standing out in the hallway surrounded by two other rigid looking men dressed in scrubs.  “Mr. Grayson, I understand how hard this is for you…”

“Do you?” I snapped.  Hell, I was going to lose it right there in the corridor of the hospital, and they’d have to take me out in handcuffs.  Again.  “So, you have a woman that you were going to propose to, get kidnapped and tortured for over a week, and then got told you should make plans for her to…” Yeah.  I couldn’t even get the word out.  I sucked my lips in between my teeth so the sobs wouldn’t escape, and inhaled deeply through my nose.  “No, I don’t think you have a goddamn clue what I’m going through.  However, I know if you are half as good a surgeon as Samantha said you were, you will do everything you bloody can to get her back to me.”

He smiled tightly and nodded, “Yes, Kade, I will.”  He walked closer to me and held an arm out in front of him, “Come, why don’t we see how she’s doing right now.”

The walk to the Intensive Care Unit was silent.  Dylan and Jen followed closely behind us, hands clasped tightly between them.

Nurses spoke in low whispers, flipping through charts at the foot of her bed.  The low hum and whoosh of the life support machines serenaded me like my own funeral procession.  I had to hold on to the bedrails to keep myself vertical.  Bandages covered the majority of her head, and tubes were just
everywhere
.  A thick one ran out of the corner of her mouth, thin ones jammed up her nose, medium sized ones inserted into the veins of her hands.  Perfect white bed sheets tucked up around her chest. Under the bruises and wounds, her skin was a frightening shade of white to match the sheets encasing her tiny broken body.  Her beautiful green eyes were closed, and all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and hold her.

I stood at the foot of the bed and swallowed the hard knot in my throat.  As the whoosh-beep-
hiss
of the machines hummed their soul shattering song to me, I broke into tears.

“Is she ever going to wake up from this?” I whispered.

“Like I said, there’s no way to tell right now.  We can only wait and see.  We’ll be reevaluating her condition often, looking for signs.  People with head injuries rarely wake up all at once.  Full recovery of consciousness is a gradual process.  In the mildest of cases, it may take a few hours, and in the worst cases, it may take months or even sometimes years.  And, Mr. Grayson, some patients only improve to a certain point, and never fully regain awareness.”

I wiped the tears off my face with an angry vengeance. “Is there any possibility that she will recover completely?  Any bloody hope at all?  Have you seen other cases where people recover?”

“Sure, I have.  I’ve seen many patients with severe head injuries end up with no noticeable problems, but I’ve also seen the same amount require constant care for the rest of their life.”

“So,” I cleared my throat, tears choking me, “what is the worst possible outcome for her?”

“The best possible outcome we could hope for, of course, is Samantha to wake up and have a complete recovery.  The worst case would be no recovery beyond opening her eyes, or what’s called a persistent vegetative state.  Those are the two ends of the spectrum, though with an extremely wide ranges of variants to the outcomes in between.  We just have to wait and see.  There’s so much damage to assess and other problems may arise, and Mr. Grayson, we don’t know the level of traumatic brain injury she has suffered.  Even if she wakes up, she might need lifelong care because of long-term disabilities.  We just don’t know.”

I nodded blankly.

“I’ll give you some time alone with her, and then you should really get some rest and food in you.  I don’t think you realize how long you’ve been here.”

I nodded blankly, again.

The shuffle of his feet and footfalls down the hall told me we were alone. Slowly, I walked to the side of her bed. My knees touched down on the cold tiled floor, and I prayed for the first time since I was sixteen.  “Don’t give up on us yet.  Don’t give up on this life yet, fight for me, fight for us.” I leaned over her, and kissed her forehead.  Wet kisses filled with my tears
, wept into her hair as I bruised myself against the iron arms of her bed. I’ll take her pain, give me it, leave her be.
  Just bloody fucking give it to me instead.

“Just
say
something,” I cried against her skin.  “Open your eyes.  God,
please
.  Give me your voice.  Call me an egotistical asshole again.  Tell me you love me. Talk through my favorite TV shows, tease me while I’m trying to write, shove your ice cold feet between my legs in your sleep, sing off key in the shower again, just
fucking wake up and talk to me
.  Okay, Sam?  Okay?  Because, I won’t do this shitty life without you.  Okay?  We stay here together, or we go together, got it?  Do you hear me, Sam? 
I won’t do this life without you
, so come back to me.  Let’s finish it together.”

Choking on my sobs, Jen and Dylan had to pull me off her.  I KNOW, it was a dick move and I could have hurt her more, but I wasn’t thinking clearly, okay?  I don't how to be away from her.  I don't know how to wake up with her not next to me.  Dylan had to shove me out of the room, hard, with both hands, to get me to leave.  Then I was
escorted
to the truck and Dylan drove me home to shower, change, and eat.

Like I could have eaten anything
.

I gagged back half a sandwich my mother had made when they told me how long we had been at the hospital.  Twenty-nine hours.  My mum pleaded with me to take a sleeping aid, but all I wanted to do was go right back to the hospital.  I felt more comfortable sleeping there, near Sam.  Not that I could do anything more for her, but I wanted her to know I wouldn’t leave her to die alone.  I was never going to leave her side.

Mum found me the next morning asleep in the chair sitting next to her bed.  As the sun rose over the horizon, and the smells of hospital breakfast foods drifted through the halls, Mum grasped me by the shoulders. “Dear Lord, what this poor girl has been through, love.  Even if she lives, how will she heal?  That was her husband and her father who did all this to her, how will she heal?”

My mum was right, but the question was all wrong. It should have been,
how will I help her heal
. 

Because she was going to live.

There was no other option.  I couldn’t begin to think of a world that didn’t have Samantha in it.  I just couldn’t.  If there was one thing the woman lying in that hospital bed taught me, it was to
hope
.

How had she helped me?  How had she let me feel like I could trust again
?

I was forced home again that night for clean clothes and a shower. There was no way I would be staying in my house while she was alone in a hospital room, so I packed a bag, I’d live there if it came down to it. 

Jen found me in the bathroom carefully packing Sam’s favorite smelly soaps, “Why don’t you take some of her favorite books too. She loves reading, so maybe your voice reading to her would help. We could take turns, and when you leave, I could take over.”

“I’m not leaving her, but you just gave me a bloody brilliant idea.”  Quickly shoving all the toiletries into a bag, I ran into my office, grabbed my laptop, and yanked the cord out of the wall.  The wire hurled across the room and into my hands. 

“Oookay then, glad I can help.  Come on, tell me the idea,” she called after me.

Bundling up my laptop and bag, without even a whisper to anyone else, I climbed into my truck and drove back to the hospital.

Dropping my coat and bags on the floor near the door, I hesitantly walked in to the private ICU. She still hadn’t moved.  Her cheeks were still so pale compared to the bright colorful arrays of bruises and cuts.  Lifeless on the white tubed-up bed, the only motion was the rise and fall of her chest because of the ventilator.

Rise. Fall.

Hiss
. Clink.

Rise. Fall.

Hiss
. Clink.

Somewhere inside that broken body, was my girl.  I needed to pull her out, bring her back to the surface, because I knew she was drowning. Pulling up the chair as close as I could to her bed, I sat down. 

The room was dark, save for the anemic yellow light that glowed from the long tubed drawstring bulb that hung against the wall.  As I opened my laptop, the room brightened, shadows danced and deepened.

 I cleared my throat so my voice wouldn’t crack. She needed to hear it strong. “Hey, Doc, it’s just me again.  It’s the second day of your coma.  The doctor just told me that the swelling has gone down considerably, and so far, there are no infections.  I don’t know what the bloody hell that means, but it sounds good.  I…uh, brought my laptop with me and I thought maybe I’d read my journal to you.  You know the one my head doctor told me I needed to write in everyday while I did my psychoanalysis. I thought that maybe it would help you see how bloody much you need to be here.  I wanted to read to you my thoughts about Thomas, about us, and about how I’ve changed, but more so, how much I want you to come back to me. Because I know, you’re in there somewhere, Sam.  Come on, Doc, open your eyes for me.  You spoke with me that night I found you, so I know you’re okay, just get back to me.”  I leaned forward and kissed her forehead, “Okay here goes…here is everything I thought about for the last six months, Samantha. I’m going to give it all to you, so you bloody know.” My stupid voice cracked, and I sniffed back a man tear.  I inhaled deeply and exhaled slow as not to have her hearing anymore of my bloody man whining.  All she needed to hear was that I was waiting for her. “Just so you bloody know how much you are loved.”

I clicked open the file folder to my journal and opened it.  “And just a little word of caution, Doc.  It’s sort of bloody crazy in my thoughts, but anytime you want to let me know to piss off, just open those green doors of yours and tell me.”

Chapter  20

…

Chapter 21

“Okay, love.  Listen to how much I bloody need you…”

Saturday

The bloody cockfucking wanker therapist wants me to write my bloody thoughts about all the tragedy in my bloody life.  It’ll be therapeutic, he says.  It’ll be closure, he cheers.  I’d bloody well like to push him over the ledge of his window, I think back.  Hang my head over the sill and tinkle my bloody fingers in a wave.  Watch him flail his arms about trying to bloody fly as he plummets, then splashes across the sidewalk.  Maybe one of his dead brown eyeballs will explode from his skull and bounce and roll down the street.  Bloody entertaining.

Monday

The bloody cockfucking wanker therapist read my journal entry and made some girlie high school air sucking sound with his lips.  I believe this to be disapproval.  He would like me to try to visualize less violent ways to deal with my anger and anxiety.

Therefore, I sit here and think on this a bit, and come to the visualization that I very politely tell my therapist I do not like his approach to said behaviors and hand him a bunch of flowers that I have pleasantly picked for him in some fictional soft colored meadow on the way to his office.  THEN I’d bloody push him over the ledge of his window.  Hang my head over the sill and tinkle my bloody fingers in a wave.  Watch him flail his arms about trying to bloody fly as he plummets, then splashes across the sidewalk.  Maybe one of his dead brown eyeballs will explode from his skull and bounce and roll down the street.  But it’s pleasant because the flowers land beautifully around his corpse in the shape of a bloody heart.