They Say Love Is Blind (17 page)

“Tory, you can’t move that.” Why was this nurse talking to her like she was a child? She swallowed and focused on her parents.

“
What’s going on
?”

Her parents looked at each other. “Tory, you were in an accident
,” her Mom responded.

Dear God, how could she have forgotten?!
Yes
, there had been an a
ccident and
while she couldn’t remember the details, she knew it had been very bad. Tory
tried to sit up in the narrow bed while the
nurse tried to urge her back down.

“Mama, where is Lee?!”

“Lay down, honey.” Daddy said with concern. The oxygen mask had slipped away from her face and he gently put it back into place.

“Tory, Lee is okay.”

“Where is he then?”

“He’s here in t
he hospital. Now you have to lie
down because of your ribs.” Daddy said. She allowed herself to fall back against her pillows
, but she was only marginally relieved
.

“I want to see him.” She didn’t believe them. Lee was dead, they were lying to her.
She thought she was going to burst into tears but not until she got some very straight answers.

The nurse was suddenly there
. “Tory, right now you are much too weak to visit him.
You have a chest tube in place and you have severe cyanosis
with a
very big risk of cardiovascular collapse.” Tory quieted. “What I’m saying is that your blood pressure is dangerously low,
so low that
your skin is blue
. Right now you aren’t able to
breathe
well
on your own because of your collapsed lung.

“Your fiancée is recovering
well, but he went through some severe trauma as well.” The nurse continued. “Right now he is in the Intensive Care
Unit
. There was head and face trauma. He has two broken arms and a broken collarbone.
Mr. Torres has some significant swelling of his bra
in and is in
a medically
induced coma. His blood pressure and vitals are very good and he is expected to make a full recovery.”

Tory searched the nurse’s eyes
. They had to tell the truth, didn’t they? They were under a Hippocratic
Oath
just like a doctor.  So even if she was telling the truth, Tory wasn’t sure
if she felt relieved or horrified. He was alive and for that she was thankful. But he was in a coma trying to heal a swollen brain. His arms were broken; he needed arms and hands to see with. She closed her eyes in distress and felt her mother squeezing her hand.

“Baby, I went in to visit him and he looked very good. He’s swollen, black and blue but he looked very healthy…unlike you. You have to take care of yourself
, Tory. You almost died.” Her mother looked at the nurse who
continued
for her
.

“You couldn’t get enough oxygen to your heart.
And you have a broken rib which can’t be taped because it will further restrict your breathing. You literally cannot get up for at least anoth
er week.”

“Another week?” She said hoarsely. “How long have we been here?”

“This is your second day here.” The nurse moved to a machine that monitored her heart rate and blood pressure. “I’ll bring you more pain medicine and leave you with your family.” When the nurse left she tried to concentrate.

“There…there was a
crash,” she said from behind her mask.

“Try not to talk, Tory.” Daddy said.

“I don’t remember it,” she said, ignoring his request.

Her mother sighed. “The police report says that the other driver had a blood alcohol level that was twice the legal limit. He was driving down the wrong side of the street and other cars swerved out of the way.
Yours didn’t. He hit you head on.
” She said no more.

Daddy continued. “Your blood alcohol level…” Tory gave him a quick look.
“…it was well within the legal limits but you had been drinking.”
Was there blame there?
This wasn’t like when she was in college and had gone out drinking and that man had…She couldn’t say anything. She knew her father didn’t like for her to drink,
but it wasn’t like that
.
She was never drunk.

“We were celebrating,” she tried to explain. “I wasn’t drunk, Daddy.”

He kissed her forehead. “Rest, honey. We’ll talk more later.”

“What about the other man, the one who hit us?”
She suddenly and viciously hoped that he was dead.

“He’s alive. It’s not his first offense so he will go to jail when he’s released from the hospital. I think he has a broken arm
but he’s in better condition than those that he hurt
.”
Bitterly she thought that jail was too good for him, but at least he would suffer the loss of his freedom.

She closed her eyes and sighed.
She was very tired. It was like she had just run a marathon and all she’d done was talk for a few minutes.

“Rest, Tory.” Her mother said gently as her eyes closed. “We’ll be here.” Already she felt less agitated. But she couldn’t wait a week before she could visit Lee. She would figure it out when she woke up. Tory slept restlessly.

The q
uiet sound of a discussion taking
place finally pulled her
once more
from her slumber.
Her mother was there with Francie and Kaye. Somehow that seemed all wrong; mixing her past with her present. She listened for a while feeling comforted by her mother’s voice and the Portuguese accent that she had grown so accustomed to.

“How…?” she took a deep breath and felt a dull pain in her side. Three sets of eyes turned to her and then
their owners
converged around her bed. “What day is this?”
She croaked.

“Wednesday and you are doing much better, sister.” Kaye spoke. Mama gripped her hand with a smile and Francie regarded her with approval.

“She’s not blue anymore.” She said.

“No.” Mama agreed.

“Brown and healthy.” Kaye added. She found herself smiling.

“Is Lee better?”

Francie sat on the edge of the bed. “They are going to bring him around today. The swelling is nearly gone.” Her eyes began to tear and she blinked rapidly and grabbed Tory’s other hand and squeezed it gently. “I was so worried about you two. I didn’t think it would turn out this well. I thought we would lose one or both of you. You both are going to be okay.”

She studied her sister-in-law to be. “I want to see him. I need to see him. I want to be there when they bring him around.”

“Your doctor was just here.” Mama said. “He said that if you can sit up in a wheelchair then you can visit him.”

“Bring the wheelchair.”

Kaye smiled. “Just like an Azorean woman. We told that doctor that if he didn’t give you permission to go you wouldn’t get healthy AND you would find a way to sneak off and find him. Am I right, sister?”

Tory smiled, and then nodded her head. “Very true.”

Francie and Kaye
went to find a nurse to bring in a wheelchair
, giving her alone time with her mother. S
he asked her to brush her hair for her—silly since Lee wouldn’t be able to see her anyways. Her mother took pleasure in brushing her shoulder length hair, leaving it lose although that was impractical with her being hospitalized.

“Such pretty hair.” Mama said. “And you’ve lost so much weight, Tory. Lee must be very good for you.”

“He makes me feel beautiful. He
accepts everything about me.” She glanced up at her mother. “It’s so strange, mama. I’ve felt so insecure for so long and one person comes along and makes me re-evaluate how badly I’ve judged myself just because of my weight.”

“It’s society that makes us think that big can’t be beautiful. You know, Tory, back in history, women built like you were put in the highest regards. In many cultures big women are in and small ones are out.
”

Tory didn’t think the American culture would ever completely change their views on big women.

“I noticed that the women in Lee’s family are all…
on the bigger side.” Mama was far from a big woman. She had never made Tory feel bad about her weight, but in recent years when she drew close to the three hundred pound mark, Mama and Daddy voiced their concerns and offered to help her with some type of program. That’s when she became obsessed with dieting—and none of it worked for her, not until she found a man that truly didn’t care. And then the weight began melting off on its own. Not completely but enough that she was comfortable in her own skin.

“Right,” Tory agreed. “They aren’t unhealthy, either. You should see them go, Mama. Those ladies have enough energy to run a marathon.”

Francine and Kaye returned a few moments later with a nurse and wheelchair in tow. “Give me a mirror, Mama.” Mama
and Kaye exchanged glances and Tory
immediately reached up to explore her face with
trepidation
.
Just because Lee was blind didn’t mean she was willing to give up the one thing that most people could agree on; that she had a beautiful face.

Her fingers told her that
she
was swollen and would be badly bruised. Mentally she
prepared herself
for what she would see
. When her mother handed her a compact mirror she saw that she had a black eye and a
n angry purple
bruise that covered one side of her face. The oxygen mask had been replaced with an oxygen tube and she saw that her lips were also swollen. Her skin tone was off, she looked nearly grey
. She handed the mirror back, regretting her decision to look at herself.

When the wheelchair arrived they took care getting her transported from the bed.
T
hey transferred her IV
and oxygen,
and
then
the nurse watched the monitors for a while before disconnecting her from it. She had to lay her head back and close her eyes for a few moments
but then she
felt better.

“I’m ready.” The nurse gave her okay and Kaye wheeled her out of the room that had been home for the last 3 days.

When t
hey arrived at the ICU ward they were met by a
nurse
who
announced that only 6 visitors could go in at a time and there were already six present.

“We can switch out with 4 others.” Kaye said.

“No, I’ll jus
t wait in the waiting area,” Tory’s
mother said. “Just switch out with three.”

Kaye wheeled her to Lee’s room
. Lee was lying in bed, naked from the chest up. There were monitors and tubes attached to him; helping him to breath and beeping loudly. She
blinked rapidly at the sight of her beautiful man lying motionless in bed.
Macey
was present, as was
Letiticia, who she rarely saw as she lived out of town
. There was also
Senna,
Raphael
, Rosalind and
Paulo.
Lee had a huge family when you factored in the seven siblings and their spouses and children. It was something that she had to become accustomed to. Now she loved it and them.

As Kaye wheeled her right next to the bed, Tory ignored everyone else
as she stared at him. He was a mess. He was cut and bruised and swollen. His arms were at his sides in heavy casts and his naked chest revealed more thick bruising. Tory realized tha
t the bruise
on his chest was from the safety belt. She reached up automatically and touched her shoulder where she knew
she would have a similar one
and the pain flared to life there.