Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) (37 page)

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” –Sigmund Freud

I’m standing in a church. Not just any church, but the crumbling stone chapel at St. Catherine’s Preparatory School for Girls. I’m wearing a white satin dress. My grandmother’s wedding dress. Aiden is standing across from me.

“I do,” I say, without waiting to be asked.

Aiden smiles at me. His teeth are blinding. Instead of echoing my declaration of ‘I do,’ he opens his mouth and breaks into song.

“Oh, speak to me and whisper what you need for me to do. I can't survive the waking world…and my dreams are empty without you. So wake for me, my darling one. Please rise for me, like the morning sun.”

I’m gritting my teeth so hard at this point, it feels like they’re about to break.

Aiden leans in to kiss me, and whispers the last line of the song into my face.

“You're my everything, my world revolves around you.”

Suddenly, I’m falling through the cracks in the stone floor, as the church crumbles away around me. But I’m not afraid. Instead, I’m relieved.

“…starting to come out of the anesthesia,” a man’s voice says. “You should probably go get Dr. Philips.”
Suddenly, I’m flying. But this time, I don’t need to flap my arms. This time, I have giant wings made of soft, white, rose petals. I’m soaring above a lush, green vineyard. It goes on for miles. I can’t even see where it ends.

“Viola,” the voice says again. “Can you hear me? Wake for me, baby.”

***

Viola opened her eyes slowly, carefully. Her eyelashes felt like they’d been super-glued together for months, or maybe years. Flexing her fingers, and then her toes, she sighed in relief when everything worked. From what she could tell, there were no missing limbs or large holes. The only pain she felt was a slight throbbing in her right shoulder.

Her eyes flickering around the room, she searched for Sam. She found only Brady.

“Miss Bellerose,” he said, his demeanor oddly formal. Disturbingly professional. “How are you feeling this morning? It’s good to see you awake, finally.”
“Finally?” Viola tried to repeat the word, but her tongue felt thick. Like she hadn’t used it in forever.

“There might be some temporary side-effects of the anesthetic,” Brady told her, solemnly. “But that’s only to be expected following any surgical procedure. And you’ve been through quite a lot of them by now.”

“What?” Viola was confused. Her heartbeat started to pick up, matched by the beeping of a machine that someone had hooked to her finger. “What do you mean, ‘quite a lot’?”

“To be honest,” he said, “you’re something of a medical miracle. It’s not every day we have a chance to rebuild a person’s entire face from scratch. You were incredibly lucky to be chosen for this study, Miss Bellerose.”

Automatically, Viola’s hands flew to touch her face. Everything felt normal. Her hands were a little swollen, and there was an unfamiliar ring on her left hand. Other than that, though—suddenly, her mind backtracked. Wait.

“Brady,” she said slowly, staring wide-eyed at the thin, rose gold band on her finger. “What the hell…is going on?”

Dr. Brady stared back at her, equally wide-eyed.

“Miss Bellerose, how do you know my name? We’ve never met before.”
If the monitor hadn’t still been beeping, Viola would’ve sworn up and down that her heart had stopped completely in that moment.

“What…what do you…”

But then, Sam was there, standing in the doorway. Looking at her the same way he always did, like she was the best part of his day. Scratch that—the best part of his entire world.

“Hey, you’re awake!” When his eyes fell on her face, his smile wilted slightly. “What’s the matter, baby? Does something hurt?”

“No…I….” Viola had never been more confused in her entire life. She looked down at her hands, then back at Sam, then over at Brady.

Who promptly burst out laughing.

“Dude,” he said, exploding out of the chair with a fist pump of triumph. “I totally pulled a
Vanilla Sky
just now, and she totally fell for it, and you totally missed it! Oh my God, that was awesome!” He sputtered loudly, choking on his own laughter.

Viola just stared, as Sam’s face went from confused to deadly serious.

“Out,” he said, pointing at the door. “Get out, Brady. Before I actually kill you.”

“Hey,” Brady held up his hands in mock surrender as he fake moon-walked out the door. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Sam dragged a hand over his face in obvious exasperation, but before Viola could even open her mouth to ask him anything, Brady was back. Or at least, his head was. He smiled mischievously as he poked his face back into the room.

“Hey, you guys? Can I…” he batted his eyelashes. “Can I still come to the wedding?”

“Out!”

“Alright!” Brady’s head disappeared, but his voice continued to waft in from the hallway. “Think about it. I’ll be at the nurses’ station, with my new lady. Oh, and V? I took a poll, and all the other interns agree. Best. Drunk dial. EVER.”

Finally, Viola had had enough of being kept in the dark.

Sam shook his head. “I should’ve known he was going to copy it. At least he hasn’t auto-tuned it.” He grimaced slightly. “Yet.”

“Sam,” she demanded, crossing her arms—though, with the numbness still wearing off, it took her a few tries. “What in the hell is going on?”

Sam sighed, coming over to sit in the chair on her left, by the window. Viola noticed, for the first time, that she wasn’t in her usual room. The view she saw now wasn’t of treetops, but of parking lot light poles.

“Also, where are we?”

“PACU,” he told her, straight-faced. When she wrinkled her nose at him, he laughed. “It stands for post-anesthesia care unit. Basically, it’s a short-term layover before you get released, so we can make sure you don’t have any negative reactions.”

“Last time wasn’t a reaction,” Viola told him. “I was poisoned.”

“I know,” Sam told her, slowly tracing his fingers across her arm. “I had them test your hair, since all of your other samples from the night of the accident had expired. Just between you and me, I couldn’t believe that you’d never done any kind of drugs before. Even I’m not that prissy.”

“Prissy?” Viola scoffed. “Whatever, I know how to party like you can’t possibly imagine. Just wait until I get out of this bed, mister.”

“Oh, I don’t know if we have to wait for proof of that.” Smiling evilly, he ducked his head and kissed her hand. “Do you remember the message you left me?”

“No…” Viola tried to think back to before her latest near-death experience. “I mean, it sounds vaguely familiar but…no details.”

“That’s okay.” He reached into his pocket. “Because I saved it.”

When Sam pushed the playback button on his phone, Viola braced herself for something unexpected. Still, she wasn’t prepared for the blubbering slur of her own voice when the message finally started.

“Sam…I wanted to tell you something, before I wake up and lose my nerve again. Or before I fall asleep… Wait, no, that’s wrong. Anyway, you know what I mean….”

Oh. My. God. Viola reached for the phone, but Sam held it out of reach, at the end of one freakishly long arm, as her drunken speech continued.

“What was I saying? Oh, right. Basically, I’m at this hotel and I just drank the mini bar. And I think I’m going crazy, but I had this dream where we were getting married. And Sam…it was the best moment of my life, except for the part where my teeth…they were all, like…gross and…never mind. The important thing is family. And my family is gone. I just drank my dad’s bottle, and my mom’s bottle. Then I toasted yours, and that was when I realized…I’ve never had anyone I just wanted to sit and listen to before.”

“Turn it off,” she demanded, mortified. But Sam only smiled, shaking his head.

“Because that’s what I did for three weeks Sam. I listened. I found out all about Brady and Whitney in the closet, and how Jeff the tech is gay.”

Sam winced comically at that part, and Viola’s mouth fell open in horror. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, grinning. “Jeff’s not mad. We already knew.”

“…And you, the way you cared about everyone—even me, not because I attacked you that time in the bar or because you felt bad for me, but because you’re just so
good
…And I never wanted to be friends with anyone so much, or know someone so much. You were all like the family I never had. And I loved you. Even that stupid song you made me listen to, and the way you surprised me, so many times…and that thing you can do with your tongue, by the way…that is…amazing. And basic…basically, what I’m trying to say is that you’re so much braver than you think you are, Sam. You’re so much braver than me, even, or anyone I’ve ever known.” There was a short pause, then “…Except for maybe Lucinda, but she’s like…a complete badass. And she loves you too, because you’re wonderful. You’re perfect and I just wanted to say that I lo—”

That was where the recording cut off.

Blushing furiously, Viola buried her face in her hands.

“Delete that. Delete it now.” She peeked through her fingers, and found herself distracted by the glare of the gold band. “Also, what the hell is this?”

She wiggled her fingers in front of Sam’s face. He caught them, lacing her fingers together with his.

“It’s a promise ring,” Sam told her, with the adorably crooked smile he got when he was blatantly lying. “See, earlier, when you were about to go under for surgery, you promised to be my girlfriend. Normally, I wouldn’t have taken advantage, because you seemed so out of it, but you were really insistent about it. You made Dr. Chakrabarti witness it and everything.”

Viola raised an eyebrow. “Right.”

“Anyway,” he continued, unperturbed, “according to my medical dictionary, there’s no take-backs on pre-surgical promises of unswerving devotion. So, yeah. Sorry about that, but it looks like you’re stuck wearing it for a while. Because see, I’m kind of crazy in love with you.”

The heart monitor skipped a beat. Viola’s eyes started to mist, but she sniffed back the tears and smiled instead. Because damn it, Viola Bellerose wasn’t the sort of girl who cried at happy endings.

One eyebrow raised in challenge, she reached out to grab hold of Sam’s starchy white lapel. She pulled him close, until his face was level with hers. Her heart monitor chirped happily.

“What did I tell you about apologizing, Dr. Philips?”

THE END

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APPENDIX

Acknowledgements

“Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.” ― Sigmund Freud

My name is Isobel Irons, and I am a gigantic liar.

As a child, I used to entertain my friends with stories of ghosts in the school bell tower. Of princesses who played with swords and talking ponies. Of course, I wasn’t being intentionally dishonest. I just often forgot to tell them that the stories I told were made up. After a few phone calls from angry parents and the occasional teacher, my parents started to suspect that I wasn’t quite normal. That there was something wrong with me. But I didn’t see my behavior as wrong; I saw it as improving the truth. So the bell tower wasn’t
actually
haunted. (Not that anyone could prove, anyway.) Telling stories made the mundane seem a lot less boring, and for me, the truth wasn’t enough. When life wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, I changed the narrative.

As I grew, I started to realize that most people aren’t like me, and that’s okay. As they say, it takes all kinds. The day I finished my first novel was the day I found
my
kind. I started poking around the online writing community and almost instantly, I realized: I wasn’t alone.

I can’t possibly begin to describe how liberating that was. How much your support has meant to me. How the knowledge of our shared strangeness somehow managed to heal so many years of self-doubt. Honestly, if I tried to name all of the incredible people who have impacted my life by simply having the courage to be themselves? Well, we’d all die of old age before you finished reading this.

So instead, I’ll say this: don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s something wrong with you, just because you don’t ‘fit in’ easily, or because you choose to see the world differently.

It’s okay to march to the beat of your own drum, or whatever instrument you prefer.

It’s okay to make shit up, as long as you’re not at the altar or under oath.

It’s okay to wear mismatched socks on purpose, or dye your hair whatever color you want.

It’s okay to spend your freshmen year of college in the library studying, instead of partying.

It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and especially if they result in hilarious stories.

It’s okay to hate math.

It’s even okay to fail your driver’s test, or get rejected to your top choice college, or get laid off from that day job that—let’s be honest for a sec—you probably hated anyway.

Life will go on, and because it’s your life, it will be amazing. If you let it, life will amaze you. Especially the parts that don’t go the way they’re supposed to.

These days, I’m all about using fiction to expose and enhance the truth, as well as to entertain. Like Freud said, words are magical. Words can do anything you want them to do.

(Except pass calculus or get you out of detention, apparently.)

To the writers and bosom internet friends who have inspired and encouraged me with their words (whether you knew it or not): Elle Lothlorien, Jenna Gines, Brian Heil, Rhiann Wynn-Nolet, Christy Schragal, Dahlia Adler, Brenda Drake, Kristina Perez, Veronica Park, Suzanne Brockmann, Jennifer Armentrout and Cora Carmack, I can’t thank you enough.