by H P Tune
“I need to get you up,” she said, shuffling her feet to plant herself firmly on either side of Mia. She knew her ribs were going to push a wave of pain through her, but she had no choice, and she didn’t care. Hooking Mia’s arms around her neck, she pulled Mia close against her chest and braced herself, standing up in one motion with a loud cry. Once on her feet, Mia seemed to hold her weight, and her eyes again kept track of Juliet. As Juliet worked at supporting Mia whilst manoeuvring the horse, Mia slowly started to shiver.
“I’m going to get you home, okay? I promise, okay, Mia? You hear me?”
Mia nodded as she raised a gloved hand to press against her head. “Humph.”
“I know,” Juliet said, both arms still hooked under Mia’s. “It’s okay. The ambulance is back at the house. You’re okay. We just…I just, I just have to get you on. I’m so sorry.”
Stepping closer to the horse, Mia leant against its warm body. Juliet kept trying to problem-solve, her mind racing but not coming up with any easy solutions. Reaching for Mia’s leg, she placed it limply in the stirrup and guided Mia’s hand to the saddle. On autopilot more than any sign of strength, Mia tensed and lifted herself up though Juliet had to grab her jacket to stop her from sliding off the other side. Mia looked back down at her with a mournful expression, and her entire body was starting to tremble. Juliet didn’t know anything about medicine, really, but she had done enough research over the years for her writing to know that by now, Mia’s body would have started pushing blood to her extremities, and her muscles would be working hard to use any energy Mia had. Her body temperature must be dangerously low, but Juliet did at least know that each shiver meant she was slowly warming. Still, they needed to be back at the house, and now.
With one hand gripping Mia to keep her upright, Juliet took a few steps along the path until she found a fallen tree to step up on. Awkwardly sliding one leg over the saddle first, Juliet somehow shuffled onto the horse, not that she was concerned with grace. Pushing at Mia’s legs, she settled into the saddle, replacing Mia’s feet with hers in the stirrups.
Mia moulded immediately to her back, cool cheek flush against the back of Juliet’s neck, nose creeping inside the collar of her coat. Both of Mia’s hands snaked around Juliet’s waist, and she limply held on, heavy as she conformed to Juliet’s back.
“Just hold on,” Juliet whispered tearfully as they slowly started to walk down the path. The light was fading quickly. “We’re going home, okay?”
Mumbling over and over, Mia deliriously mumbled out nonsensical sentences as they gradually made their way closer to the house. Eventually, the path seemed to have become instinctual for the horse. Juliet occasionally used the light in her phone to ensure they were still on the trail but could tell the horse knew where it was going. It rhythmically plodded them towards home.
They were past the dam, and lights were starting to sporadically appear through the trees in the distance when Mia uttered her first sequence of logical words: “Please don’t leave.”
“What?” Juliet gasped, turning her head slightly. Mia tugged her limp arms markedly tighter.
“You were going to leave. Please don’t leave me.”
“Mia.” She gasped out her name. “How did you know?”
CHAPTER 19
Despite Juliet’s initial reservations about the small community hospital, she had eventually relaxed during the hours spent waiting and being ushered in and out of Mia’s bay. A CT scan had cleared Mia of any closed head injuries, although they were still awaiting a report from a more experienced radiographer who was examining the images at a larger hospital. The laceration just below her hairline was small and didn’t require any sutures, just a couple of neat butterfly plasters. She would have nothing compared to Juliet’s scars.
Mia’s main issue, as had been explained multiple times to Juliet and Martin, was the hypothermia. Her core body temperature was hovering around 32 degrees Celsius on arrival, and her consciousness kept drifting in and out. They were experienced at rewarming people like Mia, hypothermia not being an uncommon patient presentation in the highlands of Scotland, particularly since their location was close to some spectacular winter hikes. A cannula pushed warmed saline infusions into Mia’s arm, and as she lay oblivious on the gurney, air was circulated around her body by specific blankets and devices.
She quickly became a less exciting, more mundane patient as her level of consciousness improved, and she began responding to painful stimuli and some verbal commands. With a nonchalant shrug that annoyed Juliet, the doctor told Juliet that Mia hadn’t had a cardiac arrest, so it could have been much worse. Perhaps it could have been, she thought, but that didn’t make her feel any better. Any less guilty.
After she was allowed to return to Mia’s bedside, she watched Mia sleeping and repetitively ran her fingers along the thin mattress of Mia’s bed. Juliet found the gesture comforting. The steel frame of the gurney was cool against her wrist, but when she located Mia’s hand beneath the plastic airflow cover, it was warm to her touch, a stark contrast to the freezing hands she had touched out past the dam. Mia’s lips were pale now, and a small amount of colour was returning to her cheeks, all a welcome sight.
Juliet closed her eyes and blew a slow exhale of air through pursed lips. She was trying to calm the knots that hadn’t left her stomach all day. Even before Martin had stopped their car, the indecision had been haunting her. Every fear and concern for her and Mia’s future had snowballed, gaining momentum and becoming something unbearable. She supposed it had been cowardly to pack up her small backpack and laptop and throw in her passport, as if that document gave her the option she was looking for. She still had no idea whether she would have gotten on a bus in town and travelled to the nearest airport, but she had made sure that she’d had everything needed to do so.
She had asked herself a hundred times over the last few hours, would she have gone? Honestly, she wasn’t sure. Fear definitely made her indulge irrational and self-damaging decisions—decisions like walking away from the one person who loved her so unconditionally and without any expectation.
Juliet felt even more ill: she had left a note on Mia’s bed—a confusing, hesitant note that Mia would probably have understood in two seconds flat.
She felt stupid and immature and ashamed.
And ashamed again.
Coaxing Mia’s hand to the edge of the bed, Juliet held it tightly and bowed her head, resting her forehead on the curve of Mia’s wrist. She kissed the skin there, finding it warm but dry, and she knew that Mia would turn up her nose as soon as she properly woke up, asking for her favourite moisturiser—and to go home probably. Juliet couldn’t imagine she had a great love of hospitals after Zalia’s birth.
She wasn’t even sure how Mia still got up every morning and smiled and laughed and oozed love and affection. It was the way Juliet did too, until she allowed the insecurities to start messing with her head. Then she just became inconsistent and confusing. She knew that Mia had been tolerating the way she drifted closer and backed away with more patience than Juliet deserved.
Where Juliet had gone wrong—and she was more than willing to admit this to Mia—was that she hadn’t done what she had promised to. She had assured Mia that she would talk with her, that she would communicate what she was feeling, and that she wouldn’t run without having that discussion with her first. And then her mind had messed her up—again.
And maybe it was too late; Mia had known, after all, even lost in the peripheries of her altered level of consciousness that Juliet had intended on leaving her.
Mia would have to be almost superhuman to forgive that, wouldn’t she?
* * *
“Excuse me?” Juliet felt firm fingers squeeze her shoulder, but she shrugged them away; she wasn’t ready to wake up. She wasn’t sure why her back was aching, and she could only feel one foot. Where had she put her pillow? “Excuse me?”
She jerked awake, blinking hastily to clear her hazy eyes. She sat up and p
eeled her face off Mia’s bed, her chair creaking as she slumped back. A pale green wall came into view, and a sea of blue swayed to the right of her. “Sorry,” she muttered, wiping her mouth and licking her dry lips. “Oh, sorry,” she said again, recognising the nurse from when Mia had been moved from the trauma area into a long row of bays.
A soft laugh emanated from the bed, and Juliet turned her head quickly towards Mia. “She needs to take my vitals, and you’re inconveniently sleeping on my non-cannulised arm.”
“Mia…” Juliet pulled her wrist into view, trying to ascertain the time from the blurry-looking hands on her analogue watch. “How…how are you? How is she?” She focussed with expectant eyes on the perpetually bemused young nurse.
The woman smiled. “She’s fine. Body temp is up, blood gasses have normalised.”
“Seriously, I’m fine.” Mia repositioned the pillow under her head and shuffled to sit up.
“Well, we’re keeping you overnight, but yes, you are fine and very lucky.”
“Hmmm, I shouldn’t even be here, right? Just a warm blanket and a hot bath would have done. I didn’t need to come to hospital.” Mia grinned wildly.
Juliet opened her mouth to speak but found herself sucking in air instead.
The nurse chuckled. “Yeah, that’s right. Look at your girlfriend’s face, Mia. Does that look like the face of someone who could have just wrapped you in a blanket? Sometimes I wish we took recordings of patients when they came in, just as a reminder of what a difference a few hours make. Particularly the young drunk teenagers, those delightful things.”
“What?” Mia asked innocently. “I do feel fine.”
“Now you do. You were a rambling mess hmmm…six, no seven hours ago.”
“Oh.” Mia glanced at Juliet with a gentle expression as Juliet stepped away from the bed to allow the nurse access. “Right, so I have to stay until tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Juliet said, and she had to cough to clear her voice. “Listen to the experts.”
Mia’s eyes looked off into the distance. She raised her eyebrows. “What was my temp?” she asked the nurse.
“Low. Too low, unless you’re a hibernating lizard.”
“I like you.” Mia laughed again. “It’s Sam, right?”
“Good memory. That’s right.”
“Well, what was my temp, then, Sam? I was pre-med once. I need to pretend I have some knowledge here.”
“Really. Pre-med, huh? Well, you were around thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two?”
“Celsius,” Sam countered, rolling her eyes. “S’pose I can’t make a judgemental comment about Americans and their stubborn insistence on living in the Dark Ages? Nah, I’ll be nice. Translates to about ninetyish Fahrenheit…I think, if my memory is serving me correctly.”
“Ah, that makes more sense. Shit.”
As Juliet silently watched the exchange, it occurred to her suddenly that Mia could probably have anyone she wanted. She was confident and articulate, so communicative and effortlessly flirtatious, even when she had no intention of being any of those things. In comparison, Juliet spent so much time in her head, like the author she truly was, that it felt as if she were two different people sometimes: there was the one who disappeared inside of herself and wrote for hours, days, months on end, and then there was the one who tried to engage with life and people. No wonder she wasn’t great at either one.
“So I was cold…to put it mildly,” Mia said. “Soooo you used that air flow thing that you took off before. Anything else?”
Juliet forced a smile onto her face while Sam took Mia’s blood pressure and temperature and redid a check on her heartbeat.
“Warm fluids, and we kept you in the trauma room. Well, as much of a trauma room as you get here. But they can turn the heat up, so we had it warming up when the paramedics phoned through. You were a bit combative for a while. But after some oxygen and some time, you settled. You maintained your airway but kept kind of drifting in and out. We had to kick Juliet out a few times.”
She flashed a kind smile towards Juliet, who was now leaning back against the wall. Despite her relatively recent hospital experience, Juliet felt out of her depth in this setting. She felt like she had when her mother first went into the psychiatric ward. It felt like when Ben died. She was feeling the weight of responsibility of a family member.
But then, she was family, wasn’t she? Mia’s family. Was she ready for that?
“Guess I am right, huh?” Mia said, sounding sheepish as she glanced at Juliet.
Looking down awkwardly at her muddy shoes and back up again, Juliet said quietly, “Better than when you got here.”
“Getting here was no easy task from what I heard from the paramedics,” Sam said, jotting a few readings into Mia’s chart.
Juliet felt a blush coming on as she ran her fingers through her hair and found them stuck in a range of knots. “There was just a horse…and you and…me…and an ambulance waiting at the house…”
Sam patted Juliet on the arm and slipped out pulling the curtains closed behind her.
Mia shifted her weight again, tugging the blanket over her chest. “I don’t really remember,” she said, “though I remember falling, sort of. And then sitting against a tree. I was going to just use my gloves to clean my head up and then walk back.”
“Mmmm, good plan, that. You may have happened to have sat in snow and had a bit of a concussion.” Juliet slid back into the vinyl seat next to Mia. She placed her arm on the bed and curled her fingers around Mia’s elbow, their forearms pressed together.
“How did you possibly find me?”
“I’d like to take all the credit, but really, it was Martin that knew. Your horse came back, and then I had that photo you texted. He figured it was one of two trails, and yeah, that’s how I found you.”
“And you rode? And you rode us back?” Mia hesitated for a moment before whispering, “Yeah, right. I was behind you, wasn’t I?”
Juliet nodded. “Mmmm, yeah, I rode us back, with no skill and completely petrified, but yes. You were…you were out of it.”
“Oh my God.” Mia emulated the way Juliet was holding her elbow. “That must have been awful. I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t thought it was all right, I never would have gone out. The trail was heaps more muddy and icy than I thought it would be. I’m a complete idiot.”
Juliet sighed and dropped her gaze, feeling overwhelmed.” I couldn’t leave you out there, Mia.”
“Well,” Mia’s fingers trailed across Juliet’s skin, “I’m really, really glad that you couldn’t.”
“I umm,” Juliet dragged her fingers away from Mia’s arm, and she stood, leaning over Mia’s blanket-clad body and ever so softly kissing her, “I love you,” she said, closing her eyes.
Mia drew in a breath and reached up to tug Juliet into her, arms around her shoulders and fingers entwined into her hair. Mia smelled distinctly of dampness and mud, the remnants of horse sweat still lingering on her skin. “Thank you.” Her whisper tickled Juliet’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” Juliet said, pulling away. She sat at the foot of the bed, precariously hanging halfway off its edge, her left foot planted on her chair as a counterbalance. Her hand trailed across Mia’s stomach and stilled at her side.
Mia frowned and shook her head at Juliet.
“No, I am,” Juliet insisted. “I’ve been…umm, I’ve been pretty awful to be around.” Mia shook her head, but Juliet pressed on before she couldn’t get it out. “Let me apologise to you,” she said, “because I have been...I’ve been completely unlovable…but you’ve still been, well, amazing.”
Mia’s expression was one of sadness, as if she hadn’t even heard the compliment in Juliet’s message. “You’re anything but unlovable, Juliet.” It didn’t surprise Juliet. Mia was endlessly giving and focussed on her.
“I was leaving,” Juliet said simply and suddenly found Mia’s index finger over her lips.
“Shhhh, I know. I know. But we can talk late
r. Because you’ll still be here.”
They settled on a lingering glance, eyes locked until Juliet slowly nodded. “I will.”
“Then we can talk later.”
“Okay.”
* * *
“Hey,” Mia said, glancing over her shoulder as she was wheeled out of the hospital, the culmination of a long debate over hospital policy and Mia’s need to independently walk to the car park. “I know I asked, but Oscar is okay, right? No injuries or anything?”
Juliet shook her head, “Nope, all fine. Martin got the vet out, just to triple-check, but other than a scrape on the side of his neck, which was probably just from a branch, he’s all good.”
“He would be spooked. We’ve never had a fall like that, the poor thing.”
“Mmmm. I think he came out of it better than you, so Oscar will have to cope with my lack of attention.”
“Does that mean I get all your attention?”
It seemed as though all their conversations eventually came around to the topic they still needed to talk about. Juliet hadn’t left her side for the twenty-four hours Mia was in hospital, even showering in the patient bathrooms and changing into one of two shirts she had bought in the small hospital store. The other shirt was for Mia, along with a few tabloid magazines for her to read. But her efforts to find a complete change of clothes and some decent shampoo and conditioner were futile. Mia had complained, clearly feeling well enough and not at all tolerating the hospital-issue gown she was forced to keep wearing until Martin arrived to collect them both.
Juliet laughed. “You will be resting, completely and utterly. Any questions about that?”
“I know.” Mia groaned. “You’ve lectured me all day.”
“You need to, Mia. You heard what the doctor said. No pressure on your body, it needs time to recover, get back to the status quo.”
“I was listening, I just don’t like it. I’ll get bored. Surely I can do some cooking, and maybe I can clean out some of the office and spare room, I’ve been meaning to do that for ages.”
