I’m weak. I hurt. I’m confused. Weak. So weak. Dizzy.
My throat hurts.
There’s a dull but constant throbbing in my lower back.
I have a wicked headache.
Wait…pain? There was no pain, before. I think this is some kind of cruel improvement, where pain means I’m waking up, getting better. But god, what pain. Deep, dull, constant, inescapable, all pervading, a wild variety of pain.
Where’s Conrad?
I hear the heart monitor beeping faster as my heart rate increases with my rising fear of being left alone in this hospital. I can’t be alone, not now. Not here. I can’t, just can’t. I can’t wake up without Conrad.
Then there’s a squeak of shoe soles on tile, and a human presence. “It’s all right, Hannah.” A calm female voice. A cool, small hand on my forearm—I can feel it, I can feel her hand on my arm. “You’re okay, Hannah. You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be fine, okay? Mr. Killian just stepped out for a few minutes, but he’ll be right back. And your—Mr. Markham…he said he’ll be back in the morning.”
He’ll be right back. Conrad will be right back; this sends a rush of calm through me, and my heart rate slows, the fear draining.
“That’s good, Hannah. That’s right. It’s okay.” Her voice is hypnotic, soothing. “I’m going to move you around a little, okay? Just to give your arms and legs some exercise.”
I feel—I feel. She takes my left leg in her hands, her cold, small hands, and lifts it, pushes against me to bend my leg at the knee, extends it, bends it, brings my leg out to the side and back in, then holds my calf in one hand and rolls my ankle this way and that.
“I heard you can wiggle your toes, Hannah,” she says, “can you do that for me? Don’t want me to feel left out, do you?”
Focusing on my toes isn’t as hard, this time. I can feel them, sense them at the end of my leg; I send the impulse down my body, through my leg, and I feel my big toe twitch. I try again, and this time I feel all my toes curl at the same time.
“Good job, Hannah, that was great! Big improvement. Now, how about the other leg?” She sets my left leg down, picks up my right and puts it through the same series of movements. When she finishes rolling my ankle, she pokes my big toe. “How about this side, Hannah? Can you move any of these piggies?”
Piggies? What am I, a child? Irritation zings through me, but I can’t express it, can only focus on my foot, my toes, on moving them. This is harder, and I don’t know why. I thought I could only move the toes on my left side, until now. It requires strain, effort, intense focus, a supreme effort…and all I manage is a slight twitch of my big toe.
“See? You can do it.” She takes my left arm, puts it through the same series of movements, bend at the elbow, side to side, up and down, roll the wrist; this time she massages my hand, my fingers. “Can you move your hands, Hannah? Twitch a finger or two?”
Not for you. For Conrad, maybe.
She massages my fingers more, rubbing them from knuckle to fingertip, pressing the center of my palm with her thumb. “Come on, Hannah. Try it for me.” I sense humor in her voice. “See, I think you’re not trying. You gotta try, Hannah. Give me a finger wiggle.”
I feel oddly, intensely stubborn about this. I want Conrad to feel me move my hands, not this nurse.
“Okay, well, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But the more you practice, the more it’ll all come back,” she says as she works my right arm, and then massages my fingers on that side.
“Doctor Abernathy will be in later this morning, and I think he’ll be pleased with your progress. We might even be able to get you off the oxygen.”
—
“…Tracheal extubation…stoma will heal on its own…assess her neurological status…”
“—Thought she was waking up, Doctor Abernathy, she was moving her toes.” Conrad sounds so sad, so frustrated.
I try to stay with him, struggle to push above the surface, but I’m just so tired, so weak.
“She’s been through a lot, Mr. Killian. I know this seems like a step backward, but really, it is improvement. This isn’t a comatose state any longer, just very deep sleep. Her body has experienced significant trauma just in fighting off the meningitis. Add in complications from the extreme fever, possible seizures, and nearly two weeks in a coma? She has every right to be exhausted, don’t you think?”
“I guess you’re right. It’s just…hard.”
“Of course it is. Watching someone you love suffer, and knowing there’s nothing you can do…that’s it’s own special kind of hell.” A sigh. “I know you’ve heard this a dozen times by now, Mr. Killian, and I know it sounds…trite, possibly, but I promise, just being here with her, talking to her, that’s huge. It really is the best thing you can do to help her. I’ve tended to dozens of coma patients, and they all say they heard their loved ones. Sensed them, at the very least. She knows you’re here, and she needs you.”
I do, oh I do. Listen to him, Conrad.
“So what’s next, then?”
“Like I said, we’ll look into weaning her off oxygen.”
I’m fading, now. Conrad is speaking, but I can’t follow it, and I want to. I need to hear his voice. I need him. Need him. Need him.
Sleep claims me, then, and I sink and twist and drift.
—
Everything is different.
Harder. Deeper. Sharper. Brighter.
Darkness, still, but I sense light beyond my eyelids.
Sounds, close and far, muffled and detailed, layered—voices in the hall and shoes on tile, a distorted voice on the PA, the heart monitor beeping, a slow soft snoring off to my left.
I feel.
I feel everything.
Myself, a thousand kinds of pain, aches, throbbing, thirst, discomfort, all mixed and muddled.
Disoriented.
The dreams in the darkness, they’re layered throughout memory. They’re all there, fresh, real, vivid, both the truth and the fiction, the dream of reality, the remembered fantasy, the fantastic reality. I don’t trust my memory, because it’s been…tainted, fragmented, twisted by fever dreams, coma dreams.
It hurts to breathe.
I feel a mask over my nose and mouth.
IV in my right forearm just below my elbow.
My toes are cold.
My eyelids are so heavy.
It hurts to be awake.
Not yet…not yet.
I’m sorry, Conrad, but I can’t. Not yet.
++++
“‘…On the second and final day of their descent into the down deep,’” I hear Conrad’s voice, but it’s metered, paced, reading rather than speaking, “‘the novel gradually became the habitual. The clank and thrum of the great spiral staircase found a rhythm.’”
I don’t recognize the words, don’t know what he’s reading.
An oddity: out of all the desperation and heartache and pain and love and desire and need, it’s curiosity that opens my eyes.
Blurry at first. Flickers and distorted, eyelash-filtered glimpses, then my eyes shutter once more.
Again.
This time I get a full snapshot of reality: a window frame, glass and steel beyond, a gray sky; close in the foreground is Conrad, feet kicked up on the table beside my bed, feet bare, toes wiggling idly, long denim-sheathed legs, plain gray T-shirt over his hard beautiful torso, his inky black hair long and shaggy and loose and messy and greasy, a thick, untrimmed beard on his jawline; in his big strong hands a paperback book. The cover is a spray of fiery orange sparks over a black background with one word in white capital letters at the center: WOOL. Beneath, in slightly smaller letters: Hugh Howey.
God, what a perfect vignette to wake up to. My Conrad, reading to me. So sexy, a fantasy made real in jeans and bare feet, a book in his hands.
I close my eyes—take a test breath, discover I can breathe on my own, no tubes—and I open my eyes once more.
And then, for a time I do not care to measu
re, I just luxuriate in Conrad reading to me from this book, Wool, and I watch him read, watch the way his eyes flick over the words rapidly, listen to the sonorous, soothing sound of his voice steady and clear and smooth. Watch his thick fingers turn page after page.
After a long while, he sets the book face down on his thighs, rubs his eyes, stretches, his back popping.
And his eyes fix on me and…
Find mine.
He stands up abruptly, the book tumbling to the floor with a noisy flapping and a thump. “Hannah?”
He darts forward, finds my hand and takes it in both of his.
I swallow; my throat is sore. I try to speak. “Hi.” My voice is raspy, hoarse.
He blinks rapidly, and I don’t miss the tears pooling in his eyes. “You’re awake.”
I try to smile, and manage a small, weak curve of my lips. “I think—I think so.”
His palm cups my cheek. He doesn’t try to hide the tears in his eyes. “You scared me, Hannah.”
“Sorry.”
He laughs, blinks, and a pair of tears trickle down his cheeks and drip off his jaw onto the shoulder of my hospital gown. “You were in a coma, and they—they weren’t sure if you’d—if you’d ever—”
“I dreamed of you.” I’m so tired, achy, sore, weak; words must chosen carefully. “I heard your voice.”
“God, Hannah—”
“I came back for you.”
“You dreamed—of me?” His voice breaks. “You heard me?”
I nod. Words are too much, now, and my throat hurts. “Read more. Please?”
He kisses my cheek, my jaw. “I’ll read to you forever, Hannah.”
I frown at him. Purse my lips. “You…missed.”
He laughs. Leans close, cups my cheek in his paw, thumb caressing my cheekbone.
And he kisses me.
Kisses me.
Kisses me.
On the lips. Slow, delicate, and careful, but I feel deep, thrumming emotion in the meeting of our lips, feel his worry, his fear, his need…
His love.
When he pulls away, I close my eyes to savor the memory of his lips on mine, the dampness from our joined mouths, the tingle.
The coma dreams batter through me, memory after memory after memory. Being forced back through the doors again and again, away from him. Never kissing him. Never quite knowing him, never quite having him, not all of him. Knowing, deep down, that he wasn’t real, that none of it was real, even though each time it felt so real, was so real.
But now…it’s finally, truly him.
And I can’t help the tears then, and I don’t try.
“Oh, Hannah.”
I nuzzle into his hand. “You’re real. You’re finally real.” It hurts to sob, but I can’t stop.
“What do you mean?”
“I dreamed of you. But it wasn’t ever…you. It was a dream. Always a dream. And now—and now—” I can’t continue, can’t finish.
He holds me, clings to me, and cradles me to him. He lets me cry, doesn’t shush me. After a while, he brushes away my tears with the pads of his thumbs and stares down at me.
“I’m real, Hannah. I’m here. You’re awake, now.”
“Promise me—”
“What, honey? Anything.”
I have to pause, gather strength to speak past the ache in my throat from the tracheostomy. “When I can go home, when I’m better…you’ll take me to bed. Make love to me. Kiss me….and never—never stop.”
“God, Hannah.” A shuddering breath. “Of course. I promise, love. I promise.” He laughs.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
He only laughs harder. “What the hell did you dream about, Hannah?”
I blush, and he doesn’t miss it. “You,” is all I say. “I dreamed…of you.”
He isn’t laughing anymore. His gaze is hot, fierce. “I think I’m gonna have to get you to tell me about these dreams of yours.”
I’m in a hospital gown, with a tracheostomy stoma, IV tubes, monitor leads. I’ve been in a bed for two weeks with only sponge baths to clean me. But yet…his eyes tell me clearly that I’m beautiful.
To him, at least.
His eyes communicate that he needs me.
Wants me.
That I’m his.
I shiver, and meet his gaze with a heated one of my own. “Maybe, when I can, I’ll just…show you.”
His nose nudges mine. His beard is rough against my cheek. I feel his body heat, smell his masculine scent.
His lips brush mine, but instead of kissing me, he whispers to me:
“I love you, Hannah.”
I’ve found what’s real.
©
Copyright © 2016 by Jasinda Wilder and Jade London. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THE BLACK ROOM: DOOR 8
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
&
Jasinda Wilder
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The Black Room: Door Eight Page 7
