He brought the devil to me. My dreams started the moment he entered my life at 14 not 18 years old, like I’ve been led to believe. I’ve been exposed and vulnerable all this time. He comforted me at night when my nightmares wrecked my peaceful sleep and he never once confessed he was the reason behind them. He’s not a man, he’s a coward. His measure of disloyalty is no different than the others I’ve dated in the past. The same wolf just in different sheep’s clothing.
I feel a hand slip into mine. I feel a touch as light as feather pace in a circular motion over the back of my hand. I can feel my tears well in my eyes, feeling the same betrayal that my heart feels.
“Jaycee, I’m here. Everything is going to be alright now. I’m not leaving you again,” Jaxon assures me.
My treacherous tears release from my eyes. I can feel the wetness crawl down my cheeks. I am bared open and vulnerable again. I feel a soft cloth wipe my tears and damp the wetness away until a coolness lingers in its wake.
“Please wake up, baby. We’re waiting for you to come back to us,” Jaxon pleads.
I shatter even more on the inside. I’m not in a position to express my frustrations, my anger, my grief, my sorrow, or my sadness. All I can do right now is just be.
I need to get out of here and away from him. I want him to hurt the same way he has hurt me. I must wear an invisible badge announcing to the world that I’m a walking doormat; please use me, abuse me, and leave me. Don’t mistake my niceness as naivety.
I want Jaxon to let go of my hand. Please stop touching me. You are no longer allowed to touch me. With pure willpower coursing through my limb veins, I will my hand to shake him off.
“Nurse, get in here! She’s waking up,” Jaxon yells.
I quickly realize that I’ve lost my range of motion. What’s holding me back? I try to move all my limbs but I’m met with restraint.
I can hear commotion erupting around me.
A man’s voice is giving verbal orders, “I believe she’s waking up. Let’s remove the breathing and feeding tubes and stop the propofol sedation to allow her to wake up on her own.”
My body starts to wretch as soreness takes over in the back of my mouth and sinus cavity. I reach my hand up to my face in an attempt to stop the ache. Oh, I can reach my hand up to my face. I’m not restricted anymore.
“Jaycee, I’m Dr. Napels. I’ve been overseeing your care along with my other colleagues for the past week now. I would like to perform a neuro assessment on you. Can you open your eyes for me please?”
I attempt to lift my eyes open but I can only see a smidgen of my surroundings.
“Good. Now I’m going to shine a light into your eyes. Can you follow the light for me?” He asks.
The light hurts my eyes but I do as he asks. I turn my eyes from left to right and then top to bottom. The light gives me an instant headache.
“Excellent job. I am going to order additional tests to make sure the swelling in your brain has subsided. You will continue to drift in and out of sleep for a while until the medication is flushed out of your system,”
I feel the pressure in my hand become tighter. Jaxon is squeezing my hand. I don’t want him touching me right now.
“Let go,” I say with a weakened voice.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying babe. Do you need something?” Jaxon asks.
“Urgh.” I groan and shake my hand free from his.
“Am I hurting you? Does your hand or wrist hurt,” Jaxon grills.
“Amy,” I whisper. “I want Amy or Mary.”
“I can message her for you. She should be completed with her residency program. She may be able to come. Mary is in Europe and heavily involved with the National Gallery in Prague. I doubt she can make it,” Jaxon said.
I can feel my mind slipping back to sleep. It is such an awkward feeling. When you naturally fall asleep your mind peacefully allows it but when you are medicated you can feel your mind cycle through the wakeful state and then darkness. It’s so surreal.
We are sitting on the trunk of my car at the river enjoying the beautiful summer day.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us to Cedar Point? I will gladly sit by myself on the rides,” I ask Amy. “ C’mon it’ll be our last hurrah before you and Mary each leave for college.”.
“I would love to come but I can’t,” Amy said. “I leave for medical school at the end of June and I’m trying to save all the money I can. I want to get there and find a part-time job before I add school into the mix. You could always come with me. Your accounting job allows you to work remotely. Besides, I could really use the support of my best friend.”
“I’m not ready to leave yet,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not sure what I want to do, so I would hate to make a commitment to you until I know for sure what I’m going to do. I just met a really cute guy named Jaxon, a few days ago. He’s almost eight years older than I am. He’s a Master Sergeant in the Marines Corp. He seems to be really into me. I’d like to see where it leads.”
“He already sounds like a step in the right direction. Hopefully, he turns out better than the others,” Amy said, sarcastically. “I don’t understand what you saw in half of the guys you dated.”
“Evan was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, but his personality was exhausting. His arrogance followed him wherever he went and his smart mouth was too much for me to handle,” I pressed on. “Darrius moved away but he doesn’t count because I was too young and Marty was also very tall and handsome, but he was extremely flakey. He was into me one minute and then the next he ghosted me. Marty’s actions are identical to Wyatt’s. It must be the thing to do these days.”
“I’ve had a few of them too,” Amy admits. “Although, I concluded that those boys will be men one day and will have many scorned lovers, ruined relationships and divorces all because they look for happiness in others instead of themselves. Let’s take Marty and my ex Larry for an example. They showered us both with gifts, attention, and wanted to be with us constantly. They made us feel like we were on top of the world. But once we gave them what they wanted, poof … gone the next day.”
“Actually, Marty was gone less than eight hours later,” I laugh. “On Easter, no less. I sent him a text telling him I enjoyed the day and I didn’t hear from him for like four months.”
“He was a loser,” Amy scoffed, rolled her eyes. “Larry at least waited for almost 48 hours before he broke up with me by text. He didn’t even have the balls to call me.”
“We do know how to pick them don’t we,” I say, as I stare into the flowing river.
Memories play like a video player in my mind of all the extraordinary times we shared together. Amy is my longest friend, ever since we were in the second grade. She’s my sister by love not by blood. I wipe a tear from my eye.
“So this is what it feels like when you have to say good-bye to your best friend,” I cry. “I will visit you as much as I can. I will gladly stay with you the week that you move and we can scope out the new town out together. Thank you for always being there for me. I love you, sis.”
That was the last time I saw Amy. She moved two weeks later to Georgetown and found a job waitressing tables at a high end restaurant. Between her work and school schedule, I wasn’t able to visit her but we facetime, call or text each other at least once a week so we can stay current with each other’s lives. She’s been dating a cardiologist for a year now and attends a lot of formal events with him. He appears to treat her well and she seems content so maybe he’s the one for her.
Amy was very comforting to me when my mother passed. She offered to take off work to attend my mother’s services but I told her that it wasn’t necessary. I know her heart broke for me, but I also know how hard it is to pack up and leave sometimes. I thanked her for the offer and I told her we can get together soon which we still haven’t managed to do.
Mary and Amy have been the two most supportive people in my life. Even though Amy wanted to be there for me, I knew
she couldn’t and it was ok. Mary was home at the time visiting her own family and she was able to attend my mother’s service. She also helped me with the creating the portrait memory boards for the service. I feel truly blessed to have found two remarkable friends in my lifetime.
It’s funny how time flies--when I look back on all the things I meant to do but didn’t and how slow time moves when I try to accomplish one of those items on my to do list.
“Please open your eyes for me, sweetheart,” Jaxon pleads, as he squeezes my hand.
My mind shifts back to the present, affording me the opportunity to hear what’s happening around me.
“Her brain MRI showed no damage and her swelling is nonexistent,” Dr. Naples said. “Which is great news. I’m still waiting for a few of her lab work results to come back but so far everything looks positive. She will make a full recovery. She will need to have limited activity for the next six weeks but we will need her up and walking so her leg doesn’t lose any additional muscle mass. I will explain all of this with her when she wakes.”
“Praise god,” my dad says.
“Awesome news. Thank you for letting us know,” Jimmy adds.
“I assure you doc, we will take very good care of Jaycee and make sure she does everything you need her to do,” I hear Jaxon say, assuredly.
My mind is still reeling from the knowledge that he is Jack.
Jaxon
Present
I had an Uber driver waiting for me, the moment the plane landed in Ridge Landing. It took me less than ten minutes to exit the plane, wait for my bags to appear on the conveyor belt and meet the driver out front of the airport.
“1155 Carnation Lane, and hurry,” I demanded.
I live less than five minutes from the airport and about an hour away from the trauma center that Jaycee is in. My only goal at this point is to get to Jaycee as fast as I can. I don’t have time for small talk right now so we drive in silence to my residence.
“Here, keep the change buddy, thanks,” I say, as I hand him a fifty dollar bill and exit the car.
Once I get home, I get a quick shower and pack a bag for Jaycee and I. I pack each of us clothes, but also our bathroom and hygiene necessities. I’m sure she will appreciate having her personal items. I walk downstairs to the office and pull out a new iPhone for her. I always carry extra phones including burner phones. I’m always prepared for the inevitable.
There is so much I need to find out; like, who has her personal belongings from the car accident? She had her wallet with her including all her personal information. I prefer that nobody has access to that. I have zero trust in people.
I grab the keys for the Wrangler, but decide against it; she will need a vehicle that will be easy for her to get in and out of. I reach for the keys to the black BMW and pull out of the driveway within the hour of being home.
My mind can’t erase the image of the car accident, or of those bastards shooting at her. I relive that moment every minute of every day. I don’t know what I would do without Jaycee. I found her during my time of need. I came to Ridge Landing because of a buddy I was in the service with, Sammy. He told me how awesome his hometown was and after listening to his stories, I felt drawn to visit the town. I can’t explain the feeling aside from a higher power pulling me here. I was a young kid who lost everything; his parents, and his home. What more did I have to lose to try something new? I was still reeling with my parents death, the stresses of being in the service, the internal struggle of wanting to gain more influence and power, but also to find what my body was pulling me towards: love.
I’m not a firm believer in God or Satan. I sort of believe in God, but it’s hard for me to believe in something I cannot touch or something I cannot make sense of. You can’t necessarily believe in God yet not believe in the devil. They are like yin and yang. I do, however, believe in angels. I believe that we have guardian angels who are there to protect us. I’ve seen too much in my line of work that I cannot deny their existence. I’ve seen a dog come running, full force, towards my platoon, preventing us from taking one more step, the one that would have been our demise. I would have stepped right on a landmine. When I turned around to wave the dog off and keep it from alerting our presence, it was gone. It was like the dog never existed.
Jaycee believes in God and she also believes in angels. She believes in everything good. She believes when Satan visits her in her dreams that she’s battling spiritual warfare. She tried to explain to me once what her perception of spiritual warfare means.
“Okay, picture this,” Jaycee said with excitement. “You have all this terrible shit happen to you, right? You wake up one day and you don’t have any hot water to get a shower. Then you go to leave the house and your car won’t start and after you get fiery mad, then your car starts. You make it to the grocery store and do your shopping only to make it to the checkout counter and learn that your bank card is sitting on the table at home from paying bills the day before.”
“What does a series of bad events have to do with spiritual warfare,” I ask.
“It has everything to do with it,” she laughed. “When you are where you are meant to be, when you are about to fulfill a prophecy, unknown to you of course, the enemy will prevent you from fulfilling it.”
“How does a grocery store apply to your analogy, love,” I asked, sarcastically.
“Well, smartass, I may have been there to support someone else in need. Perhaps the cashier was having a bad day and needed someone to confide in for a few moments and I had the right message to comfort her. Maybe the person in the parking lot needed to borrow my jumper cables and was running late for a job interview. Jaxon, we are only tools in God’s plan. We live each day unknown to us. Every day we wake up and do what we feel needs to be accomplished, but where do you think that feeling originates from? Maybe that one thing that we do that day affects someone else in need.”
She really is the most beautiful woman inside and out. I feel truly lucky and fortunate with her in my life. She’s not perfect, by any means, but she’s perfect for me. She has a mouth like a sailor, when she’s nail-spitting mad and she’s as calm as the breeze, when she’s content. She’s never afraid to try new things. Most of all, I love the way she loves me. The amount of love this woman carries in her heart is more than I can comprehend. Am I deserving of her anger at times? Absolutely! I’m certain she will be angry with me more times in my future but I’m a man and can withstand her putting me in my place.
My outlook on life is more grim than hers. I can see how terrible the enemy can be. She worries about the invisible enemy. I worry about the enemies on the other side of the world, constantly scheming and planning terrorist attacks, the same enemies who put her in the hospital.
I pull into the first open parking spot I see, grab our bags and quickly enter the hospital. Glenn texted me her room number earlier today. I walk over to the elevator and press the button for the eight floor. Once the doors open, I look for the signs to take me to room 803.
I gently push on the door and the sight before me takes the breath right out of my lungs.
She’s laying in the hospital bed, unaware of all the bruising and discoloration of her face. She has a large bandage wrapped around her head. Gauze and bandages cover the smaller lacerations. Her leg is free from under the cover and placed in a mobilizer which appears to move her leg for her. I follow each of the tubes coming from her helpless body leading to the machines on each side of her bed.
My emotions are all over the place to see her like this. My heart breaks for her, yet I want to rip those asshats apart, limb to limb. The storm brewing inside of me will not be quelled until I can throw her enemies at her feet.
“Here, you can have my seat,” Glenn says as he stands. “There haven’t been any changes, but we’re hopeful she’ll wake up soon. I’m going to leave for a bit to shower, change, and get something to eat. The doctor normally rounds between 2100-2200. It’s good to see you son,” he pats my back, as he s
lowly walks out.
Glenn looks like he aged thirty years since I’ve seen him last. His wrinkles are more defined around his eyes and mouth, his hair is disheveled, his clothes are wrinkled and unkempt. It’s obvious he hasn’t left her side since she’s been here.
I take the seat placed next to Jaycee’s bed. I slip my hand into hers and stare into her bruised face.
“I’m here babe. Please wake up for me,” I plead.
My mind races back to the day I first met Jaycee. I don’t know why I’m thinking about that now, but I remember how terrified she was, yet, she remained strong, vigilant even, though I was closing in around her.
“Please, why are you doing this to me,” she cries. “Help me, someone please help me.”
I close in behind her pretty quickly. I reach out and yank her hair. “Got you! What do you have to say for yourself now?”
“Checkmate, asshole,” she yells and starts bashing me with a rock on the side of my head. The assault caught me off guard, and I release my grip on her hair and watch as she escapes.
I taunt her with meaningless words as I recover myself and start the chase again. A few meters ahead she starts to shake and becomes disoriented then suddenly collapses to the ground.
I felt immediate regret and remorse the moment her head collided with the dry, dirt infested ground. What the hell did I just do? Why did I behave like some animal? It felt like someone took over my body and mind, controlling my actions and my words. I protect women and children from monsters and I am definitely not a monster. The amount of guilt and shame doesn’t even compare to the anguish I feel inside.
I stand over her and I feel like I’m looking at an angel. I slip off my black t-shirt and slip it under her head. She is absolutely breathtaking. I don’t understand why I was drawn to her or why I behaved like an imbecile, but deep within the depths of my heart I know I must have her. I hear the revving of a four-wheeler engine and realize I need to leave.
Shattered (Guardian Series Book 1) Page 15
