The doctor emerged with a tight mask of professional neutrality, sewn and stitched with years of trained detachment. With his free hand, he gently eased the door shut and turned to face his audience of bewildered spectators and haggard patrons. The badge-embellished coat he modeled seemed to enhance his glowing aura of astute credibility, thus generating an underlying hum of stale, though beating comfort. Wentworth led the front of the pack, along with Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove, Henrietta and Charles.
Anne lingered in the far back, unsure of the immediate desire of her company or presence, knowing that the rising level of anxiety would not decrease until she made a polite yet simultaneously hasty retreat. Though she remained a few meters away, she could clearly envision the furrowed brow of Frederick and witness the heartbreaking quirk of Mrs. Musgrove, as her fingers toyed with the sturdy loops of her fresh-water pearls. It was the classic case of the typical, dysfunctional family reaching the plateau of their undeniable, yet cleverly hidden malady of illusionary organization. Elliot had parted ways after partaking in the frantic escort to the hospital.
Anne studied Wentworth and then focused on the doctor, preparing herself for the absolute worst.
"Well, I have some good news and some bad news."
Mrs. Musgrove wrung her hands together like a sopping dish towel, the weathered veins twitching on the maps of her hands like flooded rivers. Mr. Musgrove gently placed his hand on her shoulder, his blank expression threatening to crack from smothered anxiety.
Dr. Carver sighed.
"The good news is that Louisa hasn't suffered any serious brain damage. I'm ninety-eight percent positive that surgery or any sort of operation won't be necessary. However, we will be closely monitoring her progress, as this period of recovery is critical."
All the shoulders of the family seemed to relax, though the tinged air of hysteria remained like a black balloon.
"On the other hand, it appears that the concussion is more severe than a tiny knock on the head. It seems that her left parietal lobe has been horribly bruised, which will temporarily affect her language comprehension skills."
Mrs. Musgrove gasped with alarm, clutching her hand to her chest.
"But I thought you said there wasn't any serious brain damage! What does this mean? Are you saying that Louisa won't be able to speak?"
Dr. Carver shook his head.
"No, no, of course not, Mrs. Musgrove. This is temporary; the height of her fall and the material upon which she landed should be expected to negate a clean bill of health. However, for a period of time, Louisa will have trouble understanding speech or written words. She will be able to speak; she will not have lost her ability to verbally communicate. But, you might find it difficult to hold a conversation with Louisa, as she will struggle to understand the actual dialogue."
At this, Wentworth spoke, laced with concern, the deep rumbling of his baritone surprisingly tranquil.
"But how long will this last, if it's not permanent?"
Dr. Carver swiveled to face the questioner.
"That's the thing; we're not entirely sure. Anywhere from six months to five weeks. It all depends on how well she responds to treatment. Of course, the damage isn't too serious, so I highly doubt the time period will exceed six months."
Anne couldn't ignore the guilt that bombarded Wentworth's expression, the self-inflicted wrath that doused his cheekbones, the way his lips curled into quiet disdain. The confiding enclosure of his chest cavity proved inadequate for his heart. She yearned to tell him that the incident wasn't a product of his apathy or the consequence of his malice. Louisa had been her own worst enemy; her ambitions to please and impress Wentworth had ignited her literal downfall.
The chilling gloom that crippled the small crowd rattled the very bones of Anne with a narcissistic authority, the kind of icy whip and howling cry that could not be thwarted by the defense of wool sweaters and knitted scarves.
She discovered him in one of the hotel's biggest conference rooms. It was the first place she thought to search. Naturally, Wentworth would not be able to resist the sleek beckoning of the stone fireplace, overstocked bookshelves and promised solitude. The entire family had willingly hovered by Louisa's bed-side, analyzing her stoic face, studying her tightly-clamped eyelids, as though the mere gesture would awaken the Banged-Up Beauty. After the obligatory though fumbled excusals, each family member had retreated to the cavern of his or her domicile.
The fire crackled like the flickering smile of a Halloween Pumpkin. His head rested in his hands, which slumped across his lap, his shoulders frigid and tense. Anguish lingered beneath his eyes, sooty and dark, embracing the seductive shadows created by the clash of the lamp's artificial glow and the golden flames.
His elbows rudely dug into his knee caps, the rise and fall of his chest following the silent tyranny of an offbeat drummer. His entire body oozed with restless tension, the basic elements of a brewing storm that threatened to decimate the mind's foundation of a personal grasp of stability. It seemed as though a typhoon of unsuitable words trampled across Wentworth's consciousness, obnoxious and pretentiously proud, spewing saturated slogans and propaganda like a campaign of hate. In theory, there were plenty of solutions to this immediate dilemma. She could waltz up to him, her hips energized with a subtle sway, her lips ready to lightly fly across his temple, her hands prepared to become smothered by his large palms. In perfect theory, she would know all the right lullabies to whisper, the harmonic sonatas at her disposal, certain to be disposed.
In theory, she could call the shots; she could direct the scenes and edit each frame, stripping away the fumbled lines and promises that refused to bloom. However, theory never settled with reality and reality always favored messy endings and smiles that should never have been born. Biting her lip, she crossed the threshold. Wentworth didn't bother to look up, that chest continuing its rise and fall, rise and fall, inflation and collapse.
She perched on the other end of the couch, dismissing the cool slither of the crushed velvet against the foreign invasion of her skin. Her spine was erect, straight and narrow, almost to the point of discomfort, a bird about to take its last flight. She'd never wanted him so badly; here in this moment and simultaneously, she had never welcomed such a rush to bolt.
This was a living testimony to cancerous desire, the play-by-play of unrequited love thrown back into the ring, content with its black eye and bruised body. The fire snapped and the shadows chased each other's tails. She wondered if she should let him open the conversation. But if she gave him the benefit of the doubt, would they be forced to remain frozen in the absence of a discourse? Anne was beginning to internally scold her brash impulse, when Wentworth finally looked up. His arms returned to his sides, coldly clicking into place like James Bond loading his state of the art silencer.
"Anne, it's late. What are you doing down here? Go get some sleep," he roughly ordered.
The richness of his usual tone had been substituted with scratchy and weary resistance. He had begun to construct the mental and emotional walls before she had even set foot into the room. He was almost like a general, mapping out the best points to fire, circling the spaces of obvious vulnerability.
She shook her head, turning her knees inward, on the brink of quaking with trepidation. This was stupid. Idiotic. Utterly moronic. But she wasn't about to exit, when she'd possibly snagged his attention.
"I'm not tired. And besides, shouldn't I say the same thing to you?"
He sighed, leaning back into the cushions, allowing the illusions created by the shadows and the indestructible flames to attack his exhausted form, picking away at his visible outline like fire-ants latching onto their conquest. One hand sprawled across the back of the furniture, the other find bittersweet solace in his disheveled mop.
"You could. And you probably should. But that doesn't mean I have to listen," he sarcastically retorted.
Anne snorted, slightly disarmed by the unfamiliar rumble of his responses, that gravelly and smooth rhythm that made her insides turn into a lava-lamp.
"Honesty Frederick, have you checked the time? It's nearly two in the morning. What could be so possibly enchanting about the fireplace that you feel the need to forfeit sleep?"
Frederick's lips twisted into an uncertain smile, shook his head and threw his estranged arm across the other side of the couch. It was obvious that he was drained, that sort of fatigue that eradicated the option of rest and relaxation. It was the sort of curse that stuck to the soles of your shoes and left a grimy, turpentine aftertaste underneath the bumps of your taste buds. Everything about Frederick hummed with this deprivation; his Winter had arrived with the grace of a lamb and the pride of a lion, betraying the lush Summer Green for a feast of naked white.
"Look, Anne. Seriously. I'm just not in the mood to banter tonight. My head is swimming and I don't need you to throw yourself into the whirlpool," he authoritatively clarified.
"Is it because of what happened with Louisa? Are you still thinking about her accident?"
Frederick let out an irritated sigh, abruptly leaning forward, his torso unapologetically jabbing into the once empty space. Anne knew that whatever he currently needed to say would explode from its cage. Maybe he should have come with a cautionary sticker, a bulletin of advisory: Warning! Contents Under High Pressure.
"Maybe I am, all right? Is that such a bad thing? How can I ever forget? I keep wrestling with these images, these…flashbacks. I just see her, floating in the air…that look on her face. Damn it Anne! How the hell am I supposed to just lumber off to bed when all I can see is that look on her face?"
Anne was slightly relieved that Frederick had been so willing to open up. At the same time, she was a bit worried. What if she couldn't mend this wound? She was a doctor forced to sew up a mile long gash with a plastic needle and three inches of thread. It was disheartening, to be rendered into this position, exchanging hushed words because routine mandated an air of impersonal courtesy. They used to lie in bed, watching the rain from her bedroom window, foolishly believing that love didn't carry a price and the night could blanket latent hurts. But everything they had pushed aside and herded under the rug had been reborn, pumped with bigger, faster and smarter toxins.
"No one is asking you to just forget. But taking all the blame isn't going to benefit the situation either. Everyone is worried, everyone is terrified. But you can only take on one day at a time; we can only deal with each passing moment. No one is expecting you to run out and fix this, Frederick. It's not your job to fix this."
Frederick let out a hasty peel of ugly laughter, adjusting his pose so he could gain a fuller view of his debate partner.
"But I have to, don't I? I was at the bottom of that rock; I was the one that was supposed to catch her. I let her fall. I let her tumble to the ground. Now she's hooked up to a mess of tubes and machine and you sit there, telling me to shake it off and hit the sack? I can't Anne, I can't. Not tonight. Not when things are like this," he brokenly assured.
Anne unconsciously moved closer, genuinely upset and dismayed by Frederick's immense and bottomless guilt. Why couldn't he see that his hands were clean, the bed of his fingernails void of incriminating specks of blood? It was Louisa who had been the one to jump from that boulder. It was Louisa who had ignored his requests to avoid such a danger and it was Louisa who had submitted to the persuasion of her impulse, disregarding all laws of gravity and the voices of reason.
Perhaps Frederick could have joined Louisa on the rock, in hopes of reinforcing his demands, but this was irrelevant. Louisa had voluntarily sacrificed solid ground for hollow atmosphere. It wasn't Frederick's duty to hold the naive Musgrove offspring by the hand, vanquishing the monsters governing a kingdom of closets and lands anchored behind dust bunnies.
"Frederick, please. Your nobility is worthless within these circumstances. Louisa is the one who jumped. Louisa is the one who ignored your reasoning. Louisa is the one who should be responsible for her decisions and her decisions alone. No one could have predicted that she would actually jump," Anne soothingly explained.
Frederick blocked out Anne's argument, her optimism butchered by his own translation, transcribed into maudlin pity and monotone sympathy.
"But-"
"Freddie, listen to me. You're not Superman. You're human. You can bleed, you can cry and you can make mistakes. But Louisa's accident is not your mistake, do you understand me?"
Frederick's defensive pessimism faltered and he momentarily gaped, surprised by her unyielding interruption and her spontaneous display of a sentimental nickname. True, Louisa maintained the unbecoming and childish knack for second-grade pet-names, drenched in the syrup of her piercing voice. But when Anne had utilized this term of endearment, the intent and the attached sentiments rooted from a deeper seed. He had never erased the memory, the specific and telling fashion of her tongue embracing the syllables, vocal honey wrapping and conjoining with unique pronunciation, intimate like old lovers.
Would Frederick Wentworth ever achieve the means of exterminating her face, her eyes, her lips? He let his gaze wander to her NYU sweatshirt, the material worn and gauzy after numerous washes. Poetry churned beneath the ripples of lavender; it was written on the stark geography of her skin, waiting to be devoured by impatient intellect. She would always be there, watching from the corner, the hunger that could never be stifled, the ache that throbbed like a phantom limb and stood in a case like a war medal.
So he spoke the only observation he judged appropriate for such advice.
"Freddie…Hmm...you haven't called me that in awhile."
Anne blushed, fidgeting with her hands, inspecting her cuticles.
"It just slipped out. I'm sorry."
He shook his head, frown replaced with an easy smile.
"It's fine. No need to be sorry. Christ, the last time I remember you calling me Freddie, you were yelling at me, paranoid we'd get cuffed for hopping the subway gate," he confessed this with a level of surreptitious confidentiality, realizing that he had narrowly escaped the public torture of the full truth.
This vocalized revelation had been the second snapshot to come to mind, not the first. With the utterance of this nickname, Frederick had fluently slipped into an odd day, strolling down the allotted paths of Central Park. The sun had exited stage left for the debut of dense clouds, only to flee for the grand finale of rain. Neither possessed an umbrella and Frederick had grabbed Anne's hand, laughing as they raced through the hysterical clumps of tourists and mothers glued to strollers, whipping and weaving, ducking and dodging, laughing too loud and bubbling with apologies that didn't form quick enough.
Frederick's legs started to negotiate for a decent break and he'd pulled her under a towering tree, one hand in her wet hair, the other melting with the present liquid on her slick cheek. And he'd wrapped his coat around her, his burning to feel her bones pressed against his own far outweighing the urge to dry off. And she'd giggled again and he rubbed his thumb down that crinkle in her nose and he was closing the gap, tenderly squeezing her because she was his, all his, and she was mumbling Freddie and the rain had dove into the crevices of their melting mouths and Freddie was the only coherent word that managed to stay in his jumbled head.
But that was all in the past.
Anne formed an expression that was heartbreaking, rather than heartwarming. He wondered if she also felt evaporated, depleted. Should he end the source of this burdening grief, poison the bud before it could blossom? He knew what he could do, but did he dare act upon this knowledge? He glanced at Anne for some confirmation
"Frederick. It's late. You should get to bed. You just need some time to sleep on it, that's all."
Frederick's nostalgia extinguished, his arms returning to his sides.
"Anne, just give up. We both know I'm not going to move."
They were silent. However, this sound lacked any hospitality or ease, claiming only suppressing suspense and apprehension. Frederick wondered if his tone had been misinterpreted. He watched with inquisitive rapture, as Anne elegantly arose, mouth failing to betray the emotions that churned within her head. He watched her arm swiftly leave her side, levitating in the air as though guided by a string. Her fingers uncurled and she unveiled her palm, unable to face rejection.
He stared at her open hand, indulging in the lines and the curves and the indents that time and memory had fully preserved. After grappling with the rational hesitation, Frederick accepted her inaudible invitation. He slowly leapt to his feet, gazing down at the young woman he had once unconditionally loved, the woman he did love, the woman he could never cease to love, the woman he always found himself fiercely missing, even though she was never too far out of reach.
an. I'm so sorry that I waited so long to update! I wish I could write more, but college doesn't really allow a lot of free time...But never fear, this story will be finished. Sometime. I just don't know exactly when. Haha.