Chapter 21
Amanda's sleep was anything but restful, especially with all of the middle-of-the-night medical attention- vital signs and blood drawing, heavy doses of IV antibiotics and two head CTs. Worst of all was a painful examination of her surgical site, in which Amanda howled with pain, feeling an exquisite, white-hot agony as the doctor prodded and poked and cleaned her inflamed incision. Hospital staff hadn't known that they needed to up her morphine, because Amanda had failed to communicate her pain, resolute in ignoring the slicing sensation that was beginning to return to her head, whimpering and moaning and resisting care with all the doctors and nurses that came into her room. The fever was making her increasingly disoriented, and Olivia had become the only person she wanted near her.
The older woman stayed with her as much as could through the battery of tests, or was just outside the room waiting—after the particularly excruciating exam, she rushed back to Amanda's bedside as soon as she was able, quick to soothe her and shush her and wipe her tears with the pads of her fingers, chastising her gently for not saying something if she was hurting, for not accepting help and treatment.
"My sweet, stubborn Amanda" she cooed. "Please, please let the doctors and nurses do what they need to make you well, honey. Please." She said the last word emphatically, leaning down to press her lips against Amanda's cheek, kissing away one more stray tear.
"I'm not sweet, Liv," Amanda murmured. "You know this. Stubborn—I guess I'll give you that one."
Olivia chuckled softly, her eyes damp. "That's the first coherent thing you've said in hours," she said, laying a hand on her still warm forehead. "Maybe this fever of yours is finally breaking." She bent to plant one more soft, light kiss, this time on the bruised skin of Amanda's temple, and the younger woman's heart burst into a flurry of little beats.
"Olivia—I—" she started. If her fever didn't break, if she didn't get better, this could be her last chance to say what she hadn't said to anyone, not for the longest time, not since she was a small child. But she choked on the three little words that always got lodged in her throat, that hadn't left her lips in years, her breath coming in short, quick, anxious pants.
"What's going on, sweetheart?" Olivia asked, with a twinge of alarm.
"I—nothing." Amanda responded. "Nothing, Liv," she said. She let out a long, shaky sigh of both relief and regret.
Amanda's fever didn't break that night. In fact, it spiked again as the hours wore on, her high temperature making her dreams vivid, vicious. In the first nightmare, she relived the time Patton had made her take him in her mouth. As had become his way during their office visits, he had cuffed her hands behind her back after he had forced her to kneel, hands fisting in her hair, yanking her head downwards, with the threat that if she bit down on him, he would invite her sister in for a visit to the precinct after hours.
"You know she'll get on her knees for me if I tell her to, if it means that or getting arrested," he growled. "Plus, might be fun, having a three-way meeting with you two." And Amanda had been so sickened and horrified that she had accepted the length of him in her mouth, gagging over and over, the hands tangled in her hair yanking and moving her head repeatedly against her will. Amanda was still gagging when she woke up, and Olivia, who had fallen asleep holding her, startled awake beside her in bed.
The older woman pulled her up into a sitting position and rubbed her back, and a nurse came in and brought them a plastic basin, so that Amanda wouldn't vomit on herself again. Liv murmured to her that it was okay, to get everything up if she needed to, but with nothing but IV fluids in her stomach, Amanda only heaved. "Olivia, please," she whimpered, once her stomach stopped lurching and the gagging had stopped. "I need to get the taste out of my mouth. I can't stand the taste of him, it's disgusting. My mouth is disgusting. I'm disgusting."
"Shhh, Amanda. It's okay, honey. I'll get you some water, okay? It was just a bad dream, baby. Just a really bad dream."
Olivia requested a cup of ice water from the nurse, then held a straw to Amanda's lips. Amanda sucked feebly, swished the water around, then tried to spit into the basin, but she was so weak that most of the liquid just dribbled down her chin. Desperate, she closed her lips around the straw again, trying to repeat the gesture.
"Hey, hey, stop, honey. Enough," Olivia soothed, moving the cup away. "You need to get fluids and take a drink, not spit the water out."
"Soap," Amanda murmured, her eyes glazed. "I need soap. I want to wash my mouth out." She had to get her mouth clean like she had after the office visit, once Patton had pulled out of her mouth and she had finished vomiting and coughing into the trash can beside the Deputy Chief's desk. She had gone home to her Atlanta apartment that night, sat down on the edge of the bath tub, and bit down hard on a bar of soap, eyes tearing up from both distress and the sharp, pungent taste. She sat there crying with the soap in her mouth for an hour, stunned, dazed, and then she had gurgled and rinsed with a whole bottle of mouth wash, brushed her teeth until her gums bled.
"Sweetheart, what's happening?" Olivia asked. "Tell me. What are you remembering?"
"He was in my mouth," she said, and then she dissolved into sobs. Olivia sat Amanda up bed so that she could hold her and rock her, telling her how sorry she was, that it was just a memory, that everything would be okay. Eventually, she rocked the younger woman to sleep, but the nightmares kept coming and jolting Amanda awake, one after the other, some that she didn't remember, others that would stick with her in stark detail even through the haze of fever.
It turned out, though, that the worst dream wasn't about things that had been done to her, but to Olivia. In this dream, Amanda was smoking a cigarette in the alley behind her apartment. The streets of New York were dark, and so was her mind, a turmoil of black thoughts in her head. She went to press the lit end of the cigarette against her wrist when it was suddenly snatched from her hand.
Her eyes flew up into the face of William Lewis. He was standing in front of her, Olivia roughly pinned under one arm. Her hands were bound with rope, and Amanda could see the glint of silver duck tape over her mouth in the moonlight, could hear her short, labored breaths. In his other hand, Lewis held Amanda's cigarette between two fingers. He took a long, slow puff and then let out a leisurely exhale of smoke, grinning.
"I was just about to put that out," Amanda said, her voice quivering. "Give it here."
"You want this?" Lewis asked, with mirth. He lowered the cigarette, the tip a menacing, amber glow in the shadows, moving it steadily towards Olivia's face. Amanda gasped as he ground it against the soft skin of her friend's cheek, paralyzed as she listened to Liv's muffled wail of pain.
The younger woman awoke to the sound of her own anguished scream, one word bursting past her lips. "Olivia!"
She bolted up in the bed, the rough hospital blankets tangled around her legs, the mattress vacant beside her. She was still frightened and caught in the throes of the nightmare, sure that Lewis still had Olivia, that he would mar the person she loved with cigarettes that were only meant to be put out on her. "Liv! Liv!" her voice was stronger now, piercing, and her body was lathered in a cold sweat. The fever had broken.
Amanda heard the scrape of chair legs against linoleum. Her wild eyes landed on Olivia, springing to her feet from the vinyl chair near the entrance to the exam room , tossing a newspaper she had been reading onto the foot of the bed in her hurry to get to Amanda. "Hey, honey, I'm right here. I'm still here, Amanda. It's okay," she said, hastily taking her reading glasses off her nose and sliding them in the side pocket of her jeans. She hopped up onto the bed and pulled Amanda against her. "Shhh—it's alright honey," she reiterated. "It's okay."
"Oh God, Liv, oh God…"
"Shhh. Deep breaths, sweetheart. Relax—I'm right here with you. "
The younger woman struggled to inhale, to orient herself to the room and to the fact that Olivia was seemingly unharmed and here holding Amanda in her arms. But, the memory of Lewis burning her was so fresh and real that Amanda lifted her head off her boss's shoulder to check that her face was really unblistered, reaching up to lightly touch her fingertips to the other woman's smooth cheek, her lower lip trembling. Olivia blinked in surprise, then cupped a warm hand over Amanda's, their skin layered in an intimate way for a brief second that made Amanda break into shivers. What's going on, 'Manda?" Liv asked, gently lowering Amanda's hand from her cheek so she could hold it.
"I— just wanted to make sure you were really here," Amanda stammered. She was still horrified by the contents of her nightmare and didn't dare voice any of the details to Olivia. She didn't want to bring up any graphic memories for her friend—even if Lewis hadn't really burned Olivia in front of Amanda, he had still burned her, many times. Amanda clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that escaped her lips.
"Oh, honey," Olivia sighed, placing Amanda's head back on her shoulder before beginning to gently rock. "Did you have another nightmare/"
"It was the dream from hell, "Amanda admitted, unwilling to say more.
"You've had several of those these past couple of hours," Olivia commented. "It was a rough night for you, huh?"
Amanda nodded, the long, feverish hours of last night muddled in her memory. She did remember, though, that Olivia had been there through most of it, either holding her or lying beside her in bed.
"Thank you, Liv, for staying with me," Amanda muttered, embarrassed, humbled. "I can't believe I took you away from Noah all night. I'm sorry."
"Amanda, I chose to be here," Olivia said firmly. "I couldn't leave you in that state, not when you were in critical condition like that. You needed someone."
Amanda pulled away slightly, swiping at her eyes. "Well, I made it through the night," she muttered. "I guess I'm here to stay. Guess y'all are stuck with me."
"Looks that way," Olivia said, giving Amanda a warm and completely unguarded smile before leaning down to kiss her forehead below the bandages. And in that moment, a thought crossed Amanda's mind that knocked the breath out of her. She had the urge to return Olivia's kiss, but on the lips. Her heart began to hammer and pound against her ribcage, and she jerked away from her boss and scooted out of reach on the bed.
"What's wrong, honey?" Olivia asked, voice tinged with surprise, concern. "Did I startle you?"
"I—no," Amanda choked out. But her heart monitor was giving her away, punctuating the silence in the exam room with rapid beeping.
"What's up, Amanda? Please, talk to me."
"I just—don't you have to be at work? Or better yet, shouldn't you be getting some rest and snuggling up with Noah for a nap? I know I kept you up all night."
"I do need to check on Noah," Olivia assented. "It's after 11 am. But I wanted to make sure you were alright before I went home. I'm worried about you, Amanda, and don't want you to feel alone."
"I'm perfectly fine being alone," Amanda said, much more harshly than she had intended. "I've always been fine with that."
"Okay, honey," Olivia said, holding her hands up in concession. "I know you can be on your own. No argument there. But I don't think you're fine with it."
"How do you know what I'm fine with?" Amanda snapped. "You know nothing about me, Olivia."
When she saw Olivia's raised eyebrows, she realized she had gone too far. She swallowed hard and looked down, picking at a thread on the hospital blanket. "I'm—I'm sorry," she choked out. "But you have no idea what's going on in my head. "
"You're right, Amanda, I don't," Olivia said, a bit of ice in her tone. "I don't understand how you can come so close to finally getting help, to letting someone in, and then make the decision to shut down when opening up might be the one thing that saves your life. You've almost died, Amanda, repeatedly these past few weeks, because of what you're doing to yourself. So no, I have no idea what is going through your head or what you're thinking."
"And that's not your job or your business to know," Amanda replied. "Please, Olivia, just quit worrying about me and go home."
Olivia heaved an exasperated sigh. "Alright, Amanda, I'll go," she said. "I'll leave you alone, if that's really what you want." And she turned, gathered her overnight bag on her shoulder, and walked out of the room.
Amanda clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails cutting little half-moons into her palms as she watched Olivia leave. The tears welled up in her eyes and instantly spilled over as she replayed the urge to press her lips to Liv's over and over in her mind.