Mutation

Chapter 24 Viva La Vida

You feel like you're dying, it's the only way you can describe the pain that curses through your body before everything goes dark.

Behind your eye lids you see your Elizabeth, like the day when you buried you wife. She is looking forward and not seeing anything, you want to reach out and touch her but you can't move and she keeps looking past you.

Her little voice swims around your head 'You promised'.

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You wake up and instantly close your eyes; it is always so bright in hospital rooms.

"Daddy?" her voice is soft and laced with sleep, and you feel her body warm and tiny curled next to yours. You wonder how she was able to sneak in your room and fall asleep.

You open your eyes again, slowly and she's staring up at you like she's so glad you opened your eyes but angry that you closed them at all.

"You scared me" she says it like she is years older, like it's something she gets to hold over you from now on.

"I'm sorry" you stroke her hair, brushing the messy ringlets from her face.

She lays back down, letting you play with little strands of her hair making sure she's real. That you still have her left.

"We tried to capture a rainbow once" she says slowly, looking out at the window at the rain.

"You and Mommy?" you ask and she nods. Taking in a gentle breath she continues, she tells you that Allison took her to the park and there was a rainbow, she tells you that she felt like if she reached high enough she could brush her fingers over it.

She tells you that Allison picked her up and told her to close her eyes.

"Mommy asked me if I could feel it, the colors. And when I closed my eyes really tight I could. They were so warm against my fingertips" she opens her hand, spreading tiny fingers towards the ceiling and letting you see them, were the rainbow had touched.

You can see them, in the park their faces so alike. Your daughter in your wife's arms, reaching for something that you know it's impossible to catch. You can see their smiles.

"Then she held me really tight and she said I smelled just like the rainbow" she looks up at you and smiles "She said I smelled just like blue and purple and green and red. She hugged me so tight and sometimes when I'm really scared I feel like she's hugging me that tight again, I feel the rainbow on my fingers"

You know she is telling you this because it's what she wanted to feel when she was told you were in an accident too. What she wanted more than anything when she saw you here, asleep and half broken.

"Your mom was awesome like that" you tell her.

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Your right leg is broken in two places and you dislocated three ribs, you had fifteen stitches on your arm and four pins put in your leg.

This all happened because it was cold, there was snow on the ground and your cane gave out when you were crossing through the parking lot and a car didn't see you.

You get to use a wheelchair for the next couple months and then you get to move up to crutches.

The good news is that you get three weeks off and a paid driver till you have full use of your leg again.

Your daughter promises Lisa that she will take good care of you, and though you think the thought is utterly adorable you know that both of you wish that Allison was there when you got home to make a fuss over this then completely ignore you when you want something.

You take your daughter's hand as Lisa talks about things you know better than she does about your recovery. You pull her body tight against your and take her smell in, feeling her desperately warm body against yours.

Outside there is a sliver of sunlight in the middle of winter, of hope you lost a long time ago.

Your daughter, who looks so much like her mother it makes your heart twist sometimes.

She smells like sunshine that hasn't been around for weeks, like cotton candy and childhood. She smells like blue and green and red and yellow. She smells like the rainbow she shared with her mother.

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That's it. Thank you so much for everyone who kept up with this story and reviewed.

I might do an epilogue.

Thank you again.

GabbyAbby