Well, people, THANK YOU. Thank you for sticking in there with me. I'm sorry it's been so long and even my estimates were off (I got a bit down about writing after the negative commentary I got from several terrible people who basically told me to die... so, lesson learned, guys. Threatening people does not make them go faster).
But it's finally here: an update.
Yes, this chapter is short, but I didn't want to jump ahead of myself and put the next part in... that's for next chapter.
The writing bug has finally bitten me again and I hope you're as pleased as I am. And hopefully this will answer a bunch of your questions!
Talk to you guys soon!
Chapter 46
Cautious Optimism
It's been two months. Two whole months of cautious optimism. Cautiously hoping my eyesight will fully return. Cautiously hoping my husband is alive. Cautiously hoping that anything can ever go back to how it was. Cautiously hoping...
Now I'm just losing all hope.
Although the surgery seems to have restored some of my vision, all I can make out at this point are colors and shapes. There's no detail left to my world.
I can't identify anyone until they speak. That might not seem like a really big deal, but I'm constantly terrified. I know Jack Hyde is dead, but I can't convince myself it's true.
A little less than a week after everything happened, I had us, and I do mean all of us, transferred to Northwest Hospital. Knowing everyone was getting the best care was really all I could do. The pain killers they had me on — still have me on — leave me barely able to focus on a single thought for more than a couple of minutes. Opiates are my tiny little frenemies. Sure, they make the pain so much better, but they also make me into a drooling idiot.
I hear footsteps and feel the panic rise in my chest. There's a big, human shape walking right towards me. Unfortunately, the drugs can't manage to make me into enough of a drooling idiot to keep me from my waking nightmares every time someone walks into my room.
Every person who approaches me is Jack Hyde until proven otherwise. My mother, Gail, Taylor... only José is immune because of the telltale squeak of his wheelchair.
"It's alright, Ana, it's just me, Grace." Her familiar voice soothes my hysteria and I feel myself calming slowly. She takes my hand gently and strokes it. "I just thought we might go visit him now. How does that sound?"
I just nod my head, my eyes stinging with tears from the emotional roller coaster ride of the last thirty seconds. She helps me up, holding my elbow.
"Shall I wrap your eyes, dear?"
I nod again.
We've found that walking down the hallway, where the lights blink, people pass by, and everything seems to move, irritates the hell out of me. It terrorizes me. Hell, everything terrorizes me these days.
So we wrap my eyes in gauze and then I don't have to worry about the lights and the movements and the colors. I just have to worry about the smells, the sounds, and the sensations.
Grace takes her time wrapping me up, quietly talking to me the whole while. I have no idea what she says. It's too hard to keep my focus. But it does feel nice to hear her even, reassuring voice lilting in my ear, to feel her steady, sure, surgical hands light across my face, gently moving my hair.
"Ana, are you ready?" she finally asks, standing in front of me and holding my hands in hers.
I nod once more and she leads me into the hustle and bustle of the hallway. That now-familiar pain between my legs, on the soles of my feet, pretty much everywhere, kicks into action, slowing my already snail-like pace. I try to focus on that. Maybe if my mind is occupied by pain, I won't have time to concentrate on the bodies moving around me, threatening to attack me, all morphing into Jack Hyde.
Yeah, that plan doesn't work.
"Shh, shh, Ana. It's okay. I'm here," I hear Grace's voice say next to my ear. She wraps an arm around my shoulder and that just puts me over the edge. I collapse in on myself, screaming, swatting and clawing around me, trying to establish a perimeter. A safety bubble. Personal space.
The hallway goes silent except for a guttural, cat-like howl. It definitely doesn't sound human. I wonder where it's coming from until I realize it's me.
I compose myself, standing slowly.
"I'm sorry, Grace," I whisper. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm fine, Ana. Are you ready?"
I nod my head. "Please, lead the way," I whisper again.
Finally, we arrive at our first stop — Ethan's room. Once Grace shuts the door behind us, she unwraps my eyes and I carefully navigate my way over to his bedside.
Even I can tell he's doing better. The color of his face is starting to even out to a much more skin tone-like hue, he's more animated when he speaks, and he moves without as many painful grunts and gasps.
"Hey champ," he says when I sit in the chair Grace gets me.
"Hey yourself," I say back, trying to plaster a smile across my face.
"I'll be outside," Grace chimes in. "Just let me know when you're ready to go." She smiles (I think) and closes the door again behind her.
"How're your eyes doing, Ana?"
"No different from yesterday," I sigh. He asks me every day, as though all of a sudden I'm going to have 20/20 vision again.
"Any word on glasses yet?"
"Eye test tomorrow. We'll see."
I can feel his grin.
"We'll see?" I can smell the freaking grin now. "We'll seeeeee? Come on, Ana. Eye test? We'll see?"
"Yack it up, funny man. Yack it up."
He full on guffaws, gasping for breath, wiping his eyes, slapping his thighs.
That's when I realize it. He really is better.
Once he regains control, which, let me tell you, takes several minutes, he lets out one last contented sigh and flops back into his pillows.
"So, how long have you been cleared to leave the hospital, Ethan?" I ask flatly.
There's nothing but silence in response.
"Really, Ethan. I'm drugged but I'm not stupid. You've been here a month. You were pretty messed up but you're basically back to normal. No way the doctors haven't noticed. So how long have you been pretending to be worse than you are?"
After a moment, he pipes up. "Two weeks."
I stand up suddenly, knocking my chair over in the process. "Two weeks?!" I spin in a little circle then cling to his hospital bed for balance. "You've been lying to me for two weeks?"
His voice is a small as a mouse. "I haven't been lying to you, Ana."
"You have been lying!" I nearly shout.
"I just didn't want to leave you here by yourself."
And I stop. José got discharged to a rehabilitation facility three weeks ago to start intensive physical therapy and occupational therapy. John and Taylor both left about a month ago.
"I'm not alone," I say. "I have... I have Christian."
"Ana, he doesn't count."
"He counts. Why wouldn't he count?"
"Because we don't know if it's Christian, Ana."
When I came out of my surgery, the inspector came and found me. They'd identified all but six people from the explosion. Three of those were men. Two were dead. And one was alive.
Christian hadn't been identified among the victims, but they now believed he was among those three unidentified men.
There is a one in three chance Christian is alive.
The survivor hasn't been identified because he can't be identified. He has severe burns over 15% of his body. His nose has been broken as well as several of his teeth. He has complex fractures in three limbs and will be unlikely to regain the use of his right ear. Most of his hair is singed and his face is unrecognizable. And he is in an induced coma until they are entirely confident his brain has sufficiently healed.
I've thought of all the ways I could identify Christian's body — none of them are possible for me right now. Between his mangled face and my damaged eyesight...
I keep thinking that if I could only see, I could identify him by... well, by the parts no one else gets to see. By his penis, really. I would recognize that anywhere (of course, I don't have a lot to compare it to). But then I remember that no doctor would let me see a coma patient's penis. Even if my eyesight was fine.
But it's only three more days until they wake him up.
Three more days until I kiss my husband again.
