Turnaround
bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
Neela sat by Ray's bedside. She'd been crying all night just waiting for the heart monitor to give out its parting wail as Ray slipped away. Turned out he hadn't been as clever as he'd thought. He'd forgotten that sometimes when you take a huge amount of tablets, they clump together and take much longer to get into the blood stream. Thank God he'd been in a hurry. If he'd taken his time then he would be long gone. It would be a few days before they knew how his liver would cope, how much damage had been done. Kovac was quietly confident that Ray would pull through, but he wasn't going to get anyone's hopes up too high.
How has it come to this? Neela thought. Ray, who was always so bright, so positive, so carefree, had sunk so low and it was all her fault. After reading that letter there was no denying it, he loved her and she'd ignored him. He'd been her friend and she rejected him. In fact she might as well have spat in his face; it would have had the same effect.
Neela realised when she read his letter what a profound effect she'd had on Ray. But then, he'd changed her too, given her a confidence she'd never had, a freedom to just be herself, something that she now prized above almost anything.
Except the life of the man in the bed next to her. The ventilator kept up its even breathing, doing what Ray could not do for himself, until it started to click. The beeping of the ECG became faster and a little less even. He was coming round.
"Don't Ray" Neela said as she took his hands away from the ventilator tube he'd been trying to knock out, "Not yet, you're not ready for that yet."
Ray was still dazed, eyes closed. Neela flipped the ventilator onto assist, so Ray could regulate his own breathing. At first, there was no rise from his chest. Neela took his hand and held it close to her mouth,
"Come on Ray" she muttered. She prepared to switch the machine back to automatic, but he suddenly started to breathe for himself and looked a little more comfortable.
She wanted to shout at him, tell him how thoughtless he'd been, that he wasn't thinking of all the people he'd leave behind to grieve for him, just how damn stupid he'd been and how lucky, but now was not the time. There would never be a time for those words, and perhaps she was the lucky one here.
She squeezed his hand, "When this is over, I'm going to take you home and get you better, one way or another. I'm not leaving you again Ray and I'm not going to let you go either."