Hello everyone. First of: Thanks for the reviews. They were nice as always and I do very much appreciate them, so please please please keep telling me what you think.
Second: It is quite funny. The method I talk about in this chapter here (you'll see what I mean) does really work. So, if you ever find yourself in pain, try it out. It really helps.
Third: This will probably be the last update for some time again. I haven't written the next chapter yet. I have, however, (and I'm quite proud of myself for having done that!) started writing a timeline and have decided what's going to happen in the next chapters. So, it shouldn't take months and months this time.
And lastly: Thank you so much for reading still and sticking with me and this little story. This chapter might finally be what some of you have been waiting for. It's still not Isobel's pov but it's close to it. Have a nice read.
Disclaimer: Nothing's changed disclaimer-wise. Still not mine, still no money I make with this, just for fun, ... .
Air was moving through my nostrils. It moved steadily and warmed my skin in the process. It seemed to be especially hot and I could not remember my breath ever being quite this warm before. Then again, I had never before registered my breathing quite so explicitly. It was a strange feeling. Strange, but soothing nonetheless.
I kept my eyes closed. On the one hand, I felt as though my body was not quite ready for me to open my eyes. I felt as though my body needed some more time to become consciously aware of itself. There was no need for any additional stimulus and impressions just yet. On the other hand, I was not quite sure that I knew how to open my eyes. For some reason, I felt as though I had forgotten how to move my lids on command. While under any other circumstances this would have scared me, I didn't panic at the notion in this very moment. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed being alone with my mind and body for the time being.
Focusing on my breathing led to becoming aware of movement in my chest. With every inflow of air, my chest lifted while my lungs expanded. Another experience, I had never consciously noticed. It felt unbelievable. Feeling how your body survives and functions is one of those things that makes you understand how complex a system the human body is.
For a while - I don't know how long, really. Things, especially the perception of time were a blur. - I simply enjoyed feeling my body work. While I did relish it, I soon started wondering how I had come to be in this state. What followed was a mental and very thorough self-assessment of myself.
It was something I had learned when I was just a little boy. I had been playing outside with friends, when I had fallen off a tree. The impact had forced the air out of my lungs and left me lying on the ground unable to move. A tremendous pain emanated from somewhere. As a result of being unsatisfied with not being able to identify where my pain had come from, I had started mentally walking through each part of my body until I had located the source of my agony. To my astonishment, it had worked. I had been able to not only locate where my pain originated from, but to also focus on this point and work myself through the agony. It was as if I had been able to locate and enclose the anguish and as a result of that, I was able to cope with it more efficiently. I had used this method ever since.
I used it on my patients too. Patients? That means I am a doctor. I neither knew why I suddenly realised that, nor did I think about it further in this moment. I returned back to assessing myself. As I had done since I was a little boy, I started with my feet. I focused my thoughts on them completely and listened to my body. Anything wrong with them? There wasn't. I then moved on to my whole legs and repeated the process, again coming up with nothing out of the ordinary. Moving through my whole body in this fashion revealed that there was a dull sting in my chest and trachea, my eyes felt unbelievably heavy under their closed lids - I guessed that this might have been another reason for my not opening them. -, my lips felt dry and cracked and there was a pounding behind my forehead that spread all the way to my ears. Other than that, I felt alright. Tired and worn but alright. There seemed to be no broken bones and no split skin, which made me wonder once more, how I had come to be in this position.
Maybe it was time to think about opening my eyes once more. The thought alone made me groan and immediately my ears registered some movement to my right. It had sounded very close to me; some rustling of clothes, a chair scraping minimally against the floor and a gasp. A gasp? Who was gasping next to me? Maybe whoever was next to me was in pain? Wake up! Wake up!, my inner voice screamed. But I didn't. I, instead, wondered why the gasp had sounded so very familiar. Could gasps do that? Could the rapid intake of breath sound familiar? Apparently, it could. What I was not able to do, was to pinpoint why it sounded familiar and in which way it felt so. It made warmth spread through my whole system and made my heart flutter and a name flashed through my brain for a second.
Isobel… Isobel. I felt the corners of my mouth lift up into a small smile. The name sounded nice. It sounded beautiful, like a warm embrace. It sounded like home. Isobel…
And it all came crashing back into my mind:
Trying to ask her to marry me, Gunga Din, whiskey and pain, humiliation… the war, fear, tremendous fear, France, more fear… hope, friends, her son and anguish, so much crying and wailing and cursing everything I knew for the unfairness of it all… a very slow recovery and always her, in every thought, every day, always her. And then him. And her slowly slipping away, more whiskey, more wailing and more cursing, this time on my behalf and once more about how life could be so very unfair. A wedding.
All of a sudden my eyes flew open and my upper body lifted into a sitting position. "Isobel." I rasped, followed by a moan. I should have remembered my previous self-assessment. Had I done so, I would have reconsidered sitting up quite so abruptly. As I had failed to do so, I now felt all of the pain I had identified earlier multiply. The dull sting in my chest increased to a feeling as though someone was stabbing knifes into my torso. My windpipe seemed to have started burning and my head felt as though it was going to explode any minute now.
The whole sequence couldn't have lasted more than a second and in the next instance, I heard something hit the floor. I turned my head in the direction the crash had come from and saw through blurry eyes that a chair had toppled over. My vision slowly started to be less fuzzy and finally my eyes found the source of the gasp. All of a sudden, I gazed into pools of brown and time had once more frozen over.
Trying to wrap my head around her being here in … the hospital? Never mind how I had gotten here. Trying to understand her presence in my life proved to be a herculean task. I could not, for the life of me, understand why she was here. This did not mean that I did not enjoy her being next to me. It felt like I was finally whole again after weeks, months of being not quite complete. My heart rejoiced while at the same time it cried out in anguish.
"Richard.", she whispered. It was so soft a sound that I would have been convinced I had imagined, had I not seen her lips moving. Her eyes were starting to become suspiciously moist and I felt the sudden urge to hand her my handkerchief or to console her. I could not think of a reason why she would be on the verge of tears but I was too much of a gentleman to ask her, coupled with being much too shy around her to even consider asking her about her feelings.
"Hello, Isobel.", I said and for a moment I had forgotten that I had wanted to ask her why I was in the hospital and why she was here with me. Nothing mattered in this moment except her being where she was, where she belonged: next to me.
While I had spoken, her tears had finally won the fight against her composure and they started flowing along her cheeks. I was mortified. My Isobel. Yours? Crying! Your Isobel? I nearly growled at the voice in my head. Didn't it understand that right now she was mine in every way that counted? She was next to me, she was with me and - I quickly looked to my left and right - there was no Lord Merton anywhere in our immediate vicinity. For reasons unknown to me she had decided to come and when I had woken up, she was the first person I saw. She must have spend quite some time next to my bed, I assumed.
"Don't cry, please. I can't stand it to see you cry." My voice still sounded terribly raw and raspy and speaking in itself hurt. I figured that I must have been asleep for quite some time otherwise my voice would not feel quite so… unused.
A sound I had not expected to hear pulled me out of my musings: A laugh. Not a full belly laugh like you hear from people at a fair; not a forced and affected giggle as I had so often heard from the women at the Abbey. No, it was a delicate and honest sound, coming from the richest and most beautiful voice in the world. Isobel was laughing and while she did so, tears were slowly streaming down her face.
She looked at me with the most angelic, teeth-showing smile and despite the tears she looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her look before. For a second I wondered if I would ever cease to be amazed by her beauty.
"You really shouldn't be sitting up.", she finally said through her tears and smile and in the next moment, and against propriety and etiquette, she had thrown her arms around my neck and was hugging me. Before long, I could feel her tears dampen my hospital gown.
All the while she kept laughing softly.
TBC (and I promise. I do!)
I do like this chapter quite a lot. Tell me what you think about it?