Chapter 28: Lifelong Fears

Late that evening Jebb walked up to the desk at the hospital with the intent to ask about Kira only to find that no one was there. The receptionist must have stepped away for a moment. It was just as well. He wasn't sure how he'd explain to the woman who he was to the patient in question. Jebb found the list on the desk that showed the names of various patients on a clipboard along with their room numbers. He skimmed down the list until he found Kira's name. He then made his way down the hall while searching for her room. When he found it, he paused for just a moment before going in.

It looked like Kira was asleep so Jebb sat beside the bed while trying to figure out just why he'd gone to the hospital. She'd made it clear that she didn't want to have anything to do with him any longer. He just wished that he knew the reason. Wanting to fill the awkward silence, Jebb started talking even though he knew that Kira couldn't hear him.

"What are you doing here, Kira? Riding in some stunt show? It's a long way away from using that law degree that you worked so hard for. This isn't what Ben wanted for you. You could have gotten yourself killed out there." Jebb reached forward and brushed some of Kira's hair away from her face. He always thought that she looked so beautiful when she wasn't trying to keep an immovable wall of steel around her heart. "I wish you wouldn't have shut me out after Ben died. The last thing that he'd want would be to see you live like this. He knew that you were meant for more than this. So do I."

Jebb changed the topic and began to tell her about some of the things that she'd missed in his life since she'd dropped out of it. Some was about his life on the farm out in Placid, some was about the group that he has raced with since he first got his motorcycle. He even told her about the latest initiation into the group. Blake's cousin was dared to sneak into the Placid County Jail. The next morning the local deputies and the sheriff were left bewildered while trying to figure out just why someone would break into jail after they discovered him sitting in a cell as if he belonged there. Jebb admitted that after all of the times that he and his cousins have broken out of the Hazzard County Jail he couldn't help but find a strange sort of hilarity in having his friend's cousin breaking into one.

As he spoke, he could tell that Kira was in enormous pain. From time to time she would take on a pained expression as he tried to soothe her. After finishing up with the story, Jebb was interrupted by a nurse. As she walked in she informed him that visiting hours had ended already. He would have to leave.

"Alright." Jebb turned back to Kira, sorry that she hadn't fully woke up while he had been visiting; he brushed his lips across her forehead before leaving out the door behind the nurse. The last thing that he said before he walked out was, "I'll be back tomorrow."

The nurse then began to go through her checks for her patient. She could tell that she was stirring so the nurse spoke to her patient while she checked her blood pressure.

"Who was your friend? He's kind of cute. Is he your boyfriend?"

Through the fog of the pain Kira heard the nurse's question so she groggily answered, "Used to be."

"Used to be? How'd you let a guy like that get away?" The nurse removed the blood pressure cuff off and prepared an injection to add to the other woman's IV to help with the pain.

"Everyone goes away... Eventually. This time I did." The medication was quick to take the edge off of her pain as Kira felt the drugs cloud her already scattered mind. She heard the nurse say something else but she didn't really understand her as she drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

At the door, Jebb had paused just before closing the door and heard Kira's statement. When she fell silent once more Jebb left the room and made his way down the hall.

The next morning Kira woke up to an intense pain that wracked through her enter body. She did her best to remember just what had happened to cause her to end up in such pain in the hospital. Her right arm was in a sling of some kind. With her other hand Kira touched her shoulder and instantly regretted it. A bright and blinding jolt of pain shot through her body. She hissed as she waited for the pain to be reduced to an intense ache. As the pain dulled she then realized that her shoulder wasn't the only thing that she must have injured. Her chest was tight and it wasn't easy to breathe. In addition, her left leg was in a cast. A part of her didn't want to know if she had any other injuries.

Kira glanced around her room and saw that she must have had a visitor while she was asleep. On her bedside table she saw a small vase with white tulips and a note. Briefly she wondered if any of the other riders in the stunt outfit had actually come to see her. She found that hard to believe since she had intentionally kept her distance from all of them. Kira carefully reached over and read the card.

I couldn't find the ones that you like. I thought that these would do.

Jebb

Kira couldn't help the sad smile that she felt creep across her lips. She had no doubt that he had actually tried to find her favorite flower; the Queen of the Night Tulip. Of course the only place that she has ever seen them had been in Ben's flower garden. They had been planted in the section that Chuck, the gardener, had planted a variety of tulips. He'd even taught her the meanings of each of the colors.

Her favorite tulips had been those that were so dark that they looked black. They represented inner strength. She felt that they reflected her life after she'd been taken in by Ben. He'd helped her see that she had an inner strength that had kept her alive against all odds. He'd also taught her that even in darkness, life could be beautiful. A lesson that she'd been slow to learn. Maybe it had been a lesson that she'd wanted to forget after Ben died.

Kira looked over at the tulips that Jebb had left her. White tulips, the symbol of love that had been lost. She doubted that he knew what the colors meant. After all, he hadn't spent hours in the gardens with Chuck at Ben's house in Atlanta. Somehow, though, they fit their situation perfectly. How many times had Jebb told her that he loved her? Both when they were making out and when they were casually out and about; even in his letters or over the phone.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, she did her best to remind herself of why she'd pushed Jebb out of her life. She didn't want to be hurt when he eventually realized that she wasn't worth the effort to try to be with. The funny thing was, pulling back had only seemed to hurt her worse than she had feared if he had decided to cut off their relationship on his own.

Kira set the card back down just as a doctor walked in. He began to discuss her injuries and the length of time that it would take to heal from them. From the way the doctor spoke, Kira got the impression that she would be staying in the hospital for at least a couple of weeks. He also asked her if she had any place to go or people to help her through her healing process. After all, with the broken collarbone, several broken ribs, a broken left fibula, and a torn right meniscus Kira could expect an extended need for a wheelchair. At least two months. Likely a bit longer.

"I, uh, I'll have to think about that."

"Alright. But know that I can't release you unless you have help. Not with your injuries." Once the doctor was finished, Kira was once more left alone. Left with her own thoughts, she supposed that she'd best start trying to figure out what she would do once she was released from the hospital.

Jebb grabbed his knapsack and looked around his hotel room before heading out to his motorcycle. He'd already stayed a night longer than he'd planned and he really needed to head back to the farm. Still, a part of him couldn't leave without visiting the hospital once more. Especially after thinking about Kira's comment to the nurse the night before. He knew that she'd been drugged and she likely didn't even remember that he'd been to visit her.

"Everyone goes away... Eventually. This time I did."

Just before the accident Jebb had asked Kira if Ben's death had anything to do with why she had pulled back from their relationship. But maybe it went deeper than that. A statement like that was a tell. Ben hadn't been the only one that she'd trusted and counted on who ended up leaving her alone.

Jebb made his way to the hospital to see Kira before he needed to get back out onto the road. At least this time he was going during regular visiting hours. Just outside the door to Kira's room Jebb paused before going in. He wasn't sure if he expected Kira to be glad to see him or not. She hadn't exactly looked like she'd missed him when he'd seen her before the race. In fact, she seemed annoyed that after all of this time apart she'd come across him in Alabama.

As the door opened, Kira looked up expecting to see one of the hospital staff coming in to check on her. When she saw Jebb she didn't know if she was glad to see him or not. She knew that he'd been to see her since he'd left her the flowers but she sort of had expected that he would have returned back to Placid already. With him in the room, it suddenly felt too small.

"Hey. I'm glad you're awake."

Jebb felt awkward without really knowing why. Here was the woman that he'd come to love despite the fact that she'd first begun to walk out of his life more than two years ago. It had been a year and a half since she'd shown up after a race to officially break it off and disappear from his life; seemingly forever. He'd tried to move on but he just hadn't been able to. Not with any of the girls who had shown an interest in him on the racetrack and certainly not with any of the ones that his mother was constantly trying to set him up with.

"I... um, I wasn't expecting you to come back. Shouldn't you be on your way back to the farm?" Kira shifted in the bed and bit back a cry of pain when she did so.

Jebb flinched in sympathy as Kira tried to hide the immense pain that she was in. "Do you want me to go get a nurse to get you some more medicine?"

Kira shook her head as she waited for the pain to ease a bit. "That stuff just knocks me out and-"

"Makes you say things that you might not want to?" Jebb finished. He figured that it was as good of a way to breach the subject of what he'd heard her say to the nurse the night before as any.

"Huh?" Kira tilted her head as she waited for Jebb to explain that last part. "What are you talking about?"

"Last night... Before I left... You said something that I wanted to ask you about. You said that everyone goes away eventually. That's why you did this time instead. You want to explain that? What did you mean that everyone goes away?"

Kira furled her brows as she tried to remember telling him the one truth that she'd learned to rely on in life. She glanced over at the tulips and wondered what else she'd said the night before.

"Kira?" Jebb pulled the chair up closer to the hospital bed and waited for her to answer him.

"What does it matter?"

"It matters because I still love you and I think you love me. So why did you decide to leave? Why did you think that you had to?"

Kira felt a lump of emotion tighten in her throat. "I just did."

"That's not exactly an answer, Kira." Jebb ran a hand through his hair as he thought back to his revelation back on the racetrack. "If this is about Ben-"

"It's not just about Ben." Kira's face felt hot as she thought about all of the people that she'd trusted in her life who eventually left her behind. From the various street kids whom she'd thought that she could trust only to be betrayed by them, a teacher who had wanted to adopt her but the state hadn't allowed it, the few foster families where she'd felt safe and even cared for only to be sent away, all of the way back to her own mother who had left her sitting in a hospital lobby waiting for her after a false promise to return.

Kira couldn't remember when she started letting her fears spill out but once the floodgates were opened she just couldn't seem to close them until every instance of abandonment came out. Here Jebb had thought that she'd spent her life being distrustful of people, only learning to shake that lesson after Ben had come into her life. Instead, she'd trusted the wrong individuals only to be hurt by those same people over and over again. The lesson that she'd actually learned had been to pretend that she couldn't be harmed by anything or anyone. When Ben died it had reminded her of the fact that the closer you allowed someone into your life the more painful it could be if they left.

Jebb sat on the edge of the bed as he tried to comfort Kira while being mindful of her injuries. "Kira, you can't let the fear of being hurt in the future keep you from lettin' people get close to you in the present. Being lonely doesn't keep you from hurtin'."

Kira sat stiffly next to Jebb, partially due to her discomfort of facing her lifelong feelings of abandonment and partially due to the great deal of pain she was in from her injuries. Though perhaps what made her the most uncomfortable was the fact that she knew that Jebb was right. In trying to protect her heart, pushing anyone and everyone out of her life, she'd ended up causing herself more pain than she could have thought possible.

"I know," Kira whispered so softly that Jebb barely heard her. She'd spent so much of the last two years trying to convince herself that she didn't need anyone in her life anymore. The truth was, though, she knew that she had only prolonged her pain rather than eliminated it.

After the two fell into an uncomfortable silence Jebb moved back to the chair next to the bed as he glanced around the room and saw that the only evidence of anyone having visited Kira were the flowers that he'd left the day before. There was no sign that any of her fellow stunt riders had come to check on her after her accident.

"So, how did you end up riding with the stunt group, anyway? This is a long way away from Cambridge."

Kira shrugged her shoulders and instantly regretted the action though she was glad that Jebb had changed the subject.

"I was recruited just before I graduated. One of the other riders saw me riding while up north."

"Must have been doing some fancy riding for someone to recruit you off the street." Jebb smirked as he remembered when Kira first joined the Motocross Circuit. What she lacked in skill she made up for in enthusiasm. By the time he'd lost touch with her she'd begun to show herself to be a better stunt rider than most in the group.

"Not really."

After a couple more moments of awkwardness Jebb broached the subject of the other riders. After all, with not just one but two members of their group in the accident and hospitalized, surely they would be concerned for the well-being of all involved.

"Have any of the other riders come to see you, yet?"

"One brought me my truck keys. He and some of the others took it and what's left of my bike to my place. I doubt that any of them will be back."

"Oh." Jebb wasn't sure why he was surprised that Kira hadn't developed any relationships with any of the other riders. Even after spending years with his friends on the Motocross Circuit she never did seem comfortable on the more intimate level. Though he now understood more of the whys behind her actions after hearing of her lifelong fears to add to the other issues that he'd learned about earlier in their relationship. Jebb decided to change the subject once more and instead asked about Kira's final year in law school and all that he'd missed from her life. Jebb only wished that getting back to where they were before Ben's death could be easier but the first step was just getting Kira talking again.

A couple hours later Jebb reluctantly glanced at his watch. He knew that he needed to head back home soon if he wanted to get back to Placid when his parents were expecting him but walking out would be one of the hardest things that he'd have to do. Partially because he had missed Kira so much, perhaps more than he realized when he didn't know where she was, and partially because he knew that part of Kira would doubt that he'd be returning once he left at all.