Thanks Em you are a star!!!
Ps this will be finishing soon due to lack of time in the country!
enjoy x
pps edited slaps head i'm a muppet!
"He tried hard to help me
You know"
Joni Mitchell
It was a week since she left the hospital and she wished she was back there.
Harry had sat by her every night, so the nurse told her. She didn't see him; he didn't let her. He came once she was asleep and left before she woke up. The nurse, Tas, had also told her he had paid for a private room and checked up on her twice a day. He seemed to be something of a hit with her. She smiled when ever she mentioned his name. He did always have a way with women. Tas had told her she was lucky to have him: he was a 'sweetie', a 'real catch', 'one for life', and 'very unfortunate his job kept him away in the day'. He was all those things and she knew it. She wished she was back in that hospital bed, at least he would still be with her, even if he didn't let her know.
His visits gave her hope: undue hope, undeserved hope but hope nonetheless. She didn't deserve to have him sit with her. She didn't deserve for him to think about her. She didn't deserve anything. She had done too much, gone too far and needed to pay the price. She had paid the price and still was. She couldn't remember what had happened. She couldn't remember what had made her do it. She couldn't remember…either that or she didn't want to.
The two days were a blur. Adam had filled her in but she knew he left some out. She felt different; she could tell what he had done to her. The marks on her body gave it away, the pain she felt too. It didn't bother her, oddly. There was nothing she could do now, nothing she could have done then - except maybe not have let herself get into such a situation. But there was nothing she could have done right at the time. Before it, yes, during it, no. They said the drugs he gave her meant she probably wouldn't remember it fully anyway, so there was no need to dwell. She did want to know though, about the mess she got herself in to. Adam told her what he could or, rather, what he thought he should. She could tell. It was obvious through the gaps in the story and, so, she asked Malcolm and through his loyalty he had been frank. He recounted the fear, anger, humiliation; the worry and panic he had seen; the loss. These where the terms he used. She knew they related to Harry more than him. He didn't say so, not explicitly, but in his face she could see what he was trying to get across. He had told her what he said though. He recounted the loss of love he had talked of and, more than anything, the loss of faith
The last bit had made her cry. He tried to comfort her, which made it worse. She was back to 'deserving' again and she didn't deserve his comfort. She cried long, wracking sobs and he had left her, eventually.
She didn't understand how or why she did it. She had ideas and notions.
The excitement, the pleasure, the fear and the adrenaline. The kiss, the street, the hands - his hands. His eyes, his face, his voice, their debates, his behaviour. The risk, the hurt, the sorrow, and now the loss. She didn't know how, she didn't understand, yet she had done it.
She loved him; the silent man, the strong one, the one who she hurt, the one who held her. She knew. She had been told and she'd felt it: his arms were around her. She could feel through the drugs, through the state she was in. Something had been there in her mind; a security, a soul, a pair of arms. She could remember feeling it, something she clung to through the haze. At least that's what she thought she felt. She confused herself.
She was clutching a pillow now, in her living room.
Her living room, void of the one thing she wanted there. She found he had removed his possessions when she arrived home. It had been obvious straight away, there was emptiness: it could have been the house, or it could have been her.
She had to face it tomorrow; everything she had been hiding from in her little world; everything she never wanted to face yet needed so much. She didn't actually know how people would react. Sympathy?...but she had done it to her self. Would they be judgemental? To her face or behind her back? She didn't want to know yet. She wanted this semblance of normal again, she wanted to be there she really did, but before all this, before she messed her world up, her perfect world.