Chapter 2
It's been a few days before you realize her mother has yet to find out.
That she's back.
That she's alive.
It occurs to you for the first time that not only have you not seen Angela but you've not heard from her either. Until you find out that your beloved detective bought her a weekend spa date for two, date fixed for the day she had returned and sent her a message using your phone telling her to go and spend some time with the BPD Lieutenant because you needed some time alone to process given everything that's happened in the last few days, how you were fine and you'd see her at work on Monday. Despite the underhandedness of it all, you wouldn't have it any other way. Her all to yourself, if only for a few days, basking in her mere subsistence.
So busy you've been learning what's happened over the last few months; how she did actually die on the table, how the doctor somehow brought her back. And you're grateful to the staff. More so than they will ever be able to imagine.
Cardiac arrest.
You find out how once they re-started her heart more times than you would like to think, how each second her heart refused to beat made it more and more dangerous for her coming back to you as the person you remember. You know the statistics. You know how if normal blood flow is not resumed within 15-20 minutes, brain cell loss becomes extensive, how simply brain cells can become damaged within a few seconds, never mind 20 minutes. Because it is the absence of a heart beat, the absence of breathing that leads to the absence of brain function; how the simple stopping of that strong, necessary muscle which in turn causes a lack of red blood cells being pumped round the body can cause utter catastrophe in its wake; how each small catalyst can lead to death becoming irreversible. How even if she had been saved, she might not have come back as the Jane you knew. You try not to think about it. You focus instead on how the doctors managed to fix the internal bleeds, how they moved her to another floor, away from the corridor where you and the rest of her family were waiting outside, through the 'back doors' of the operating theater.
As per request of the FBI.
You hear how she was sedated during the critical period before being weaned off the drugs until it was realized she had entered into a coma and remained as such for the next two months, all the while under the watchful eye of the Bureau, and specialist doctors. Part of you is grateful for the care your Detective received. Another part feels cheated; of the months you could have spent together, of the time you could have spent taking care of her, making it up to her, memorizing every detail of that beautiful face as if it were to be your last, showing her you cared by holding her hand, brushing stray tendrils away from her face, talking to her, whispering in her ear, that she was loved, and of the time you could have spent by her bedside, all the while thinking that if only you'd been there, she would have opened her eyes sooner. She speaks of how she spent the next month, recuperating, and the following time undergoing rehabilitation and physiotherapy for her arm. And you think…of how you should have been by her side, ensuring she wasn't overdoing it whilst at the same time, making sure she was doing all the exercises she so hated to do for others, but would willingly do for you.
And despite your conflicting feelings, you understand. That her hiding had been necessary due to the threat that had been hanging over her, put out by Doyle's men till even they were rounded up, and for all you know, by Doyle himself. That her hiding had been necessary in keeping her alive. And so, despite your conflicting feelings…
you're grateful.
Reviews? Improvements, comments etc?