Chapter 6 The Next day
Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute and the Makah that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.
Thanks to BanSidhe for betaing.
The next day Seth was back.
This time he was a little more prepared. He had spent half the night reading up on coma patient strategies on the internet. He had no idea how many of them were fake stories, but there were rare cases where people woke up after years, with no bad side effects. He really hoped Rose didn't have any bad side effects.
The general idea was that the longer she stayed like this, the more problems she would have getting back to normal. Whatever that was for her; he didn't even know.
So, he brushed her hair. As well as he could with the bruises and cuts on her head. He kept touching her hand and chatting away; a running commentary on everything he was doing. It might have freaked her out to have a stranger touch her anywhere else, so he was careful not to overstep her boundaries.
He chatted to the nurses; learnt all their names. He needed them to be his friends. He asked them about coma nursing. They told him that they have to roll her or move her every two to three hours, to stop her getting bed sores.
He held her hand; the one without the tubing and massaged it a little. He kept just chatting away about how he would never be able to deal with being stuck the way she was. Then he apologised because he thought that it might be rude to remind her that she was stuck.
"It's all right for me, eh? I can just walk out the door. You're stuck here until you get yourself out of this. Hey, the nurses said you are probably healing a brain injury. They think you banged your head on the side window when the car rolled."
"I'm doing patrol tonight… you want me to bring you something smellier than flowers? What about some leaves from the forest?"
He waited.
"Sure, I could do that for you."
"Pine or cedar?"
He waited for a response.
"A surprise… okay. A surprise it is then."
Next visit he brought in cedar branches and crushed a sprig under her nose for her to smell. He arranged them in a vase, like flowers.
"Don't you hate the smell of hospitals? And there is always something wrong with the clocks. It's weird; it's like they don't move at all or else that they go too fast. They are always too fast if you don't have enough time, you know if someone doesn't have much time left… I dunno…"
He prattled on… filling the awkward silence with meaningless chatter.
He perched on the side of the bed and held her hand. He told her all about his family. About how weird it was that his mum was dating the Sherriff. He told her Charlie was cool, but it was just weird to see your own mother dating. It seemed wrong somehow. He talked about how he lived with Leah and Jake. He told her what a cool couple they are and that he hoped that maybe she could meet Jake one day.
He decided next time he should bring a book and read to her. He felt like he has run out of things to talk to her about.
"What kind of books do you like?"
He waited.
"My choice… okay… what about music? Alternative… disco… classic rock?"
He waited.
"Cool… my choice too, huh?"
He chuckled. "If you hated disco I could play the Village People or Abba until you woke up, spat it, and told me to stop… would that work?" He looked crestfallen for a second. "Because I really want you to wake up, Rose."
He found an old portable radio and he left it on her bedside table.
He read somewhere that you should have a comment book, to write in milestones that the patient passed and to make notes for the patient's other visitors. The nurses agree. He knows all their names now and they like him.
Laura Markowitz was chubby and chatty; the archetype happy fat girl. She was the youngest of them.
Valerie Spinelli was slim and dark and in her late 30's, he guessed.
Evelyn Downs was a little older. She was a bit rough around the edges but had a heart of gold.
Deborah James was tall and blond, and in her late 20's. She was unlucky in love and eyed him off speculatively.
He managed to time his visits to not clash with her mother. He was not entirely sure he could carry that off right now, meeting her… again. He feared she may ask about his real motives in being here. He assumed the nurses told her about his frequent visits; they must have. Plus he wrote notes in the comment book for her and he saw that she had started to use it too.
Whatever… he was still allowed to be here and he wanted to do his best to help.
He felt as if it was his fault.
Intubating
Days passed. Rose's bruises faded and the cuts and scratches healed. Her shoulder was still bandaged where she broke it when the car rolled. Her eyes opened and closed. She blinked.
The nurses had to clean out the breathing tube in her neck. She had been intubated at the accident scene and they did not think she could breathe on her own yet.
Seth could hear her heart rate pick up. It must have been hurting her or maybe she just didn't like things being shoved down her throat. He grabbed her hands and spoke to her, calling her name and calming her down. When they had finished, there were tears on her cheeks. He thought she had cried, the nurses argued that it was just a gag reflex. He calmed her down and she seemed to fall into a state he liked to think of as sleep.
"You just wore yourself out there Rose," he told her. "If you don't want it in there, you will just have to breathe on your own," he told her sternly.
A day later, she could breathe on her own and the tube was pulled out. It was a big step. Not just that she was breathing on her own but that she was moving her throat muscles properly. Her brain was functioning at a level capable of telling her muscles what to do. Without the breathing tube she could be moved around; she had a little more flexibility. They could move her to lie in a special reclined chair. It was supposed to be good for her whole body. Seth thought it would give her something else to look at instead of the ceiling. Hospital ceilings were pretty damn boring no matter how you looked at them.
Every time they moved her, the nurses used special lotion and massaged the part of her that she had just been lying on. It all helped with her circulation.
Now she had a tube that rested under her nose, giving her extra oxygen. More oxygen was supposed to help coma patients too. She was still being fed by a tube down her nose to her stomach.
He helped move her arms and legs in a kind of physical therapy. The nurses showed him how to do it properly and he learnt quickly. A physical therapist came to see her too.
Seth read her children's books and showed her the bright pictures.
He pretended to argue with her about it.
"Well you said it was my choice… if you don't like it… you will just have to do something about it," he told her.
"But come on, what is not to like about this one? 'Edward the emu' by Rod Clement. The librarian said it was a donation from an Australian tourist. And check out the illustrations… 'Edward the emu was sick of the zoo'…" he started reading aloud.
"How sweet is this… look he is trying to be a lion… and now he tries to be a seal… look he is all wet and balancing a ball on his beak…"
"And it has a happy ending… he finds another emu… just like him… awww … isn't that cute?"
He started to be able to pick up her moods. Some days she was sad, others angry. He started to watch tiny facial, or body changes; he used how she felt to him, to guess at her mood.
He asked her, "Are you sad/angry/bored today?" and he waited politely for her to answer.
He turned the radio on and sang along with his favourite songs.
He held ice cubes and hot packs against her skin to stimulate her nerves.
He brought her talking books and left a pair of ear-buds for her so that she could listen when he was gone. She seemed to like the Harry Potter stories narrated by the English actor Stephen Fry. He did all the character voices too.
The library didn't have a big range of talking books, but he found a series by Laurell K Hamilton about vampires and werewolves; the Anita Blake stories. He thought that was ironic. The librarian assured him that women liked the books.
Rose seemed to like them too. He put his head next to hers on the bed and listened to part of one, one day and he nearly died.
"Whoa Rose," he told her, "This is pretty hot stuff. Explicit sexual content there… it should have a rating… I apologise if I have got you all fired up there… no wonder all the ladies like this one…"
He washed her hair for her one day and braided it carefully. The nurses all joked that he could wash their hair any day.
Any changes Rose was making were very slow, but Seth didn't lose hope.
FF_2154210_ - 14/03/2011 01:22:00 PM
FF_2154210_ - 30/08/2011 09:00:00 PM