I come bearing gifts! I hope this meets expectations.
Any and all feedback is more than welcome.
/*/*/
Day 3 – 9:02 am
The dream was just so frighteningly vivid…
“It was me,” he croaked out decidedly, through watery vision. “I shot Ben Chambers. I started it all.”
A thin, salty tear streamed down his cheek and met the curve of his lip. He stared in sorrow at his wife’s sleeping form.
Ryan and Sammy, surprised to hear such an absurd confession, were quick to absolve him. Sammy stood up and walked around the bed to hopefully lend him some comfort.
“James, it was just a dream.” Ryan attempted. “You didn’t shoot anyone. You weren’t there; you’re not even a cop.”
Ryan looked at Sammy for some back up when he noticed James’ unyielding eyes. The man didn’t believe him.
“What exactly happened in this dream, James?” Sammy asked kindly.
“I… I was sort of everywhere, err… and everyone. Or at least I was seeing everything happen as if I was every person there. At first I was Collins, the idiot who didn’t even notice the cop get passed him. Then I was one of the idiot civilians peering through the windows. Then I was the idiot rookie who tried to… be the hero.” His voice radiated disdain with that word. He seemed like he was about to gag just at the sound of it rolling off his tongue.
“James, that’s not what happened at all. You know that, right?” Sammy asked him.
When his brows furrowed in disbelief, Ryan chimed in to refresh his memory. “Bro, first off… Collins didn’t let any cop into the room. The cop disarmed him or something, took his gun and jet onto the scene. That’s how he got in. And I don’t know how exactly your dream ended, but Collins took his cue from Abigail.
“He tackled the cop to the floor, but he was still able to shoot. It got the suspect guy in the arm. Flesh wound, I think Collins said it was. Abigail was barely able to dodge that bullet. Then the suspect guy got angry and aimed to shoot back at him, but Abigail got in between the two. She was going to get the gun away from the suspect guy, but he shot her.”
James nodded as he let the facts churn and settle in his brain. “How do you know this?” he questioned.
“James, I was there with you when Collins let you in on the case. He even broke some rules by telling us how everything played out,” Ryan replied, but James still looked a little skeptical. “Are you okay, man?”
“Yeah, yeah… I just, I guess that dream felt a lot more real than it should have.” James tried to shrug off the cloudiness that had possessed his mind since he awoke, but things were still hazy.
“Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. You’ve barely slept here and when you did, it was in that chair. The cushions are so bad; it’s practically a metal chair. Maybe you just need some rest,” Sammy suggested.
“No. No, I can’t. She’s here. I need to be here. With her.” James kept his eyes fixed on his wife’s features, stubbornly avoiding eye contact with his friends.
“James. No one would blame you for–”
“Blame. That’s what it is…” James interrupted Ryan, releasing his words as if he were only thinking aloud. “It’s my fault she’s in here. I wasn’t with her when she needed me. I need to be here now. She needs me. I need to stay with her.”
He kept a stoic expression on his features but Sammy could hear the edge in his voice. It was heartbreaking to see him be so harsh on himself.
Ryan, on the other hand, was utterly surprised to see this side of James. Never before had he ever seen his best friend so stubborn and angry at himself.
After glancing at Ryan, Sammy figured it was her turn to speak to James, since he was obviously too incapacitated with shock and disbelief to do so at the moment.
“James, look at me,” she said sternly, but no less tender. “You weren’t anywhere near the hospital when she was shot – that’s not your place. Sure, you’re her husband but it isn’t in your job description to stalk her at work and attempt to ‘save her’ when you think she’d be in danger. We all know she can take care of herself. We also know it would only annoy her if you did anything to show her you thought otherwise.”
Sammy sighed heavily, exasperatedly, when James tore his gaze away from her and again towards his wife. In one last effort to get through to him, Sammy cupped her hand around James’ shoulder before starting again – this time in an unbelievably soft, gentler tone of voice.
“None of this was your fault. I know there’re always the ‘what-ifs’ and the ten million other unanswerable questions, but James… that’s just the thing. The fact of the matter is, it was never your place to even think of taking a bullet for her…” Sammy paused hesitantly, almost unsure of her words, but her voice didn’t quiver when she spoke again. “It was never your place to do anything of the sort. You were being all that she wanted you to be: safe.”
Sammy half-squeezed her hand around James’ shoulder in a last hope that it would pass along some comfort, before she released her grip altogether.
That was when silence overtook the room. Ryan and Sammy assumed James was only allowing their words to register in his head, but when he spoke again, it was only then that they came to truly understand how broken he had become.
“That doesn’t make me feel like any better of a husband… I had always been there for her. Somehow, some way… I had always found a way to be there when she was in trouble. But not this time. This time, I didn’t even know… I didn’t even feel… anything go wrong. That’s the only fact that matters.” James’ voice was raspy and soft, almost bitter, as if he wished he didn’t believe the words that left his lips.
His and Abigail’s hands were, and had been entwined since he arrived at the hospital days ago. For the majority of this day, he had kept his eyes on the connection, thumbing soft circles onto the back of her hand.
“I didn’t even feel anything go wrong,” he repeated quietly with his eyes still fixed on their hands. It was barely above a whisper but he was sure they heard him. “If Collins hadn’t called, I probably wouldn’t have known.” He paused as he tried to rein in his emotions.
James continued with a disbelieving scoff and an expression on his face that could only be described as a grimace. “Aren’t you at least supposed to feel something? I mean, isn’t that what people say?”
“James…” Sammy started, sympathy clinging to her voice. She paused to rack her mind for the words that would give him comfort and courage but nothing came. Writers were supposed to be “word gods” and “wordsmiths”, but when it seemed to matter the most, she felt that she was anything but.
“How could something like this happen and I not even realize until it was too late?”
For just a second, James allowed his eyes to stray from the entwined hands in front of him. His gaze ricocheted between Ryan and Sammy – their profiles blurring through his tear-stained vision. He was pleading silently for answers, hoping they would give them to him.
Finally, Ryan’s voice shattered the deafening silence. “James, bro… You’ve gotta believe she’s gonna be fine. That’s the only way you’ll live through this long enough to see her whatever-colored eyes.” He offered a small smile, hoping to lighten the mood with a joke, but he was instead returned with a glare.
“Kidding, James. I know she’s got hazel eyes…” James’ glare hardly softened, but Ryan didn’t wait for it to disappear.
“Bro, listen to me. You can’t spend this time dwelling on what you did or didn’t do. Because when it comes down to it, you know full well… none of this is your fault. She’ll be awake before you know it, and she’ll be back to kicking some criminal ass in no time.”
Both Sammy and James smiled. He hadn’t smiled so easily in a while.
“And James,” Sammy started, after a beat. “The nurse said Dr. Francis will be coming in any minute now to bring us up to date on Abigail’s condition. So far, there haven’t been any complications. So, there’s nothing worth worrying about.”
Ryan and Sammy exchanged looks before turning to James. Even after a genuine smile, his relaxed expression still looked a bit forced – but only just.
James opened his mouth to offer a reply, but just before any words could spill out, the hospital room door opened, revealing a rather eager-looking Dr. Francis with Nurse Julie. They weren’t exactly chipper – James observed – but they weren’t as solemn as their last visit.
The doctor flashed his patient’s family a warm smile before starting.
“Mrs. Fischer is recovering remarkably from the surgery. And as you already know, we had to keep her in a subconscious state for some time after the surgery. It was essential in order for her body to be allowed to self-heal.” He saw the skepticism etched on their faces when he sounded the word “essential”. It briefly unnerved him, but he recovered quickly enough.
“Anyway, I hope you have all been speaking to her, as I suggested. It should keep her body calm and it could possible make her more responsive. Like I said, she is recovering remarkably, and if my estimations are correct, she should be able to wake up soon. But…”
James’ could’ve sworn he felt his stomach do a flip when he heard the doctor pause after the deadly word, “but”. So many things could be wrong.
“But, what?” James prodded.
“Well, I just don’t want to get your hopes up too high. It is still completely on your wife – when her body is absolutely ready to wake up. But when she does, we’d still like to keep her here at least for an extra day or so just to monitor her vitals and make sure everything runs smoothly.”
He was finished now but under the three’s silent, scrutinizing gaze, his lips were forced into a tight smile. It was the only way he knew how to deal with tense family interactions like these.
James couldn’t stop himself from verifying, “So, she’ll be fine? She’ll wake up soon?” His tone implied that he was asking, but it was obvious he wanted more than anything for it to be a statement.
Had he not been listening to the man? He wanted to slap himself for asking unnecessary questions.
“From the very beginning, sir, there was never any doubt that she wouldn’t,” Dr. Francis affirmed. He overlooked the redundancy of James’ questions and offered a supportive smile.
After the game of twenty questions the three of them played with him, Dr. Francis checked Abigail’s vitals as Nurse Julie checked her IV and catheter.
When the duo left, it was as if a great gust of wind had swept through the room, carrying with it all of their regrets and sorrows. James wished his worry would have been swept away as well, but it sadly had not been.
A questionably grave silence suddenly fell over the room. After the news the three had just received, it was an illogical silence. They should have been full of hope, or maybe even happy, but they just weren’t.
Okay, so maybe not all the regrets and sorrows had been taken away after all.
In the silence, James remembered the conversation he was having with Ryan and Sammy before the doctor walked in and so he gathered a bag of words in his mind before opting to speak.
“I know and I understand what you guys were saying earlier,” he paused to get Ryan and Sammy’s attention. It was almost comical, the look on Ryan’s face. He looked as though he had never heard a voice in his life before James spoke up. But this was no time to make jokes and James was barely in the mood to do so anyway. He wanted – no, he needed to continue.
After shaking the irrelevant thoughts away, James further explained, “It’s all realistic and logical and it really is helping, but… I just–”
The words suddenly balled up in his throat. He momentarily tore his gaze away from his friends and towards the sleeping form of the woman all his thoughts and current words were dedicated to. He gripped her hand tighter as if he were attempting to squeeze confidence out of it.
“–even after all the doctor said, I… I need something to hold on to. Something that’ll let me know that she’s almost here, that she’s coming home.”
The only way James had been able to cope with everything was imagining that Abigail was backpacking across Europe, or climbing cliffs somewhere in Arizona. He had to imagine that she was just on some vacation trip. Only this ensured him hope that she was going to come back home to him.
James scrubbed at his face with his free hand, fatigue and uncertainty washing over him. He kept his gaze on his wife, but spoke to no one in particular – or perhaps to his friends standing by him. “I can’t do this without her. She… Leah. She needs her mother. She’s already asking about her. I don't know if I could be Mr. Mom... I don't want to be."
He briefly shut his eyes, fighting against the onslaught of emotions threatening to release themselves. When he looked at Abigail, he saw her. Not as a detective, or the mother of his kid. He saw her as Abigail - his wife - but his now wounded wife, and it hurt him to have to realize it again.
A beat past.
"Please come back; we can't do this without you, Abs. I can't do this without you," he whispered.
James’ eyes glazed over again, but he forcibly bit back those tears before looking up to meet the eyes of his friends standing near him. Sammy offered a hopeful smile, and Ryan did as well. They wished they could do more for him, but it was all any of them could manage for now.
The rest of his hope – the rest of his life – was lying unconscious on the bed in front of them. Her audible breath, the rise and fall of her chest was the only hope he could hold on to.
Gender:
Points: 520
Reviews: 30