I sit on the table and let her quickly put my foot in a cast.
“Do you want pain meds?” she asks.
“I’m an alcoholic and drug addict. No, I don’t want drugs.”
She nods. “Wheelchair?”
I hop down, giving her my answer.
She smiles at me. “I’ll have some crutches brought to her room. Follow me, and I’ll take you to your wife.”
Luckily, Millie is just in the room over. I can’t breathe though when I see her hooked up to so many tubes and IVs. She even has one shoved down her throat.
My nurse takes the chart and looks it over quickly as the other nurses and docs are still working on Millie. She looks from the chart to the machine with her vitals and then squeezes my hand. “Your wife is going to be okay, thanks to you. Now, go hold her hand until we get her moved up to another room.”
I nod, choking back tears and words, and then I go to Millie. When I squeeze her hand three times, I swear I feel her squeeze back three times. That’s all I need to know that everything is going to be okay. We are going to make it.
I look down at her hand. I have no idea how I’m going to let go of her
hand in six months.
20
Millie
Sebastian squeezes my hand three times. He doesn’t know the meaning; at least, I don’t think he does. But he saw Oaklee and me do it. He’s letting me know he’s here for me. He’s letting me know that he cares more than any words he could ever say.
I smile inside even though I can’t show him what it means to me that he’s here, that he saved me. Not only that, but once he saved me, he stayed. He didn’t leave. He stayed.
I try to squeeze his hand back, but I feel so weak that I barely moved my fingers at all.
“I’m here; it’s going to be okay. I’m here.”
Those words stayed with me while I dreamed. I wish I dreamed of my future. Instead, I dreamed of my past. Even dreaming about a future without Sebastian would have been better than reliving everything.
My dreams didn’t take a different form. I didn’t dream of a bright light or falling or clowns or whatever it is that people dream about that is a metaphor for their real fear. No, for every second that I was unconscious, I relived every heartbreak, every mistake, every drop of pain my life has contained.
It gives me motivation to open my eyes even faster, to get away from my past and live my present, even if my future is back to reliving my pain.
I open my eyes, afraid that Sebastian is gone. That I dreamed Sebastian King up. Or that once I open them, I’ll remember he’s nothing more than an egocentric ass, who is only in this relationship to get laid.
I open my eyes, and I see him. He’s sitting in a chair next to my bed, slumped over face first on the edge, drooling onto my pillow, making the softest most adorable snores. He looks exhausted, even though he’s sleeping. I can tell by the ways his eyes are twitching, his mouth is moving, and the adorable yet painful soft snores he exhales. What catches my breath, though, isn’t the broken man, it’s that he’s still holding my hand.
“He hasn’t let go,” a woman says.
I glance away from Sebastian to the other side of my hospital room, where a nurse is pressing on the monitor next to my bed.
I’m surprised these are the first words she says after I woke up. She didn’t ask me how I’m feeling or tell me a doctor will be in to check on me soon. No—she needed to tell me about Sebastian.
“I’m Rebecca, one of your nurses.”
I smile weakly.
“You have a good hubby there. He hasn’t left your side. Hasn’t let go of your hand. I had to force him to get a quick cast put on his ankle. And the only reason I’ve been able to get food or coffee in him is if he can eat it one-handed.”
I look away from her and back at Sebastian. He’s too good. He shouldn’t have stayed, at least, not like that. He should have gone back to the hotel to sleep and checked in on me during normal visitation hours.
I study him closer, looking at the bee stings that speckle his arms, neck, and cheeks. They’re now covered in a lotion to reduce swelling and itching. I try to glance over the bed to see his ankle, but I can’t with the way the bed is situated.