Chapter 122 I am alive

Chapter 122 I am alive
Alexa’s POV 

The white ceiling was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes .I had been looking at a lot of ceilings lately. That was the thought that arrived before the strange floating observation of a mind coming back online slowly, as i took in the inventory of the environment before the bigger things arrived.

The fluorescent light was but the room was lit still by the pale grey of the window showing a sky that was either very early morning or very late afternoon, I couldn’t tell which yet. The smell of antiseptic and recycled air hit me next, and the place was peacefully quiet, that only existed in one kind of building. Hospital.

I was in a hospital.

The next thing I became aware of was the body. It  gradually occurred to me in the weight of it against the mattress, and heaviness of limbs that had been still for longer than sleep accounted for. My mouth was dry. There was also something in my hand…a line, a drip, the slight pull of tape on skin. And underneath all of that, deeper and more persistent than anything else …

Pain.

Not the sharp immediate acute kind that announced itself loudly. But a deep and settled one, in my stomach, in the muscles around it, the pain of something that had been addressed but was not done being felt. I turned my head slowly. Taking in the room. There were medical equipments, a chair against the wall, a window with its undecided sky, a small table with a cup and a water jug, and in the chair beside my bed…Nora asleep.

She was folded into the chair the way people fold when they had fallen asleep in them without meaning to… not comfortably, just wherever exhaustion had put her. Her head was tipped slightly to one side. Her hands were loose in her lap. She was still wearing what I recognized as the clothes from the restaurant, which meant she had come straight from….I stopped.

Came straight from where?

I tried to go back, to find the last thing I could remember.

I had been in the apartment. Nora had left for her first shift and I had made coffee and moved around lazily and then…I showered. I had gotten out of the shower.

And then…

I closed my eyes and opened them. Looking at the ceiling.

Natalie.

I breathed carefully, managing the breathing around the pain in my stomach that flared when I moved too much.

Natalie had been in the apartment and then I was in a hospital. The math of those two facts was not complicated. I turned my head back to Nora.

She was still asleep. Her face in sleep was different from her face awake, the watchfulness gone, the careful attention she gave everything gone, just the face underneath all of that. She looked tired, like someone who had been through something and had not yet had enough sleep to begin to recover from it.

“Nora.”

My voice came out rough and thin, barely there. The voice of someone whose throat hadn’t been used in a while. She didn’t stir.

I tried again. Slightly more.

“Nora.” And she moved.

A small involuntary movement of someone pulled from sleep by a sound that their brain had been waiting for. Her hands came together in her lap. Her head came up and her eyes opened. She looked at me.

For one second, taking in what she was seeing…my opened eyes, my head turned toward her, the fact of me being awake and here, her face did something that went through several things at once too fast for me to track all of them.

Then she was out of the chair.

“Alexa.” She was beside the bed and her hand was on my face, she was looking at me with eyes that were doing the bright wet thing immediately, no preamble. “You’re awake. You’re….” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said.

She made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not a sob either, It was something that lived exactly between the two. Then she leaned down and put her arms around me carefully, with the specific gentleness of someone who knew there were places that couldn’t be pressed and held on.

I lifted my arm that didn’t have the drip in it and put it around her. We stayed like that for some time.

The hospital room was quiet around us. The drip was doing its steady work and the pain in my stomach present, insistent and completely secondary to the fact of her arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” she said against my hair. “I’m so sorry. I should have….the locks, I should have made sure before I left, I should have…”

“Stop,” I said.

“I should have been there…”

“Nora.” I tightened my arm around her slightly. “Stop.”

She pulled back and looked at me. Her eyes were wet and she wasn’t hiding it. The Nora who had hidden things was apparently somewhere else tonight.

“I’m here,” I said. “I’m awake. I’m okay.”

“You were on the floor,” she said. “I came home and you were on the floor and you weren’t…” She stopped trying to control the tears. 

“You weren’t moving.”

“I know,” I said.

“You don’t know,” she said. “You were unconscious. You have no idea what…” She stopped again. Looking at me for a long moment. Then she straightened up and reached for something on the table beside my bed.

A small button on a cord.

She pressed it.

“I’m getting the doctor,” she said. “They need to know you’re awake.”

The doctor came in after some few minutes, she looked calm for someone who was probably several hours into a long shift. She checked things with the quick thoroughness of someone who knew what they were looking for. Blood pressure and reflexes. The wounds, which she checked with a particular care of someone who had been the one to address them and was now assessing her own work. She asked me questions. Did I have pain and on a scale of one to ten where would I put it. 

“Six,” I said.

She adjusted something on the drip.

Five minutes later it was a four and I was grateful for modern medicine in a way I had not previously been called upon to be.

“The transfusion was successful,” she said, looking at the chart. “Your levels are much improved.” She looked up. “You lost a significant amount of blood. The wounds themselves have been addressed, both were serious but neither hit anything that can’t heal with proper rest and care.” She looked at me steadily. “You were very lucky.”

“I know,” I said.

“We’ll keep you for observation today. If your levels continue to improve and there are no signs of infection we can look at discharge tomorrow.” She looked at Nora briefly and back at me. “Is there family we should contact?”

The question landed with a specific weight.

“I’ll handle that,” I said.

She nodded. Made a note. Left.

The room was quiet again. Nora had gone back to her chair but had pulled it closer to the bed so she was within arm’s reach. She was looking at me with a steady attention she gave things that mattered. I looked back at her and we were quiet for a moment in the way that people who had been through something together could be quiet.

“What happened?” I said.

She looked at me.

“After,” I said. “After I…after. What happened.”

She held my eyes.

“You came home from the restaurant,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I was working it out. “You found me.”

“Yes.”

“And then.”

“And then a lot of things,” she said. “All of which I will tell you.” She reached out and put her hand over mine on the blanket. “When we get home.”

I looked at her.

“There’s a lot to tell,” she said. “And I want to tell you all of it. Everything. I won’t hold anything from you. Yiu deserve to know.” She paused. “But not here. Not now, in a hospital room, you just wake up twenty minutes ago.” She looked at me steadily. “When we get home.”

I held her eyes.

There was something in them. Something that had more in it than the relief of me being awake and the exhaustion of whatever the night had cost her. Something that was sitting further back. I didn’t push it.

She was right. This room was not the place.

“Okay,” I said.

Her hand was still over mine.

“Okay,” she said.

The undecided sky in the window had made up its mind while we were talking… it was early morning, I could tell now by the way the light was changing, the shift of it that meant the day was just beginning rather than ending. A new day.

I looked at the ceiling and felt the pain in my stomach, the drip in my hand, Nora’s hand over mine and the strange specific gratitude of being a person who was alive to be lying in a hospital bed being annoyed by the pain and the drip. Feeling Alive.

“Nora,” I said.

“Yes.” She answered.

“Thank you,” I said. “For coming home.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll always come home,” she said.