The woman didn’t mean for her decisions to hurt me. I knew that. I knew she loved me, wanted me to be here for her and our children. The only thing was that I’d never again be the man I was. No matter what they did to me, I would never be that man.
Jade came to me, standing over me. I hated to be in the positions they had me in. I hated being strung up, helpless to do a damn thing for myself. I couldn’t even take a shit by myself for the love of God.
“Pierce,” her voice but a whisper, her eyes glistening. “Please try to think rationally. I know you hate this. I hate it too. But this is just a space of time where things aren’t great. You’ll get out of these chains, and you’ll be back to yourself before you know it.”
“I’ll never be back to myself, Jade. You and I both know that. Tell someone else your lies.” I closed my eyes again, not wanting to see her face.
“They aren’t lies.” Her hand moved over my cheek then her lips followed.
My heart couldn’t take it. The monitor beeped like crazy, and she pulled her lips away. “Jade, I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” She swept her hand through my hair. “I think the first thing we’ll get done as soon as they get you out of this contraption is get this hair washed and cut.” Snapping a rubber band on her wrist, she pulled my unwashed hair into a ponytail and used the rubber band to secure it. “I hate when the nurses take this out and leave you facing down. Your hair is getting so long it hangs in your face.”
“I ask them to take it out. After a while it makes my head hurt. While I’m glad to feel something, it gets annoying.” I hadn’t felt my limbs in a month. The way they kept my body made it that way. Well, that and some pretty stout pain meds. But they’d been pulling back on the meds for a while, and still, I felt nothing from the neck down.
Glad not to have a mirror to see the state I was in, I relied on Jade to tell me how I looked. She’d explained that a metal bracket ran along my spine, another piece of metal ran around my neck to keep it in place. Another metal bracket ran along the front of my body too, and both pieces connected to the metal collar and another round metal piece that ran around my hips. My head was held by what they called a halo; they had screwed into my skull. Casts were on all of my limbs as well and metal chains held them up for me.
The surgeon told me that I hadn’t broken every bone in my body, but I sure had gotten close. It was a miracle that I’d survived being hit by that truck that was carrying mattresses to some store in London.
It was no miracle in my opinion. It was Jade’s doing. It was Jade who had me there, trapped in the hospital. It was Jade who kept telling the doctors to bring me back each time I’d died. It was all Jade’s doing, every last bit of it.
I didn’t believe I could ever forgive her.
Jade
I’d woken up with a start as my cell went off. It was nearly midnight. Looking at the other side of my bed, I found my husband had still not made it home, which was odd.
He’d been out Christmas shopping for me. After we put our children to bed, he kissed me on the cheek, told me to go to bed myself, and he was going out to buy me some gifts.
I’d done as he said and fell asleep with ease. But I never thought he’d be out so late.
Picking up my cell, I saw a number I didn’t recognize but answered it anyway, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Langford?” a man asked.
“Yes, this is she. And you are?” I nibbled my pinky fingernail, getting an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“This is Doctor Williams at London Bridge Hospital.”
My heart stopped. Why would a doctor from a hospital be calling me in the middle of the night? I could only pray I was having a nightmare and none of this was actually happening.
“Yes?” my voice but a whisper. I knew without him telling me a thing. My husband had been hurt or worse.
“Your husband, Pierce Langford is here with us. We really need you here, Mrs. Langford. Decisions have to be made. How fast can you get here?” his question echoed in my head.
I was in shock, unable to move or answer the man. But then I pictured my rock of a husband and how he needed me and shook my head as I jumped out of bed. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Good. Come to the Emergency Department and tell them who you are and they’ll get you to us.” He hung up, and I sprang into action.
Calling my mother as I pulled off my nightclothes and pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, I’d never been more thankful for my parents living in the guesthouse just behind our home. “Hello?” came her weary voice.
“Mom, I need you to come into the main house to be with the children. Something’s happened to Pierce. The hospital just called me, and I have to take off now.”
“Oh, God!” she cried out. “What’s happened to him?”
“Mom, I don’t know. I don’t have time. Please just hurry up and get here.” I ended the call as I ran to the bathroom to splash water on my face and pull my hair into a ponytail.
My reflection told me I wasn’t taking things well. The color in my face had drained away, leaving only pale skin behind. There were dark circles underneath my eyes, and when I looked down, I noticed my hands were shaking. “I need to call our driver.”
After calling him and getting him going, I grabbed my purse, and a jacket then ran out of our bedroom, only to come right back in, cursing the whole time as I’d forgotten to put on any shoes.
Stuffing my feet into a pair of sneakers, my eyes roamed over the bedroom one more time, scanning for anything else I’d missed. Seeing nothing, I left our bedroom, extremely conscious of the fact that I might never see my husband in our bed again.
Trying not to cry proved to be hard, but somehow I managed to fight back the tears. Staying strong for Pierce had to be my first priority.
Passing my mother in the hallway, one of her hands grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Call me as soon as you know what’s happened, Jade. Your father and I are worried sick.”
“I will, Mum, thank you. Keep the kids calm, please. Love you.” I ran to the front door and was happy to see the driver had the car waiting.
He stood at the back door, holding it open for me. I couldn’t say a word as I slipped inside. Our driver sped off toward the hospital while I sat perfectly still. My eyes traveled over the posh interior of the car my husband had purchased only a few months earlier. A car he might never get to ride in again.
Shaking my head, I drove the negative thoughts away once more. They kept creeping up on me somehow.
The drive took forever, not really; it only took fifteen minutes. Those fifteen minutes felt like an hour. Time wasn’t moving right. Nothing felt real. It was as if I was an actor in some drama. A drama I wanted to end happily. Most dramas don’t end that way.
A Shakespearean tragedy wasn’t a thing I wanted to be a part of. But it seemed I’d been thrust into the middle of one anyway. What had started out as a beautiful relationship, one that had brought three souls into the world, might end on a sad note and much too soon at that.
How could I make sure our ending didn’t come too soon?
Pierce
“Can you feel this, Mr. Langford?” the doctor asked me as he pushed a needled into the tip of my finger.
My eyes were trained on the needle as it pierced my flesh. “No. Nothing,” my tone as grim as my heart.
Always the optimist, my wife piped in, “Nothing to worry about, Pierce. This is very common with injuries like the ones you’ve sustained. You could still regain feeling and movement, no need to get down about this little test.”
Her cheery tone annoyed me to no end, and I found myself clenching my jaw for the umpteenth time that day.
Six weeks had passed since my accident. The casts on my arms had been removed, but I couldn’t make them move on my own. Physical therapists came in twice a day to move them for me. And Jade had been shown how to move them too; she did so in the afternoon.
I felt like a puppet.
Once I’d been a p
owerful man. A dominant man who took the role of the rock in my family. And now, well, now I was nothing. As useless as a puppet.
Jade had demanded that I let our children come to the hospital for a visit. No longer in traction, I didn’t look quite as decrepit as I did swinging in the chains. Now I was lying in a hospital bed.
Soon the casts on my legs would come off, and then I’d be able to move about using a wheelchair — a thing my doctors and wife thought I should be overjoyed about — I wasn’t happy about it at all though.
Jade had washed and cut my hair, sprucing me up, trimming my beard a bit, making me as presentable as she possibly could for a visit with our kids and her parents. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to the visit.
The doctor patted me on the shoulder, a thing I didn’t feel. “Okay, Mr. Langford, I’ll be back to check in on you on the morrow.” He gave Jade a little wave. “See you tomorrow, Mrs. Langford.” I could see the sorrow in his light blue eyes as he made eye contact with my wife. He felt sorry for her, having to put up with me.
Jade bid him goodbye then turned her attention to me. “I’ll call Mum and have them come up here with the children now.”
All I could do was sigh, heavily. “Whatever.”
“Pierce, don’t be like that,” she chided me. “They all miss you so very much. They’ve begged to get to come see you. You have no idea how hard this has been on them.”
“You think this is hard on them, Jade?” I practically yelled at her before clenching my jaw again to shut myself up.
She paused, glaring at me, then put her cell down on the table. “Pierce Langford, I’ve had just about as much as I can take out of you. This self-pity is a thing you need to get the fuck over,” her tone firm and strict.
“I can’t just get the fuck over this, Jade. Fuck!” I shouted. “I am nothing now. You made me this way!”
The way she recoiled from me, astonished me. She acted as if she’d just been struck by something. A grimace took her stoic expression over as she spat, “I did not make you this way!”
Emotion welled up inside of me and tears spilled from my eyes. What was I saying? “I love you. I don’t know why I’m so pissed at you. But I am mad at you, Jade. I do blame you for this. Why didn’t you just let me die? Death would be better than this. Why did you demand I be brought back to life six goddamned times, Jade!”
Sobbing, I gasped for air and hated the fact that I couldn’t even wipe the tears away. But I didn’t want her to touch me. I wanted to be left alone. Why couldn’t she see that all I wanted was to be left alone?
The tears made everything blurry, but I could see her small frame as she stumbled back and fell onto a chair. “Pierce, my God. I really had no idea. I’ll make sure you get some mental help, sweetheart.”
Suddenly the sobbing stopped. My tears dried up, miraculously. “No,” came my soft word.
“No?” she asked then got up and came to me, wiping away the tears.
“I don’t want to talk to a therapist. I just want you to leave me alone, Jade. Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I asked as I searched her eyes. Eyes that had looked at me with love filling them for a decade. Now all I saw was sympathy.
I hated being a pathetic human being who could only arouse sympathy in my wife’s eyes.
Passion had once filled them, desire, even panic — which was better than fucking sympathy — I had to wonder if I’d ever see those things again in her beautiful eyes.
After clearing all the tears, she held a tissue to my nose. “Blow.”
I blew my nose, feeling helpless. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t understand why this had happened to me. What had I done so terribly wrong to deserve this?
“Jade, during all the BDSM stuff we did, did I ever hurt you and you not tell me?” I asked her as a train of thought sparked up in my head.
Blinking, she tilted her head to one side. “Pierce, do you think you had an accident that cost you so much because you somehow deserve it?”
“Maybe.”
All I could do was watch her as unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. Then she leaned over me and pressed her lips to mine, kissing me softly. Her lips grazed mine as she said, “You never hurt me. You only took me higher than I imagined I could go, my wonderful Master.”
Could I still be the Master she deserved?
Jade
When I got into the Emergency room, I was whisked away to the other side of the large hospital. A nurse led the way at a fast pace, telling me everything that had happened to my husband, “Mr. Langford was heading east on King’s Road when a delivery truck suddenly moved into his lane, striking his vehicle head-on. Due to the heavy weight of the truck, which was filled with mattress sets, the front of your husband’s Mercedes was crushed much like an aluminum can.”
“My, God!” I gasped and clenched my throat in dismay.
“Your husband’s car had to be cut open with a mechanism they call, the jaws of life. His body was intact, a thing most of the rescuers were afraid wouldn’t be.”
“Thank goodness,” I mumbled. At least he hadn’t lost any limbs.
The nurse nodded in agreement. “That being said. The surgeons are not certain at this point that they will be able to save all of his extremities. He’s broken most of the bones in his body, Mrs. Langston. He’s looking at a long and frankly painful recovery.” Her eyes darted to me then back in front. “If he can feel anything, that is. There is a very large possibility that he could either be paralyzed from the waist down or even the neck down.”
Knots formed in my stomach and my throat as my hands clasped together and I wrung them in a nervous state. “But he’s alive. That’s what matters the most. I still have him.”
The nurse stopped at a set of double doors that had the word, surgery over them. “For now, he is alive. But you need to know that he isn’t breathing on his own. He’s on a ventilator. But his heart is beating on its own. If it wasn’t, I’m afraid he would’ve been called dead on arrival. His brain isn’t showing much function at all, either.”
My knees went weak. “He’s that bad off?”
She nodded then pushed a button to open the doors and in we went. There I was met by two men in light blue scrubs. Blood was splattered on the fronts of their clothes. Was it my husband’s? My stomach churned with the thought.
They pulled their masks down, and one of the men spoke to me, “Mrs. Langford, I presume?”
I nodded. “How is he? When can I see him?”
The other man took over. “He’s in a grave condition. And you can’t see him until he’s out of the O.R.”
All I had wanted was to see him. I needed to see him. I needed to hold his hand and tell him everything would be alright. I’d take care of him forever if I had to. “Please, gentlemen, I really need to see my husband.”
The nurse patted me on the back. “His condition would only serve to break you, Mrs. Langston. Let them do what they can for him first.”
Suddenly grief overtook me, and I swooned. The men grabbed me and took me to sit down in a nearby waiting area. One of them went to get me a cup of water while the other looked me over. “I know this is shocking. We need you to keep a level head. Your husband is in surgery right now. If his heart stops, it will be up to you to make the call if we’re to try to resuscitate him or not.”
Suddenly I knew I had to push this sorrow and shock to the side. I had to be the rock now. Pierce needed me to stay strong and keep him alive.
And just as I took a drink of the water I was handed, another man came flying out of a set of double door. Doors I now knew my husband was behind.
I could hear the loud, long beep that kept on going. “Is that her?” the man called out to the three who were with me.
They all nodded, and I stood up. The sound I could still hear, even though the doors had closed, told me what was wrong. “Save him,” I ordered.
With a nod, the man who’d run out of the operating room turned and ran right back inside, shout
ing, “Bring him back!”
And that would happen five more times in a matter of six hours. Each time the chance of him not coming back was far greater than the previous one.
I sat and waited, chewing every fingernail I had to the quick. My body ached from the tense way I’d kept it. My jaw hurt from clenching it so hard and for so long.
Why was it taking so damn long?
Why couldn’t they stabilize him?
Why did this have to happen to him?
As the staff had work to get back to, I was left alone in the small waiting room with one solid glass wall that allowed me to see the comings and goings of the people who went in and out of the operating room Pierce was in. Alone, I waited and waited, giving my consent to them when needed to bring my husband back from the other side.
Deep inside my heart, I knew he might hate me if he had to live the remainder of his life as a person with quadriplegia. Losing the ability to walk would prove difficult, but I had confidence that he’d be able to handle that. Losing the ability to move anything lower than his neck might prove to be too much for the dominant male that had been my husband, merely hours before.
Eventually, as I gave the sixth order to bring him back to me, I became comfortable with what I’d done. He could hate me all he wanted; I’d only ever love him back.
Pierce was my rock, my world, my life. I’d accept his hate in return for having him here with us. I’d do that for our children. They didn’t deserve to lose their father so young.
When a woman came out, wearing hot pink scrubs, I was surprised and relieved with the smile she wore after she took off her mask. “He’s out of the woods, Mrs. Langford. You can see him soon!”
Pierce
“Daddy! Daddy!” my children all called out at once as they came streaming into my hospital room.
“Easy now kids, Daddy’s not able to move, and you must be very careful with him,” Jade cautioned as she got between them and me, guarding me from my own children.
Our nine-year-old, Sarah, looked at me with wide eyes as she peered around her mother. “Daddy, we’ve missed you.”
Her Dark Melody Page 84