by Nikki Chase
Elena
The Next Morning
Oh, hey! How do you feel today?” asks a chirpy female voice I don’t recognize.
My head hurts, and I had a weird dream about a strangely violent family Christmas skit, but I don’t think she’d care about the second bit.
Besides . . . where am I?
I blink a few times and squint as I look around the bright, white room. There’s a row of windows along the wall through which the blinding sunlight streams in. Whoever runs this place must be a morning person.
A TV hangs on the wall, airing some daytime soap opera.
The woman who greeted me is standing by my bed. She’s probably a morning person. Besides her blue scrubs, she’s also wearing an overly cheerful smile. The name tag on her chest says “Miranda.”
“Is this a hospital?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, her long brown hair cascading down her back as she does something with the bag of IV liquid hanging by my bed.
She’s probably in her mid-thirties. She’s pretty. Judging from the big grin on her face, I’m probably not about to die—unless that’s what she always looks like.
“What happened to me?”
“You came in here with a gunshot wound last night,” she says. “But you should be feeling okay now. Does anything hurt?”
“Yeah. My head.” I shift to face her, but a sharp pain in my chest stops me from moving. With a grimace, I add, “And my chest.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, it’ll take a while for that to stop hurting, but the worst part is over now.” She stoops to take a closer look at me. “The doctor wanted me to let him know when you wake up, so I’ll go and get him now, okay?”
“Okay.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping it’ll help with the headache. But with no vision to distract me, I can feel the throbbing in my head even more intensely.
All at once, the memories of what happened flood back into my brain.
Damon. His place. Pizza. The towel bar as a weapon. Sex—kinky sex. Losing my virginity. The two men. The drive and my escape attempt. Damon scooping me up into his arms. Dark, abandoned houses. Ceramic tile. My dad walking in. The red dot on Damon’s leather jacket. Breaking free.
Then . . . darkness. And the car ride during which I kept thinking back to my childhood.
I got shot. By one of my dad’s men. Whoever he is, I’ve probably seen him around the house. Most likely, we’ve talked too.
The doctor comes into my room and interrupts my thoughts with his questions. He tells me my dad is at the cafeteria downstairs and is coming right away.
Oh, God. How am I going to face him after everything I’ve done? All these problems . . . I’ve brought them upon myself, all because I wanted to spend time with Damon.
And yet . . . I don’t know. I need time to process this.
“How are you feeling?” Dad asks when he bursts into a room.
“I’m okay, Dad. The doctor and the nurse both told me I’ll live.”
Dad pulls a plastic chair closer to the bed and takes a seat. He grabs my hand. “I was so worried. I thought I was going to lose you.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Don’t do that to me again. This is why you need your bodyguards at all times,” Dad says, staring into my eyes.
I look away. I don’t feel like I’m ready to agree to anything yet. “Where’s Damon?”
Dad’s grip on my hand tightens. “He’s the one responsible for this. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Dad, you didn’t . . .” My knees weaken at the horrible thought in my head, but I have to ask the question. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”
Please tell me he’s alive.
“Yes.” Dad lets out a deep sigh. “You jumped in front of him to take the bullet for him. I couldn’t have . . . done that . . . after what you did for him.”
“Did you say anything to the cops?”
“Of course not.” Dad sounds almost offended. He’s always had an uneasy relationship with the cops. He’d sooner bleed to death that call 911 asking for help.
I don’t know how it’s possible that the cops aren’t notified after the hospital admitted a patient with a gunshot wound, but my dad has his ways, and I’ve given up asking him about the details.
“So he’s . . . free?” I ask, my heart racing with worry. I know my dad’s fully capable of locking Damon up in some damp, dark basement equipped with medieval, torture tools.
“Yes. Don’t worry about him. He’s fine. I’m worried about you, honey.”
He changes the subject to the more practical things, like how the hospital staff plans to treat me, how long I’m going to stay here, and when my mom will fly back into town to see me.
I’m glad my dad’s concerned about me. Really, I am.
But questions about Damon swirl in my head and refuse to leave. I know I can’t ask my dad about him.
He’s alive, and he’s free. That’s all I need to know. I hope he’s in his apartment right now, eating pizza and hitting his sandbag, maybe at the same time.
Two weeks later . . .
It’s almost time for the hospital to discharge me. Just another day, and I’ll be out of here.
I’ll be living in the outside world where I can finally get my hands on a phone and reach Damon. Or not. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.
For all the free time that I’ve had, just lying in my hospital bed, I still can’t sort out my thoughts and feelings.
Maybe it’s my hospital room that’s the problem. That’s why for the past few days I’ve been walking the halls. It gets lonely all by myself in there, and it’s nice to see people. Some of the nurses recognize me by now.
Alexa at the nurses’ station waves at me. I give her a smile and go back to my thoughts.
I hate Damon for misleading me, even if it was by omission, about what he was planning to do to my dad. He set a trap for my dad.
At the same time, my dad . . . Well, he did unthinkable things to Damon’s family too.
Damon was using me. And I almost lost my life protecting him—even though when I jumped in front of him, I assumed my dad’s man wasn’t going to shoot me.
I was a fool.
After all those things, I still want to believe what we shared was real.
How stupid am I? Maybe it’s time to forget about him already. I’ve been here for two whole weeks, and he hasn’t been here to visit me once.
I peek inside the staff break room.
“Wow, Miranda,” I say to the nurse who greeted me when I woke up on my first morning here. “That’s a lot of flowers.”
She stares at me like she’s seeing a ghost. Her eyes widen.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Oh. Uh, nothing.” Miranda smiles but there’s something off about it.
“Can I come in? The flowers are so pretty.”
“Sure.” Despite what she says, she appears reluctant.
I walk inside the break room and touch the flowers, leaning down and sniffing their scents. They’re all roses and there’s at least a dozen huge bouquets of them—red, yellow, blue, and white.
“They’re yours,” Miranda blurts out.
“Huh?” I turn to look at her.
She fidgets with her fingers, then hurries to the door and closes it. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, so please don’t tell anyone I told you.” She looks around at the flowers. “We were supposed to throw them away, but nobody could do it.”
“Why would you throw them away?” I ask. Something weird is going on. I wonder if my dad has anything to do with this. He probably does.
“We were told to hide them from you,” she says. “But I can’t do it anymore.”
“It’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone,” I say gently.
“He’s been coming every day. The guy who brought you here to the hospital with your dad. The one who gave you his blood,” Miranda blurts out quickly like she’s afraid she’ll change her mind but ca
n’t stand the guilt anymore. “He’s been bringing flowers every day even though he’s never allowed to see you.”
Damon.
“Hold up. He gave me his blood?” I ask.
“I can’t say any more.” Miranda glances around like she’s afraid someone’s going to burst in here and forcibly separate us. She pulls out a drawer and hands me a stack of envelopes. “Here. Don’t let anyone see them.”
Elena
Sitting on my hospital bed, I finger through the stack of envelopes Miranda gave me. There’s one for every day I’ve been in the hospital.
Each envelope contains something stiff—a card?
I open the first envelope. It’s a simple white card with “Get Well Soon” printed on it. Inside, there’s a short handwritten message:
Sorry.
No other word. Not even a signature or a name at the bottom.
Moving on to the second envelope, I find a similar card with the exact same message inside. The same with all the other ones.
With envelopes and cards strewn all over my lap, I clutch the last card to my chest and let myself feel the pain I’ve been holding in. I run my fingers over the cardstock, imagining Damon’s hand over the same paper texture. I wish I’d stolen one of those flower bouquets so I could smell the scent that would no doubt stick to Damon for at least a short moment.
Sorry.
That’s all?
I appreciate the sentiment and all, and I know he’s been coming here every day for two weeks. But he tried to kill my dad and got me shot instead, so there’s probably more than one word we need to exchange.
Will we get to have that talk? Will we ever see each other again?
That evening before leaving Damon’s apartment, when I asked him, he said, “Probably not.”
Things haven’t turned out the way he expected at the time, but seeing as my dad would never allow it, I don’t see how his answer could change.
A drop of clear liquid drips onto the card in my hands, staining the white, thick paper, and I realize it came from my eye. I put the card down, afraid of ruining the only things Damon has left me. Once I go home, nobody will be brave enough to slip me anything from Damon behind my dad’s back.
The doorknob turns, and the door creaks open.
Damn it; that could be Dad.
I scramble to gather all the cards and envelopes. I should hide them under the covers. I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.
“Are you okay?” asks a female voice.
I turn toward the door to find Miranda, standing by the door with her hand on the knob, looking at me with concern. I wipe the tears on my cheeks with the backs of my hands. “Yeah.”
Not super convincing, I know. But it’s the best I can do.
“I’m so sorry. I just came here to let you know your father’s in the building. He should be here any moment now so you might want to store the cards somewhere,” she says.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She has colluded with the rest of the hospital to keep me in the dark about Damon’s visits. I don’t blame her because it’s my dad’s fault, but I don’t need her pretending to be my friend either.
I breathe a sigh of relief when my dad leaves after his daily visit.
During any of his visits, I don’t normally say much. I was even quieter today but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept going on and on about how he has made all the arrangements for me to go home.
As soon as he leaves, I take out my stack of cards from under the covers. My treasure.
How long will these hand-written notes of apology remain dear to me? Will I keep taking them out to read, caress, and smell when they’ve yellowed? How long will it take until I stop missing Damon?
I let my thoughts take over and lose track of time. It’s dark outside when I hear knocking on the door.
Probably one of the nurses, here to check my vitals. I leave the cards on my lap. I don’t care if whoever the nurse is sees them. Maybe that’ll get Miranda into trouble, but whatever. It’s not like my dad will find out.
“Come in,” I say.
I catch a glimpse of the blue scrubs the nurses wear and turn my attention to the TV mounted on the wall. I don’t want to make small talk with someone who thinks they’ve got one over on me.
“Princess.”
That voice.
It must be my imagination, right? I’ve spent the past few hours obsessing about Damon; that must’ve taken a toll on me.
Afraid to shatter the illusion, I turn toward the door and see him.
Damon. In the flesh.
As he pulls the door shut, a tsunami of emotions washes over me.
I want to run over there, despite my body still being weak. I want to throw my hands around him and make sure he’s real. Ask him why he attempted to kill my father despite my pleas. Tell him I know about the flowers.
Instead, I just sit on my hospital bed and stare at him. My jaw drops.
He’s wearing scrubs. Blue scrubs that are way too small for him. His muscles bulge underneath, straining the fabric and testing the integrity of the seams.
And I snigger.
I burst out into laughter and can’t stop.
He may be wearing the right uniform, but it looks completely wrong on him.
I mean, Damon would look good in all kinds of uniforms. Firefighter. Police. Army. Even scrubs would look good on him if he got the right size.
But this . . .
Damon says nothing. He glances at his cards on my lap and waits for my laughter to die down, watching me with a patient smile as he stands by the bed.
“What happened? They shrunk your scrubs in the wash?” I dab at my eyes with the tips of my fingers. I laughed so hard I cried.
“This is how all the cool kids are wearing their scrubs,” Damon says.
Even though I expected to be mad at him, I grin instead. Damn those scrubs.
“I’m so glad you’re okay.” Damon glances at my left shoulder. “I . . . I came here . . . I drove you here right after, and I stayed all night. The next day, a nurse told me I had to leave, so I did. But after that, they never let me come in to see you, no matter how many times I came or how long I waited.”
“Until tonight.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Miranda—one of the nurses—she got me her friend’s scrubs and helped me get in here.”
I nod.
So she tried to make it up to us after all. That makes me feel bad about ignoring her when she came in to warn me about my dad’s visit earlier.
Damon reaches out like he’s about to touch my hand. Before I think about what I’m doing, I flinch away from the edge of the bed.
When he flicks his gaze up to look into my eyes, I can tell he’s hurt.
“I’m so sorry, princess.”
I nod. I know that. I’ve read his cards. That’s all he’s said in every single one of them.
“I can’t sleep at night. I keep wondering if you’re okay, if you’re even alive. Fuck.” Damon runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “When I left the hospital after that first night, they told me you were going to be fine. But I just . . .” Damon’s dark eyes cloud over. “I needed to see you.”
“And now you have.” I surprise myself with my blunt answer. I didn’t expect to say something that sounds like a dismissal.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
I stay silent, afraid I’ll say something hurtful again, even if it’s subtle.
“I’ve never . . . I’ve done a lot of bad things, princess. I’ve hurt a lot of people,” he says. “I tell myself it’s just the nature of my job. That’s the same justification your dad makes, which makes me just as bad as him. But I . . . I’ve always been able to sleep.”
“Are you saying you want me to ask a nurse for some sleeping pills?” I ask, unable to stop myself. Is this speech supposed to make me feel better somehow?
Damon hesitates. “It’s not easy for me to say this. I guess that’s why I’m devia
ting from the main point.”
I stare straight at him.
“The only times I couldn’t sleep was right after my parents died,” he says. “I . . . I’m a moron, I know. But when you . . . When you got hurt, when that bullet entered your body, I realized how much you meant to me.
“I’ve been thinking about why it took a bullet for me to realize that. Night after night, when I lay in bed alone in the dark, unable to sleep . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.
“I think . . . I don’t know. This sounds like stupid psychobabble even to me, but I never knew how much I cared about my parents until I lost them either.” Damon pauses and stares at his shoes. “I . . . They were never around, and I had to learn to be independent.”
“So because of your past, it’s okay that you tried to kill my dad?” I ask.
The pain in Damon’s eyes makes my chest clench, but at the same time, there’s righteous anger burning in my belly.
Ironically, I now understand why Damon wanted revenge.
He tried to kill my dad, and now I can’t forgive him.
But that doesn’t mean I want him dead. I haven’t even thought about killing him once.
“I’m not saying it’s okay,” Damon says.
“But you want me to forgive you anyway?” I ask. I’m on a roll now, and the words form themselves and launch off my tongue without any control from me. “Because you didn’t forgive my dad for doing something like what you tried to do? Do you see how hypocritical that is?”
“Yeah.” Damon nods. He draws a heavy breath. “I do hope you’d to forgive me, but it’s okay if you don’t.” Looking deep into my eyes, he says, “I love you, princess.”
I’ve been dreaming for years about hearing those words from Damon’s mouth. But now that it’s happening, I don’t feel the way I always thought I would.
The anger in my stomach burns hotter. It coils and readies its venom to attack.
“Really? You tried to kill my dad, and now you tell me you love me? What do you want me to do with that?” I don’t know where the words come from, but there’s a steady supply of them inside me. I continue, “We had a good time together, Damon. I won’t deny that. But let’s not pretend that it was something more than a fleeting thing.”