by Corri Lee
Excusing herself, Dr. Downes squeezed his arm on the way past and whispered something that made him frown. His reply seemed hostile but was spoken too quietly for me to make it out. Whatever their disagreement was, it looked like she’d win.
“All right, fine.” Blaze held his free hand up and strode over me to start fiddling with the heart monitor until it’s beeps rose to a dull roar. “But this is staying on.”
“Jeez, turn that down!” Wincing, I reached for him, thinking I might understand what he was protesting to. “Two sliced radial arteries, severe shock and a heart attack didn’t kill me. I don’t think a few hours shut eye is going to finish me off.”
“I know that, I think. The daft quack over there was suggesting I sleep.”
“Oh.” I rolled my eyes and pinched him until he turned the monitor back down. In the unlikely event of my heart stopping again, it wouldn’t just left to chance for someone to realise. Nobody really trusted that there wasn’t a serious problem waiting to spring out and surprise—and disappoint—us. It was a little unrealistic. “She’s right, though. If you get so much as a sniffle from being run down, they won’t let you in here.”
“Fair point.” He kicked off his shoes and plonked down in the chair, sipping smugly from his mug. “But this is coffee with a triple shot of espresso. I’ll sleep when you wake up and Daniel comes to watch over you.”
Damn it. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah, and four hours ago I was asking your friends to be pall-bearers so—” He clicked his tongue and gave me a ‘beat that’ look. I couldn’t, obviously, so resigned myself to the fact he was going to win every argument for the foreseeable future. As exasperated as me, Dr. Downes bade us good night and left us properly alone for the first time in hours.
Even with my eyes closed and the distraction of pain, I could feel Blaze still watching my every move. There was no way to stop him so I had to focus on breathing instead, almost meditating to block out everything but thoughts of sleep.
And time did pass. The next time I opened my eyes it was light outside, so I must have slept. The only thing that disturbed me was the weight on the bed next to me, and the way it squirmed. Apparently distressed, Blaze had fallen asleep with his head on my bed, and mumbled and cried through a dream. Nothing he said was coherent but I understood that he dreamed of death and regret.
I couldn’t bear to see him like that. Just able to reach him, I stroked his hair and whispered words to soothe and awaken. It took a while for the dream to pass, but he woke immediately afterwards and took a moment to look at our environment.
“Fuck...” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he surged to his feet and pulled my weak body up into his arms, crushing me against him with a force that would have hurt even if I’d been in perfect health. Resisting a whimper, I held strong until he found his senses and laid me back down, fussing over his aggressive advance.
“It’s okay,” I assured him, desperate not to let him see how sore I felt from his assault. “Tell me what I can do to make you feel better.”
“What you can do? Jesus, Emmeline.” He lifted my head much more carefully to remove and plump my pillow. “I drove you to suicide last night—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Drove you to suicide.” The moment of silence after that sentence dared me to disagree again. I didn’t, even though I knew it was stupid. “I’m the one who has to make up for it.”
“You’re not. Really. And I owe you, remember? For Natasha.”
Blaze paused for a beat; then put the pillow back behind me and nodded. “So maybe we’re even.”
“Great...” I winked and held out a hand for him to hold. “So tell me how to skip past you into first place.”
“Ah, Miss Tudor...” Laughing begrudgingly, he raised my hand to his lips and kissed each finger. “Always hungry for the advantage. You can get there by never making me think I’ve lost you again. Once was enough. A further four times was overkill.”
“Okay...” It wasn’t an unreasonable request. I’d broken a promise and he’d saved my life. More than that, he was potentially covering up a murder for me. Vowing to live was really quite an insignificant request. If anything, I was obliged to spend the rest of my days doing anything and everything to make him happy.
Yes... I straightened a little on realising my new purpose. Everything I said or did from then on would be with his happiness in mind because as much as he insisted I didn’t, I owed him. I owed him everything.
“Are you okay? Is she talking to you?”
“What?” My gaze snapped back to Blaze. She? “Oh... No, she’s MIA.”
“I should never have ditched your meds, Emmeline.” He started kissing my fingers again, more urgently. “You should have been weaned off. I could have caused this.”
“Damn it, stop that. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
He paused for a beat. “If I had, would you forgive me?”
“But you haven’t.”
“But if I had?” Something about the way he was pushing the question made me anxious. It didn’t quite feel like an admission of guilt, maybe a pre-emptive warning or quest for permission.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.” His answering smile was a little too sharp and contrite. What had he done—or was planning to do? “But if I had...”
“I’d forgive you.” Because I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t. He could never do anything as bad as I had, never let his dreams and jealousy rule him. The worst thing he could do to me is break my heart, but I was fairly sure that wasn’t an option to him.
“Good.” Relaxing, Blaze pulled the thin sheets up over my arms and glanced across at the steadily peaking line and dull flash of the heart monitor. “I dreamt that we were here, you know. When I woke up, I really wished it had just been a nightmare. I wanted to believe that we’d wake up in your flat and the past day and a half were all an illusion.” His eyes skimmed across my body and up to my face. “I love you, Emmeline.”
The strangest sense of sadness overwhelmed me. Love could and would make us do stupid things. Part of me thought we might not be in such a complication situation if he’d never said it at all but the rest of me was so grateful that he still said it now, after everything I’d done.
And because of everything I’d done, I could say with great conviction, “I love you more.” He’d argue but I knew I was right.
If someone had told me that you’d wake up after a near-death experience feeling revitalised and ready to take on the world in a way you couldn’t bear to before, I’d have told them to stop watching stupid spiritualist documentaries and get a grip. Twice over, I knew that the reality was typically a deep depression at having survived, some major guilt trips and often a considerable amount of pain.
But by some strange turn of events, I woke up a few hours later feeling like a million dollars. I could move without reservation, touch my chest without feeling wires stemming off my skin. It was almost a shame to open my eyes and spot the tray of standard hospital breakfast sitting in front of me.
“Oh, man. They’re trying to make me feel suicidal again now?”
“Eat up. Doctor’s orders.” Blaze walked in from the adjoining bathroom, freshly shaven and chewing on toast. “They want to make sure everything works in the digestive regions before they consider discharging you.”
“Oh. Ew...” No matter how nicely he’d worded it, I knew that every time someone checked on me, they’d be asking whether I’d taken a dump. “Why do they care about that?”
“You have a spinal injury, Emmeline. Your legs weren’t taking your own weight yesterday.”
“Paralysis?” Shaking my head, I scrambled to sit up. Ever on the ball, Blaze passed me the remote control that raised the head of the bed and moved my breakfast closer. “I can move them, though.”
“Bit more complex than that. But don’t think about it, just eat up. You look a lot better today.”
Knowing that breakfast was my only safe meal,
I dubiously pulled the wrapper off a set of pre-packaged plastic cutlery. “I feel better. I presume I’m drugged up to the eyeballs.”
“Absolutely. Dr. Downes came in and took all your junk off while you were sleeping—gave you some intravenous painkillers before the canulas came out. We wanted you to wake up comfortable this time.”
I paused midway through pouring milk over bran flakes, of all the cereals in the world. “Is this where you tell me I’m going to die after all?”
“What? No!” Blaze scoffed, peeled the lid off my tiny portion of jam and started spreading it across my cardboard. I mean toast. Spread it on my toast. “To be honest, it was intended as a sweetener. Everyone is nagging to see you, cupcake.”
“Ah.” So they’d drugged me and provided breakfast in bed as a bribe... “Do I get coffee first?”
“Decaf.”
“Seriously?” What was even the point? If the choice was between decaf and one of Henry’s fatherly pep-talks... “Let them in.”
Even when mourning—despite it being unnecessary—Ivy Tudor was ever the trophy bride in a designer black shift dress, unreasonably high heels and a full face of makeup more suited to a dinner party or gala. She’d started sobbing the moment she set eyes on me and hadn’t managed a coherent sentence in twenty minutes. At first I’d felt bad but the remorse soon transformed into teenagerish eye rolling and groaning.
“Okay, Mum. You’re kind of overdoing the grief now. I’m here; alive, mostly well and ready to get kicking you out of here...” She wailed in response, which just made me sigh. In a weird way, I’d liked it better when it was just Blaze by my bedside. I didn’t feel hospitable, not even a little bit. If my life became one with only us in it, I didn’t think I’d mind.
Blaze smiled sympathetically and tried his best to diffuse the situation with a cheery, “Emmeline might be home tomorrow.” Well... It stopped the crying. Unfortunately for him, it launched the spiralling rocket that was my mother’s little seen temper.
“They won’t seriously discharge her? She’s ill—she needs to be under psychiatric care.”
“No, she doesn’t. Her doctor is sure that home is the best place for her. She’s not depressed.”
“She tried to kill herself!”
“I’m also right here! Jeez.” I growled skyward, irritated by them forgetting how much I hated them speaking about me like I wasn’t even there. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“No.” Oh well, they were agreeing on something. “I’m already a registered carer, Ivy. She’s safe with me.”
“So safe she slit her wrists in your company. Pardon me if I’m a little nervous about charging you with her care.”
My jaw hit the floor. I didn’t even know my mother had it in her to be malicious and that blow was a little too low for my liking. I stared at her, willing her to apologise. When she didn’t, I turned my attention to Blaze and telepathically begged him not to take it to heart.
Catching my gaze, he straightened his spine. “She’s coming home with me, Ivy. I was the only one protecting her life when you all decided to let it end.”
“What about her back problems? She can’t walk up those steps to the flat.”
Blaze bit his lip and shifted awkwardly away from me. “That’s already in hand.”
Curious, I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Not now, Emmeline.”
“Yes now, Blaze. What have you done?”
“Nothing.”
“You mean ‘nothing yet’.” He had that look about him, the same one he’d had when he’d delivered the news of his wife wanting to meet me. He was up to something and I didn’t like it. I’d have handled anything better if he was upfront about it.
“Oh, hey!” Digging his hand into his pocket, Blaze pulled out his phone with a flourish and pointed at it with every ounce of male model swagger he could muster. “Would you look at that. It’s the phone I haven’t checked in, ohh... Twenty-nine hours. I must have a ton of messages...”
“Nice try, Valentine. You’re not off the hook.” Flashing me a grin, he backed out of the door and almost collided with Daniel and Esme on their way in.
“Emmy!” Dan flew over to me and kissed me right on the mouth, which made me laugh. I promised I wouldn’t die again because he’d touched me and he told me about the celebratory truffles his husband, Jonathan, had bought for us all to share when I was home. Esme, on the other hand, was a little less exuberant and took a protective, if a little hostile, position at my mother’s shoulder. At a guess, she was mad at me.
“I am so mad at you, Emmy.” Suspicion confirmed. “You worried the hell out of us.”
“I’m sorry.” I’d said that so often the words were losing meaning. “I’m okay now.”
“You were okay forty-eight hours ago, too. Look how that turned out. Do you have any idea the damage you could have done—how close you came to dragging us all down with you? Your dad has been attached to his phone and slowly draining his bank account to stop the media getting hold of this. Your sister spent an hour in the recovery position after giving you a pint of blood you just bled straight out—”
“And that’s my fault?”
She held up a crimson tipped finger to stall me. “Blaze and Chris made serious threats to kill themselves if you died.”
“They did what?”
Daniel made a low hissing noise to shut her up but when wounded, Esme had a habit of launching for the perpetrators jugular. She had a point she wanted to make and I’d hear it whether I liked it or not. And I didn’t. “Trying to do yourself over is one thing, Emmy, but when you take others down with you, it’s unforgivable. Imagine if they hadn’t waited for you to breathe your last. How would you have felt if you’d woken up and we’d had to tell you they were both dead? Think about that, because it’s how we felt having to call your poor parents in the ungodly hours of yesterday morning.”
“Esme, that’s enough.” It really was. My heart was pounding to a frantic rhythm of guilt and speculation. If it had happened, that could have made my death count three. My actions could have killed three people; two of them I didn’t think I could live without. No, I knew I couldn’t live without them. That was entirely the point of trying to die in the first place.
“The hell if it is, Daniel. She could have come to any one of us before heading for the knife block. We would have been there for her.”
“In all fairness,” I snapped bitterly, “you’re the last person I’d try to wake up if I fancied a midnight cutting frenzy. It’d take too long to peel your fucking eye mask off.”
“Stop! Jeez...” Rounding the bed, Daniel seized Esme by the wrist and promptly led her out of the room. She left nothing but her glare and an awkward silence behind her. Neither of them spoke until they were outside, and then they underestimated how thin the walls were.
“Are you trying to kill her off completely? You can’t stress her out.”
“I’m supposed to consider her feelings after she was so selfish? Someone has to tell her that she’s ruined her life this time. I know you won’t.”
“She hasn’t—”
“Yes, she has. If she seriously thinks everything will be okay after this because she lived, she’s more of an idiot than I thought. As much as Blaze says he’s okay, he’s going to see the mess she left for him to clear up every time he looks at her. Their relationship is as good as over.”
Right on cue, Blaze edged around them back into the room, directed a confused nod towards them; then stood stock still. I’d sort of expected him to be a little appalled at finding me in tears, but I sure didn’t expect him to slam the emergency call button and start ushering my mother out of the room.
I didn’t understand it until I felt a warm wetness on my upper lip and looked down just in time to see a drop of blood hit my gown. My fingers brushed my nose and came away covered; it was just a nosebleed. “Jeez, relax.”
“I...” Blaze reined himself in and sat on the be
d next to me, brushing his hands over my face and hair. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, it’s a nosebleed. They happen. No need to kill yourself over it.”
He frowned; then rolled his eyes and looked back over his shoulder to the small gathering of my two friends, mother and my newly arrived father for good measure. “They told you.”
“Esme told me.” I didn’t feel even a little bit bad for ratting her out. “You’re supposed to be stronger than me, Blaze.”
“I’m only strong if I have a reason to be.” Emptying his pockets onto the bedside tray, he kicked off his shoes and climbed under my sheets with me. Taking advantage of my medicated state, he pulled me over into his lap and urged me to lean back against him.
It was heavenly. He hadn’t showered in a couple of days but he smelled musky rather than disgusting, all him and nothing artificial. His bulky arms roping with muscle came around my waist and settled there, tender but a firm reminder that I’d never escape him. Until the day he died and beyond, I’d be his and he’d make sure I knew it. We were forever fused as one.
“As it is, I didn’t even get outside.” He kissed the top of my head and rocked me slightly. “I saw your doctor out there. Provided there’s no more bumps in the road, she’ll discharge you into my care tomorrow.”
“That’s so soon.” He’d be like my nurse. How degrading for him, never mind for me. Would he be paid an allowance to care for me like he had for Natasha? I didn’t want to be the next job that restricted how far he could travel for photo shoots and filming... “Maybe I should go back to Cardiff.” His sudden stillness made me regret the offer. “Blaze?”
“Why would you say that?”
Because I’ve ruined your life enough already. “Don’t we have enough to rebuild without you having to baby me?”
“By babying you, do you mean giving you medication, changing your dressings, helping you out of bed and taking you to appointments?”
“Yes...”
He manoeuvred me to one side, giving me no choice but to look up at him. “Would you be saying this if you’d had life-saving surgery? Like an emergency appendectomy or organ transplant?” I pursed my lips. Where was he going with that question? “You did have life-saving surgery, Emmeline. And a blood transfusion and you have a back injury... You think my wanting to care for you is less noble and motivated by love because of how you got these injuries? Don’t confuse empathy for pity, cupcake. It’s as much for me as it is for you.”