Wedding Dreams: 20 Delicious Nuptial Romances

by Maggie Way

  “I don’t hear from you for nine hours, when you’ve been traveling alone, and you think I’m just going to say goodnight and go to bed?” He scoffed. “Keep dreaming, Gretchen.”

  Gentle, despite his annoyed tone, Carl set her down on the couch and took the spot right next to her. “Now, what happened, and where have you been all night?”

  There was no chance of getting him to leave without an explanation. “At the hospital,” Gretchen said with a sigh.

  “What?” His gaze scanned her body, looking for signs of injuries.

  “I’m fine,” she reassured him, “but something happened on the way back. Not to me, but…I was driving and saw something in the road. I thought maybe it was an animal. It…wasn’t.”

  Carl’s eyebrows rose. “It was a person?” When Gretchen nodded, his concern deepened. “Dead?”

  She closed her eyes, trying not to picture John’s mangled body. “Almost.”

  “Gretchen, wow, I’m sorry,” he said. “That couldn’t have been an easy thing to see.”

  “I almost hit him,” Gretchen whispered.

  Carl’s pulled her to him, and stroked her hair. “It wouldn’t have been your fault, but you didn’t hit him, and you called for help, right? You did everything you could.”

  His words sounded so final, like she could walk away with a clear conscience. Shaking the feeling of responsibility for the poor man lying alone in the hospital was impossible. Discussing that with Carl felt…strange. Instead, she asked, “Who won the game?”

  The groan of disappointment gave away the answer, but he said, “Not the Nuggets. They’re down by three games now, and not looking like they’re going to come back.”

  “Sorry,” Gretchen said, mostly heartfelt in her condolence. She had never bothered to follow sports before moving in next to Carl. Even after seven months of watching games with him, she still didn’t really follow his favorite teams, so much as support his addiction.

  The weekend Gretchen arrived in New Mexico with a small U-Haul trailer packed with her entire life, Carl had seen her struggling to wheel her dresser into the house and strode across the neglected lawn to help. Even though she’d shied away from his help and friendliness, he’d unloaded the entire trailer and had stuck around ever since.

  Watching games together started with preseason football soon after she moved in. She’d tried to refuse the invitation. Carl was hard to resist, especially when he never gave up asking. He seemed to understand a romantic relationship was the last thing on her mind when starting her first teaching job and moving to an unfamiliar town, and was simply there to keep her company when she was feeling lonely. At first.

  Carl made no secret of the fact that he would like more, if the offer were on the table. It wasn’t. He respected that, for the most part. Gretchen didn’t really mind his stolen hugs and the occasional arm around her shoulders as much as she got onto him about it. She wasn’t in a place where she could admit that to him, but she cherished his friendship. Until she got to know some of her coworkers better, he’d been her only friend in town, and he had been a good one.

  “You could have called me,” Carl said. “I would have driven out to help, and waited with you at the hospital.”

  “I know,” Gretchen said quietly. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I was just so scared and worried, I guess I shut everything else out.”

  He pressed her closer to his chest and took a deep breath. “Is the guy going to be okay?”

  Gretchen could only shrug. “Nobody’s sure. He was still unconscious when I left.” Yawning, but too tired to attempt covering it, Gretchen’s eyes slowly began to close. “I’ll check on him tomorrow.”

  Carl was quiet for a moment. “You will?”

  She nodded and tried to tell herself to get up and go to bed. Alone.

  “Why?”

  “He’s…by himself, and hurt,” she said, her words broken up by another yawn.

  “Gretchen,” Carl said cautiously, “this may not be something you want to get involved in. If it’s drug related…”

  Gretchen wanted to shake her head at the suggestion, but even though the town was fairly small, Carl had told her stories of cartel influence and trafficking. They lived in the northern part of New Mexico, but it was still a border state. His warning did give her a moment’s pause, but the need to know the man she’d rescued was at least going to survive was too strong to overcome.

  “I’ll just stop by and make sure he’s doing all right. I can’t imagine waking up alone from something like that.”

  Carl sighed. She knew he’d continue to fight her on the subject, but it was well after three in the morning, and Gretchen knew despite his insistence that she call in sick to work, he wouldn’t do the same. It reminded her that she really did need to call in, and pulled away from Carl to find her phone.

  She fished around in her purse sleepily before Carl finally took it from her hands and extracted her phone. He handed it over and leaned his head back against the couch as though he intended to stay there all night. Shaking her head, Gretchen sent her message and turned to face him.

  Without opening his eyes, Carl snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her to his chest. Her lips parted to complain, but he spoke first. “Just once, let me have this, okay?” He settled his chin on the top of her head and exhaled slowly. “I thought something awful had happened, and I was going crazy waiting to hear from you. I want to be mad at you for letting me think you’d gotten into a horrible car accident or something, but I’m so glad you’re okay I can’t work up enough strength to be upset. I just want to hold onto for a few minutes, all right?”

  There was a good chance it was a line she was about to cross with Carl she wasn’t ready for, but Gretchen couldn’t bear to refuse him. Just this once. It had been a long night for both of them. As she relaxed against his chest, the tension he’d been holding since storming out of his house finally melted away.

  Chapter Four

  A Sound

  In one week, Gretchen learned more about comas and coma patients than she ever expected to learn in a lifetime. Textbooks she hadn’t touched since her first year of college were littered over her kitchen table. Carl didn’t approve of her interest, but kept his frustration to warnings about what getting involved might lead to.

  The nurses, however, were supportive and helpful. They updated her on tests they ran and prognoses the doctors gave. It felt good to learn about what was happening to John as he lay asleep in his hospital bed, but every day he didn’t wake up, stepping into the hospital got a little harder. As did going home to find Carl pushing her to stay out of it.

  It didn’t stop Gretchen, though. Every day after school she packed up her books, along with papers in need of grading, and drove across town to the hospital. By Wednesday evening, the duty nurses stopped in to say hello as much as to check on John. Thursday, there was a cup up tea waiting for her in John’s room.

  The nurses told Gretchen her visits were helping him heal. She knew there was research validating what they said, but she felt she was the one benefitting from her visits the most. Concern and responsibility slowly morphed into a calming sense of purpose. When she walked into the room, the day’s craziness gave way to the gentle rhythmic sounds of his breathing. It felt good to watch over John, though she doubted her presence made any difference to him.

  Gretchen told no one at work about continuing to visit John, except her best friend Desi. They had all heard about the incident of course, but after a few “How are you doing?” comments, their interest faded away as the bell rang. They probably all assumed Gretchen had forgotten the experience as quickly as they did.

  Desi, however, thought it romantic. She asked once if Gretchen wanted her to come with her, but she said no. Gretchen didn’t want to share her time with him, or admit how much she enjoyed the quiet visits. So Friday afternoon, she packed up her weekend stack of grading and hurried to the hospital alone.

  Stepping out of the elevator on the fifth floor, G
retchen took her usual route past the nurses’ station, pausing to say hello to everyone, and down the hall to John’s room. Lynn, a nurse she had become friends with over the week, was busy checking his vitals when she walked in. She looked up when she heard Gretchen bump into the side table. “Hey, Gretchen. Violets?”

  Gretchen glanced down at the potted plant in her hand. Violets weren’t the showiest flower in the world, but their delicate beauty always drew her in. “I thought they might brighten things up,” she said.

  “They’re beautiful,” Lynn said. She stuck her pen back in her scrubs pocket and put her hands on her hips. “How are your high school hooligans doing? You ready for summer yet?”

  “Don’t even mention summer to me. It’s still two months away. If I start thinking about summer now, I’ll never make it.” Gretchen laughed as she said it, but it was true. It was her first year of teaching and she was ready for a break.

  “That bad, huh?” Lynn grinned as she started toward the door. “Just be glad my son isn’t in any of your classes. That boy is the bane of his teachers’ existences. It will be a miracle if he graduates.” She laughed as she walked out of the room.

  Gretchen set the violets down on the table next to John’s bed. Lynn griped about her son, but the smile in her eyes said he couldn’t really be as bad as she made him out to be. Still, Gretchen couldn’t help but be glad she wasn’t his teacher.

  After watering the violets, she sat down next to John. He already looked so different from the first time she had seen him. His bruises were starting to heal. Instead of black and purple, his skin had lightened to a mottled brown and yellow with a few splotches of deep purple that lingered where the more serious injuries were. The casts would stay on for another six to eight weeks, but many of the stitches were already beginning to dissolve. Even the cuts were looking significantly better. The steady beep-beep of the heart monitor was reassuring white noise Gretchen heard without really noticing anymore.

  He was healing. At least his cuts and bruises and broken bones were healing. What was happening to his brain? Nobody really seemed to know. Information from the nurses had dropped off in the last few days. Unless something changed, which it didn’t, they didn’t have any news for her. They kept encouraging her. Keep talking. Keep visiting. Have hope. He’ll wake up soon.

  Gretchen clung to those thoughts.

  She told herself it was because then he would be able to explain what happened and go home, ending her sense of responsibility. Everyone could go back to their normal lives. Which was mostly appealing.

  With it being her first year teaching on her own, it had been chaotic. That day had been no exception. She vented her stress by telling John about the flamboyant English teacher who spilled coffee all over Gretchen’s shoes before first period, about the sophomore who started crying and ran out of the room when she reminded her class they would be dissecting frogs the next week, and the senior who kept leaving Hershey Kisses on her desk in the hope of her bumping his borderline failing grade up to an A.

  “But the absolute worst part of the day, and the reason I was late leaving, was getting a call from the office to come down and speak with a parent just as I was about to walk out the door,” Gretchen said. “I really do enjoy teaching, but sometimes the parents are too much. This woman stood there like she was going to attack me, and I had no idea who she was or what she wanted. To be honest, I was a little scared.”

  If the principal hadn’t been standing there to back Gretchen up, she might have just kept walking. Gretchen didn’t like confronting parents. It rarely ended well. Looking over at John, she felt a smile creep onto her lips. Normally, she told Carl about her bad days, but things had been tense between them lately. Gretchen couldn’t help wonder if John would always try to fix her problems, or just let her vent like he did now. Would things be different when he woke up and they could tell each other about their days?

  Pulling back, Gretchen shook herself. What was she doing? The past few days she had found herself daydreaming about when John woke up. She would be in the middle of a lecture and find that her thoughts had strayed from the structure of a cell to what his eyes would look like when he finally opened them. During lunch on Thursday, the bell startled her out a dream about him waking to find Gretchen by his side, knowing she had been the one to take care of him.

  It was childish. The kind of thing she would see on one of those awful Lifetime for Women movies, unbelievable and sappy. She realized that, but John filled her thoughts. He might never wake up. He could spend the rest of his life lying in a hospital bed. And even if he did wake up, Gretchen had no idea what kind of person he was. He could be a criminal for all she knew. She was fantasizing about a man in a coma, for crying out loud.

  “I’m being ridiculous, completely delusional,” she said to herself. “Maybe I shouldn’t even be here.”

  Gretchen told herself that so many times that week, but the same thing happened every time she thought about stepping away. She move closer to John’s bedside and started talking. Walking away from him was something she couldn’t bring herself to do. She wouldn’t let him wake up alone.

  Steadying herself, Gretchen went back to her story as if nothing had happened. “So anyway, the mom who wanted to talk to me, she was mad because her daughter missed class last week when I gave a test, and I wouldn’t let her make it up because her absence wasn’t excused,” she said, trying to stay focused on what she was talking about and nothing else.

  Maybe John would have laughed at her story of the mom forced to admit that her ditching daughter did not deserve a chance to retake the test. Or perhaps he would have thought Gretchen was awful for not letting the poor girl have a second chance. There was no way to know, but Gretchen found herself able to laugh at what she had found so terrifying at the time. Deciding John might be tired of listening to her, Gretchen took a folder out of her bag and stared at the stack of homework assignments which still needed grading.

  Looking over at John, she suddenly didn’t mind that it would take her several hours to finish.

  Gretchen was halfway through the stack of papers when Lynn popped her head into the room. “Hey, Gretch, you wanna go grab a bite in the cafeteria?”

  Gretchen really needed to tell her how much she hated being called Gretch. Lynn was so sweet, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Dropping her pen, Gretchen stood up and stretched.

  “That sounds great.”

  Reaching for her purse, she was grateful the hospital’s cafeteria was closer to a café than the typical hospital food. Gretchen turned away from John just as she heard a sound that stopped her heart.

  Chapter Five

  Waking Up

  Lynn spun back around and stared at Gretchen. She was still looking at her, too afraid to turn around and see if what she had just heard was real.

  “Did he just say something?” Lynn asked.

  “I…I’m not sure,” Gretchen said.

  Lynn marched toward John. Gretchen forced herself to turn around and look at him as well.

  He looked exactly the same. Eyes closed, bandages and tubes in place, leg up in traction. Had she just imagined it? No. Lynn heard it, too. Lynn checked all his vitals, reviewed the printouts from the machines, and watched John. So did Gretchen. More like she searched every inch of his body for a clue that he might be waking up. The beeping heart monitor was the only sound in the room. Every passing minute drained her hope.

  Sinking back into the chair, Gretchen brushed her fingers across his hand, hoping…. She gasped as his fingers curled up in reaction. “Lynn! He moved,” she exclaimed.

  Lynn scurried around to Gretchen’s side and looked at the loose fist John’s fingers had made. “What did you do?”

  “I just touched his hand and he pulled away.” Reaching out, she touched his hand again. His hand relaxed and a low moan escaped his lips.

  Pressing the nurse’s call button, Lynn asked for one of the other nurses. Maria bounded into the room less than ten se
conds later. “Is he waking up?” she asked.

  “Gretch, touch him again,” Lynn commanded. To Maria, she said, “Watch the heart monitor.”

  Taking John’s hand once more, Gretchen watched the monitor, too. His pulse rate jumped up as she touched him. His fingers attempted to wrap around hers, but seemed too stiff or weak to actually complete the motion. Tears rolled down Gretchen’s cheeks as she squeezed his hand. “Wake up, John,” she whispered.

  “Should I get Dr. Marshall?” Maria asked Lynn.

  Lynn nodded. “Yeah, he’ll want to see this.” Maria hurried out of the room and Lynn moved closer to Gretchen. “He may stay like this for a while. This is a great sign, but he may not fully wake up yet.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m just so glad to have some sign that he might wake up.”

  “I know you do, honey. Just keep faith and be patient.”

  Dinner was forgotten by both Gretchen and Lynn. Gretchen went back to watching while Lynn started a more detailed check of John’s vital signs and stimuli responses. She reached up to check the dilation of his pupils right as his eyelids fluttered open. Lynn jumped back, her hand coming to her throat as she tried to stifle a yelp. Gretchen stood up and leaned closer, watching as his eyes slowly opened and closed without really seeing.

  His lips parted and moved, but only dry, rasping sounds emerged. “He needs some water,” Gretchen said to Lynn. “Can he have some water?”

  “I’ll get some ice chips.”

  His eyes and mouth closed again, but Gretchen watched the fingers of his right hand wriggle in slow, testing movements. His left hand stayed wrapped around Gretchen’s. Locked in that stage of waiting, it wasn’t until the hurried squeak of Lynn’s tennis shoes brought her back into the room that John tried to open his eyes again. Dr. Marshall and Maria followed right behind, and they all watched as John’s eyes finally opened completely to stare at them.