I wanted to ask why, badly. Yet I just listened to him, taking in everything he was saying. I could feel a burning in my wound that was growing, cutting through the morphine. This was a new pain, a shrill, high pain that felt not as though something had been shot through me but rather that something was still inside, trying to dig its way out. I let out a little cry as pain stabbed at the wound. A tear fell down my cheek .
Leon stood up from his chair, handkerchief in hand. He reached down and wiped away my tear before I could even think to do so. I felt his caress, shielded by the thin cloth, and longed for him to touch me in a way that I had never previously felt. It wasn’t a sexual longing but rather a longing to be held, tight and secure, the warmth of his body on mine.
Another jolt of pain erupted in my shoulder and this time it was so intense that I almost reached down to call the nurse for more pain meds. But when I looked up, I saw Leon’s face. His eyes were heavy with worry and they looked down at me with something that reminded me of the night we had shared in my house by the fire. Except the difference was that his eyes had such an intensity to them now that the other night had only been a vague suggestion of.
He sat back down, this time pulling the chair closer to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was heavy with sorrow and it surprised me when I heard it. “I’m so sorry about Andrea.”
It took a minute for the gears of my memory to finally click over and lock. Andrea. Andrea Locke had been the woman Leon had been with when I walked in on him. I saw them before me clearly, as though I was back in that room. Leon thrusting into her from behind, fucking her forcefully as she cried out for me. She looked at me and hesitated for only a moment before letting him continue. He had turned her just enough so that I could see him sliding in and out of her. When I looked in his eyes, there was nothing there but contempt. As I had fled, tears flowing down my eyes, he had moaned loudly as he came.
“You scared me,” he said.
“I suppose it’s scary being walked in on while you’re having sex,” I replied curtly. The memory had struck back so hard that I felt like crying all over again. Yet I knew no tears were going to come; I had cried all of my tears for Leon Christensen already.
“No, not like that,” Leon said, smiling meekly. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and ran his other hand through his hair, pushing it from his face. “You scared me because of how you made me feel.”
I turned my head and looked at him. A wave of emotion struck at me when I saw his eyes. They were growing wet with tears and bloodshot from rubbing. They looked exactly as they did the night we had first embraced one another. Yet when I looked at them closer, there was a pain that had not been there that night.
“After Kevin died, I saw exactly what love could do to a person. That was an absolute for me. But more than that, I saw what I did to someone I loved. I loved Kevin like a brother. When he died, something in me was lost. I knew that his death was my fault. Yes, he had tied the rope and made the decision, but I had pushed him to it.”
Leon paused to wipe his eyes with the same handkerchief he had cleared away my tears with. I wanted badly to reach out and touch him, but I stayed guarded. I was not about to be pulled into another emotional roller coaster with this man. I felt distrustful and as I listened, the pain in my chest was growing past unbearable. Something felt seriously wrong.
“I’ve never let it go. I’ve never been in love and I’ve always felt that was because I don’t deserve to be in love. I’ve never even had a strong feeling towards a woman. I’ve kept them distant, almost cruelly distant. More than a few have even called me a sociopath.” Leon said.
“Then I met you. Immediately, I was interested. But of course, I thought I just wanted to have you. I figured that once we had sex, you’d be boring just like the rest. Even if you made it interesting for a while, I would make sure I got bored before you could get close. I’d never let anybody in and I wasn’t planning to ever start. But after we had sex, you were in my mind like a goddamn computer virus,” he said, laughing.
I wanted him to stop. Tears formed in my eyes and fell down my cheeks. The pain was spreading down my spine and my whole body was alight with torturous tumult. It was as if Leon’s words were spreading my wound.
“Leon,” I said, my voice breaking with pain and tears. I wanted everything he was saying to be true. More than anything, I wanted this to be genuine, but I couldn’t trust anything.
“I knew that if I told you how I felt, you could hurt me. And if anybody deserved to be truly hurt, it’s me. When you brought that file, I thought you didn’t feel the same way. And after our conversation, I had to prove to myself it meant nothing. But afterwards, with Andrea still there, I just felt horrible. The guilt was so intense that I had to leave. I wanted to chase after you and apologize. Beg for your forgiveness.”
Even if Leon Christensen was sincere, there was no way this was going to last. I wasn’t even sure that this was the first time he had given this speech to a girl. I wanted to believe that it was genuine and at the same time I wanted to believe that it wasn’t. But the look on his face defied any claim that he was putting on a show; Leon Christensen was revealing himself to me.
“Leon,” I said, words were now like molasses coming out of my throat. “Please, you don’t...”
Leon reached over and took my hand that was next to the button for the nurse. Everywhere fire tore through my body and I felt as if I was about to convulse with the horror of whatever was spreading through me. I shifted my body to try to adjust the pain, to calm it, and a wave of blistering torture shot out of my shoulder. I cried out softly and bit my teeth down.
“I want you,” Leon said. It was everything that I had ever wanted to hear from him, but at the moment he said it, I felt something wet coming down my chest.
I raised my hand and once again I was staring at my hand, dripping with red. Leon looked down at my hand and immediately rose to his feet.
“Julie, oh my god, are you alright?” he asked, alarmed. He looked back on me and I saw a look of terror adorn his face. “You’re bleeding.”
Blood was flowing out of my once closed wound. My hospital was soaked with red that quickly spread to stain all the white that was around me. The pain was unbearable. The lights dimmed and then returned as though someone had flipped them off and on quickly before I realized that it was me, passing out.
Leon pressed the button for the nurse, slamming it with his thumb over and over. A second passed. Two seconds passed and Leon ran out into the hallway and started yelling. His voice rose and fell in volume and I struggled to make out the words he was saying.
“Julie, you’re going to be alright. You have to be alright. Please,” Leon said, his words miles away now. “Be alright. I can’t lose you.”
People surged into the room like water from a breaking dam. My eyes opened and closed, creating a strobe-like effect for only me. I saw doctors hover above me and looks of concern turn to anger turn to fear. Nurses ran around me, injecting me with things and pulling things out of me.
“Sir, you have to leave. Now!” a woman yelled.
“No, wait, let me stay. Please,” Leon pleaded.
“Get him out of here or call security,” a doctor commanded. “We need to get her into surgery, right now.”
I blinked and the lights above were moving, passing over me with increasing frequency. I heard the sounds of wheels creaking as footsteps pounded against the tiled floor. I tried to look around, but the air was so thick with gravity that I could merely blink. The world began to drift away. Everything felt far away. In that moment, all I wanted to do was sleep.
My eyes opened and I saw a bright light above me encased in a large metal circle. It looked almost like a light from a dentists’ office. Before I could speak or even look around, a doctor lowered a plastic piece over my mouth. I breathed in heavily and soon the darkness was complete. As everything dissipated, my last thought was of Leon. I wished he was right beside me, holding
my hand. I wanted to feel his heartbeat against mine as he told me everything was going to be alright and I believed him.
Darkness became my world and everything else was gone.
I slept a dreamless sleep. When I awoke, my mind was numbed from sleep and opiates. The lights were off in the room yet it was not fully dark. After I passed out, they must have moved me to a new room because now the window was on a different side and showed a wide city landscape. Lights flickered on and off in concrete buildings and a full moon cast its blue light down upon my hospital room. I looked around, trying to adjust my eyes, thankful that it wasn’t daytime; even the moonlight was painfully bright.
I couldn’t sit up. Every ounce of my energy was focused in on keeping my eyes open. Even turning my head was such a laborious act that I resigned to keep it pointed towards the window, treating the rest of the room like it didn’t exist. I could not ever remember having felt this weak and injured before. But then again, I had never been shot before.
Leon sat in a chair, slumped over. If I wasn’t completely dulled with drugs, I would have felt alarmed at the way he looked almost dead. His breath rose and fell in spaced out, shallow intervals. I couldn’t make out his face, the moon was behind him and it cast darkness on him, but I knew that he was asleep.
I let my eyes fall closed, feeling oddly content and at peace. Sleep came easily, welcoming my return to a blackness that was devoid of all color and light.
When I finally opened my eyes again, the sun was shining. I had no idea how much time had passed. I felt stronger and the pain in my shoulder had lessened to a dull ache. The taste in my mouth was horrible and I imagined the smell rivaled the taste in its awfulness. I lifted my arms and brushed my hair back.
Leon was still in the chair. He looked disheveled, a fitting look for someone sleeping in a chair. Even with his eyes closed, I could see bags under his eyes and wrinkles in his clothes. His hair hung down over his face, this time messy and not in a stylish way. His hand propped up his face and his mouth hung slightly ajar. I smiled as I looked at him; he looked almost childish in his cuteness, despite the apparent exhaustion all over his face.
I reached out my arm and delicately ran my fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face. His head had been leaning down slightly, pointed towards the grounded in his uncomfortable looking sleep, and when I touched him, his eyes opened groggily. When he saw me, his eyes opened wide. I smiled at the sight.
“Good morning,” I said in a hushed voice, barely above a whisper. It was as loud as I could talk.
“Morning,” Leon said quietly, but still excitedly. “Did you sleep well?”
I let a smile grow once again on my face. “A girl needs her beauty rest and I’m no exception. How long was I out for?
“Two days,” Leon said, a hint of worry strong in his voice.
I was speechless for a full minute before I thought of anything I could say. “I woke up last night, briefly. I saw you sleeping there. The moon was full and it was beautiful.” Every word was labored, slow and thorough.
“Julie,” Leon began softly, “the moon was full two nights ago.”
“Oh,” I said. I laid there, unable to do anything else but lie there, and thought about what happened. I had a brief flash of doctors hovering over me, talking about something. I remembered blinking and I could hear music in the back of the operating table.
“Your wound opened up when we were talking a few days ago. Apparently there were some complications, something about your body rejecting the sutures.” Leon said. “When you woke up and started moving around a lot and talking, the added irritation must have caused the wound to open again.”
I could hear the faint echo of Leon being told to get out of the room. They had threatened to call security because he had refused to leave.
“You were rushed into emergency surgery and they used something different to stitch you up. The doctors said everything is fine now and that you’re out of the woods.”
I tried to take in all of what Leon had said and it just felt too much to comprehend. The memory of Leon refusing to leave warmed my heart in a weird way. I felt scared over what happened to me and at the same time I felt joyous at the sight of Leon. More than anything, I simply felt confused.
“While you were in surgery,” Leon said, his voice growing horse and thick. “They weren’t sure if you were going to make it.” Tears formed in his eyes and slowly strolled down his cheek. He made no move to wipe them away. I reached my hand over and brushed away the tears gently. He took my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. A loving squeeze.
I felt my defenses start to dissipate. I noticed then that Leon was wearing the same outfit that he had been wearing when we had talked two days ago. His hair was a mess and he looked like he needed a shave, badly. It dawned on me that Leon had not left the hospital since I had fallen back ill.
“Have you gone home yet?” I asked, shocked by the truth that I knew he was about tell me.
“No,” he said solemnly. “I wasn’t going to leave you. It was my fault that I had upset you and somehow made your wound open. I knew I needed to be here for you the moment you woke up.”
“Leon,” I said, choking back tears. I was so touched that it took every effort not to cry out to him to embrace me. “What about your life? Your clubs?”
Leon smiled out of the corner of his mouth and started nodding his head slowly, as if agreeing with something I said. “Stills. I called him to tell him about what was happening and he didn’t even need me to ask him to take over things for a while. And to be honest, I didn’t even give a shit what happened to the businesses.”
I smiled back, thinking of Stills. On some level, I should almost curse him. Without him, none of this would have happened. But then again, without him, I wouldn’t have met Leon Christensen. Despite all that had happened, Leon piercing my heart and then Marilyn literally shooting me in the chest, it seemed worth it to know that my feelings were being reciprocated.
“I realized that losing you would hurt too much. No matter how I try to push you away, being apart from you is the last thing I want. I hope you can forgive me for all of this. For Andrea, for Marilyn, for all the bullshit defenses I put up because I didn’t want to let you in. Maybe it’s too late Julie, and I can never take back the things I said or the things I’ve done but I’d like to start over again. To start over again with you. Will you give me that chance?”
To hear Leon open up to me like this was something entirely new for me. Could I forgive him for the things he did? I don’t know. But he was just asking for a chance. Maybe he didn’t know it, but it wasn’t just a chance for him, it was a chance for me to melt the protective ice that had covered my heart for so long. I felt the pangs of loneliness that I had long kept repressed surge in my chest.
I knew what I would say before I even opened my mouth. After all, what choice did I have? Bury my memories of Leon in the past and continue smiling and selling clients a dream I didn’t believe in?
“Yes, let’s start over again” I whispered.
The nurse came in and paused when she saw us.
“Everything alright in here?” she asked casually.
“Yes, everything is perfectly fine. Perfectly fine,” I said, smiling.
“Good. I have to take your vitals sweetheart, I hope you guys don’t mind,” the nurse said, looking at Leon.
“I think I’ll go to the bathroom and wash up a little bit. I’m starting to look like a bum,” Leon said. I saw his eyebrows rise at me and he gave me a small smile. His face looked completely new, still tired and frayed with worry, but lighter, as though something had been lifted from him. He looked happy.
Leon walked out slowly, hands in his pockets. He looked around the hallway and then I heard his footsteps grow fainter as he walked away.
The nurse leaned in close to me and looked around conspiratorially.
“Damn girl, that is one handsome man you’ve got there. If I were twenty years younger and single, I
think you’d be in trouble,” she said, winking. She shook her head and whistled a catcall. I giggled and covered my mouth.
“I think you’d have to fight me for him,” I said.
“You know I’m not about to fight a tough cookie like you,” she said, raising her hands defensively. “Taking a bullet like some action hero, you’re way too tough for me. You can have him, but I’m still gonna steal a little peek at him every now and then.”
The nurse poured me a glass of water and asked me if I needed anything else. Her name was Rose. She told me she had been working in the hospital for over thirty years. “You’ve got the best damn nurse in this godforsaken building,” she had said. I immediately liked her.
Leon came back in, drinking a cup of coffee. His hair was slicked back and wet, his face clean but still unshaven. Even wracked with stress and sleep deprivation, Leon Christensen looked better than any other man I had ever seen. He walked over to me and ran his hands through my hair. I closed my eyes and breathed in the sensation of his fingers pressing firmly against my scalp as they ran down to the top of my spine. When he got to the top of my spine, his fingers turned to feathers so that he wouldn’t hurt my wound. It felt wonderful.
He sat down on the chair beside the bed and moved it forward so he could be close to me.
“So,” I said, not sure as to how to proceed. “What is this now?”
“What is what?” he asked.
“This,” I said, motioning back and forth between him and I slowly with my still weak arms.
“Ah,” he paused. “I don’t know. This is all so new. But I know when I think of you, I feel the beginnings of something different inside of me. Something turning over and opening up to letting you in.”
I nodded, listening to his words. It was still hard to keep my eyes open, but even in my state between the waking life and dream world, his words sank in deeply. I reached over and took his hand with mine and we felt the slight warmth of each other as he continued on.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think. In the past few days, all I’ve had is time to think about what this is and how I feel. I still don’t know. What I know is that you got in my head without even trying. The simple sight of you planted some seed in me and despite how hard I tried to deprive it of water and sunlight, the bastard’s grown like a weed,” Leon said, smiling at me. I squeezed his hand playfully and leveled my eyes at him, feigning anger.
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