“Thank you, Doctor.” She walked out and I sat and gawped at Bella, I was taking her home to live out her days sleeping, and here she was as fresh as a daisy and awake.
“What happened I remember that woman coming in and nothing after, well bits and pieces of huddled whispers?”
“You went all Jedi Knight on Gina, and she well she stabbed you in the heart with a dagger and as she rolled over on you she cracked a rib and it punctured your lung and for good measure she stabbed you there too. Henry saved your life, doing some sort of pipe trick he learnt as a medic and kept you alive until the paramedics came to save you.”
“I don’t remember any of that, but how did she get in? Mores the point how did she fucking escape from prison, and where did you find Ethan?”
“Questions are all I have answered these past few weeks Bella?”
“I want answers Chris, I am stuck in here and all because of Gina, please, I deserve to know Chris don’t lie to me please not now and not ever.”
“Okay sweetheart okay. She escaped with the help of Roger and Catherine.”
“Those two caused this?” She was mad as hell.
“Roger found a prison doctor in there, who needed money, and he was easy to buy, he had Gina transferred to the prison wing, they rigged a drip and she had some sort of fake death thing happen, don’t ask me but the two of them worked a way of getting her out and to America. She had been in the hotel for three days, before we got there, and Dad’s death hastened their plan for Gina to kill me. Thus keeping the blood off their hands, however Roger the fool, didn’t know who he was dealing with, he started barking his instructions out to her and she was off her medication and it was then the voices started and she slit his throat, and she stabbed Catherine, when she went to help him.
Catherine realised Gina wouldn’t stick to any plan, and she knew Gina would either take or kill Ethan if she found him, and in all the confusion of the alarms and security rushing around, she somehow managed to get into Ethan’s room and put him in a cupboard to keep him safe. She sat with him and talked to him, he fell asleep, and well she died saving him, and when the gun shot woke him he sat there for a while, the lady didn’t speak to him again, and then he simply walked in the room.
Tammy found her body in the cupboard and Tammy saved you baby, she shot Gina, just as she was going to stab you. Then well you, you, you died over and over and it’s been awful here watching you sleep. Ethan and I have tried everything to wake you, he doesn’t understand, he just calls you Sleeping Beauty. I got permission to fly you home and well that’s that a month out of our lives we will never get back and one I never want to live through again.
I have texted Luis, and they are all coming and en mass baby, including Ethan, Luis and Mel are here anyway, baby Isabella made an early appearance last week. Mel has been here trying to keep the baby in her as long as possible to give her more time, she isn’t called Nina as it was too like Gina and well Luis and Mel called her Isabella, and she’s just like you baby just like you too.”
“Oh hell I did miss a lot, didn’t I? How’s Mum and Dad?” I can’t believe I’m having a conversation with her, a month of this one way shit was all I had done and now all I want to do is look at her and touch her. I snap out of my silent lusting as the doors burst wide open.
“Bella Pooh your awake you lazy bitch. Sleep becomes you, so why wake up now then did you know little Bella was off her ventilator and can breathe on her own?”
“Great, she’s breathing on her own, how’s Mel?”
“I’m here the lug left his fiancé in the damn bloody corridor err forget something did you sunshine?”
“Oops sorry, I forgot about you for a little minute there.” I laugh as Mel is wheeled in.
“Well ain’t you the sight for sore eyes. I guess a welcome back is in order then, excuse the chair, c section and all that and damn sore back. Wow you look great for a corpse.”
“Mel.”
“Well she does, I knew she would wake up, you lot and she’s going to sleep her life away. They have driven me potty oh hell and your mum is a bloody fussing nightmare.”
“She is rather, and I guess having us both in the same place she has exercised a lot?”
“Yep three floors you, Mel and little Bell. I hear her coming now God help you Pooh, she’s over hyper.” With that, Maria and Hugh crashed through the door, Hugh holding Ethan tightly, who wasn’t for staying put once he saw Bella.
“Mummmmmmyyy, mummy, mummy, oh mummy put me down Papa, Mummy you sleeped a long time a long time.”
“I know baby boy, come here I need a special huggee squish from my big boy.”
“Daddy I says she wake up before we go on plane, we not go on plane tomorrow?”
“No, we will be here for a while until Mummy is all better.”
“Okay, I tired I sleep here with Mummy.” My son climbed in next to Bella and I saw the tears falling down her face. Her mother and father were killing her with the hugs and for now Bella was letting them. I stood back and couldn’t take it all in, she was awake and like nothing had ever happened. When everyone eventually leaves I climb on the bed for the much needed cuddle, and sleep, my arm covers her body and I breathe in her smell. I wake and I am cuddling the pillow in my son’s bed and then the realisation sets in again, Bella didn’t wake up at all, she wasn’t asleep, she died when we took her off the damn machines. I actually said goodbye to the love of my life yesterday, not my father, I am a mess and crying like a baby when Mel comes in to sit by the bed.
“Let it out Chris come on cry, you have kept this in all week let it out.”
“I can’t live without her Mel, I can’t, why did he not give us more time, we had days not the years of marriage we both envisaged, we were meant to be together forever not for mere days, not days Mel.” Mel is huge and in that last dream she had her baby early, in reality she is still pregnant and as I cling onto her I realise I’m screwed, my heads a mess with the utter confusion between my dreams and the reality.
“I don’t know if I could cope as well as you have, if it was me having lost Luis or this little girl in here I’d be a mess too. I so wanted to hold you and comfort you yesterday, but you were kind of zoned out again. You kind of space out a lot, do you imagine being with Bella? You were talking to yourself a lot at the funeral, but I didn’t hear what you said or to who, then you came here after giving the wake a miss and spent the evening with Ethan, how is the little guy?”
“Holding out better than his ole dad, that’s for sure. I want her back and I know that’s never happening I know she’s dead, I just need all this to be a dream. I dreamt she was alive again last night, I have the same dream over and over and I have for the whole two weeks since it happened.”
“You may be better once you get away from here, and settle back into the ranch?” I am taking her ashes back to Australia, with those of my mother, which my creepy dad slept with under the bed he took the bunnies too, I had him and the others cremated and buried all together, let the mad bastards have each other for eternity, it serves him right, for being a mad man.
I am being joined by our whole family. We have decided that a fresh start for all of us is what’s best, and with many CEO’s in place, I intend to focus on healing and raising our son to be the man his mother wanted him to be. I will be joined by Hugh, Maria, Mel, Luis, my sister Lorna and the rest of our extended security family. It will be hard it is hard, her dying has killed a part of me that only she could bring to life, my soul is heavy and my heart broken, I can’t do this without her, I don’t know how too… “I don’t want to carry on living, let alone be ranching, I want to stop the world and get off, that’s what I want to do Mel, and I want to be with her.” Just then, Ethan walks in and smiles.
“Daddy I want Humpty’s head off, but he’s being hard, I can’t do it Daddy you do it pleazzzze?” I get out of bed and scoop him into my arms, and realise that this is why I have to carry on, he is all I have left of her and in him, and I will have
her forever. I smile dust myself down and go to do the breakfast prayer without her…
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Coming soon... Ethan’s Outback Adventure... Ethan wants his father to be happy, something his father is not, and hasn’t been for a long time, so he thinks his father needs someone to care for him and make him smile again, and he intends to be the one to find someone to heal his father’s broken heart... Quite the herculean task for the ten year old...
Soul Mates. The Beginning. Page 41