Chapter Twenty-Nine
MARINA
PRESENT
I never thought I could feel this level of worry in my life.
Maybe when I thought about either of my parents getting hurt, or when we found out that the cottage caught on fire last year, and found out May was inside. That was worry.
This is an agonising panic, one that’s left me sleeping in this stupid hospital chair for the last two nights. One that has had Miles’s nurse bringing me multiple cups of coffee from the staff room—not even the shitty stuff from the machine.
His surgery was two days ago now, he spent the entire first day and night sleeping, but I couldn’t get used to it.
Seeing him so helpless in this bed, tubes and needles attached to him, monitoring his vitals as he laid there still as ever.
He’s always been so solid, the strong and steady one. But seeing him like this is…jarring.
He was in and out yesterday, but he was never awake for long. Only long enough to let me give him some water and some of the pink jelly the nurse left for him. He said he couldn’t stomach anything else.
Isla and Caio have been in and out too, they spent the first day trying to convince me to go home and get some rest, but it didn’t feel right.
Leaving Miles here while I went home to the comfort of my apartment.
I felt sick at the mere thought of leaving him.
By day two, they brought me a bag of clothes and my toothbrush.
Three days spent watching over someone gives you a lot of time to think. And all I can think about is us.
When I finally find sleep, I don’t rest, because my mind keeps showing me things I don’t want to see.
Images of Miles getting beaten, getting hit so hard I can hear the cracking of his bones from where I’m sitting in the crowd.
Of his limp body in the boxing ring. It sends shockwaves through my body, surges of the emotions I felt that night.
Sickening fear, confusion, overwhelming grief for the time I’ve spent away from him.
Nothing but pure adrenaline got me to this hospital.
Miles was right, it wasn’t safe, but all I could think about was that I needed to get here as quickly as humanly possible.
I could barely stand that I wasn’t there in the first place.
That I couldn’t ride in the ambulance with him and hold his hand and tell him he was going to be alright.
The only conclusion I could reach in these last three days is that I’m so tired. So tired of fighting this man who I would drive erratically on a motorbike in the middle of the night for.
I can’t sit here and pretend he doesn’t still mean everything to me. I can’t pretend I’m not so fucking mad at him for putting himself in a situation where with one wrong move we could have lost him. I could have lost him. I can’t pretend that it doesn't gut me every time I think about it.
I don’t even know what that means, or what he plans to do over the next six weeks. If not being able to work will eat him alive, if he will leave again as soon as he gets the chance. I’m just tired, and I don’t want to be tired anymore.
“This lighting does nothing for you, princess.” My gaze jumps up at the raspy sound of his voice. He’s got a pitiful attempt at a smirk on his face. “You look sickly. ”
“You don’t look too great yourself, hotshot.” The jab is half-hearted, I just scoot my chair closer to his bedside.
“What time is it?” he asks. His eyes blink against the cool lights.
“It’s around three, I think,” I say, looking for the phone I’ve barely touched in the last three days. I would feel bad for not texting my parents, but I know Caio will be keeping them updated.
“Have you been here all day?”
“She hasn’t left your side since you got here,” Miles’s nurse, Sofia, says as she enters the room.
Miles' gaze stays locked on mine, like he’s searching for the reason why I have barely left this chair. As if it isn’t written in marker on my forehead.
I still love you, you idiot.
“How are you feeling today?” Sofia asks. “Is this the longest he’s been awake?” she asks me.
“Well, it’s the first time he’s attempted a joke,” I answer, and she just nods, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“How’s the pain, Miles? Low, moderate, or high?”
Miles closes his eyes, as if really trying to focus on the pain. “Moderate,” he says. “It’s a dull kind of ache at the moment.”
“Okay,” Sofia nods, dropping her board and pulling the stethoscope from around her neck. “Just a reminder for you, this button here,” she shows him a button attached to a tube running to somewhere beside his bed. “These are your painkillers, press it when you need relief, okay?”
Miles nods as she places the diaphragm against his chest. “Deep breath in for me.”
He follows her instructions, pulling in deep breaths and long exhales as she listens to his heart. I feel my own beating as I simply watch, waiting for any possibility, watching her face for any inkling of concern, but I don’t find any.
“Good,” she writes her notes on the clipboard. “And if that pain ever becomes unmanageable, you press this button here, okay?” She shows him a bigger button, one that I’m assuming pages a nurse immediately. “I’m going to check the surgical wound now just to see how it’s going, okay?”
He gives a tiny dip of his chin, and Sofia moves to the top of his bed, undressing his wound. “How about you, Marina? When was the last time you ate something?”
“Oh, uhh…” the last thing I remember eating is the simple bread roll from Miles’s dinner tray last night while he was sleeping.
“Not recent enough, then,” she answers for me.
Miles’s eyes are locked on mine over Sofia’s shoulder.
Like he can’t understand what I’m doing here, or why I’ve barely eaten at his side.
I don’t blame his confusion, I haven’t been the warmest when it comes to our interactions these last few weeks, but surely he knows I’d always run to him if he was hurt, just like I know he’d run to me.
Or maybe he’s not so sure of that anymore, not after everything that’s happened between us.
I kind of forget he was unconscious for all of this time that I’ve been turning over what he told me before his surgery.
He has no idea what I’m thinking or how I feel about him. But it was never a question in my mind whether to be here or not. I barely had time to form a thought in the time between Isla hanging up the phone and me jumping on my bike.
“That’s looking good,” Sofia says, wrapping him back up with her delicate touch. “I’ll be back soon with an early dinner and a coffee.” She sends a pointed look my way and I just smile in appreciation before she leaves us alone. The room is somehow quieter now than it was while he was sleeping.
Nausea rolls through my tummy as Miles’s eyes continue to penetrate mine. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” he asks.
I stutter. “Like that .”
He just sighs, his eyes closing for a moment, and I wish he’d open them again. Even his assessing stare is better than not seeing those green eyes at all.
“Why are you sitting at my bedside?” he asks, and the question hits me like a gut punch. “You should be at home, burning my clothes and stomping around, huffing big, dramatic sighs when you think of me.”
“I do not sigh dramatically.”
“Yes, you do, and that’s besides the point.”
I drag my nails across my scalp. “What is the point, Miles?”
“That you should hate me more now, I told you everything. I told you the pathetic reason why I left you, why I broke your heart and here you are,” he gestures toward me with the arm not held up by a sling. “Supporting me.”
“Of course I’m here, Miles,” I sigh. It’s big and dramatic, just as he said. I press the heel of my palms into my eye sockets. “It takes too much from me,” I say.
Miles is quiet, and it makes me look up to check he hasn’t fallen back into sleep, but though his eyes hold exhaustion, they’re trained on me. Like he’s hanging off my every word in this moment.
“It takes too much from me to hang onto what happened. I have clung to it so tightly for four years, never giving up an inch. But all it has done has wrapped my hurt around my shoulders like a safety blanket. But instead of shielding me, that hurt just seeped into my bones. I wore it like armour, but as soon as I saw you at Isla’s wedding it was like you put a chink in it.
Then that phone call from Isla, and seeing you here like this, it smashed that armour to pieces.
I’m not going anywhere, Miles. Not right now. ”
His mouth parts, like his body wants to speak but he’s not sure what to say.
The buzz of his phone answers for him.
I reach for where it sits buzzing on the small table beside his bed and pass it to him, my eyes not leaving his, even to see who’s calling .
He looks down at the screen. “It’s my mom.” His eyes bounce between me and his phone. “Does she…? Has anyone…”
“Isla told them,” I say, nodding. I almost expect him to ask me to leave, but he answers, placing his phone on speaker and resting it in his lap.
“Hey, Mom,” he croaks.
“Oh my goodness, my boy! You’re awake, how do you feel?”
His eyes are closed as he answers. “The painkillers are doing their job for now.”
“Oh, honey.” Pain fills her voice. I couldn’t imagine having a child so far away and hearing that they’re hurt. I know how I felt when I heard and I was only an hour away. “And the surgery went well?”
“As smooth sailing as it gets, apparently.” He’s not exaggerating. When the surgeon visited us, he said it went well and that Miles should have a straightforward recovery so long as he does what he’s told and doesn’t test the injury.
“What’s happening with your job?”
Miles’s eyes close, like he was expecting the question, but like he’s exhausted by it.