Chapter 14
Due to being as useful as a fart in the wind, Delilah has me brought into a nurses’ break room and splayed me on a cot.
Time seeps in drips and drabs, hours here, minutes there.
Exhausted doctors and nurses arrive off-shift and collapse into metal chairs, grateful to be off their feet.
I’m sure they begrudge me the fact that I’m on one of only two cots in the room, but I can’t seem to care.
I only leave my cot to use the bathroom or drink from the water fountain. Delilah won’t let me go anywhere else.
Some time later, maybe a day judging by how my stomach gnaws on itself, Delilah reappears in the doorway. The off-duty nurses turn and nod to her. She gives them a tight, insincere smile and beckons me.
“Lucy. Time to go.”
Her words lift and bid me to follow her, my body reacting without my brain. In my mind, I’m padding down the hallway toward my room, my mother tagging along behind me. I snag a book from the dresser next to my bed, flop into my covers, and await her voice to read me to sleep.
When I return to myself, I’m in a clunky metal elevator, chugging up two floors and into another beige, sterile corridor.
This floor is much quieter—doors closed, nobody zipping around with wounded people on carts.
We stop outside a door marked 729. Assuming Taylor is inside, I go to grab the handle but Delilah nabs my wrist.
“You should be aware of her condition first,” she says in a soft voice.
“Her condition?”
“Some burns. She was shot three times—once in the thigh, once in her left shoulder, and one barely missed her liver.” The hand Delilah has around my wrist tightens as the world spins without me. “Keep it together.”
With a gulp, I straighten my posture and try to radiate confidence. Delilah’s face makes it obvious I failed miserably. “What?”
“She’s in and out of consciousness. The doctors have advised me to limit visitors.
There’s a gash on her temple so they think she took a pretty bad hit to the head.
So…” Delilah sighs and places one hand on my shoulder, the other on my cheek.
Her scent of cinnamon and citrus grounds me. “Be patient.”
Once I acknowledge her advice with a nod, I turn and enter Taylor’s room.
Machines create a symphony of beeps and boops, tubes protruding from her like she’s sprouted vines.
A white sheet covers her body except for one arm and her head.
Her visible arm is the one she was shot in, wrapped in bandages.
My entrance doesn’t wake her. She lies in the middle of the bed, still as stone.
The tips of her flaxen hair are blackened and burned, brittle ends breaking off onto her pillow.
A soldier returning from war is always romanticized in fiction.
He drops his bag on the porch and takes his girl in his arms, twirling her around to swelling orchestral music, scene bursting with the final satisfaction of a longing ache.
Reality is far from romantic. It is painful and complicated.
Bittersweet. My mother always said that’s the best word in the English language, bittersweet.
No other word so deliciously contradicts itself.
Pleasure and pain fleshly entwined like feverish lovers, pushing one another toward mutually assured destruction.
There is no pain so acute as the unreachable ache of the bittersweet. That is how I feel.
I lift a chair and quietly plunk it next to her bed.
Not wanting to rouse her, I take her hand gently in mine and run my thumb along the mountain ridge knuckles on top of her hand, trailing down the rivers of her veins.
Even in her doped-up state, power coils in her hands.
Potential energy courses inside the muscles and tendons.
I wonder if she’s ever been soft with her hands.
Pet a kitten, held a baby, or run them affectionately through someone’s hair.
I don’t think she has. Probably a safe bet she’s been denied life’s gentle pleasures.
Every fading scar on her knuckles is a punch thrown. Every callus the memory of a weapon gripped. I’m busy ruminating on her hands when a tiny voice emerges, like a breeze through low brush.
“Hello again.”
Blinking over to her, my eyes go wide as her amber ones come into focus. They’re swimming, glossing over, but they’re there. She’s there. Awake, alive. She settles on me.
“Hello yourself,” I call back with what I hope looks like a smile. It hurts. “You came back.”
Taylor gives me a halfhearted eye roll. “I said I would see you in Lansing.” Her voice is dust, like someone has taken her larynx and crushed it. “Mason? Is he alive?”
“Yes, but I don’t know any more than that.” I’m ashamed I didn’t ask. I make a mental note to inquire with Delilah.
Taylor nods in understanding, closes her eyes, and presses her head back into her pillow. She squeezes my hand, tremors running through her fingers. “Don’t leave, okay?”
As if there were any choice. Her eyes peek open when I don’t respond quickly enough, mostly because I’m trying to figure out a way to speak around the lump in my throat. I can’t, so I nod. Taylor exhales a long, tired breath and relaxes. Other than her hand where her fingers still clench mine.
“You went through an awful lot of trouble to get out of giving me that hug.”
If Taylor could laugh, she probably would have. “On the contrary,” she whispers with a gentle smile. “I went through a lot of trouble to give it to you.”
And, how? How, through the relief and grief and jungle of emotions, how is she able to slice through directly to where my heart beats and bleeds for her?
“I’ll remind you when you’re not nursing three bullet wounds.”
It isn’t long before the exhaustion and drugs lull her into a much-needed sleep.
Once her hand releases mine, I get up and stretch my aching limbs to inspect the room.
Delilah got her a room alone, which is quite a feat considering how many people need a hospital room.
A suite, actually, as I scrutinize the room more thoroughly.
This may have been a labor recovery room in another time, when bringing life into the world was still worth celebrating.
The walls are painted a comforting beige and maroon instead of glaring white.
A television protrudes from the ceiling in the corner, guarded by two bulbous chairs on the floor.
An awful watercolor painting of a rainbow hangs above the bed.
What catches my attention is the red plush sofa near the window. I close the lights, and give her a final glance to ensure she’s asleep. I tiptoe over to the couch and perch my knees on the cushions, staring out the window. Heavy, thick gray clouds hang in the sky, ready to expel their payloads.
After watching the arrival of ambulance after ambulance, I lie down and kick off my shoes over the edge of the couch. It isn’t comfortable, but it’ll do. I’m not sure there’s a damn thing that could drag me from this room, including the offer of a real bed.
I’m almost asleep when the door creaks open and closed. In the darkness I easily make out the familiar form. Delilah. I snap my eyes closed and feign sleep like I did as a child when my mother came to check on me.
She sits down in the chair I brought bedside, stroking Taylor’s bedraggled hair as the soldier drowsily comes to. Peeking through one eye, I silently observe the tender moment between them.
“You gave me quite the scare, darling girl,” Delilah croons at her, sultry voice tight with emotion.
“Sorry.”
“Not the first time you’ve tested the fortitude of my heart. Remember when I caught you and Hunter on the roof of the hotel, daring each other to step on the edge? I nearly had a coronary.”
“She always got me in trouble,” Taylor whispers.
Delilah chuckles. “She did try. I never could stay mad at you.”
“I will get her back.” Her vow is solemn and firm despite her lack of voice.
“I know you will do all you can.”
Taylor coughs hard, wheezing, her lungs longing to expel the debris trapped inside. “I miss her.”
As a reminder that it’s still there, my heart squeezes and hurts inside my chest.
“I miss her too.”
“Do you think she’s alive?” Taylor asks, like a child would ask their parent to check for monsters under the bed.
Delilah sighs. “I do.”
“Do you think they hurt her?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. If they did, I’m sure she gave them a hell of a fight.” Delilah sniffles a few times.
“How is Mason?”
“He’s stable. In and out of surgery, but he’ll come through.
” It’s difficult to tell from here, but Delilah’s posture changes a bit.
Bad news looms, I feel it in my joints like a coming storm.
“They couldn’t save the whole arm. Once he’s healthy enough for travel, he’s going back to HQ.
They’ll develop a prosthetic for him in no time.
” The room falls eerily quiet, save for the beeping of machines.
With Delilah’s back to me I open my eyes entirely to get a full view.
“I’ve informed Theia. When you’re well enough, she’d like to speak with you. ”
“Is she mad at me?”
I could throttle that woman for making Taylor dependent on her affection. She’s starving for Theia’s approval and receives only paltry portions. Never enough to satisfy, leaving her with a constant hunger.
“No, darling. She’s worried about you, and proud of what you’ve accomplished. The whole region is nearly under our control. Theia is preparing a victory speech to be broadcast on the television stations you commandeered.”
“What victory? I let my brother down.” She heaves another heavy sigh, punctuated by a short fit of coughing. “How has Lucy been?”
Lucy is curled on your couch, overwhelmed with emotion and barely holding herself together. A canoe, held aloft by a rock, teetering on the edge of a waterfall. That is how I am.