27. #3
I couldn't remember getting here. The last place I remembered clearly was the hallway at my house, although even that came back in disconnected pieces that made my stomach tighten when I tried to arrange them.
Rodney.
The floor.
Grant.
I swallowed and immediately regretted it. My throat felt painfully dry, as though I hadn't had water in days, and when I tried lifting my head, pain spread from the swollen area above my eye through the rest of my skull.
I stopped moving.
The cold sensation in my arm finally made sense when I looked down and saw a thin tube taped against my skin. My eyes followed it toward an IV bag hanging beside the couch, but turning my head even that small amount sent a wave of dizziness through me.
The movement must have been enough.
Grant stopped speaking.
"Naomi?"
The woman turned at almost the same time.
I couldn't see her clearly from where I was lying. I registered dark scrubs and hair pulled away from her face before Grant moved into my line of sight, crossing the room so quickly that his features blurred.
"Hey." His voice changed completely when he reached me. "Don't try to move yet."
I wanted to ask him what happened.
I wanted to know how I'd gotten here and who the woman was and how long I'd been asleep.
My lips parted, but before I could force out the first word, Grant's face started losing its edges.
I blinked, hoping it would clear.
Instead, the room dimmed around him.
I could still hear Grant saying my name as my eyes closed again, and although I tried to hold onto his voice long enough to tell him I was awake, the heaviness pulling me under was stronger.
I never got the chance.
The next time I opened my eyes, sunlight filled the room.
It came through the narrow spaces between the curtains and stretched across the floor in bright strips, one of them reaching almost to the couch. I stared at it while I waited for the room to settle around me, afraid that moving too quickly would bring back the dizziness from before.
It was definitely morning.
Late morning, probably. The sun had risen too high for it to be seven or eight, and the house had that particular daytime brightness that made me wonder how long I'd been lying here.
Something warm and heavy rested across my legs.
I lowered my eyes.
Grant was asleep beside me.
At some point he'd pulled something close enough to the couch to sit on, although he'd apparently given up on sitting properly hours ago.
His head rested against my lower stomach, turned slightly toward me, while one arm stretched across my thigh beneath the blanket. His other hand lay loosely near my hip.
I couldn't remember ever seeing him sleep like this.
Grant usually looked peaceful when he slept. Annoyingly peaceful, actually.
He didn't look peaceful now.
There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and even in sleep his eyebrows seemed slightly drawn together. His hair was disheveled in a way I'd never seen it, several pieces falling across his forehead.
I watched him for a while.
My body felt impossibly weak. Not sore in one specific place, although there was plenty of that too.
It was deeper than soreness, as though I'd used every bit of energy available to me and my body hadn't figured out how to replace any of it yet.
Even lifting my hand from beneath the blanket took effort.
I managed it anyway.
A piece of Grant's hair had fallen near his eyebrow. I brushed it away carefully, letting my fingertips skim across his forehead.
His reaction startled me.
Grant's head shot up so quickly that I flinched, his hand tightening instinctively around my leg as his eyes searched my face. For a second he looked completely disoriented, caught somewhere between sleep and whatever fear had apparently been keeping him on alert even while unconscious.
"Shit. Sorry." His grip immediately loosened. "I didn't mean to scare you."
I stared at him.
He rubbed one hand over his face and moved closer. "How long have you been awake?"
I tried answering.
Nothing came out.
My throat burned the second I attempted to speak, and I stopped, pressing my lips together as I swallowed painfully.
Grant noticed immediately. "Let me get you some water."
He disappeared from beside me before I could respond.
I heard movement somewhere behind the couch, a cabinet opening and then the unmistakable clink of glass. Even without seeing him, I could tell he was rushing. Less than a minute later he returned carrying a glass with a straw already inside it.
"Can you sit up?"
I nodded.
That was apparently optimistic.
I planted one hand against the cushion and tried pushing myself upright, but my arm trembled almost immediately. Grant set the glass down and reached for me before I could struggle any further, sliding one arm carefully behind my shoulders and the other beneath my elbow.
"Easy."
I hated how much I needed his help.
Even with Grant taking most of my weight, sitting upright made my head throb hard enough that I closed my eyes. He waited until I stopped swaying before adjusting the pillows behind my back and slowly lowering me against them.
"You okay?"
I nodded again.
Grant retrieved the water and held it in front of me, guiding the straw toward my mouth.
The first sip hurt.
My throat was so dry that the cold water almost burned going down, and I winced before taking another, smaller pull. The second felt better. By the third, the dryness coating my mouth had begun to disappear, and I could feel the cool path of the water all the way down my throat.
He set the glass on the table but didn't move far from me.
"I just woke up," I managed.
My voice sounded terrible.
Grant's eyes moved over my face. "You woke up for a minute a few hours ago."
"I did?"
"Last night."
I vaguely remembered him standing over me. A woman beside him.
Everything else was gone.
I looked toward the windows again. "What time is it?"
Grant checked the clock hanging on the wall behind us.
"Eleven forty-seven."
Almost noon.
I frowned as I tried to work backward through the days. Yesterday had been my first day of class.
"Isn't it Tuesday?"
"Yeah."
"Aren't you supposed to be at work?"
"Naomi."
There was so much disbelief packed into my name that under different circumstances I might've laughed.
"You have patients."
"And I have people who can reschedule them."
"But—"
"I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."
The certainty in his voice quieted whatever argument I'd been trying to make.
Grant wasn't looking at me like staying home had been some enormous sacrifice I was now responsible for repaying. He said it as though there had never been another option worth considering, and something about that made my chest ache in a completely different place than the rest of me.
Then I remembered why he was here. The memories didn't return gradually this time, they flushed into my mind.
I raised my hand toward my forehead before I realized I was doing it. My fingers barely touched the skin above my eye before pain made me pull them away. There was a huge knot there, large enough that I could feel the swelling extending toward my eyebrow.
Grant caught my wrist gently.
"Don't."
My eyes burned.
I looked away from him before he could notice.
That was stupid. Of course he would notice.
He always noticed.
I concentrated on the curtains instead, blinking rapidly until the room stopped blurring for a completely different reason.
Rodney had done this before.
Not exactly this. There had been a head injury's , but I'd never remembered losing consciousness for this long, but I knew what came after Rodney hurt me badly enough that I couldn't be seen.
A nurse.
A locked apartment.
Sometimes a hotel suite arranged under somebody else's name.
Instructions not to leave until the swelling went down or the bruises could be hidden beneath makeup.
Rodney would make sure someone checked that I wasn't dying, and then he'd leave me there alone until I was presentable enough to become his wife again.
The memory made me look around.
This was different.
I knew it was different.
Grant was here.
Still, there was something humiliating about waking up like this again. Another room. Another person taking care of injuries Rodney had given me. Another stretch of my life that would have to stop until my body recovered from whatever he'd decided I deserved.
I was so tired of being injured.
Not just physically.
Yesterday morning I'd walked onto Georgetown's campus terrified but excited.
I'd sat in a classroom where people looked at me like I didn't belong and made the decision to go back anyway.
I'd gone to Grant's office and admitted that I wasn't confident yet but wanted to learn how to be.
Last night I'd sat upstairs in his bedroom talking about how maybe confidence was something I could build one decision at a time.
And hours later, Rodney had put me back on the floor.
My throat tightened.
Part of me wanted Grant to leave.
Not because I was angry with him. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to pull the blanket over my head, curl into myself and cry until I didn't have enough energy left to feel embarrassed about it.
I didn't want him to watch me fall apart again.
Grant had already seen too many versions of me that needed rescuing. Crying in his office. Showing up at his house afraid to go home. Flinching. Panicking. Apologizing. Now unconscious on the floor because my husband had beaten me badly enough that I couldn't stay awake.
I was sick of being broken in front of him.
Grant's fingers slid between mine.
I hadn't realized my hand was shaking until his closed around it.
He didn't squeeze hard or pull me toward him. He simply threaded our fingers together and rested our joined hands against the blanket over my thigh, his palm warm against mine.
"Don't do this to yourself."
I kept looking toward the window. "Do what?"
"Whatever you're doing in your head right now."
A tear escaped before I could stop it.