Chapter 7 #2
“Kat, don’t worry about me,” I try to tell her.
It comes out unintelligible, and she takes her eyes off the road to look at me, her expression full of worry, cornflower blue eyes stricken with panic.
Pain rips through my body like a streak of white-hot lightning.
Who knew a little spider could take down a full-grown man on one of the happiest nights of his life?
Then my whole world goes black.
* * *
When I wake, my airway is blocked, and I immediately try to rip the tube out of my throat that seems to be suffocating me. The gesture sends multiple alarms into high gear, and then a nurse is hovering over me, trying to explain to me why I’m here.
Her pleasantries do nothing to calm my fears, and I grab for the IV in the ditch of my arm and rip it out. Blood squirts out everywhere.
The hospital room floods with light and medical staff, and soon someone injects me with a sedative that immediately puts me out.
Hours later, I open my eyes again to find myself bound to the hospital bed in four-point restraints.
“Where’s Kat?” I ask in a scratchy voice that doesn’t sound like my own.
“Miss Shaw comes nearly every day,” the nurse tells me. “She should be here around four. You’re lucky to have such a supportive sister.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You came in early June, I believe. It’s November now, Mr. Clifton, almost Thanksgiving. Five-ish months, is my guess. Hopefully, you can be home with your brother and sister for the holidays.”
I cringe at this woman calling Henry and Kat my siblings, but I try not to let it show.
“Toxic shock set in and you eventually slipped into a coma. You’re lucky to have that leg, Mr. Clifton. The doctors here at Stony Brook worked nothing short of a miracle on you.”
I move my legs when she says it and breathe a deep sigh of relief when I can feel both of my limbs.
“A spider bite did this to me?”
“A brown recluse, Mr. Clifton. An extremely dangerous spider. You’re lucky your sister saved the specimen so it could be identified, and the doctors could proceed with the correct treatment.”
I bring my hands to my face and scrub my fists through my hair and groan.
Not because of the time I’ve lost, but because of the nurse insisting on calling Katelyn Shaw my sister when she’s anything but.
I’m so head-over-heels in love with Kat, I need her more than the oxygen that runs through the cannula in my nose.
I feel depleted from just a few movements.
The nurse finishes changing the IVs and raises the bed so I’m inclined on my way to a sitting position. An orderly enters the room and sets a tray of hospital food in front of me, but I have no appetite.
“Do you want to see the infection site?” the nurse asks me.
Her bedside manner isn’t the most comforting, and maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems like she enjoys revealing the horrors of my situation to me.
“I guess so.” I don’t want to see it. I want to get the fuck out of this hospital and see Kat. I don’t like the idea of her being alone with Henry in Wainscott Hollow for five months without me. “Now that I’m awake, can I get discharged?”
“Ha!” the woman scoffs at me.
The nurse shakes her head as she comes around the bed and untucks the sheets. She seems to be scolding me with her mannerism as she pulls the bedding, lifts my hospital gown, and undoes the dressing.
I don’t gasp or yell but instead say only, “Fuck,” when I see the blackened tissue and hole in my leg that goes through to the bone. “Jesus, a fucking spider, huh?”
“Necrosis, Mr. Clifton. Like I said, you’re lucky to have your leg. The doctors have it under control enough that you’re out of the woods as far as amputation, but you’ve still got a ways to go toward healing,” she tells me.
Before she’s done debriding the wound, Kat walks in.
She’s clad in a red turtleneck sweater which reminds me that our summer of freedom and celebration is long gone, and cold, gray weather is upon us.
The sun has gone down on all the hope we were building.
Our new future now lies in the wake somewhere behind us.
“They called and said you were awake,” she whispers. Kat removes an elastic from her wrist and ties her long wild hair back before moving to my side.
My throat is choked, and I can’t find the words to tell her I’m sorry for exiting our lives, for leaving her alone in that scary house by herself with the bane of our existence. I never meant to abandon her, abandon us, cancel our plans—maybe permanently.
She wrings her hands and sits by the bed but keeps her distance from me. I can’t put it into words, but something has changed between us. Kat’s eyes are tired and have deep dark circles. If I weren’t the one in bed right now, I’d wonder if we’d both spent the last few months in a nebulous sleep.
Nurse Ratched eventually leaves us alone, but the gloom doesn’t go away.
“I’m sorry, Kat. I had no idea. I didn’t mean to put you through this.
” I can’t imagine how I’d feel if Kat fell into a coma, what I’d do if I weren’t sure my other half was gone and might never come out of it.
“I hope they’ll let me come home soon.” I reach out for her hand, and she keeps hers guarded in her lap.
“I’ve missed you so much, Kat. I’ll die without you,” I say as my eyes start to well with tears.
I wasn’t aware time was passing, but I feel gutted by the idea that we’ve been separated, our plans thwarted by such an unforeseen deviation.
But most of all, I’m horrified that I left her alone.
Alone in that house, alone with the demons that live in every alcove.
She lowers her eyes in shame and bites her lip. “About home, Heath. I don’t think you should come back to Wainscott Hollow. You’ve been gone a long time, and a lot has changed.”