Sexy Hart (Sexy Series) (37 page)

I shake my head as I begin to cry again, this can’t be happening. I want to talk to him, touch him, kiss him… maybe he’ll wake up when he hears me… feels my skin… I can’t sit here doing nothing; I need to help him. His body is so big and strong, yet he’s lying there so weak; it just seems so… impossible.

Emily stands and walks to the far corner of the room, facing the wall, and she looks up at the ceiling as if she’s praying.
My heart breaks for her, it’s her boy! Her perfect baby boy who so adores her, he can’t be taken from her, from us, he can’t be taken from me, he’s mine; he’s finally mine after all these years of loving him; he’s my best friend, he’s the father of my future children, my husband.
My husband.
Oh dear god, I don’t know how I’m supposed to cope with this, I need to stand or walk or… something, I don’t know.

“Can I touch him?” I whisper to Bea and she simply nods and tells me to double check with the doctors. So I slowly stand, brushing my dress, nervously, as I do, and step over to the side of Oliver’s bed, weeping as I take a closer look at his perfect face, flawed by those dark, black bruises. “Um… please could I… could I touch him?” I ask, tentatively and the doctor responds, letting me know that I need to be careful of the tubes, but it’s best for us to touch and talk to him, let him know we’re here.

I look over to Emily to get her approval but she’s still facing the wall, her hands on her cheeks, suffering in silence. Bea sits on my chair, her knees brought up to her chest with her feet on the seat, resting her cheek on her legs, so I decide it’s okay for me to take this moment to try to communicate with my beautiful, handsome man.

I slip around to the other side of his bed to hold the hand with no tubes near it
; the hand that bears his wedding ring. As I slip my fingers inside his, his warmth surprises me - his lifelessness and knowledge that they’ve reduced his body temperature makes me imagine his body to feel very cold, but it’s not, and though it’s no incredible sign that he’ll be okay, it’s a comfort anyway; he
is
alive, he’s in this room with us, just sleeping… sleeping very, very deeply and he will come around soon, the Oliver I am so completely in love with will be back soon.

Fearful to move anything, I bend down to press my lips against his fingers, and then his wedding ring, and I rest my cheek against the back of his hand. One of the nurses brings a chair over to me and I sit without even thanking here, too preoccupied with the feel and smell of his skin.

Closing my eyes, I savour every second of his heat permeating my skin, and as I lean against the bed to rest my cheek more permanently against his hand, I stare up at his face and watch his body move as he breathes, the oxygen mask clamped over his mouth, unsympathetically pressing into his nose.

“I love you,” I whisper, not wanting everyone to hear me. “I love you more than anything in the entire world, I won’t be able to live without you, Oliver. Please wake up, please? Please?” I whimper, fresh tears running down my face and onto his skin. I clamp his hand in both of mine and bury my face in the sheets and mattress at the side of the bed, the pain is indescribable, my chest hurts intensely.

All of a sudden, and really quite randomly, I have an urgent need to know exactly what happened to him and exactly what the doctors are expecting. I lift my head from the bed, refusing to let go of his hand and I clear my throat before asking the question with a raised voice so that everyone in the room is listening.

“How did it happen?” I ask, demandingly. “How did it happen and what’s going to happen to him? How long ago was the accident? How long has he been here? All that stuff you’re writing…” I say, raising my chain towards the clipboards, “what is it? What are you expecting? When will he wake up? Can he hear me? Is he in pain? Can’t you give him something to wake him up? Will he be brain damaged?” My voice becomes louder as panic begins to set in about exactly how serious this situation is, even if he does wake up, will he be the same? Will he remember me? “When can I take him home?” I cry, loudly, “
he needs to be at home! He needs to be at home,” I sob, hysterically, before quietening, whispering as I look at him, “with me… holding me, taking care of me, making babies and starting a family… I want to look after him.”

Bea watches me and bursts into tears again, leaning against the side of the chair, covering her face with her hands and shaking her head. Emily is at my side, immediately, bending to hug me, and I release Oliver’s hand with one of mine
; only one, to rest it on Emily’s shoulder as she comforts me.

“Oh, darling…” she says, “you love my boy.”

“Oh god,” I cry, “I love him so much, why is this happening? We’ve been so happy… I hate that you don’t know that. We’ve been so excited about our future and having a baby and everything. I thought I might have gotten pregnant once, though we hadn’t planned it. Why wasn’t I? He’d wake up if I was pregnant, he might never have been at work if I was pregnant - we could have had a doctor’s appointment or a scan or something…”

“Sweetheart, this would have happened one way or another, somehow this is meant to be, I can’t understand why right now, but there is a reason we’re being put through this, there’s a reason my boy is lying here… but he’ll be back soon. He will. I know my Oliver, he won’t leave us.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What for, darling?” Emily asks.

“This; getting hysterical; making you comfort me when you’re having to see your son here, like this… lying to you about not having met anybody recently; not telling you.”

“You have your reasons. Of course, I’d like to talk all about it with you both, but right now, the fact is,
you’re my son’s wife. I love you and I wouldn’t have picked anyone else to be with my Oliver. You’ve always made him smile and love, Clare. Don’t think about that for now - we can get used to that fact later, when things are a little more normal.”

“You’re amazing,” I say, absolutely believing it. “You’re the strongest, most loving and welcoming woman I have ever met.”

“I’m not all that strong, I just need to keep focused for Oliver, right now. I’ve also been here longer than you so I’ve been able to get my questions out, though I still have many. Here, let me get a chair and we’ll try to get some of yours answered.”

She pulls over a chair to sit next to me, next to her son, and Edward quietly comes back in. “Anything?” he asks. Bea and Emily simply shake their heads and he nods once in response, his face sullen and expressionless. He sits on the chair next to Bea and opens his arms to her, inviting her to sit on his lap for a cuddle.

“Daddy, I’m twenty eight, I’m too heavy for you now.”

“Nonsense, you’re still my baby,” he says, patting his lap and she instantly leaps up and curls up her arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder.
“Okay, okay, he’ll be right as rain, darling,” he whispers soothingly. I can’t imagine my father ever doing something so tactile or affectionate with me.

I look back over at Oliver, checking for anything new
; a movement, an expression… anything. But there is nothing, and I sink into a slouched, defeated position.

“What happened darling, is that he fell from quite some height,” she says, quietly, taking a deep, painful inhalation as she frowns, looking at him, a tear falls from her eye and she rests her hand on top of ours, connecting us all. It’s almost as if she’s offering her blessing. “He was on some scaffolding inside one of the buildings they’re working on, I’m not entirely sure what happened but it seemed he lost his footing or something, and the scaffolding hadn’t yet been completed so…”

I nod, not needing to hear anymore about the fall. I feel sick at the thought.

“He was the only one inside and there was a lot of work and commotion outside, so I believe there is a chance that he may have been there for a while, but we don’t know, it’s rather unclear at the moment.” I gasp and throw my spare hand over my mouth, my poor boy could have been lying in pain or unconscious for god knows how long.

“Someone called an ambulance, it was around three or four, he was in and out of consciousness at that time, which is when he asked for the ring and for you, darling. Of course, no one knew who his wife was and his phone was locked with a password so they couldn’t check his messages or anything. He wasn’t able to help with that. Which is why it took a while to get hold of you. I wasn’t really thinking straight to work it out, until Bea said Daniel had called you to come and then something just clicked, I knew it was you.”

I nod, guiltily, saying nothing. She simply squeezes my hand. What a stupid fucking secret. If we’d been out in the open about it, or at least told people that we were seeing each other, I might have been able to get to him, maybe even on site while he was conscious… or maybe not. I don’t know.

“The last thing he spoke… would you like to know?” she asks, considerately.

“Oh, yes - please.”

“He said, ‘please, I want my wife’.” She squeezes my hand again, tightly and offers a sympathetic smile as my heart rips in two, my soul destroyed at the thought of him asking for me and I wasn’t there - I couldn’t get there, and nobody knew how to get hold of me.

I simply close my eyes and drop my chin to my chest as I let the warm, salty liquid drip onto my lap. I sit, silently like that, for a moment before Emily begins to speak again, moving on, helpfully.

“He obviously has the head injury, but has also broken a couple of ribs and his collar bone.”

“Oh dear god,” I whisper, my voice quivering, “I can’t believe it. He was so ‘okay’ this morning…”

“I know, I know. I can’t stop thinking about our last conversation - just yesterday, and he was so happy and normal… now look at him,” she says, holding her hand out to his unresponsive body, her chin quivering, her strength diminishing before my eyes. ‘One minute I think I can be positive and work through this, and the next I’m a wreck… he’s my baby boy, Clare…” she cries, quietly, and I can only wrap my arm around her, holding her close to me as our other hands remain connected with Oliver’s.

Edward looks over at us helplessly as he comforts his daughter and I simply smile, sadly, offering sympathy in any way I can - not that it’ll help.

“Anyway, where were we,” she says, wiping her cheeks and sitting up tall, composing herself for her own sanity. What else did you ask? When will he wake - oh, yes, and if they can give him anything. Well, as they have given him drugs to deepen his unconsciousness, he won’t be coming around naturally yet. They said they could keep him like this for anything between a couple of days and a month, depending on the swelling. Once they gradually wean his body from the drugs, it will be just a matter of waiting to see when he will wake naturally. So the answer - we don’t know.”

“It’s all just so… so quick, I mean - how did this all happen in such a short space of time? It’s… it’s so horrible.”

“They had to do it quickly, darling…”

I nod, not wanting her to elaborate further as to why. “So… what will happen? Will he have any… any brain damage?” I ask, one of the hardest questions to ever come out of my mouth, other than having to ask Alexia if he had died.

“We don’t know yet. Nobody knows until he wakes up what he will be like. They said if he’s otherwise okay, he might have post traumatic amnesia for up to about a week, and may never recall the accident, but they just don’t know how he’ll respond when they lessen the drugs.”

“So… could he not wake up?” I ask, my voice a whisper. She squeezes my hand tightly.

“I can’t even bear to think about it, Clare.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m just trying to get it straight in my head because I’m unlikely to remember. I feel like this is just an awful dream, a terrible nightmare that I’m not waking up from. I’m listening to everything you're saying but I feel like I’m going to need to ask all of this again… how do you remember it?”

She shakes her head and sighs, “I don’t know. I just have to… I need to keep my head working to be able to function… it’s my coping mechanism I suppose. Hopefully one day I will be able to forget all of this information and enjoy my beautiful son again.”

I nod, though I don’t really understand because I’m more of a hysterical crier when it comes to upsetting situations.

“They don’t know if he can hear us,” she says, looking at his face, “but they said that we should talk to him anyway, I like to think it might help or soothe him a little, knowing we’re here.”

I suddenly realise why maybe I should try to control my emotions, I’d hate for him to be able to hear me and be worried about me - he’d hate that he can’t comfort me… and Bea and his mum and dad, he’d hate to have us all here upset and not be able to get up and give us a cuddle.

I sniff and straighten up, just like his mum. I need to be strong for him, like she is, I don’t want him to hear my heart breaking, I don’t want him to worry - what if it makes him sad and it affects something… no. I need to be strong.

I take a deep breath and nod
, I can do this. If I need to break down - I’ll do it later, outside or something.

I turn to look at his face and squeeze his hand. “Okay, darling. I’ve stopped with the hysterics now, you don’t need to worry about us,
we’re fine. We know you’re going to be okay. I just can’t wait to speak to you again, I want you to look into my eyes and tell me you love me before you grab me in that overly-dramatic way and bend me over your knee to kiss me. You’re going to make me that chowder when we get home because only you know how to make it exactly how I like it, my attempt was terrible, you remember? It tasted like old dishwater. Anyway, I put a super-hot dress on for you tonight, I know you can’t see it because you’re sleeping, but you can be sure I’m going to wear it again.”