forty-one: in which she has an eye-opener

"I'll keep breathing 'til my heart stops" –Too Far Moon, 'Til My Heart Stops

********************************

It looked like he was just fast asleep. Dreaming peacefully, even.

Megan wheeled me inside his room in the ICU, IV drip and all, putting the brakes on after she'd left me by his bedside.

"Tell me," I demanded.

"Collapsed right lung. There were...multiple gunshot wounds," she said quietly, smoothing creases she probably thought she saw in the counterpane spread over Jacob's lower half. "The doctors are waiting for him to wake up on his own, but at least the surgery went well. He's going to be fine, Maya."

"Can I just...be here?" I pleaded, looking Megan in the eye. If she said no... Said I was too weak, too fragile to just sit here with the man I loved... I wouldn't know what to do.

She was chewing on her bottom lip, clearly torn. "Five minutes, Maya," she answered, her voice stern. "Dr. Anderson will kill me if he either finds you in here, or finds your bed empty. I'll be outside."

"Thanks."

"Five minutes."

The only sound that was a constant in the room was the steady beeping of the machines Jake was hooked up to. The noises were a constant reminder that he was alive, was here, and he would make it. He would.

"Look at us, Jacob," I whispered, reaching for his hand to take it in my own. "Look at you."

His hand was warm, but he didn't squeeze mine back. I tried to swallow past the ball in my throat and failed.

"I didn't want to see you, you know. I didn't want to have to watch you take one look at me and blame yourself." I swallowed, preparing to force the next few words out of my mouth. "I didn't want you to feel guilty. But you know what? You should feel guilty. People died. I nearly died. And I...I almost killed. How do I go back from that? How?"

Of course, there was no answer. His eyes remained shut, and all the while, the machines were beeping. And beeping, and beeping.

He looked so different like this. In the past, I'd watch him sleep sometimes; watch his face contort into a grimace during whatever nightmare he'd have, watch his face relax and his lips tip up into a smile while he dreamed about something that made him happy.

But right now, with his skin pale and his body too still, he looked like a corpse.

I couldn't take it. I slid my hand out of his.

Megan came in once my five minutes were up. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah," I told her, closing my eyes. "I'm ready."

***

"Now, sweetheart, let's see how loud you scream... Scream, Maya! Scream, damn it! Maya!"

The voice seemed so faraway, yet so close at the same time. It was my name, over and over again. Not a man's voice – not his voice – but a woman's.

"Maya? Maya, wake up! It's just a nightmare," she was saying, and slowly, my eyes opened.

"Mrs. Adeola?" I murmured, rubbing my eyes before doing a double take. "What are you doing here?"

"Bringing you something worth eating," Moira's voice came from in front of the windows. "Hospital food is shi- Terrible."

I let out a pleased sigh. So that was what that delicious smell was.

Moira's mother was still standing, arranging Tupperware containers on my bedside table. She picked up the tray of my leftover lunch, bringing it up to her nose and sniffing. "My goodness, are you sure this isn't what's been keeping everyone sick here?"

"Mom, come on," Moira scolded her, coming to stand beside me. She gave me a smile. "Hey, stranger."

"Hey, stranger," I said back. "What time is it? I've missed you."

"It's just after three. And I've missed you, too."

"This your week off?" I asked. She was wearing a blue-and-white sleeveless dress and her curly hair was in a bun. The make-up was minimal, but as usual, her eyeshadow was a vibrant color. It was blue today. "You look nice."

"Thanks, sweetheart. And yeah, I'm off. Work has been hectic. The old folks really miss you." She heaved out a sigh. "You look much better than I expected."

"For someone who was tortured and almost died?"

"Exactly."

"Moira," Mrs. Adeola said in a low voice, "have some manners."

"Mom, that was a compliment."

Her mother made tsk-tsk noises as she regarded me. Her coffee-brown eyes were full of concern. "How are you feeling now, my dear?"

I liked Moira's mother. The few times I'd met her, or been invited to Moira's family home, she'd seemed jovial and kind-hearted. She was a round woman who never wore pants – only skirts and dresses – and loved cooking so much that she'd opened a West African restaurant only a few blocks from the hospital. While Moira was tall and dark, like Mr. Adeola, her mother was fair and a little on the short side, and despite being fifty, had barely any wrinkles.

"I'm doing much better," I lied.

Physically, sure. I wasn't in that much pain when I'd woken up this morning, and I'd even managed to make it to the toilet unassisted.

But emotionally? Mentally? Not anytime soon. I was having bad dreams – dreams in which I was covered in blood, drowning in it; dreams in which James McNally was gutting me like a trout while I watched, feeling everything. I kept remembering Sticks' face, remembering how much blood had spurted out from the slash across his neck.

It was tearing me up inside, this survivor's guilt, and it didn't end once I woke up. It only got worse. But I would tell everyone that I was okay because I had to be. I just had to be okay.

Mrs. Adeola nodded, seeming to accept my answer. She proudly held out the container of food, pointing out the Jollof rice and beef stew, telling me that she hadn't made it spicy. My stomach growled in anticipation of edible food.

"Thank you," I said to her, knowing that she didn't have to do this, didn't have to come here. "Thank you."

"You're most welcome, Maya."

If I ate while I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend that I was at the Adeola household with Moira for lunch on a hot Saturday afternoon. I could almost pretend that I wasn't bruised and broken and bandaged in this air-conditioned hospital room while my boyfriend lay unconscious in the ICU one floor down.

Almost.

Moira and her mother steered clear of any conversation that involved what had happened to me. It was as if that topic was a landmine that they were carefully trying to avoid stepping on. Moira made an effort to keep me in the loop about what was going at the old-age home, telling me about the deaths, about the other nurses. Apparently, they – we – were demanding a five-percent salary increase, something that was being reviewed by the board.

"So, hey, when you get back, you can expect more dollars in your pocket," Moira finished with a smile.

"And here I thought you didn't do your job for the love of money," her mother said with a snort, folding her arms across her chest.

"Well, I do have to eat, you know."

"You come by the restaurant almost every day after work for free food! I'm going to have to start charging you, Moira."

I listened to their back and forth with a smile on my face, thinking that I could actually fall asleep to the sound of their voices. If I slept now, listening to them, maybe my dreams would be of fried rice and my workplace, Rose Haven...

But that wasn't what I dreamed of. Not even close.

"Sex is on your mind 99% of the time, isn't it?" I said, fighting back a smile.

"Pretty much," he replied with a sly grin.

"Well, can you channel that 1% and tell me how you got your nickname?" I drew away from him and sat at the foot of the bed and looked up at him expectantly. "And don't spare any of the details, Ripper. I want to know everything so we can start on a clean page."

"Everything?" He looked like he wanted to eat me. Again.

"Yes. Tell me a story. Your story."

"You know my story, babe," he said, sitting beside me. "You know everything there is worth knowing about me."

I lay back on the bed and he followed suit, linking his fingers with mine. "Why do they call you Ripper?"

"Probably 'cause I ripped a guy apart for calling me stupid."

I eyed him out of the corner of my eye. "You know you're not stupid."

"I don't wanna get into that right now," he said, his clasp of my hand tightening. "But you really wanna know what my story is?"

"Yeah."

"Fine. I guess you could say I was always ashamed that I wasn't like everyone else," he said after a while, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. "Baron was smarter than me – still is – and my old man had an IQ that was supposed to mean he was fuсking brilliant. Meanwhile, I was fuсking up my ABCs. My teachers – the fuсking inspirational bunch they were – said I was doing it on purpose, screwing around to be funny. So in the end, I gave up, pretended it was all a joke, accepted all the detentions."

"That's messed up," I whispered, feeling sore for the confused, angry kid Jake must have been.

"I guess. But I was angry, more than anything. At myself, at everyone. And I took that anger everywhere with me. Carried it into my adulthood." He let out a loud breath, turning his head in my direction. "I'm messed-up, Maya. I don't know what the hell I did to deserve you."

I put my hand on his cheek. "Do I make you happy?"

Jake's brow creased. "What kinda question's that? Hell, yeah."

"Then you deserve me. Just go with it."

His lips curved up into a smile. "Don't have to tell me twice."

I sat up. "Isn't that spaghetti getting cold?"

Laughing, he pulled himself upright and we both stood. "Yeah. Let's go eat. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get to hear the story of how I got the sexy scar on my top lip. There's a knife involved."

"Oh, your mom told me the real story," I told him, allowing him to throw his arm over my shoulder. "Didn't the diamond on her wedding ring catch that mouth of yours when she slapped you that one time?"

The next day, his cheeks looked like they had a little more color in them.

The machines were still beeping and he was still breathing, on his own without the ventilator – but his eyes were still shut.

Nevertheless, I talked to him like he was awake, and Megan allowed me to sit with him a little while longer.

I had believed that I was keeping it together, but I completely fell apart when Baron shuffled into the room. His face was too much like Jacob's; his voice almost the same. I was in the wheelchair, and he had to bend in half to hug me, but he did it all the same. I held onto him, burying my nose into the spot where his neck met his shoulder.

"Hey," he said gently, "don't cry. Don't cry."

But the problem was, once I started, I just couldn't stop.

"They'd told me you didn't want any visitors," Baron was saying, stroking my head. "That you weren't ready."

"I...changed...my mind," I choked out, pretty sure that my talon-like nails were digging into his skin through his thin cotton T-shirt.

"I'm glad to see you."

"Glad you're alive," I said on an exhale. "I'm glad you're alive."

"Yeah. Me, too." He sounded subdued.

Eventually, I released him, and he immediately went to his brother's side. "Still no change?"

"The nurse told me his vitals are up. And they are."

Baron nodded, dragging a hand through his wild dirt-blonde hair. I noticed the bags under his eyes, the faint stains on his T-shirt.

"He'll be fine," I told him. "He's the Ripper, remember?"

Baron nodded repeatedly, eyes trained on his brother. "It's just... He's my brother. My only family. I was so scared I was going to lose him this time. Coming in everyday, seeing him like this..."

"He's going to be okay, Baron. He just has to wake up."

"I know, I know." He pulled at his hair, cursing out loud. "And...Bree isn't pregnant."

"Was she...supposed to be?" I asked, maybe just a little eager to not focus on what wasn't happening with Jacob.

"She thought she was. That's what saved our lives, you know?" He released a bitter laugh. "Dragging her to the nearest pharmacy so she could get a stick to pee on. Maybe if I hadn't left the clubhouse to go do something so stupid, I could've –"

"You could've what, Baron? Gotten yourself killed as well? Or, maybe, you would've been clubbed over the head and abducted like I was. Great options, don't you think?"

Blood...

Blood...

Blood...

Baron hung his head. "I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry about. It was..." My voice trailed off when movement from the bed caught my eye. "Baron, did you see that?"

"See what?"

"His fingers moved!"

"That doesn't mean anything, does it?"

"Well, they weren't moving before."

"They've stopped."

"Things like this tend not to happen when you're watching intently."

"Great," Baron mumbled. "Ripper has performance-shy fingers."

Despite everything going on, I laughed, and it felt so good and excruciatingly painful at the same time, that I laughed some more. Baron looked at me strangely for a few seconds before his laughter joined mine.

My laughter ceased the moment Jake's eyelids fluttered and it looked like he was waking up.

Author's Note: Next update - May 20

Radish update: May 20

P.S. This is a little random, but I went for an eye test yesterday because of all these migraines I have been getting for months now, which I'd chalked out to stress, and it turns out that I need specs. Oh, what joy. Anyway, don't ignore migraines, especially ones behind the eyes, because you never know what the real problem could be. This has been a random PSA with Kimber Lee ^^

"Tell me your story," she said. And so he did.