I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew but I still looked to him for an explanation.
He turned away from the sun, making to leave with a gentle smile on his face, but pat me on the shoulder first as he looked towards his car. "She’s stronger than she looks.”
I shut my eyes and let my head fall, listening to the sound of his footfalls until they faded and I was left with a million emotions spinning around my head. The most prominent, fighting and clawing its way through everything else, was hope.
Chapter 68
Lily
I was wading through chest-high water in a pitch-black space. Unable to hear, see, or feel anything other than the pressure on my lungs and the pull at my waist that delayed my movements.
There was no pain here. No anxiety, or sadness, and yet I felt like I needed to keep moving. At least until the darkness cleared.
Time stretched on in this lonely place as I slowly drifted — drifted but remained completely still. My mind wanted to move forward but my body refused to budge. Surrounded by never-ending shadows, I tried to call out but had no voice. Instead, I was met with a soft and distant echo. Another voice, soothing and deep, drifting through the darkness from miles away.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I turned to find it, pushing against the drag of the water.
There, floating far in the opposite direction, was a very faint, hazy light. A grayish opening in the black. The closer I drifted to it, the more the black faded. Changing to a grayish-blue haze of smoke. The water was non-existent but the feeling of it remained. Like a numb embrace around my middle and down my legs.
I was here for too long, searching for a voice that never returned.
Something brushed through my hand at one point, but I couldn’t see it. Not when the feeling gently tightened around my palm and in between my fingers. It was gentle and comforting. An urgency to find where it belonged made me push forward again until something else brushed across my forehead. A very brief caress and then it vanished.
It was too silent in this place, save for a distant and steady beeping.
The faint smell of coffee and perfume danced across my senses. It seemed to clear the fog enough to allow visions to flood in. The drag of the invisible water eased, and I was struck with vague flashbacks. A loud eruption. No, a gun firing, followed by a slicing, burning feeling passing through my body. It replayed too fast, but the pain drew out again before I was numb.
A second flash turned everything white and too bright as muffled sound rushed in around me. The beeping was louder, paired with murmuring voices nearby.
Dull aches and stiffness quickly raced through my libs. That numb, weightless feeling was replaced by the sensation of lying down for too long. I wanted to move but I couldn’t. But I was running in my head, trying to find a way out of this blinding light until I was dragged forward into darkness again.
This time, the only light here was filtered through my eyelashes.
My eyelids felt like they were glued shut as I struggled to pull them open. Everything hurt and was too much of an effort to move, as I grew used to the feel of my body again, and then recognized the subtle tugging through my side.
I could feel the tubes and leads strapped to my body. The needle in the back of my left hand, the pulse monitor on my right middle finger, and the nasal cannula across my face. Gauze was wrapped firmly around my waist, layered in bandages that felt too warm. The blankets felt too warm, but I had no energy to move them.
Unsticking my tongue from the roof of my mouth, I managed the weakest of groans.
“Oh my goodness, she’s awake.” Soft hands cupped my face as my mother kissed my forehead. Her voice shook with emotion. “My baby.”
The room hazily came into focus.
Mom was on my right, sitting the closest as she stroked my hair and wiped tears from her eyes. When someone gently squeezed my left hand, like my dream but not quite the same, I found Dad on the other side of the bed. He kissed the back of my hand.
I blinked tiredly, bringing my gaze to the end of the bed where Jane stood. She chewed the inside of her cheek as tears welled in her eyes. That alone seemed to stir up some sense of reality in this whole situation. My brain felt foggy but seeing her so upset had me reaching for her.
She moved quickly down the left side of the bed.
Dad stepped back to let her through, saying something about getting a doctor as he headed for the door.
Jane hesitated once she was at my side. Her eyes scanned my body and everything attached to it — the IV and other tubes tucked beneath my hospital gown. She was silently questioning if it was okay to hug me. I wasn’t even sure if it was okay to hug me.
I wasn’t even sure I was truly awake.
I lifted my hand towards her, and she took it instantly, hugging my forearm to her chest as she cried quietly.
