“Thank you, God, thank you…” He leans up, kisses me lightly before sitting back down, and starts to rub my arm again. I can tell from the way his lips are pressed tight, and the slight flare of his nostrils, that he’s trying to compose himself.
Destiny comes back in the room, and she gives me the pain meds, and checks the machines one more time before leaving. I try to stay awake, afraid that if I fall asleep, I might not wake up again. Clearly understanding me better than I understand myself, Beck recognizes my reluctance to close my one good eye. He brings his face back to my ear and starts to whisper softly, again.
Between his deep voice speaking softly against my neck, and the strength I pull from just his touch, my eye starts to close, and my heart starts to calm. The last thing to filter through my mind as I listen to his voice is how lucky I am that he’s even here. It doesn’t even matter that I can’t even understand the words, he’s here. For everything that I’ve put him through, my depression and PTSD, and my stupid mind letting the past rule my present, he still hasn’t given up. If this isn’t proof of just how far he really will go to fight for me, then I don’t know what is.
I let his love wrap around me, and drift off to a dreamless sleep with the knowledge that when I wake up he’s still going to be here, and it’s up to me to fix this now.
When the doctor finally told me she would be released, I want to actually hug the lady. For the last week, I’ve sat by her side, hoping and praying that I would finally get to take her home.
First, they wanted to keep her because of the swelling to her brain from repeated blows. God, just hearing them say that over and over had my body ready for a fight. When her head wasn’t the main worry, it seemed that her kidneys were. And finally, a few days ago, she stopped pissing blood. We would’ve been out of here before now, but they wanted to monitor her kidneys to make sure there wasn’t anything else going on.
I think we were all ready to get her out of this room and back to Georgia. Dee was starting to get frustrated with the constant poking by the staff and lack of good food. All I could do was smile, because even though she was here, she was fighting mad. The important part was that she’s here at all.
Being this far from home wasn’t ideal either. Having to keep everyone back there up to date with her progress had become more annoying than anything else. Somewhere around day seven, I finally passed the phone to Maddox around day seven and told him to keep them fucking happy. To be honest, I didn’t really give a shit about keeping anyone up to date.
I only have eyes for Dee, and all my focus is on keeping her comfortable and making sure that she feels safe. I look over at her sleeping face and I physically hurt when I see how swollen it still is.
When she finally opened her left eye two nights ago, just a crack, she announced that she could see. We all released the collective breath that we had been holding since the doctor had warned us there was a chance her vision could have been impaired from the injury.
Her eye really was the least severe of her wounds. There wasn’t much of her body that wasn’t covered in nasty black and purple bruises, right down to a few of her fingers.
I lean back in the chair that I’ve pulled up next to her bed, and let my mind think about the call that we got Monday morning that all but stopped my heart.
When Maddox came bursting through my office door with enough force to literally rip it off the hinges, I knew something was wrong. All it took was one word—Dee— and I was out of my chair and following him out the door. Coop had already brought the truck around, and we hit the road from there.
He filled me in during the drive. Her assistant called his phone in a panic. She had come to work to find the whole office trashed. She would have missed Dee, but in her panic, she tripped over some overturned boxes. When she fell, she had a direct line of sight into the break room. By the time she had gotten to Dee’s side and called 911, she said she could barely find her pulse. That was the last update we got. I spent the rest of the car ride thinking that when I finally made it to her, she would already be gone. The unknown was bad enough, but when I couldn’t stop thinking about what I would do if she were taken from me, the crushing agony was almost too much to bear.