She didn’t cry at movies. Erik had to think hard to remember if he had ever seen Daisy cry. Really break down and weep from her guts. Sometimes she choked up in the throes of an emotional moment with him, but he was always choking right along, which made it a sweet, shared cry. Once or twice he saw her reduced to teary-eyed frustration after a grueling class or rehearsal. But if dance were a cause for sobbing, it was with an air of “I’m letting it out. I’ll be over it in a minute.” Productive crying. Cathartic and purposeful.
But when they dialed back the sedation the next morning and let her come up through the fog. When she opened her eyes and took in where she was. When Dr. Jinani explained, and Daisy gradually began to comprehend what had happened. And when she finally went grabbing at her leg, struggling to sit up but only getting as far as an elbow, just enough to push aside the draped cage over her calf and see what had been done to her…
No, Erik had never seen her cry like this. It tore him apart, how helpless she was against it. She couldn’t roll on her side or roll against him or curl in a ball or fall on her knees with her face in the floor. She had to lie there on her back and take it. Take in how her leg was deliberately and gruesomely sliced open.
It didn’t matter it was done to save her life. It didn’t matter Daisy Bianco was a pragmatic girl who veered away from unnecessary drama and found comfort in practical action.
Nobody was tough when their leg was cut open from knee to ankle.
She cried into her hands at first, but then her fingers hooked into claws, her nails were in her forehead. She was scratching her face and then she howled like a widow, like a madwoman.
Erik peeled her hands away from her face, where already red welts were rising at her temples. He took her wrists, put them up around his neck, and he bent over the bed to hold her. Into his chest she screamed, her breath hot and wet in his sternum. No words, just a keening moan—a thick, drunken blur of despair.
He held her, knowing these tears would do her no good—they served no purpose, they would do nothing to fix her. But he didn’t say a word. Nothing he could say would console her. He wouldn’t insult her by even trying. He just made himself a strong and immovable wall for her to fling herself against. He held her tight and held still.
It was a long and ugly jag, with streaming eyes and running nose and dripping mouth all soaking into Erik’s shirt. Her hair a wild, sweaty tangle in his fingers and her skin hot like fire beneath her gown. She cried so hard she spiked a fever. She wept until she made herself sick, another moment Erik had never seen. Not once in twenty-eight months.
Daisy was particular about puking in private. She practically made Erik leave the state whenever she was hungover or laid low with a stomach bug. But now she was retching helplessly on her misery. A nurse was supporting her back. Erik was holding the basin with one hand, Daisy’s hair with the other, and he was helping her heave it up. As calm and unconcerned as the nurse.
“I’m sorry,” Daisy said, gasping between bouts.
“Don’t be,” he whispered, gently wiping her face with a damp cloth. “Just get it out of you.”
At Dr. Jinani’s order, the nurse put some kind of magic in Daisy’s IV line and within minutes she was out. Erik sat bedside, one hand holding hers, his other laid flat on her cooling forehead. Within his grip, her fingers twitching intermittently. Beneath his palm, her eyelids trembled and fluttered. She was asleep, but hardly peaceful.
Erik knew the fasciotomies were necessary and they saved her leg. Yet he sat with his insides twisting in misery. He could not bear to see her sliced open while he was whole and unscathed. The scales needed to be balanced. While he had no intention of putting his eye out or recklessly slashing himself, he still felt a desire to be scarred. He needed some kind of ritual injury, too. A permanent reminder.
Daisy, he thought. And he finally connected his love to an image of the flower, a little white-petaled ringlet. The spirit of Daisy, crushed and broken on the ground, trod upon and left to die.
I won’t leave. I will never leave you.
He set his lips on her temple. “I won’t let you die,” he whispered.
He had an idea.
*