Waking

Riley

My right hand is cold.

No.

My left hand is warm.

I don't know how long it's been like that.

I mean, I don't know how long I've been aware. I move my fingers and the warmth turns to pressure.

"Riley? Riley, can you hear me?"

Row. On the verge of tears. The voice once so soaked with surety and sex and song. It always tremors now. With anger or desperation.

I did that.

No, she did that.

"Riley, open your eyes. Look at me."

I open my mouth to tell her to sod off because she's the only goddamn thing I ever see when my eyes are closed—her and Aidan Mosteller— but no sound comes out. My throat hurts, and that awareness causes me to take a sharp breath and then...

Bloody fucking hell.

Everything hurts.

Then I remember. Terror and tumbling and the unnatural movement of the horizon as my car flipped over and over. And Row—with gray hair in a red cowboy hat— the last thing I thought I would ever remember.

I squeeze her fingers mostly just to see if I can.

"Riley! Riley!" she whispers-shouts.

I open my eyes, the light hurts—everything is a blur—and I immediately close them again, focusing instead on what I can hear and feel.

Row talking excitedly, calling the nurse, while a machine beeps and another machine whirs. That's what I hear.

What I feel is pain

Then alarm. Because I was wrong.

Not everything hurts.

My head hurts, my throat aches, my lungs feel like they are filled with glass and as much as that hurts it's even worse on the outside, so I must have broken ribs. But everything below that feels heavy and dull. No, not entirely. Something is wrong. It feels too heavy and numb. I try to wiggle my toes and I can't tell if it's happening or not, beneath the covers.

"Riley, don't try to move, okay? You have to stay still."

"Water," I croak.

Row is asking a nurse if I can have water.

"Of fucking course I can have water." My voice crackles imprecisely. Annoyed, I clear my throat and try again. "Rather necessary to life, darling."

She laughs because in my delirium I have called her a pet name that I haven't used in quite a while, I suppose. I would rather like to see the smile that accompanies her laugh, because I am pretty well buggered here. So even though I wouldn't normally allow myself the indulgence of looking her directly in the face, I turn toward the sound of her and work to make my vision focus.

Right, forgot for a minute—the gray hair is long gone, and with it the cheeky smile. She's bleached blonde now—with dark roots—messy extensions to her waist. Her expressions are more fragile—her eyes and mouth seem larger in her thinner face.

Even though she laughed, her smile looks painful.

Actually, she looks like she's been dying for days and days.

A year of bloody days and more. We both have.

The way she looks scares me and angers me at the same time, but I can't stop myself from trying to reach her, in my way.

"Rowan," I whisper.

She leans close, eager. Anticipating her normal scent, I find myself slightly disappointed. Row usually smells exotic...like a Moroccan spice market. It's her natural scent enhanced by the musky cologne she prefers. And the cigarettes, of course. There's none of the spice right now...just the scent beneath, which is something like skin of apples. I draw a long breath as she says, "Yes?"

I swallow heavily. "You look like hell. It's not a competition, you know."

"It is, and you win," she says, bringing the little grey cup with the lid near and pressing the straw between my lips.

Good god, this is what it's come to? A sip of cool water feels like the greatest pleasure in life?

"Slowly," the nurse cautions.

Holding my head up to drink becomes exhausting, and I let the straw fall away as I drop back onto the pillow.

"Was there another car?" I ask.

I'm begging God for the answer I receive. "No," Row says slowly. "Just yours. You went off the road, into a ditch."

"That's good." I gasp. "Very good. Charges?"

Row is no fool. She knows what I'm asking.

She shakes her head. "Not yet. The police want to talk to you, though..."

I nod. Of course they do. As they should.

The nurse asks me about my pain.

"Rough all over, a good bit worse around the ribs, and the pain in my back would be excruciating except for what's worse." I say tersely.

"What hurts worse?" Row says at once.

I pant just from the exertion of making that many words.

"My legs don't feel banged up at all" I say. I focus on Rowan's face. "Do I have a spinal cord injury?"

Row's eyes narrow in imitation of their old fierceness. "You're going to be fine."

"Rowan. Bloody well tell me-"

"Let's get you some pain medicine," the nurse interjects, and she pushes something into my IV. It must be morphine, because it acts fast.

"Goddammit, don't let them give me morphine," I grit out.

She knows I had a habit I worked hard to kick, after Priscilla. She knows I take nothing stronger than aspirin and booze.

"You're going to be fine," she repeats and then the old familiar haze becomes my lover.

#

I sleep until the pain wakes me, and then they give me more pain medicine and I sleep some more. After awhile, I simply fight to stay asleep because waking is just too terrifying.

It's not just my injuries that are terrifying. Or the pain, or the morphine. It's two other things.

It's the knowledge that Row is here, and I don't know how to feel about that.

Most of all, fully waking means facing what I did.

I made one of the worst decisions of my life, when I got in that car.

I wasn't fit to be driving. I could have killed someone.

Finally I just can't return to sleep anymore. Not even to escape that knowledge. Dreaming is a greater misery than  waking, so I open my eyes and keep them open.

Typically, my brain would decide to betray me in this way in the deep of the night. I turn the light on over my bed and study the large credenza on the opposite wall now filled with flowers.

What the hell kind of people send flowers to a hospital patient? It's a bit horrid, actually. Life, cut off in its prime, left to wilt and rot and stench. Much like me stuck in this bed. Or soon to be worse? Stuck in a wheelchair?

Christ,  this is insanity. Calmly watching flowers die, as if I have nothing better to do.

I have no idea how long I was unconscious after the accident, how long I've been in a morphine haze, what my injuries are. I reach down and pound on my legs lightly with my fists. Well, I can feel it, I think. Or it just that I feel the blow through my fist? I pound again. Yes, I can feel it but I don't think it's normal sensation. I reach beneath the covers, and scrape along my thighs, testing the sensation in various spots. Then I scrape my other arm for comparison. There is sensation, but not normal sensation, in my legs.

"Riley, what are you doing? Are you okay?"

From the dark corner beneath the window, Row stretches like a cat as she emerges from beneath a brown blanket and slinks toward the bed. She's pouring water from the pitcher, offering me a drink. I don't drink. Instead I bow my head. This is too much to bear. Completely immobilized, possibly paralyzed, without the slightest bit of self-determination. And Row, beautiful star, despicable wife, playing nursemaid?

Now she's raising the head of my bed, explaining that the nurse showed her exactly how far it can be adjusted.

"Would you like a sip of water?" she says, with the patience of someone talking to a child.

No, I don't want a bloody sip of water. I want fucking answers.

But obviously, I do want a sip of water because I'm sucking it greedily.

After several suck and rest session, Row smiles.

"The nurse said you could try to eat something."

I shake my head. "How long?"

"Since you've been here?"

I nod, tipping my chin for more water. She refills the cup and gives me more.

"Six days. For the first four you were basically unconscious. You've been in and out for the last two but not very talkative. Do you want me to get you something to eat?" she asks.

I consider. That's a long damn time without food. I shrug and nod. Row skitters quietly out of the door. She's gone long enough to make me anxious.

When she returns with a tray, it's filled with what I should have expected, if I had given any thought to the forthcoming "meal." Applesauce. Jello. Broth.

"You couldn't find a nice curry?"

"They save the good food for the celebrity patients. You're just a working stiff."

She pulls a stand near and sits down on the side of the bed, peeling back the foil from the applesauce cup, dipping the spoon in, yawning broadly as she stirs it. She holds the spoon out expectedly.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" I ask.

She looks confused. She gestures the spoon toward my mouth.

I roll my eyes at her and take the cup and spoon out of her hands. I'm shaky, but I manage. Immediately, she assists me by removing herself from the bed and putting the tray in her place, giving me somewhere to steady the cup and my forearms.

"Tell my about my injuries." I say.

"The doctor will come in the morning. He comes every morning."

"And does he discuss my condition with you?" I ask.

"Obviously."

"Obviously because you're posing as my wife?"

"I was your wife when you were admitted," she snaps back. "I was also your emergency contact in your phone, and you could have changed that at any time in the last year."

She's right, I could have.

"Tell me about about the goddamn mess I've made, Rowan," I snap. "Tell me or fucking go. Now."

"You failed to take a turn and went over a guardrail at a fairly high rate of speed."

"Yes, I remember that part. What's the damage?"

"You had a ruptured spleen that required emergency surgery, a punctured right lung, two broken ribs. There were some other repairs in your emergency surgery, too," she says vaguely.

I eye her suspiciously. It's hard to tell if she's being vague on purpose or if she doesn't know all the technical details.

I eye my IV and pump, then realize... I reach beneath the covers. "Awww...fuck."

Row's icy gray eyes go wide with sympathy. "Yeah, you have a catheter."

"That's going to be horrible coming out. But that's not the worst of it, is it?"

Row doesn't answer. She's slowly opening the Jello cup.

"Rowan."

"You have two cracked vertebrae in your lower back," she pats my arm, "The doctor said not bad at all. They operated and put a tiny plate and some screws to reinforce the vertebrae. The injury is causing some swelling and some temporary compression of your spinal cord. The swelling will go down. In the meantime, the doctor said it could cause pain in your back, numbness or weakness in your legs, or possibly trouble feeling your feet. Your spinal cord is not severed. You aren't paralyzed," she says quickly, placing a hand on my left leg, rubbing hard. "You can feel that, right?"

"Yeah," I say. "But it's like you say...numb."

"It will get better," she says firmly.

"That's what the doctor said?"

"He said with time and physical therapy, most people get better."

I push the tray away and pull back the blankets. I can move my toes, I just can't feel it all that well. I try to lift my right leg, and there's a shooting pain that races down my back, disrupting the effort. I try again, with the same effect. "Fuck."

"What's wrong?" she says.

"It bloody hurts, that's what wrong."

I try again, lifting a little more, ignoring the pain.

She looks alarmed. "Well, maybe stop. Let's wait and talk to the doctor in the morning."

I ignore her, trying to bend my leg sideways at the knee, practically writhing between the back pain.

"Riley, stop, okay? Pain is your body's way of saying stop."

"Well, you said fucking Aidan Mosteller was miserable but you kept on seven times, didn't you?" I snap.

She says nothing, just waits for me to give up on my ridiculous efforts to try to move. I lay back on the pillow.

"Is there anything else I should know about my injuries?"

"The doctor can explain it better," she hedges.

"You know we had a deal, right? That you would never lie to me again?" It was one of our agreements after the affair. I guess I can't really hold her to it now that we are divorced, but I've gotten used to reminding her of her end of the bargain and old habits die hard. "How much worse?"

"The deal was I would do all the things you asked and you would forgive. You quit on the deal, but I'll still keep my end. He said, even when the swelling goes down, sometimes...the function doesn't return one hundred percent. They call it a permanent partial spinal cord injury."

"Which means?"

"It could mean a lot of things. Varying degrees of impaired motor function."

"Meaning I might be in a wheel chair?"

"It's not going to happen."

"But it could?"

"I guess," she confirms. "But that's not going to happen. He said the majority of people with your injury recover."

I think of our Lion and his belief in karma. Is this what I deserve? For being an utter bastard to my wife for the last thirteen months? Is this what I deserve, for driving impaired with the potential to destroy someone else's life?

Yes, I imagine this is pretty well deserved.

"Riley, the doctor said you were lucky and most people with your type of injury get better. He will tell you the same thing tomorrow. You will get better."

She tosses my applesauce cup in the trash and pushes the jello on the tray to me. "Cherry is the best kind," she says lightly.

I close my eyes, suddenly exhausted and ready to sleep again. "Rowan, go home."

"I'm not going home. You need help."

"That's what nurses are for."

"That's what your family is for," she says with steady eyes, even though she knows exactly what my reply is going to be. My cruelty is precisely as predictable as my love once was.

"You're my not my family anymore."

"This is my fault," she whispers. "You were supposed to go to Trace's wedding. I know why you didn't. The same reason I didn't. You can't tell me this isn't my fault."

She means that it was her fault I got plastered beyond all reason on the last day of our marriage. It's not her fault. It's mine. I was the one who wanted the divorce. I am the one who can't forgive her but can't forget what loving her once was. I was the one wild with pain and anger who decided to drown it with a liter of gin, and when that didn't work, I tried to take a trip to her favorite secret Malibu beach, hoping I could channel the peace she seeks there.

Of course I don't say any of that. I say, "Your narcissism knows no bounds. Nothing in my life is about you anymore. We are no longer married. What, six days now, is it?"

"Yes. And I've been here the entire six days, and you've been aware for the last two that I've been here, and you're only trying to send me away now because you're scared about your injuries and you don't want me to see that."

"No, I'm sending you away because I don't want you here."

Her pales eyes are shiny with liquid hurt but they turn steely as she says, "Then why do you call for me in your sleep?"

Fuck. I could accuse her of lying, but I don't think she's lied to me once since she told me the truth about her affair.

"Because I'm in pain. A state that even my subconscious associates with you."

She sighs and pushes away the tray, while turning the light off over my head. "Are you cold? Do you want an extra blanket? Or your pillows a different way?"

I am too tired to fight with her. "Just leave the cup where I can reach it...and go."

She pushes the tray along side the bed and refills the cup.

"You didn't go," she says evenly. "When I was the one lying in the hospital bed in New Zealand, and the news you heard was much worse than this. You didn't go."

She means after her cocaine overdose. The news she's speaking of was not her prognosis, however. She told me right there in the hospital what she'd done with her co-star. In horrible, rambling unhinged detail. How angry she had been with me over the last long season of her show. How close she'd become with Aidan. How she'd had a horrible weekend binge, that including binging on her co-star. How she'd simply abandoned our vows to a den of depravity with him. How she'd kept trying to find something in the cycle of booze and drugs and sex. How she couldn't, because no matter how bad things had become between us, she still loved me. How she regretted cheating so much she'd considered suicide, which is how she'd ended up in hospital.

"I did go, Rowan," I say quietly. "I just waited until you were on your feet again."

"And that's twice you've got me back on my feet," she holds up her right hand, recalling her past injury. "Three times really, counting the miscarriage," she says softly. She rubs her face with both hands, Then she masters herself. "When you're better...it will be like you said. I'll go. This isn't about our marriage or what I did anymore. This is about..." she frowns. She's searching for a word she wouldn't normally use. "What's the word? Reciprica—"

"Reciprocity."

"Yes. Reciprocity. Thank you," she says. She sounds a little pissed that I supplied the word she was seeking, but she asked, didn't she?

"You're welcome."

Huh. Civility. Who knew it was still possible between us? Perhaps I can go again...

"Rowan, I appreciate that you've been here. But no one could possibly claim you are beholden at this point. I never did a thing for you with the expectation of reciprocity. I did it because—"

I stop. I did everything I've ever done for Rowan because I loved her. But somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like love to her. I do understand that. I just wish she had told me instead of allowing her reckless betrayal to hack us to pieces.

"Riley, I know our marriage is over. I didn't want to accept it, but you've made me a believer. We were already failing—nothing I did for a solid year before the...affair...made you happy. Then I cheated and you've treated me like shit since then. I can't fix it. I know I'm stubborn, but two years of fighting you is enough to convince even me that I can't make you love me anymore. But since our marriage is over, can you maybe just stop being so goddamn hateful? Isn't the opposite of love supposed to be apathy, not hate? So...find your fucking chill and let me help you right now, okay? It's the least I can do for you. And honestly? It's the least you can do for me. Let's get you better, so we can both finish on our feet. Does that sound like a fucking plan to you, love?"

She's fired up. She hasn't spoken to me like that since before her affair.

I sigh and lean against the pillows. Every single sensation I feel is misery. The only thing I haven't felt that was utterly hellish since the accident was the warmth of her hand. The truth is, I once craved the comfort of Row's touch like I have never craved anything else. That's as hard to forget as her betrayal.

With my eyes closed, I reach for her hand, and she meets me at once, with both her hands. The disadvantaged one squeezing softly, and her good hand stroking my arm.

"I don't have anymore energy to argue right now. Pain is exhausting."

"You can have more pain med—"

"I don't want more bloody morphine."

"Okay. No opiates. I'll tell the nurse to call the doctor. I'll insist on something else..."

I nod slowly. I don't know if I'm agreeing only to the medicine or to Row's continued presence, but it doesn't matter. When she puts her mind to something, there's no stopping her.