Page 57 of Holding Grace
Whatever had happened, I’d obviously messed up by not keeping a closer eye on her. That was a mistake I wasn’t going to make twice.
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WALKING INTO GRACE’S hospital room and seeing her lying in the bed, machines attached to her seemingly everywhere and an IV in her arm, was one of the toughest moments of my life.
The doctor had told me she was stable, in no immediate danger. I repeated those words back to myself as I stood just inside the door and took a shaky breath.
Grace was quiet, her eyes closed, either sleeping or still unconscious, I didn’t know which. The left side of her face was swollen and starting to bruise, and angry red abrasions marred the smooth skin of her right cheek. More bruising and scrapes covered her arms and hands where they lay motionless on top of the covers. A machine whirred softly, doing I didn’t know what, and a clear liquid dripped steadily and silently from the IV bag into the tubing attached to Grace’s arm, but neither seemed to disturb her.
I crossed the room and lifted a chair into place closer to Grace’s bed, then just sat and watched her, letting her quiet, even breaths steady me.
As messed up as it sounded, it was probably a good thing she was out, because I needed time to pull myself together. My hands still shook from the adrenaline that had shot through me after the doctor’s phone call. I had only a vague memory of the drive to the hospital. The whole situation had my protective instincts amped up to the maximum, with lights flashing and alarms blaring in my head. My emotions were all over the map – fear and worry for Grace, anger at myself for not protecting her better, and fury at whoever had dared to touch her.
In that moment, I would have given every last thing I had on earth if it would make Grace open those beautiful eyes of hers and look at me. But before she did, I needed to lock my shit down. The last thing she needed was me acting like a raging neanderthal. Even if every instinct I had was telling me to scoop her up, take her to my place, and lock her away from the world, that wasn’t happening. She was already running from two men trying to control her life – the very last thing she needed, hurt or not, was a third.
I lost track of time as I sat there, eyes pinned to Grace, cataloging every slight movement of her eyelids or twitch of her fingers. After a few minutes or a few hours, a woman dressed in red and black scrubs with her dark hair smoothed up into a ponytail walked through the door and gave me a smile as she crossed to the small sink to wash her hands.
“I’m Della, Grace’s nurse. And you’re her fiancé, right? Michael?”
I confirmed what she’d said as she dried her hands and watched her as she checked the machines and IV connected to Grace. Apparently satisfied, she turned to face me, her hands resting lightly on the rail of Grace’s bed.
“I don’t know how much Dr. Randolph told you when you talked, but our main concern is the injury to her head. We suspect that she has a concussion, though we won’t be able to really assess her until she’s awake. The scans ruled out any serious brain injury, though, so that’s a bit of good news. As far as her other injuries”...Della looked at Grace for a moment, then back at me... “she’s pretty banged up, but nothing appears to be serious.”
“Good.” I let out a breath slowly, not letting myself think about how much worse the news could have been. “That’s good.”
“Yes, it is,” Della agreed. “Now we just wait for her body to be ready to interact with the world again, and then we’ll see.”
“Is it bad that she’s still out?”
“Not necessarily.” Della paused as if weighing her words before continuing. “It’s hard to tell with head injuries. They can be tricky. The sooner she wakes up, the better, but until then we just make sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable.”
I rubbed my hand across my face. I’d do anything for Grace, but I knew my inability to fix this for her would eat at me.
“I’m not the best at sitting back and waiting for things to happen.”
Della laughed softly. “You and me both. Believe me, I understand. If there’s anything that working in the medical field teaches you it’s that our bodies, and especially our brains, do things on their own timeline and in their own way. We can try to influence things one way or another – and we do – but at the end of the day, our bodies do what they’re going to do in the way they’re going to do it.”
With a last look at Grace, Della stepped back from her bed.
“In the meantime, until Grace rejoins us, it helps if you talk to her, even read to her if you want. We don’t know exactly how much people hear or understand, but patients say they remember people talking to them, so something does seem to get through. And you can touch her or hold her hand if you want to, just be careful of the monitors and IV.”
She pointed to a plastic bag sitting in a cubby across from Grace’s bed. “Grace’s personal belongings are in the bag there. Her clothes, her bag, everything she had on or with her when she was brought in.”
She looked at me, her eyes tinged with faint regret that I didn’t understand until she spoke. “I’m sorry to say she wasn’t wearing a ring when she was found.”
It took me a second to process what Della was saying.
I’d said I was Grace’s fiancé. We were supposed to be engaged. Della was wondering about Grace’s engagement ring.
I swallowed hard as an image of Grace wearing my ring flashed through my head.
“Yeah...she, uh...” I rubbed the back of my neck, thinking... “She hasn’t decided on one yet,” I finally finished, hoping that whatever Grace might hear and remember from all this, that wasn’t it.
“Oh, that’s fine, then. I just hoped it hadn’t been lost or stolen.” Della headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a little while, but if you need anything, just push the call button or pop your head out and let me know.”
With Della gone, I lowered the rail on the side of Grace’s bed and moved my chair closer, close enough to carefully hold her right hand in mine. I looked down at her hand, so small and fragile as it lay in mine, my eyes tracing over the scrapes and bruises, evidence that, whatever had happened, she’d put up a fight. I blinked my eyes against the sudden moisture gathered there and swallowed hard against the lump that rose in my throat.
I stared at Grace, wondering exactly how and when she had become the center of my world. Because after this, there was no denying, even to myself, that she was. If, for some reason, Grace never opened her eyes again, never came back to me...