Living Out Loud (Austen, #3)(87)

Annie turned her head, her eyes glassy and struggling to stay open. Her lips moved, but no sound came. She swallowed and took a more purposeful breath. “Greg…”

My heart skipped a beat, and I stepped to her side. Her hand lifted. I took it.

With my other hand, I cupped her cheek, now free of tape but still tethered by an oxygen line. “Hey, Annie.”

She smiled, just the smallest curve of her lips. “You…found…me…” The laborious words were almost inaudible, a shallow breath needed to power each one.

“I found you,” I echoed.

“Don’t…go.”

To that, I smiled, my eyes teeming with tears. “Don’t worry—I’m not going anywhere.”





24





Yours





Annie

“That’s disgusting,” Meg whispered in wonder two days later, hunched over the photos of my exposed heart during surgery. “There’s your superior vena cava,” she said, pointing at a thick blue vein, “and that’s your aorta. I can’t believe they cut through your sternum, Annie. Do you know how much power it takes to crack that bone?”

I flinched against the visual and the following wave of nausea. “No”—I took a breath to power the rest of the sentence—“and I’d rather not know.”

Mama laughed. “Come on, let’s put these away.”

Elle swept the photos into a stack, separating them from the little instant photos I’d taken over the last couple of days, and put them back in the folder I hoped never to see open again. Meg watched them disappear before lighting up again.

“Please, can we watch the video of your surgery? Pleeease?” she whined.

I laughed, the sound quiet and rough, my throat still shredded from being intubated. “Never in a million years.”

“Can I see your scar again?” The hope on her face was almost comical.

I waved her over, and she climbed up the bed, mindful of the tubes. I pulled the neck of my robe down and lifted away the top of the taped bandage, already loose from showing her twice that morning.

“Cool,” she breathed, eyes wide. “There are actual staples in you. You’re a badass, Annie.”

“Meg!” Mama scolded, shocked.

But the rest of us laughed, and after a second, Mama was laughing too.

The last two days had been a blur of pain and commotion. I’d been moved out of ICU and into a regular recovery room where I got no rest, in part because nurses made their rounds about one REM cycle apart and otherwise because the crushing pain was so immense, it was impossible to ignore, pain meds aside.

The first day was the hardest. I barely remember waking, only flashes of fuzzy memories like a disjointed dream. I drifted in and out once I finished with all the doing; I had to stand, move around, speak, prove that I wasn’t in distress, regardless of the fact that the movements themselves put me in their own form of distress.

The pain was indescribable, white-hot and blinding, requiring all thought, all energy to endure. And when it was through and I was left to rest, I slipped away into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke, it was to tears.

I’d thought it couldn’t hurt any worse, but it did. People joked about feeling like they’d been hit by a bus, but that was honestly the closest I could come to explaining it. It was like I’d been crushed, shattered, and sewn back together, my bones stinging and burning and rubbing against each other like sandpaper. I couldn’t breathe past the most shallow of breaths, my throat a wasteland, dry and lined with glass. I wanted to drink, but the water hurt, the force of my muscles working my throat hurt. Everything hurt. So I lay there, parched and obsessively considering each pain, wondering how I could possibly survive this, wondering how long it would be until I felt better, if I would ever feel better.

Somehow I’d made it through that night. And the next morning, it was better. Not very much better, but enough to give me the first glimmer of hope.

And this morning, I’d woken to improvement, leaps and bounds ahead of where I’d been.

It felt like nothing short of a miracle.

Greg had been there through it all. I remembered flashes of moments—lying in his arms in the park as I’d said goodbye, the vision of his face in the ambulance with the humid oxygen mask on my face, wondering if I was going to die, holding his hand when I’d woken, knowing he’d been there all along, knowing he’d stay.

And so, I was in good spirits, good enough to let Meg pull out those gruesome photos of my open chest and bleeding heart, which, in hindsight, I regretted. What little food I’d been able to keep down churned in my guts, even after they were packed away.

Meg chattered on, relaying medical facts about the heart, and I looked over my family—my mother in her wheelchair laughing, the sun shining in her blonde hair; my elder sister smiling, her cheeks rosy and high and happy; and my youngest sister with shining eyes, everything about her vibrant and alive. And my heart beat a sweet, solid rhythm for the first time in my life. My hands were warm and full of color. My body, as broken as it was, was already healing, and my heart itself had already healed.

The hole was gone, all patched up, and not a bit of happiness would be lost again.

A knock sounded on the door, and Meg bounded off my bed to open it, my heart picking up pace when I saw Greg standing in the threshold with a bouquet in his hand.