While I Was Away(34)

When he reached Adele's bedside, she was looking at a doctor, holding her mouth open while the man checked her tongue and throat. It was a little shocking. She looked so ... alive. He couldn't remember when he'd started thinking of her as a ghost, but he had, and now he felt ashamed.

She was still beautiful, but she looked different now that she was sitting up. She'd lost a lot of weight during her coma, and the loss of “baby fat” had sharpened her features. It really brought out her eyes, making them look large and luminous.

Then she turned to look at him, and it was like everyone in the room disappeared. The person who'd been the main component of his life for the last three years. The woman he'd shared a home with and a bed with; one of his best friends. He'd thought she was lost to him, and yet here she was.

I missed her.

“Honey,” her mother said. “This is Charlie. Remember Charlie?”

Adele stared at him for a moment, and her look morphed into one of confusion and fear. It startled him, and he glanced at her mother and the doctors.

“This is completely normal,” Dr. Martin spoke in a calm voice. “Adele's brain is ... still waking up. She may have trouble remembering some things at first, but don't worry.”

Charlie nodded, then looked back at her and managed to choke out, “Hi, Adele.”

“They ... they told me you were in the accident,” she started to speak. Her voice sounded different. Raspier, probably from lack of use, and she spoke in a halting sort of way, as if she was really concentrating on which words she wanted to use. “That you were in the car with me.”

“I was. I was driving,” he said simply, struggling to keep his smile in place.

“I know ... I know it wasn't your fault. And I'm glad you're okay,” she told him. He forced himself to smile.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm glad you're okay, too.”

There was a long pause and she looked like she was thinking really hard about something. Then, finally, she smiled back at him. A genuine smile – like a ray of sunshine that had been missing from his life for four months.

“And I'm sorry about the car,” she added. “You ... you loved that car. It was a beautiful car. I can remember being jealous of it, and I know I told you I hated it, but I promise – I had nothing to do with our accident.”

A joke. She was making a joke. She was remembering him, remembering them, and she was trying to make him feel better by making a stupid joke.

He couldn't keep it together. As he smiled, tears swam across his vision. He nodded his head and wiped at his eyes.

“I know. And thank you. Thanks,” he whispered. “I'm glad you're here, Adele. I missed you so much.”

Her smile faltered, but only for a second.

“I think ... I think I missed you, too, Charlie.

Then the doctors took over again, and he was glad. It was too much. So much more intense than anything he'd imagined. He shook free of Mrs. Reins and almost fell across the room, collapsing in a chair when he reached the far wall. He took deep breaths, trying to get a hold of himself.

“Surprised?”

He looked up to find her oldest brother standing next to him.

“Not now, Ocean. Not today,” was all Charlie said. There was a long silence, then the other man squeezed his shoulder.

“I just meant ... I know how you feel,” he whispered.

Neither of them looked at each other or spoke again, but Ocean left his hand there for a while.

And Charlie was thankful for it.

*





THAT FIRST WEEK WAS a blur to Ocean. Adele was moved to a whole different wing of the hospital, where a whole different barrage of doctors and interns were always rotating through her room.

She was a medical marvel, they were told, to have been in a coma as long as she had and to wake up relatively fine. They'd all been told that longer the coma, the greater the chance for brain damage. By that reasoning, and according to her doctors, Adele should've been grappling with some sort of cognitive issues, but she wasn't. Her memory was even back to normal – she could remember Charlie now, and she could also remember the day of the accident, though not the accident itself.

On top of mental issues, most coma patients also awoke to a plethora of physical problems. Her doctors had warned them she'd most likely need help walking, or talking, or using her basic motor skills. Her body's responses to her brain's instructions should've been significantly slowed down.

But they weren't. The coma had caused her to lose a significant amount of weight and her muscles had deteriorated some, and her leg was still stiff from the break, but that was it. She barely needed any physical therapy at all.

It was virtually unheard of for a four month coma patient to be in such good health upon waking.

Her story made the national news. It was kinda fun at first, watching August babbling to reporters on the nightly news, making an ass of himself. Seeing Adele's graduation picture in the newspapers, alongside a picture of the crash. It was like she was famous.

It stopped being fun, though, when a woman broke into her room and tried to wheel Adele out, all so she could bless the woman's coma-stricken son. Ocean had heard his sister screaming from down the hall. If her accident had shaved a year off his life, her screams had taken another five.