While I Was Away(87)

Just Adele and Jones.

Just how it always was.

She moved cautiously around his hospital bed, eyeing all the machinery and the tubes and the wires. Had she looked like this? Like a cyborg recharging and rebooting?

Just a software update, folks, downloading heaven as we speak. Heaven, with a side of minor psychosis!

Adele shook her head. She'd managed to keep the hysteria at bay this whole time – she wouldn't let it take hold of her now. So she focused on the man in front of her.

He had two really impressive black eyes, and even under its bandage, she could tell the cut on the side of his forehead was deep. A stitch poked out from the white gauze, and she wondered how many it had taken to close up the wound. Wondered if he'd have a scar for life.

Just adds to his beauty.

His head was swathed in bandages, but she could still tell they'd shaved his hair. His messy, gorgeous blond hair, all gone. Would it grow back the same? Would a jagged scar leave a bald patch?

Just adds to his character.

She sat in the chair at Jones' bed side and stared at him. Then she reached out and grabbed his hand, praying his fingers would feel her, would squeeze her back.

But they didn't. They were limp and almost lifeless in her grasp, and she started weeping again.

“Is this a joke?” she asked. “I find you, and then I lose you? What, we're only allowed to be together in our dreams? This isn't fair, Jones. This isn't fair. You come back here right now.”

She stopped herself from saying more. What was she doing? She sounded angry, and in all her dreams, in the eternity she'd spent with Jones inside her mind, he'd never once sounded angry with her. He'd sounded concerned and accepting and happy and joyful and playful and ... in love.

She would give the same back to him.

“I know you're somewhere else and you feel all alone,” she whispered, scooting up close so she could rest her head on the pillow next to him and speak directly into his ear. “And I know it's strange and it's scary. But don't be scared. I'm right there with you, and I'll stay with you for as long as it takes to find your back.”

And then she did for him what he'd done for her so many months ago.

She talked.

She talked about her phone call with his dad, and she talked about his cabin. She talked about her time in design school, and she talked about her brothers. She talked about anything that came into her mind; anything he might find interesting.

She also described their poppy field in as much detail as possible, hoping she could take him there. And she threw in a memory from her youth – a tree house. He'd given her his cabin, so she would give him something of hers. She explained how it had been built onto a giant, old oak, and that it had been built solely for her, but her brothers had taken it over anyway. Which was okay, because even as a little girl, she'd always adored them.

“They mean well,” she explained, all while gently tracing her fingers down the side of his face. “And they love me more than anything, and they might be the only thing that gets me through this. So if they ever give you a hard time, just remember – while you were away, they took care of me.”

Adele talked for another hour. And then for the entire hour after that, and the next one, too. She talked until her voice was hoarse and she talked until the sun was coming up. She talked until she could barely keep her eyes open, and as her voice faded almost as quickly as her consciousness, she held onto his hand once again.

“I'm with you,” she whispered sleepily. “Wherever you are, or wherever you go next, I'll be there. I'll meet you in our dreams. I promise.”

And she would. This plane of existence or another. This life or the next. This reality or their dreams. She would go there and she would paint their world in bright colors and she would give him something beautiful to see in his sleep.

Because once upon a time, he'd done the same for her.

He helped me while I was way, and now I'll help him.

Always.





38




Jones turned in a circle.

“Hello?”

His voice echoed off into the distance.

“Is anyone here?”

... here ... here ... here ... here ...

Nothing. Just fog, surrounding him, enveloping him.

Fuck this.

He started running. He was a good runner, he could go for long distances, he'd completed several marathons. He could out distance this fog, he was sure.

But when his lungs were burning and his legs were aching and he was sure hours had passed, he finally came to a halt and collapsed to the ground.

Yet still the fog remained.

“Where am I!?” he shouted.

Once he'd caught his breath, he sat up and crossed his legs. Decided to take a different approach to the situation. He was a smart guy, relatively intelligent, he could figure this out.

“I'm not in L.A.,” he mumbled. The City of Angels saw its fair share of fog on the coast, but this was something else entirely.

And he wasn't back in Denver, he was sure of that – he hadn't been there in over six months.

Because I was too busy working. I had a new patient, she was special, I had to spend a lot of time with her.

“Adele,” he gasped, and he looked around again. “Holy shit, I'm dreaming.”