his face, so bruised and battered and her heart broke for his pain. “Probably not something you want to hear right now, though. I’m sorry. You’re probably thinking I’m totally insensitive. And you’d be correct.” She looked at him with soft eyes. “My only excuse is that, well, confidentially, you’re quite spellbinding. I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.” She grimaced again. “Not that we’ve actually met. Not officially, anyway. Nor will we ever meet. You’ll probably hate me if you knew who I was.” She was rambling now, but the doctor had said he could hear her so she shifted to other, more interesting subjects.
She continued to talk to him until her voice was hoarse and she couldn’t speak any longer. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but she fell asleep, her head resting against his hip and her hand holding his own.
Drake woke up at some point in the night, confused and in more pain than he’d ever thought was possible. He couldn’t move his leg and he slowly lifted his head in order to figure out why but even that was difficult. His leg was encased in a cast and lifted higher than the bed on some sort of pulley system. There were beeping sounds all around him, lights, white sheets, a hideous mint colored wall…he was in the hospital, he finally realized.
His face hurt like hell and he tried to lift his hand to figure out why but he couldn’t move his arm, which confused him. Nothing about his arm hurt. His ribs hurt, it ached to breathe, there was something seriously wrong with his stomach and he couldn’t believe the pain shooting up both of his legs. But nothing was wrong with his arm except that he couldn’t move it.
He laid his head on the scratchy hospital pillow, every cell in his brain aching with the pain shooting around in his skull. When he finally had enough energy, he lifted his head once again and looked at his arm and was startled to find the dark-haired beauty he’d seen earlier today. Or was it yesterday? He wasn’t sure what day it was, or even if it was day or night.
She was laying on his arm, her hair draped over his thigh with the curls wrapping around in places he really shouldn’t be thinking about right now.
He suddenly realized that she’d been crying. He wanted to lift his hand, to touch the tear tracks that had marred that beautiful skin but she was holding his hand tightly and he couldn’t move anything. In the end, he accepted that it felt good to just have her close, to smell that incredible, honeysuckle perfume, and listen to her soft breathing.
He closed his eyes, intending to rest for just a moment, but by the time he opened his eyes again, the woman was gone, replaced by a stern looking nurse who was trying to take his pulse.
“So you’re awake?” the nurse asked, her eyes assessing him carefully. Without even a smile, she wrote something on a paper attached to a clip board and walked out. “I’ll inform the doctor,” she said and she was gone. He wasn’t sure if his need for information was stronger than his fear of her harsh demeanor. He wanted to understand what was going on, but that nurse was a tough cookie and he wasn’t sure he could butt heads with her right now. Maybe later, he promised himself.
He slept fitfully for what seemed like a long time. Every once in a while, he dreamed that he was walking through the forest, surrounded by honeysuckle and he breathed in the scent, enjoying the calming effect it had on his pain. Every time he smelled her, his body ached just a little bit less.
Several times, he thought he heard her talking to him, telling him stories about…school? No, not possible. But she was giving him arguments for taking calculus and linear algebra, something about discrete mathematics and numerical analysis. Was she actually giving him the pros for statistics? No one liked statistics, he thought but his mouth was still too sore to actually form the words, and he couldn’t even open his eyes to let her know that he heard her. He smiled though. Well, at least he thought he was smiling. She certainly liked discussing math.
Drake liked math, could do complex problems in his mind, but he didn’t enjoy math simply for the challenge of doing math problems, which is what