The Light of the Blue Pearl (20 page)

The voices must have seeped deeply into her
dreams; before he realized it she was looking up at him. She was
grinning too, a smile he couldn’t resist kissing.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did they wake
you?”

“Maybe, I don’t know…it doesn’t matter,” she
said, stretching a little but then snuggling back into him, not
quite ready to let the cold air touch her skin.

“I will have to have a word with them,” he
said, slightly annoyed that he had given specific instructions that
hadn’t been followed.

She giggled. “Oh, don’t worry about it, I’m
glad I’m up.”

Truth be told, so was he.

“Well, we only have a little while left
before we have to pack up and be off. But there is time for
breakfast. Go put your apron on; the chef wants to see you make
waffles.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” she said,
pulling the covers up higher.

“No?” he asked. “Oh, he will be so
disappointed.”

“You’re welcome to, you look much cuter in
the apron than I do anyway,” she said.

As if he had heard them there was a knock at
the door.

“Boy, they really don’t understand the
concept of ‘do not disturb’ do they?” he said.

She chuckled and pulled the covers up even
higher before he gave the consent to come in.

Carrying a tray of delicious looking food
was one of the waitresses from the night before. She set it down
next to Ethne and asked if they needed anything else.

“Nope,” Scott said. “Thanks.”

She nodded before leaving the room as
quietly as she had entered it.

After eating everything in sight they got up
and packed up the few things Scott had brought for them.

“This was a lovely surprise, Scott,” Ethne
said, as they stepped off the boat and onto the pier, the crisp air
making them both wish they were back under the covers.

“You’re welcome, Ethne. I only wish we could
have stayed longer but I have to work today.”

“I know, it’s all right, it was a lot of
fun.”

“Well, maybe after we go bungee jumping we
could do this again,” he said, playfully nudging her.

She was laughing when they rounded the
corner of the pier; they had both been looking at each other and
hadn’t noticed the blue car headed straight for them.

Scott saw it first and quickly pushed her
out of the way but didn’t have time to do the same.

He was struck on his side, the sheer force
of it throwing him up over the hood and back over the other side of
the car. She screamed his name and watched in horror as his body
rolled away from her on the other side of the street.

He had looked like a rag doll, not like the
strong man she had just been lying in bed with.

The driver didn’t stop, but sped away
ignoring the carnage he had just created.

She hadn’t seen the driver enough or thought
to take any plates in the confusion; the only thing she could think
about was Scott, who was on the other side of the street, not
moving.

With tears running down her face she raced
over to him to see if he was alive.

“Scott!” she said, so many times she thought
he would get up just to shut her up, but he didn’t.

He had blood on his head and a deep gash on
his side and multiple scrapes all over his body. She screamed for
help, although it was early there were a few people around.

Some of them came running over to see what
had happened. Others darted away quickly not wanting to be a part
of the drama.

Only one person was kind enough to call 911
for her while she sat next to Scott.

He was breathing, but was unconscious. It
seemed like hours before she heard the siren blaring its way to
them. She was in a complete daze, unbelieving and non-accepting of
what had just happened.

She had a few scrapes and bruises too. When
Scott had pushed her out of the way she had fallen, but she didn’t
feel any of them. She didn’t feel anything at all, except for
concern and fear.

The medics were assessing Scott and
preparing to load him in the ambulance while an officer questioned
her, but she wasn’t much help to him. She told him what she could
remember but instead just kept asking if she could go be with Scott
now.

Finally, he agreed and said he would be over
to see her in the hospital later to see if she had remembered
anything new.

She shook her head not following anything he
was saying and he helped her climb into the ambulance before they
closed the doors and rushed Scott to the hospital.

Per her request they took him to where they
worked, she wanted to be sure he got the special treatment he
deserved.

He was still unconscious which she took to
be a very bad sign.

The EMT tried to reassure her that such a
response after an accident like that was normal and that it didn’t
necessarily mean the worst.

She refused to have any false hope and was
only interested in fact at that moment, and the fact was, Scott was
barely alive.

Pacing the halls it seemed years had gone by
before someone came out to talk to her. They had spent far too much
time attending to her wounds, even though she assured them she was
fine.

They had insisted on getting her head
checked out as well considering her history, everything had come
back normal. Many of them kept repeating how heroic Scott had been,
that he had saved her life. Had she been hit, it likely would have
killed her instantly.

She didn’t need them telling her this. She
already knew how much of a hero Scott was. He had already saved her
life once already; the second one wasn’t needed to convince her of
his status.

The doctor sat her down before going over
the extent of Scott’s injuries.

“Okay, first…Ethne, I want you to take a
deep breath, you’re going to hyperventilate.

“Scott is out of the woods…for now,” he
said, taking her hand and trying to calm her down. “He is still
unconscious and there is some swelling in his brain, we are keeping
a close eye on that. Once it decreases I am very confident he will
wake up.

“He has three broken ribs and many cuts and
bruises, but the head injury and main point of impact on his side
are our biggest concerns right now. There is no internal bleeding
as far as we can tell, but he does have a lot of internal bruising
so we will monitor that very closely. Do you have any
questions?”

There was only one question in her mind that
she wanted an answer to.

“Is he going to die?” she asked. While she
had been listening to the list of Scott’s injuries, the
technicalities of it all made no difference to her – the overall
outcome did.

“No, I do not believe so, as of right now he
is stable,” he said, still holding her hand but not having much
affect on her physical state – she was still panicked. “Like I
said, right now we are simply in a waiting game until the swelling
goes down. Then we will see if he will wake up on his own.”

“Is he in a coma?” she asked.

“He is sedated, he may have already woken up
on his own by now, but it is safer for him if we can allow some
time for the swelling to go down before he wakes up,” he said.

“Oh…,” she said taking her hand back,
getting up and walking to the window to look outside. “Okay.”

The sun was fully up now and everyone was
going on about their day as if this hadn’t happened, totally
unaware that her world was falling apart.

“When can I see him?” she asked, still
looking out at what would have been a beautiful day.

“Right now,” he said, taking her elbow and
leading her down the hall to his room.

Scott was lying lifeless on the bed, hooked
up to monitors that were so loudly disturbing the room she felt
like putting her hands over her ears.

This was a far cry from the peaceful and
serene moments they had just had the night before.

He looked the same as he usually did, only
with a few extra cuts and bruises. Had you tried to assess that he
had a brain injury from his appearance you wouldn’t have been able
to, aside from a small cut and scrape on his forehead.

She sat down next to him and took his hand;
his finger was inserted into a monitor she was afraid to mess with
so she did her best to not touch anything but his skin.

“I’ll leave you alone with him; let me know
if you have any other questions…I won’t be far,” the doctor said,
before disappearing.

“Thank you,” she managed to say to an empty
room, time seeming to have slowed down to something like you’d see
on The Matrix.

If only time had been moving that slow this
morning, perhaps they both could have gotten out of the way of the
car. She still couldn’t believe this was happening.

Touching Scott’s face she traced the line of
his jawbone lightly with her finger, he seemed so fragile to her
now. He was fragile; she knew that – she knew everyone was.

“Scott?” she said, hoping he could hear her.
“Please wake up, Scott, I need you – I can’t lose you now.”

The tears seemed to be rolling down her face
constantly now. It was like she had turned on a faucet and left it
running. Her face, hair and shirt were damp from it all. She tried
to stop, but couldn’t.

She was scared to death, and there was no
one here to comfort her. Her only comfort was lying in a hospital
bed, near death, because of her – because he had saved her.

A huge pang of guilt flooded through her in
that moment as she retraced all of the reasons he was now where he
was. All of the reasons were because of her.

This realization made her want to run, she
felt like bad luck; a jinx that no one should be around. There was
a reason she had stayed away from people, maybe that was the reason
and she just had never wanted to admit it.

Scott lying there helpless and injured
proved that to her.

Had she not been the guilty party for having
put him in that hospital bed she would have run; gotten as far away
from him as possible so that it couldn’t happen again.

But she
was
the reason and there was
no one else here to be with him. She couldn’t abandon him; there
was no way she could do such a thing.

She loved him and jinx or no jinx that was a
fact.

After getting some Kleenex and doing her
best to squelch the tears, she sat down by him again not taking her
eyes off of his face; wanting nothing more than to see his eyes
open to look at her.

She knew it wasn’t in his power to do so at
the moment, but it didn’t stop her from wanting it.

After a little while of sitting there alone
she heard a tap on the door, there was a young woman standing there
holding her and Scott’s bags.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I hate to bother
you, but these were dropped off for you.”

“Oh…thank you,” Ethne said, not really
wanting to let go of Scott’s hand.

“You can just put them anywhere,” she said,
waving to one of the chairs nearby.

The woman gave her one of those ‘I’m sorry,
hope you’re boyfriend doesn’t die’ kind of smiles before leaving
her alone again.

She wasn’t really able to or willing to give
her the ‘It’s okay, I’ll be alright’ smile in return; she didn’t
know that she would be.

Their bags…only sitting a few feet from her
now reminded her of the fun night they had just had; she couldn’t
stop staring at them.

How is it possible that life can change so
suddenly? Instantly without even a second thought to its
players?

This was the reason she supposed that she
had locked herself away for so long; she already knew the
underhanded way that life tended to play.

She didn’t want to play anymore. She wanted
Scott back, that’s all she wanted.

It seemed days had gone by instead of merely
hours when a nurse came in to check on him.

“Do you know how long they plan on keeping
him under?” Ethne asked.

“I don’t,” she said. “But I can go get the
doctor for you so you can discuss it with him if you like.”

“Thank you,” she said.

When she returned with the doctor Ethne was
nearly asleep, she was exhausted and could barely keep her eyes
open.

“Hi, Ethne,” the doctor said, startling her
back to reality. “You have a question for me?”

“Yes, I was wondering how long you plan on
keeping him sedated?”

“Well, that depends on the rate at which the
swelling goes down, but it could be just a few days, maybe a week.
He was very lucky, Ethne, he has brain function and is likely to
heal from this, we just need to give it time; honestly given the
circumstances I’m surprised his injuries aren’t more severe – he
really is lucky to be alive.”

‘A week’…was all she heard. Well that and
‘lucky to be alive’.

She had to remember that doctors sometimes
had a way of doom and gloom. They tried to be optimistic, but in
their line of work, they saw it all, and unfortunately death was a
part of the equation.

It occurred to her she should have been a
doctor, she seemed to share their attitude on things.

“How are you feeling, Ethne?” he asked her.
“Any problems or injuries of your own?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, just wanting to be
back at Scott’s side and left alone again.

“Okay, well if you need me just have me
paged.”

“Alright,” she said, sitting back down as he
left her be once more.

Gently picking up his hand again she laid
her head down next to him.

She really hoped it would not be an entire
week that she would have to wait to see his beautiful eyes on her
again.

S
he had fallen
asleep almost instantly and was now being woken up by loud beeping
sounds and noisy people telling her she needed to get out of the
way.

Scott’s monitors were going off, he was
crashing and they needed to resuscitate him. This had not been part
of the deal.