Page 31

It was like a dream where everything that happened around you was out of your control. Lena felt like she was floating. Her whole body felt both light and heavy at the same moment. There was no more agony or misery, only quick flashes of old events from the past that rushed by her in a whirlwind as she hung there, what seemed to be in the middle of an infinite pit.
There were beeping sounds coming from far away. They reverberated till they turned into a never-ending ringing sound. She heard hurried voices, some of which sounded familiar and some that didn’t. People all around her were talking worriedly and, at times, angrily, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t figure out what they were saying or where it was coming from. It was hard to understand, and it was quite aggravating when the brief flashes of persons and things, the annoying ringing tone, and the rushing voices yelling things that didn’t make sense all mixed together.
She had exhaled in relief when, all of a sudden, everything went quiet. The flashing lights, ringing sounds, and persistent voices faded away as a chill that made her feel numb spread across her body.
A cool air that made him feel uneasy blew over Kellen, and he opened his eyes with a start. He didn’t know when he had fallen asleep with his head on the cool glass of the window.
He couldn’t put into words the type of terror that crawled up his spine. It completely took over him and his heartbeat in a crazy way inside his chest.
He instinctively turned his head toward the glass that Lena was behind.
That was when it all started. Lena’s body started trembling in spasms at the same moment as alarms went off. The equipment connected to her also started making a lot of noise.
He couldn’t breathe and felt like his feet were made of lead. A lot of nurses and physicians rushed in. They started working on her right away. Kellen didn’t know that when he proceeded with shaky feet toward the open doors, a male nurse pushed him, but the push didn’t bother him. His biggest dread was coming true.
He stopped still at the door as he heard the few words that reached his ears. “Her pulse has dropped.” “We’re losing her.”
There, in that frigid, quiet condition of being stuck…  The empty space surrounding her was filled with funny light. And it became brighter and brighter until it was so dazzling that it hurt to look at. She would have closed her eyes if she could, but as in dreams, she had to keep staring and waiting for something she didn’t know. She saw two faces in the distance, and her heart raced with delight when she recognized them.
“Mom… Dad!”
She felt comfortable and at ease in a way that only parents can give. After a long time, her heart was full of joy, and her lips turned into a real grin.
Kellen had moved a little closer in the middle of all the nurses’ work. He could see her face as he looked over the doctor’s shoulder. He saw that her lips had extended into a little smile of happiness. He had once loved her grin, but later, he had ruined it. He would die to see her grin again, but right now, seeing it made him feel uneasy.
She was going away from him.
When she saw her parents waving at her and telling her to come to them, she started to slowly walk toward them, almost as if she were floating in the breeze. She couldn’t help but be pulled in; it was like a spell. Her mother raised her hand for her to clasp, and her eyes filled with tears of joy. For the first time in a long time, she felt loved. She wanted to hug her parents and tell them how much she missed them. She wanted to tell her mother how much she missed her lullabies during the hard days she spent alone. Like a kid, she wanted to hold her father’s index finger and go away to a place where everything was fine.
As she started to run now, memories of happy times from her youth flooded her mind. Her mother sang to her; she had birthday parties and the first day of school. Lena remembered that hide and seek was her favorite pastime. She used to feel like she had conquered the world as she jumped around the corner where her father liked to hide. She used to yell with joy…
“I found you!”
“We lost her.”
Lola cried loudly from the door. Ryan appeared too shocked to do anything while Lola hugged him.
Kellen blinked since the announcement shocked him. He looked at Lena’s still body without blinking. The flat line on the heart monitor made him feel like the devil was laughing at him. He could feel arms pushing him back and attempting to get him out of there.
Dr. Robert was next to the bed. He moved his wrist to check the time with a frown on his face. “Time of death…”
“No!” Kellen yelled, and that’s when he pulled aside the hands that were pulling him. “Lena can’t die. No.”
Dr. Robert turned to the younger doctor with the clipboard, ignoring all the cries but not without a compassionate gaze. Ryan and Lola had gotten closer by then, but they were both too sad to do anything about Kellen, who was still in denial.
At first, Kellen got down on his knees next to the bed and begged her to wake up and open her eyes. But then his voice got angry when he didn’t get an answer. And soon, he started to cry hard.
“I swear,” he said, his face pushed into Lena’s hand as he cried. “I swear I’m going to kill myself, Lena. Please! You can’t punish me like this, in any way, but not like this. God damn it, Lena!…”
Ryan snorted from the foot of the bed, “She’s gone, Hart,” and aggressively wiped away tears from his cheeks. He had this urge for revenge that was seething in his blood. “Why don’t you go back and celebrate?”
Kellen glanced up with shock. He shook his head in pain. He had done nothing except push her away from him all these days. And now that she had made the last step away from him, he was abruptly alone and sad, with a big hole in his heart where it used to be. He kissed Lena’s icy hand tenderly after bringing it up to his lips. He kissed her, and tears mixed with it. He could hardly see her through the haze, and her soft hands caressed his shaking, wet lips.
She was only a few steps away from them. As the faces became sharper, the overwhelming joy appeared to be a part of her. She could also see a little bundle in her mother’s arms now. A little face came out from the beautiful ruffle of the clothes. For a while, it confused her, but then she felt the familiar pain of losing love. Her baby!
A few more steps, and then we’ll be there.
But suddenly, it felt like warm liquid was on her fingertips. She raised her hands out of curiosity. It appeared like drips of dew were falling down her hands.
The quiet and peace were replaced by the familiar sounds of a woman’s pain, one voice full of anger and another full of hopeless despair.
Things started to change.
The space surrounding her got so much bigger that she stopped feeling like she was flying, and her parents’ and baby’s beaming faces disappeared. She wanted to yell, “No, don’t leave me again!” but the anguish in her head made it impossible.
A beeping sound started somewhere in a steady pattern. She wanted to throw a fit to make the unpleasant sounds stop, but instead, she opened her heavy eyes to see weeping faces and barely understood their shocked looks.
But her gaze traveled past their faces and looked out the window of the room she was in. The first rays of sunlight pierced through the glass and touched her with their warmth. She could have awakened up to see the morning. And she knew she liked it more than rain.
Oh my God!
The patient had returned after three lengthy minutes of flat-lining.
Dr. Robert swayed back and forth on his heels, his hands on his hips and his mouth set in a tight line. He turned his face toward his junior doctor assistant, who had his eyebrows up to his hairline. “That’s what I call strange.”
Damien ran along the hospital hallway like a crazy person. The concern, fear, and rage that were building up inside him were so strong that they stopped him from being exhausted from driving for hours last night. Lola had brought him up to speed on everything that had happened since Lena went to the hospital, right up to Kellen’s true face.
He didn’t get into a vehicle wreck on the way here, which was a miracle. But the speeding fines were a different story.
He couldn’t believe that Lena had kept Kellen’s true identity as her husband a secret. And the best part was that she’d been working with that jerk the whole time without anybody else knowing.
How much pain she had been in all this time! How awful it must have been for her to witness the jerk hanging about in front of her. Damien could only guess.
And to think that he had her attend meetings with that Kellen!
Damien cursed himself in his head, and then he swore out loud. There, the father of all problems was sitting in a chair.
Damien was furious and upset, so he grabbed Kellen by the collar and dragged him up. He could see people gazing out of the corner of his eye, but before anybody could stop him, he hit Kellen in the face with a hard blow. Damien assumed it would leave a bruise, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
But Kellen was really quiet. It looked like someone had cut his throat with a dagger, and it wouldn’t have mattered to him. And it made Damien even angrier. He was so angry that he wanted to fight.