Drown #14: we go on, part 2

September 2086. Stephanie and Justin are 26. Willow is 5, Lily is 4, Benji is 3 weeks old. Robert is 52. Jeremy is 70. Bryson is 64.  


Stephanie spent hours going through a cycle of hope and disappointment and hope again. She called out to his nurses, "I think he blinked!" But it wasn’t a blink so much as a muscle spasm of the eyeball or maybe even a burst of REM dreaming. Then she thought she saw him move his finger. A twitch. The nurse wouldn’t say yes or no, just, "It could be." Then she went on with her work. Stephanie wasn't sure whether she was hearing grunts or exhales or perhaps just a tummy rumble.

"Do you think he's hungry? How can he be getting enough nutrients through that little tube for this many days?"

She was driving herself a little bit crazy.

Her mother demanded that she step outside to watch the sunset. "Come get some air with me, sweetheart. If it was a blink, then he’ll still be doing it when you get back."

—

Justin was awake, but not. He was awake inside himself.

Days went by in alternating periods of dreamlike wakefulness and deep black canyons of sleep. There was movement and voices all around him. He saw the ambient light from the other side of his closed eyelids. He saw the shadows of people moving in front of windows, of doors opening and closing.

There were unfamiliar hands for a long time, lots of them. The voices were hasty at first and then calmer. Then there was Stephanie’s hand, a touch he would have known anywhere. Stephanie's voice, soft but distinct, like he could pick that windy sound from a roaring crowd of voices. 

Then there were little hands, four of them. Two little voices crying. There were complicated declarations in his head, too many words to say. Willow! She's here. She said she was sorry. Don't be sorry little girlie, he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that she was so brave, but that was too many words and they wouldn't come out.

He was frustrated and tired. So tired.

His mother fixed his blankets and said, "It's okay, you can rest, we're right here with you."

He didn't want to rest. He wanted to get up. 

They kept taking Stephanie away from him. Stephanie, you should eat, you should shower, you should change, you should sleep. Stephanie, your lawyer called, the school called, your doctor called, you need to sign these forms. Stephanie, the girls need you. Stephanie, the baby needs you. 

Bring the baby here, Justin wished, but nobody brought him.

Bryson played jazz music. Then Jeremy played classical. They sat beside Justin's bed and debated which he would have liked better because neither of them had ever asked. Justin liked both kinds of music roughly about the same, but he couldn't tell them that. 

"He's crying," Stephanie said. "Does he need more medicine or is he sad?" 

Justin didn't feel sad, exactly. He felt frustrated and bored and restless, yet still inexplicably tired. If his body was in pain, he couldn't feel it. 

Stephanie wiped the corners of his closed eyes with a tissue, then he noticed how swollen they felt. His eyes and everything around them felt two sizes too big. Stephanie kissed his forehead. She smoothed his hair. He wanted to stroke her cheek, but she stroked his instead. Her fingers were better than medicine.

A nurse came and the medicine made him sleep again. 

In his dreams, he could hug them all with the strength of a thousand arms.

—

Then, after one sleep or another, Justin didn't feel the fog anymore. His eyelids weighed a ton. But he lifted them, a sliver of blinding white light, then a flood. Too bright.

He couldn’t tell any length of time. How many days or nights had he been asleep? For the first time he noticed the window. It was night outside. He didn't need to sleep anymore. He felt like he’d slept enough.

"Steph?" He couldn't quite say her name with any voice, only breath and air.



He tried to move his body, which was a big mistake. Because now he felt the pain. He felt everything, everywhere, like every part of his body had been snapped in half.

He grumbled. Audibly this time.

"Oh, you’re awake. Oh, you need more painkillers. I’m sorry, hang tight. I’m just an intern, I have to go get my supervisor."


"Oh my god," Stephanie said from the doorway.

She was here. He saw her and wanted to wrap her up in his arms, but his body did not comply.


Moving felt painful and delirious. He didn't understand how his limbs worked anymore. But they did work, sort of. His movements were delayed and either more or less forceful than he meant them to be. His foggy mind raced in circles and everything he meant to say for the past however many days all came out at once. "Steffie, my arms are weird. Where is he? Did they catch him? Where are the girls? I need to talk to Willow. I need to... I need to... I don't know what to do."


"Shh. Be calm, my love. You'll hurt yourself. You just have to get better, that's all you have to do. I'll do everything else. Lie back down now. Willow is fine, she's sleeping. It's one in the morning."

"Can I hold Benji?"

"No, he's not allowed in here. He's too little."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

"What day is it? I have to go to work."

"No, you don’t have to work today."

"But what day is it?"

"It's Tuesday."

"Steph, what Tuesday? We have interviews for the new dig project. I have all the notes. I have to give them the notes. Did they do it without me? I don't think I can drive to the harbor. Can you drive me?"

"Shh," she said. "Don't worry about work. You remember it all? You're okay?"


"I’m not okay. It hurts."

"I mean, your head is okay."

"No, my head hurts. I’m sorry."

"Don’t be sorry."

"Where is Jeremiah? Did they catch him?"

"Just rest for now. We'll talk about him another time."

"I'm sorry I couldn't stop him."

"You did stop him. The watch, that was your idea. You really did stop him."

"Do they have him? Is he in jail?"

"The nurse is coming now. Just lay still. Look, there she is. She's here."


Everything Justin wanted to say and do for all of those days was smothered in fog again. A lighter fog this time, a different fog that happened through his body instead of in his mind. The room swirled, but he didn't want to close his eyes. He was worried he might go back to sleep again. He just wanted to keep looking at Stephanie. He wanted her to curl up around him and melt into his bones the way only she knew how to do.


"Steffie Supernova, you’re so pretty."

"Your medicine is working good now, huh? Does it hurt anymore?"

"No. I wanted to hug you but my arms won't move."

"That's okay. You can hug me when you’re better."

"It’ll be the best hug you ever had."

"Yes, I know it will be."


She moved closer beside his bed, seeming scared to touch him. He wished she would. "I wanna give you a kiss," he said.

"How about I’ll give you a kiss instead," she said. "But don’t move. Promise?"

"Okay."


She found a spot, the only spot on his face that wasn’t broken, at his temple near his hairline.

"Oh, wait, I found another spot."

She kissed his earlobe.


"One more," she said, and she kissed the underside of his chin. "And one more." She kissed him on the corner of his mouth that wasn’t stitched.

She found a way to hover over his broken body without making contact, like she was floating, like she was magical. Her kisses were as lingering and weightless as a tickle. He felt her in his bones even though their bodies never touched.

—

In the morning, they brought the girls in to see him.

They were both in good spirits to see him awake, and Willow told him the heroic story of what happened after he "went to sleep" on the ground, ending with how she got to ride in a police car with its lights on to the hospital. She left out everything gruesome and scary from her story, like the day was nothing but heroics and a little scuffle and a fun police car ride, which made them all worry about her. But they would decide later how to address that—nobody wanted to deny her this happiness right now.

Justin didn't want to mention Jeremiah's in front of the girls, but he began to understand what it meant that nobody told him the story of Jeremiah's harrowing arrest. It meant that it must not have happened.


His doctor saw him that morning and they went through a series of questions to test his memory and cognitive function. His address, his birthdate, the names of his children, what was the name of the street he grew up on, what is the square root of 121?

He answered all of the questions just fine except for the square root. Bookish as he might be, Justin always struggled in math. "Uh, I don't know, maybe nine? I can't remember the square root of 121."

"No worries, it's eleven. I just throw that one in there for laughs. Most people don't know it off hand."


"But, good news, we’re moving you upstairs into recovery first thing in the morning. We want to see you upright and moving, within reason. You'll have a couple of sessions with our physical therapist, and we'll monitor your healing. But I bet we’ll have you home by next week."

—

With Justin on the mend, and since his father wanted to sit with him, Stephanie finally agreed to go back to the hotel room to nurse the baby and take a good long sleep in a real bed.


For as long as the baby would let her, anyway.



But he was easy to pacify. He was a happy baby and his innocence comforted Stephanie. How sweet it must have been to be three weeks old and know nothing more horrible than a dirty diaper.


When they both finally slept, it was the first sound sleep that she'd gotten in weeks.

She agreed to let her mother take the girls home, where they would be more comfortable in their own beds and surroundings, and each of the grandparents would take turns staying with them. Or staying here to help with Benji. Stephanie had always felt like such a burden for leaning on their parents so often, but right now, she only felt grateful to have them all.


Justin slept and woke normally again, but his dreams were vivid and chaotic. Each dream replayed the gruesome scene over and over, dissecting it for what he might have done differently to gain an upper edge. The best dreams were the ones where he magically seemed to know kung fu somehow and he defeated Jeremiah valiantly. But Justin hadn't studied combat arts in Takemizu, only tai chi. The worst dreams were the ones where he got away with Willow and they never saw her again.

"Nightmare again?" his father asked.


"Nobody will say anything about Jeremiah," Justin said. "So I guess he got away clean then? Are they going to find him?"

"They put out warrants," Robert told him. "They put him on some lists. He'll turn up eventually. He can't hide forever. People like him make mistakes and they get caught."

"But they're not really looking for him?"

Robert shook his head. "They did for the first couple of days. They found his car abandoned just outside of Chicago. They tried the camera footage from the train platforms, but he must have been lost in a crowd. He's traveling in cash, so there's no trace after that. You know, they just don't have the manpower. There are a lot of criminals to catch in the world."

"So he could be anywhere? Wherever it is, I hope it's far away and he stays there."

—

"Steph, come here. Let me feel your leg."

"You're lucky I finally shaved," she said. "Before this morning, it had been at least two weeks. I looked like a yeti."

Justin looked out for nurses and let his hand explore her skin, enjoying the experience of groggy pleasure instead of so much pain. He was slightly curious to make sure that certain equipment could still rise to the occasion, even if the occasion was not right now. There could be lasting damages, his doctor told him, and impotence was one of those many possibilities. But at the feel of Stephanie's long soft leg underneath these short little shorts, everything started to work just fine.

"Do you think I seem like myself?" he asked her.

"Yeah, I do," she said, smiling. "They better send you home soon because you are out of control."

"Is that a nurse coming?"

"No, it’s my dad. Hi, Dad."


"Hi, kids. How's everybody doing?"


Her father sat with them for a while and they chatted about inconsequential family gossip. "Your mother is upset that your sister didn't call to offer her support. Your brother called, your cousins called, your aunt Sophie called, your aunt Abby called all the way from Tokyo, but your sister didn't call."

"I don't mind," Stephanie said, thinking that these were such nice problems to have.

Stephanie longed to live the rest of her life and never worry about anything worse than her sister not being a thoughtful person.

"Sorry, my dad killed your mood, huh?" 

"Nah, it's alright," Justin said. "I was only teasing myself. Doc says I shouldn't try anything like that for at least four weeks. Cracked ribs make for a pretty nasty orgasm."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense."  

"But you?" He looked at her and tried to make a suggestive face underneath his bruises and bandages.

"Slow down, tiger. My postpartum checkup isn't until... oh, I guess it's next week." She shrugged off a sad thought. "I completely forgot that was coming up. It's the kind of thing we should be looking forward to, but it's been a scary time. It's been scary for weeks."

"I know," he said. "How about a snuggle instead?"

"I don’t want to hurt you."

"You won’t."


"I think I hurt your ribs earlier," she confessed. "When you were sleeping. I didn't know they were broken at first, and I might have hugged you too hard."

"No, Jeremiah hurt my ribs. Not you."

They held each other and he helped himself to another handful of bare thigh.

"Steph, I think I heard some things when I was sleeping."

"Yeah? What did you hear?"

"I heard you singing."

She chuckled. "Sorry, that was dumb."

"No, it was nice," he said. "And I heard Keri saying she was sorry."

"Wow. You should remember that. I bet you’ll only get to hear that once in your life."


"And I heard you say it should have been you instead. Steffie, I would never let it be you. Not in a million years."

She took a couple breaths and finally said, "Oh."

"I’d never even let him pull a single hair on your head. If this is what it takes to keep him away from you and Willow, then I’d do it all over again."

"No, don’t do it again, please."

"But I would."

"I know. Thank you."

—

outtakes: Stephanie doesn't read signs // just hanging out in the morgue

gameplay notes: on running the hospital