Everything

XLVI

It was a coin toss to what my nausea could be attributed to.

First, there was overwhelming smell of antiseptic which was poorly attempting to mask the iron stench of blood.

And then, there was the sight of my husband, dwarfed by his hospital bed, wires tangled around him like a spider's web, attached to an IV in one arm, a blood bag in the other, and an oxygen mask covering his handsome face.

Tom had driven me to the hospital, practically carrying me into his car as my limbs went to jello, unable to process what I had been told over the phone.

When I'd seen him on the crash cart, coagulated blood matted to his hair, lacerations across his body, his chest heavily rising and falling, my stomach had flipped and somersaulted and I'd had to run at full speed to the bathroom before emptying my breakfast into the toilet.

I was joined in the emergency room by an ashen faced Licia, who Tom had contacted on my whispered insistence. He'd only left my side once she'd arrived.

We sat together in plastic, sticky-backed chairs amid the chaos, holding hands while I cried and cried and cried.

It wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.

Spencer had been headed home from the office in his usual mode of transport: his white Ferrari, when an out of control truck with a drunk driver at the wheel had jumped a red light, veering to the other side of the road and T-boning him, sending his car straight into a streetlight.

The surgery had lasted hour after agonising hour as day turned into night, but the wait had felt like it was my life on a knife edge. Internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen, concussion and a broken collarbone, he'd gone into shock while paramedics had tried to rescue him from where he was trapped between the driver's seat, the windshield and the post.

Right now, though, the only currently visible sign on his body that he'd even been in a car accident was the gash across his forehead. I knew he'd probably joke he looked like Harry Potter, and the thought only made tears stream down my cheeks again.

After he'd come out of the OR, they'd wheeled him into this private room for further monitoring. There he'd lain ever since, unconscious, eyes closed, as if he was sleeping, the only sound coming from the machine monitoring his heart rate.

It had been nearly 36 hours since the accident, and I hadn't slept for more than 20 minutes at a time, at best.

Eventually, they'd made Licia go home. Family only, they'd said. And to be quite honest, I hadn't had the energy to protest or put up a fight as I usually would.

So I was alone. A call to Spencer's mother who'd cried down the phone while I tried to hold it together, and a call to a fretful Sebastian who said he'd be on the soonest flight out was the only contact I'd had aside from the nurses who monitored Spencer every 20 minutes.

The last check-up had been positive. They'd said his condition was looking better than it had been in his whole time in hospital. They'd even let me get closer to him, once they'd taken away some of the more complicated machinery.

I'd pulled the chair I was sitting in closer to his bed, so I could periodically kiss his hand, my tears dripping onto the mattress.

But the hours ticked on. Streetlights reflected through the blinds, making small lined shadows on Spencer's face and the ticking clock on the wall read 4am.

I threaded my fingers through his, unable to stand the lack of contact any longer.

"You scared me there, Haywood," I said, my throat hoarse from all the crying and lack of sleep, "Like really, really scared me. I knew I loved you before, but I don't know, waiting for you outside that operating theater, seeing you in this hospital bed, it's like...seeing myself. I couldn't bear to lose you, Spence. Not now, not ever. How would I cope? What the hell would I do? And I'm not just talking about reaching the top shelf in the wardrobe or not burning food in the kitchen.