Cold as Ice: The Heart of Stone

Chapter 34 - Reality

Izzy's POV

It took some time but eventually Rori started to come around functionally on day 2/3. To say my heart was in relief, was an understatement. My sister was alive, breathing and awake—ish.

There was no certain guarantee on the extent of her brain function when she arose from her coma based on the fact she was so nearly classed as brain dead, but...as miracles work in mysterious ways and as strong as Rori is, she is coming round amazingly medically, but she isn't the same, not right now at least.

It's so fucking hard, I won't lie. The doctors said, from for the patients side of things and the doctors side of things. They basically can never know what happened in the coma as everyone's experience is different but in a nut shell for the patient waking up—it's like waking up from a long nap that you never intended to have. The long naps where you wake 6 hours later, feeling disoriented and baffled—if they so happened to have any recollection at all, it only adds to the confusion but after Rori came around more from the sleepy dazed state, she was indeed totally confused beyond the point where my brain couldn't fathom.

Confused to the point where it is upsetting, mainly for her but for me too because I have to explain over and over again in a delicate way. She is saying things that never happened, in months that have not yet been, things that I assume flitted between her dreams. Again, the doctors said that right now, memories will spring up again and again with Rori forgetting she already said them...but these aren't memories from things that have happened and I know that.

Do you know how hard it is to explain? When she asks for Leah, I have to tell her that after the accident, people had to try and gain some sort of normality having come to terms with her condition at the time.

Not that I told her this much, but Leah has moved on. Well, so the gossip says. Someone that happens to look quite similar to Rori.

She will fucking thrive off that.

I don't know how many times I can say that Leah isn't going to swing by. She did, she was always here at the start but things changed. She maintain she is busy but deep down I think that she was in pain too. Rori however...as she continues to be confused, which could last a couple of days/week...the result is always the same.

Devastation.

I can see it all over her face. Every. Single. Time.

It's almost like the more I tell her, it goes in but doesn't commute properly, however with each time that comes, a less and less emotional response is received. I'm worried I'm the one to break her heart.

If I could lie and say that Leah would swing by, which seems to be her only concern, I would. But I have messaged and got little in terms of a response. She is always busy, always doing something—basically, to put it bluntly...she is always putting it off. I get it, the site of Rori in her current state is actually, quite disturbing.

Rori has this look in her eyes when she looks at people. She look at Beth and the girls like they a strangers when they visits, she looks at everyone like they're a stranger. Even me. I can't sit here and say I'm not worried, I'm worried she has invisioned the perfect life she doesn't have, in her coma. Now, she doesn't know what reality is.

It's almost like, she doesn't trust what is happening. I know this, because when she was still very dazy and in ans out of it, she mumbled that she would wake up soon and everything would be normal.

She talked about being drugged? A football pitch? Saying it was a prank gone wrong? And everytime, I have no fucking idea what to say. She talks about someone called Chris, asking about him with the extra ask for me to go and check on him, but he is not here—I did check, with everything in me. She talks about the Euro's which is way off in the grand scheme of things. She just talks and talks and talks. As much as I listen, I have heard everything 4 times over so far, resited in the exact same way as if it was read from paper in front of her, as if it did happen and still, I have no clue what she is talking about. She doesn't either, because since the game against Everton on the 13th of March, she had been lead here, lifeless. If I hadn't been her sister, I would hear what she is saying and 100% believe it to be true, because she does and my god, she is convincing when she tells it. Rori believes it's true and all I seem to be doing is breaking her heart over and over again.