Star Island

3. Alex Dubois - Awakened

        Alex had grown tired of hearing the constant beeping of the hospital machine weeks ago. He angrily flipped through the pages of one of Leah’s many gossip magazines. The girl could read. She had stacks of them in her closet at home. He thought he heard the sheets rustling, but it was most likely wishful thinking. Leah had been in a medically induced coma for almost three weeks. The doctors had informed him that she would wake up whenever her body was ready. Alex had been by her side since then, restless. He flipped to a page that had an article that held his attention. He could faintly hear the hospital bed creak from movement, but he was preoccupied with reading.  

            “Alex,” He heard a voice croak. At first he didn’t acknowledge it, but once it called out a second time he dropped the magazine and it made a smacking sound when it collided with the floor. Alex sprang up out of the uncomfortable seat and rushed over to Leah’s side. “Dieu merci, tu es réveillé! Je savais que ce jour allait enfin venir! I was so worried,”He gently brushed her bangs out of her tired chocolate brown eyes. A faint smile made its way to her face and his chest tightened. Leah held Alex’s warm hand to her cold cheek.

            “Why am I in the hospital?” she asked after a short while. Alex snapped out of his revelry, and his face flushed as anger rushed throughout his veins. He snatched his hand away from Leah and started pacing back and forth. Leah stared at him with wide eyes, afraid that he had lost his mind.

            “Pourquoi es-tu à l'hôpital, tu demandes? Il est parce que vous êtes incroyablement stupide et vous êtes tombé vingt pieds sur du béton! Tu as de la chance d'être en vie. Si ce n'était pas pour le chariot à bagages entraînée par tu serais mort! Quoi tu pensais?"Alex exclaimed with steam blowing from his ears. He was speaking too fast for Leah to fully understand with her only picking up fragments of words. The monitor was beating fast and the peaks of the line running across it were especially high, too high.

            “Okay, I get it you’re French. Now speak English,” Leah commanded, her head felt too heavy to process a language that she was just starting to get the hang of. In his anger, Alex had forgotten that his friend could only take so much stress in her condition. He calmed down and sat down beside Leah and grabbed her hand in his.

            “For some unknown reason you tried to run away from the TSO’s and because you jerked the segway too fast you lost control and went speeding down this jet bridge and it wasn’t closed and the airplane had taken off so you fell two stories. The doctor said you had broken a few bones in your right leg, fractured a bone in your left foot, broke four ribs and one of them punctured one of your lungs, and you had a lot of internal bleeding, which is why the doctor’s put you into a medically induced coma and why you’ll have a scar when the surgery wound heels up,” Leah looked at him, petrified, “Don’t worry, I’m sure that it will be a very cute scar.”

            Leah attempted to punch Alex, but her arm was restricted by a cast, “Oh and you fractured your wrist bone,” Leah blew out a breath and slumped deep into the uncomfortable hospital bed. She felt restricted. Alex slid off the bed.

            “I am going to go get your doctor,” he leaned over her and softly kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger. He rarely had a chance to touch her the way he did today, intimately. Alex had grown deep feelings for Leah over the short amount of time that he had known her. Every moment he spent in the hospital staring at her motionless form was like a blow to his chest. He felt so joyous to see her awake and moving. Leah took his hand and kissed the inside of his palm.

            “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Alex. I bet you barely left this room while I had been in here. A friend like you only comes once in a lifetime. I don’t deserve you. Je t’aime, mon ami,” Leah looked up at him with her big brown eyes, his heart clenched painfully because he knew that she didn’t love him the way he loved her. He cleared his throat and backed away from her.