Being with Michael: Part 1 (Book Two)

Chapter Fifty Nine

It's 7:30 in the morning. Paige has been in surgery for almost eight hours, and everyone knows that's not a good sign. Michael takes one last look outside and captures the picture in his mind. This is one scene he never wants to forget.

Then he moves to look at the doctor. The doctor is tall to begin with, but from the view of the chair, he looks like a skyscraper looming over Michael. Way to make him look even more intimidating.

The doctor gets to talking and sits down in the chair beside Michael. Michael's grateful  he doesn't bother with the formalities of a handshake. He doesn't get the doctor's name because he's waiting to hear the meat, not the bones.

Finally the doctor gets to the good stuff. Why am I calling it good stuff? That's ironic.

"...but most importantly, she made it," He hears the doctor say.

Michael looks at the doctor to see if he's joking. The doctor's giving him a slight smile, but other than that, his face is serious. She made it. He can't seem to process the thought.

"How?" He hears the question slip out of his mouth.

The doctor gives a little frown. Obviously Michael didn't hear him when he explained it before.

"Honestly, we don't know," the doctor explains. "We went in to stop the bleeding and sew her up, but she kept bleeding. We found where it was coming from, there was a slight puncture in the brain."

Michael cringes at brain.

"We fixed it up and now we're giving her blood to make up for the amount she lost in the process. It was a very close call. Right now she's under anesthesia from the surgery, but she should be waking up in about twenty more minutes."

Michael's staring off into space trying to wrap his head around the good news. Well, news that's better than what he had anticipated.

"And Michael?" The doctor waits for Michael to look at him.

Michael sees the wariness across his face when he looks at him. Shit. Of course I couldn't have been lucky on this one.

The doctor waits a second to make sure Michael's paying attention. Then he says, "Because of the puncture in the brain, we can't guarantee anything. We don't know how's she going to be when she wakes up. Anything can happen. I just want to give you a fair warning, so you're not entirely shocked should anything be abnormal."

Michael looks past the doctor and sees Janet and Wissam two seats down. Janet's leaning her head against Wissam and looking at Michael with a sad face, almost a look of hopelessness. That's the thing about Janet, she's not going to cover up her feelings to save face for Michael. He can always know the truth from her.

The doctor stands up to give Michael and the rest some space. "She's in room 113 when you're ready to go see her. You can wait for her to wake up." Then he walks out of the waiting room to go fulfill his other duties.

His life goes on, Michael thinks. He looks back at Janet once again and her face hasn't changed. Instead it looks like she's waiting on him to decide when he wants to go.

Michael looks back outside the window and stares at all the trees. He notices the trees seem lighter and a little more colorful than before, not grayscale. A tear rolls down his face as he looks at the beauty of nature. He thinks about how trees lose their leaves in the fall and remain bare all winter long, but as soon as spring comes, even more beautiful leaves come to replace them. He hopes this is a metaphor for his life. That every time something bad happens, something even more beautiful comes out of it.

He stands up from the chair and wonders where he found the strength to do so. Janet, Wissam, and Jonas all get up behind him and Michael starts walking out of the room with the others following his trail. He looks at the numbers of the rooms as he walks through the hall trying to find 113. It's only now that the reality of the situation sinks in and fear builds up in his chest.

He stops. Room 113.

The door is open, but there is a curtain blocking the bed. He stands in the doorway looking at it. Then he slowly walks forward focusing on one step at a time. He puts his hand around the curtain and feels the roughness of the cheap hospital material underneath his hand. He pulls it aside and steps in, letting the curtain fall back into place behind him.

He stares at the girl in the bed. Her head's wrapped entirely in white bandages so that only her eyes and below are showing. There's a big, swollen black bruise over one of her eyes. The rest of her face remains the same. Her skin looks smooth as silk with a couple beads of sweat sitting on it. Her lips are pink and plump just like they've always been. She's covered in a light blue blanket with only one arm staying out on top. An IV connected to her slowly pumps blood back into her system. A machine beeps every couple of seconds letting them knows she's still breathing.

Jonas, Janet, and Wissam slip in beside him and he takes a seat in one of the chairs. Janet sits in the other chair next to Michael and holds his hand. He never takes his gaze off of Paige hoping to see her eyes flutter open any second. Wissam stands behind Janet and squeezes her shoulder. Jonas moves to the other side and wraps his hand around the railing of the bed as he waits.

They all stay quiet in their positions for the next twelve minutes. Then they see one eye blink open and then the next. They all take in one large breath at the same time. Michael gets up and moves to the side of the bed, bending over so he can get a better look at her face.

Paige blinks trying to see through the blur in her eyes. She can make out two figures on both sides of her, but she can't see who they are. Their builds both look like men and one of them seems to have long black hair while the other has short brown hair. She turns her head to the left towards Jonas as her sight begins to focus. Michael looks up at Jonas waiting for a reaction from him, but he doesn't give one. He looks back down at Paige and waits to see what she does.

Paige's focuses on Jonas' red shirt and she makes out a recognizable body as her gaze makes its way up to his face. When her eyes lock on him, he gives her a smile. Her lips twitch into a light smile in return. "Jonas," she whispers.

"Yeah, it's me," he says, nodding and flicking his eyes over towards Michael.

Paige turns her head to the right and looks up at Michael's face. He grins at her and his eyes glow, but Paige doesn't smile back. He reaches his hand out to her and she flinches away from him. His smile fades in confusion and she whispers out a question, "Who are you?"