Page 98 of Light in the Dark
"All done?" She asks, when I close my mouth to refuse the straw.
"Mmmm-hmmm."
"Good, it's important to listen to your body. You’ve been getting your liquids and nutrients intravenously for the last few days, so your stomach might have a hard time at first." She sets the cup on the tray and glances at Felix. "You’ll have to help her until she has her mobility back. Just take things slow, okay? Dr. Richardson should be in soon."
We're alone again. My gaze goes to the book—he set it on the edge of my bed when he got up.
"Want me to read more until the doctor comes?"
"Mmmm…mmm," I grunt, the negative somehow slightly more difficult to form than the positive.
"No?"
I don't know how to communicate my extremely complicated feelings toward that book, especially without the ability to speak. My left hand rests on my thigh above the blanket. I look at it and wiggle my ring finger—tap my thigh a few times. "D—Duh…"
His gaze follows mine, and he frowns. "Dutchie?"
My heart pangs, and I blink once. I try to form the R sound, meaning to say "read" but all I manage is a garbled grunt. I look at the book again. "Duh…sh…ee."
God, this is difficult. Frustrating and infuriating to have the words in my head yet unable to get them out.
Understanding dawns on Felix's face—understanding that morphs into horror. "Dutchie? That was Dutchie's book?"
I blink twice, and then once.
"No and yes. I…I'm not following." He flips through pages, opens the front cover to look at my name written in my best calligraphy on the inside of the cover. "It's your book—your name, your writing in the margins."
"W—we…"
The horror on his face deepens. "We?" He scrubs his face. “We, meaning you read it together?"
I blink once. "Mmm-hmm."
"It hurts," he whispers. "It reminds you of him."
Another blink.
He hangs his head. "Fuck, Ember. I'm so sorry." He sweeps his hat off and tugs at his hair. "God, I'm an idiot. I just…I saw your name in it, all the markings and…it just…it looked like a book you loved."
I squeeze his hand, having no other way of communicating with him. "L—Luh…love."
"You do love it."
Blink.
"But it's hard to…" he trails off. "I'm sorry, Ember. I'm sorry." He leans toward the floor, stuffing the book into a faded black Jansport backpack.
The door opens, admitting a handsome doctor in his forties—actually, he looks kinda like Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy. His smile is warm and professional and kind as he sweeps toward the bed, white lab coat fluttering behind him.
"Well, if it isn't Ms. Ember James." He consults his iPad, and then closes it with a snap of the lid and tosses it onto the rolling tray as he rounds the bed to my left side. "Wow, you have the most stunning eyes I've ever seen, you know that? Can you follow my pen with your eyes?"
Up, down, side to side, up, down…
"Good, very good. Quick look with the light." A penlight flashes into my eyes, forcing me to squint. "Excellent. Now, it's not unusual for you to have to work on your motor skills, so don't panic, okay?" He goes to the foot of the bed, tugs the blanket up to expose my feet, and puts his palm against the sole of my left foot. "Can you push against my hand?"
I try, but I'm not sure how much progress I make.
"Hey, that's great! Now the other one." I do it again, and he praises the effort the same way. All that done, he hooks a rolling stool with a foot and drags it over to the side of the bed and sits, leaning on the railing. "I'm sure you've got a lot of questions, Ms. James. I also know you're probably frustrated with how hard it is to talk at the moment. I promise that will fade quickly. We'll have a lot of tests and assessments to do—you know, cognitive stuff, just to see where you are. You suffered a pretty decent traumatic brain injury. But you seem lucid and coherent, and your scans are all pretty good. I feel confident you'll make a full recovery, in time. But…" he pauses to think. "You're going to have to be patient with yourself. Brains are funny things. You might have balance issues. Random bouts of irritability—like, something totally innocuous will send you into a fit. Lethargy. Confusion, brain fog. All this is normal and it should clear up, but it might take a while to do so."
