Page 33 of Sweethearts and Savages
We all needed touch sometimes.
“Tell it to me straight, Doc. Will she speak again?”
She drew back and looked at me. “Will it affect how you feel about her?”
I reared back, stepping away. “No! Jesus, Stacey. I love her. I’m not going to run away because things are hard.”
Stacey eyeballed me. “Good. The Broca’s aphasia could last for a short time as her brain heals itself, or it could be forever. We just don’t know. The brain is a hard organ to predict.”
I swallowed hard but nodded. “How do we help her?”
Stacey chewed her lip. “Speech therapy is best. She's the same intelligent person inside her head, she’s just struggling to communicate. Encouraging her to speak will help, but with easy simple sentences.” She sighed. “I’ll have to research it a bit more. But she’s going to be frustrated and angry, Bohdie. With brain damage, people can have changes in their temperament. You have to be prepared that she might not be the same Enit as before the accident.”
I was devastated. But I just nodded and slipped back into Enit’s room. Her eyes met mine, like she knew I left. I gave her a soft smile, but she didn’t smile back. She frowned at me, then dragged her eyes back to her family, before they blinked heavily as she drifted back to sleep. Once her eyes closed, I let myself actually feel the devastation inside my soul. Stacey’s words kept going around and around inside my head, but I wasn’t going to worry yet. Time would tell what hurdles we’d have to overcome, and no matter who Enit was at the end of this, she’d always be mine.
Two weeks later,Enit threw the pen across the room. “No!” she growled, and Stacey frowned at her. She put the pen back on the table.
“Yes.”
Enit snarled, and I pulled her out of her chair and into my lap. I snuggled her neck, breathing in her scent. Stacey and I had a good cop, bad cop thing going for Enit’s recovery, and today was my turn to be the good cop.
“I know you’re frustrated, but don’t snarl at your girlfriend,” I chastised softly. “Pick it up and we can try one more time. For every letter you write, I’ll kiss you.”
She looked over her shoulder and smirked. “Kiss. Anyway.”
She was doing so damn good, slowly getting back her language, though she still forgot a lot of the connector words. Stacey said they would come back eventually as her brain relearned their importance.
I kissed her throat. “Well, maybe I’ll resist this time.” Both her and Stacey snorted in disbelief. Okay, that was fair.
Stacey had called, stalked, and threatened every neurologist she could google to create a recovery plan for our girl, and Enit’s parents had been happy to let Stacey handle her recovery. Apparently, she’d impressed X during the surgery.
As Enit had recovered, other changes had become apparent. She’d damaged the nerves in her right hand, meaning her ability to write was shaky. She was learning to write with both hands now, but she got easily frustrated.
Scariest of all, was she seemed to have damaged the part of her brain that controlled fear and anxiety. We hadn’t realized until she’d yanked out her cannula, climbed out of bed and fallen flat on her face. She hadn’t been at all hesitant about standing on her broken leg or pelvis.
Stacey had wanted to prove the point, and she’d had me gather every Alpha in my class and bring them to her hospital room. Besides being a little surprised, Enit had just given us a thumbs up and continued watching TV.
I didn’t know if I was happy or terrified for her. I was glad she no longer had to live with the anxiety of being around Alphas, but fear was a necessary thing in life. It kept you safe. That being said, I’d walked into the room as a lion and roared, and her fear responses had elevated, so Doc hypothesized that it was only learned fear that had been obliterated. Which was still scary as fuck. She wasn’t going to run in front of cars, or wrestle a grizzly bear, or jump from a plane without a parachute. But she would put herself in situations that she would have run screaming from before the accident. Like a damn room full of Alphas.
But she was still my Enit. When I’d taken her outside to the pond, she’d breathed such a sigh of relief to be back in the sun that she’d just lain against my chest and dozed. She still picked flowers, albeit with her left hand and not her right. She still made happy noises about the ducklings, which were full-grown ducks now. She frowned at the weeds in her medicinal garden, and I’d gotten some of the juniors to weed it.
Now, she bit her lip and held the pen in her right hand, growling when her hand shook. But still, she managed to scratch out a rough E.
“Yes!” she crowed. “Kiss.”
I smiled and kissed her softly, and she mumbled unintelligibly against my lips. I missed hearing her speak, missed having her wrapped around my body in the dark as she talked about everything and anything. But one day soon.
She turned her face to Stacey, who was beaming down at her, despite being the bad cop today.
“Kiss.”
Stacey shook her head, leaning forward to kiss Enit softly. When she pulled away, she was smiling, but then turned it into a mock frown. “Two kisses for the one letter? Stop rorting the system and keep going.”
Enit scrunched her face up in a pout, but she felt happier. She did a shaky N, and I squeezed her tight around her middle. She kept going and I felt myself swell with pride. Stacey cleared her throat.
“I think you should both move into my apartment.”
I froze, and so did Enit. Then she shrugged. “Yes.”
