Code blue, p.5
Code Blue, page 5
CHAPTER TEN
MARIE
“Are you absolutely sure that you’re ready for this?” Marie’s mom asked. They were in front of the apartment she had just put a deposit down on, and while it wasn’t exactly a beautiful place, it was what Marie needed.
“Yes, Mom,” she replied, trying her best not to roll her eyes. She knew her mother was just worried about her and she tried her best not to throw it back in her face. She had been traumatized by Marie’s accident, probably more than Marie, herself, and while they had been going to therapy, her mom had become overprotective to a point that worried Marie.
“Maybe your sister could move in with you for a bit.”
“I don’t think Kayla would like that,” she said. “Mom, it’s time for me to live my own life. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I really just need to get back to normalcy. Whatever that looks like, now.”
“Your doctors might clear you for playing soccer soon,” her mother said.
Marie tried her best to smile. She wanted to want to go back to sports, but she didn’t. All she wanted to do was go back to her real family—to her world. Because it didn’t matter how many specialists she spoke to, this still didn’t feel like her world. She felt like an impostor, making her life in a place that seemed like a facsimile of her own world. “Well, I’m still trying to get into working, and even though it’s only a part-time job, I think it will help. Plus, I don’t know if I should be getting back into playing so soon.”
“You’re right. I just want you to go back to something you’re passionate about.”
Marie nodded, unlocking the door and opening it, letting her mom go in ahead of her.
Her mother looked around. “It’s not too bad,” she said. “You could do worse.”
“I could,” she replied, closing the door behind her. “I’m only a block away from you, so if anything were to happen, which it won’t, you could literally just run here.”
“But nothing is going to happen.”
Marie knew that her mother was only saying that to make herself feel better, but she wasn’t exactly going to contradict her. “Of course, nothing is going to happen. And I want to go back to the things I’m passionate about, too, but first I want to be passionate about things everybody takes for granted.”
“Like what?”
“Like doing laundry or going to the vending machine when you want a drink. Cooking my own meals. Being able to just scroll through TV shows without deciding what to watch. I want to enjoy existing,” she said, a little quietly, surprised by her own words. “I need to enjoy it. And then I can get back into the things that used to make me who I was.”
“You don’t have to go back to who you were. I don’t need you to be the same person you were before the accident,” her mom said, looking right at her. “I just want you to be okay, and I want you to be happy.”
“Yeah,” Marie said, looking around the apartment, noticing chips and cracks on the wall. “And that starts with me living here.”
“I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since you got out of your coma.”
“I know,” Marie replied, then closed her mouth to lick her teeth. “Me either.”
LANDON
He told himself that it was a bad idea as he parked in front of the apartment building. He knew that Marie could call her family if she was in dire straits, but she didn’t seem to be. She just wanted his help with something, and it wasn’t as if he could just say no. She wasn’t fragile, and she rarely asked for help, so he knew that it was something she wanted to do by herself.
He had continued visiting her, though his visits had been sparse, and they usually happened in front of her father or her mother, sometimes her stepdad. He preferred it that way, when they were sitting in a living room, and there was an invisible barrier between them. Because despite everything he had learned, and everything he knew about her, he found himself thinking about her far too much.
He thought about the way she would laugh, throwing her head back. He thought about how she would smile at him when they said a particular word on the TV, which always seemed to be on when he visited. Landon knew that he needed to keep his distance, because he could tell that he was falling for her. And that added a set of complications that he just couldn’t deal with.
So, he had started to pull away, visited her less, and when she reached out to him over text or on the rare occasions that she called him, he always said that he was too busy, but he wished that she was well.
Marie wasn’t stupid. She knew exactly what he was doing, and though she had once tried to call him out on it, he had simply played it off. They were both busy people, and Marie knew that as well as anyone, it was almost impossible to keep track of everybody you wanted to keep track of as an adult.
Especially when recovering from an accident like hers.
Especially when you were a doctor, with your own clinic.
At least that was what he told himself. He wanted to believe that she bought it, but he knew that she didn’t.
Even with that, she had never asked him for help. And the moment that she had, he had jumped at the opportunity.
He tried his best to steady his grip on the wheel, telling himself that there was no reason to be nervous. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
She had been out of her coma for almost a year, and he had made sure not to be a part of her outpatient team in any way, shape, or form. She shared some medical things with him, but none of her providers did, and that, as far as Landon was concerned, made a huge difference.
So maybe Jade could be right. Maybe they could be friends, he told himself. Maybe it wasn’t the big deal that he was making it out to be in his head.
And maybe, just maybe, he needed to stop sitting in his car like a creep and go inside.
He took his keys out of the ignition, determined to do just that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARIE
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
Landon was standing by the door, looking bewildered. It was as if he didn’t know how he had gotten there in the first place. She opened the door for him, letting him come in.
“Thanks again,” she said.
“It’s okay. I was surprised you called me here at all, so I assumed you really needed me.”
“Why wouldn’t I call you? I am reasonably sure you’re my strongest friend.”
“Yes, but this kind of thing is usually done with more than two people.”
“Don’t worry, I promise you that there are more people coming. At some point. They are movers, because I don’t want my friends to worry about me.”
“You hired people?”
She nodded, taking a deep breath when she did so. “Yes,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to be hovering over me as I try to move stuff.”
“What makes you think I’m not going to hover?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “That’s just my feeling about you.”
“Right,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Do you actually want my help?”
“I don’t just want your help,” she said. “I need your help.”
“With moving?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I mean, yes, moving is part of it.”
“You will forgive me for this, but I don’t really understand what you want. You’re being kind of cryptic.”
“I know,” she said, sitting down on the carpeted floor. “I would offer you a place to sit, but I still don’t have any chairs. I would offer you a drink, but I don’t have any glasses, and in any case, the only thing I would be able to offer you would be tap water. I’m going to go ahead and guess you don’t want any.”
“I would take tap water,” he said, smirking at her. “So, you want me to join you on the floor or…”
“I definitely do.”
Still smirking, he sat down in front of her. He met her gaze. He noticed how serious she looked, so it pained him a little to ask the next question he did. “So why do you need me here? It seems like you have this well under control. You don’t need me here. I’m half inclined to believe that this is some sort of prank.”
“I’ve never been much of a prankster. Or maybe I used to be, before the accident. I don’t remember.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know you that well.”
“You know me now,” she said. “Do I seem like a prankster to you?”
She watched as he thought about it for a second. “No,” he said. “If anything, you seem a bit on the melancholic side.”
“Well, then you know that this is not a prank,” she replied.
He stared at her, and she sighed.
“I’m sorry for making you wait. It’s kind of hard to put this into words. I’m just trying to figure out how to do it.”
He stared at her, never doing anything to take his gaze off her, except for blinking.
“When I woke up, you were kind of the only thing that seemed real to me. It’s still a struggle to really settle into this life, to think that it’s mine.”
“Have you spoken to…”
“Don’t talk to me about my psychiatrist right now. This isn’t about that.”
He swallowed, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat as he did so.
“Okay,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. I get where you’re coming from. But I do need you here, as a favor. Because I need you to anchor this place for me, okay? I need you here so that you can make this place feel real. So that you can christen it right.”
He furrowed his brow, but she put her hand up before he could say anything else.
“Don’t, don’t contradict me. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s what I need. Can you just sit here with me for a bit? And then you can go, and I know you’re not super excited to be friends or anything, I…”
“Whoa,” he said. “That’s not true. I want us to be friends.”
“Then do this for me, okay?” she asked. She could tell that he knew she was serious. She could tell that he saw it in her eyes.
He sighed, bowing his head slightly. “Okay,” he said. “If it’s what you need, then I can do that.”
LANDON
“So, what do we do now?” Landon said after they were sitting there for a bit; both of them looking at each other; neither one of them saying much.
“We just talk,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I think.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded, noticing how pale she looked. “Are you excited to move into your new place?”
“Beyond excited. It will be nice not to have my parents around me all the time.”
“They worry about you.”
She closed her eyes, sighing. “I know. And if I were them, I would worry too.”
“But you’re feeling kind of trapped?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s a good way of putting it. It makes me feel like I can’t be myself, like I can’t find out who I am now. They don’t give me any space to breathe, so I have no space to exist.”
“Do you think you’ll have that here?”
“I don’t know,” she said after a minute. “I hope so.”
He nodded, looking away from her. The apartment she had rented was modest. It was nice, with one bedroom, one bathroom, and a small kitchen that looked like it was exactly what Marie needed. The place had an open plan with large windows that opened to a large green space with giant trees. “I like it,” he said. “It suits you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“I hope you don’t feel like I’m interrogating you,” he said. “I’m just…interested.”
“No, I know,” she replied, meeting his gaze. “And I appreciate it. It’s nice to be with someone who doesn’t see me as a freak.”
He bit his lip and resisted to say something about how she was something of a medical miracle. He knew that she knew, but it was hard not to parrot it back to her. “Well, whatever I can do to help.”
She sighed. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”
“When?”
“When you told me to keep a journal,” she replied. “You sort of mentioned it offhandedly at some point, and then my psychiatrist told me it was a good idea. He told me it would be easier to remember. He was right. I remember things I didn’t know I could remember.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She looked away from him for a second. “I don’t know. I think it’s going to sound like I’m totally insane. I told you a bit, about how it felt like I had this life, but I never really went into detail.”
“Do you want to go into detail now?”
“It wasn’t just places. That was a part of it; I was in different places. I remember getting engaged on the beach, a really cold one, and then I got married at the courthouse.”
“Our courthouse?”
She looked at him, clearly thinking about it, then shrugged her shoulders. “Honestly,” she said. “I have no idea. I don’t know what the courthouse here looks like, but I remember that one vividly. The chairs were blue. There was a wall paper, and it was like a beige brown. And I also remember that it smelled like food. Rice, chicken, things like that.”
“That sounds very vivid.”
She nodded, looking away from him, tucking her legs close to her chest. “Yes,” she said. “It was very vivid. It felt more vivid than when I woke up in the hospital. Like, the courthouse was more real to me than anything else, and way more real to me than the hospital bed I woke up in. The room I had been in for months and months, you know, it just felt like I was stuck in a painting or a video or something.”
“I can imagine that was disorienting,” he said.
“So fuckin’ disorienting,” she said, “which is why I need you here. I know it’s a bit weird, but…”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, staring back at her. “No. It’s not weird at all.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
MARIE
“Should we order pizza?” she asked when she saw how intently he was looking at her. She wanted it to stop, because she didn’t know how she was going to be able to keep up with this level of scrutiny. Whether he wanted to or not, he was certainly staring at her hard enough to bore a hole into her skin, and while she appreciated his company, she could tell that things were getting pretty intense.
“Yes,” he said, smiling at her. “I think this conversation is making me hungry.”
“Weirdly, I think it’s making me hungry too,” she replied.
“It doesn’t seem that weird,” he said. “It feels like you’re expending a lot of emotional energy.”
“I am,” she said. “But it’s easier now. I do remember when I first woke up, how it was so hard to just sit there and have a conversation with someone else. I remember it feeling like it was so hard.”
“I hope I never made you feel like that,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I didn’t want to make you speak when you didn’t want to.”
“No,” she replied, looking right at him and grabbing his hand. It was the first time she had touched him—ever—and it was done when she wasn’t thinking about it, which was the only way she was ever going to be able to actually reach out and touch him. She let go of his hand and stared at him, as if she had just been zinged by a hot stove. “Sorry, I…”
His gaze darted between her hand and her face. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “Really, it’s not…it’s not a big deal.”
She could hear the hesitation in his voice. It didn’t feel like it wasn’t a big deal.
“I didn’t mean to cross a…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay. It really is. Look, you didn’t do anything, right? All you did was touch my hand. That’s not doing something wrong.”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”
But even though he was right, she still held her hand on her lap, and she tried her best to tuck it under her leg. She didn’t want to cross a boundary and touch him again, even accidentally.
She didn’t want him to feel put out by her. She tried to flash him a smile, but she knew she was coming across as a bit crazy, so instead, she looked away from him.
Coming across as normal was one of her priorities since she had come back to live, and he didn’t make it easy. It was easy for her to let her guard down when she was around him, which guaranteed that she would let her façade slip every now and then.
“Let’s decide what we want for pizza,” she said. “Then we can talk about everything else that happened during the coma, okay? If you’re still interested in hearing about it.”
He nodded. “Oh, trust me,” he said. “I’m interested.”
When she met his gaze, he was smiling.
LANDON
It was rare for Landon to have pizza, but when he ate it, he remembered just how much he liked it. It had always been one of his favorite treats. He enjoyed sitting there, eating it, talking to Marie about everything and nothing. He liked being next to her, listening to her speak, listening to her laugh. When she had reached across and touched his hand, he felt a jolt of electricity going through his body. He knew that he felt a spark with her, but this was too real, it was too much. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do about it.
He didn’t want to recoil, because the last thing he wanted to do was make her feel bad. It had been an innocent touch, but outside of the hug they had shared before she had left the clinic, there had been no physical contact between them whatsoever.
The physical contact that did exist had been planned. She asked him if she could hug him, and he had said yes, and the hug had been brief and friendly. He had not felt anything like what he felt when she touched his hand.
Her skin on his skin felt warm, electric. The touch, brief as it was, was enough to jolt him out of any sense of security that he had. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to stop himself from falling for her, because regardless of what he said to himself, his engagement with her was far more than just academic.
