souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 154: learning to walk again

Alex had kept his promise and he showed up the first thing in the morning once visiting hours started up again at eight o'clock. The snow drifts fell outside the window, but he still stepped into the hospital room with a few snowflakes rested on the crown of his head and his shoulders: the gray streak over his forehead blended back into the pieces of snow drifted down on his curls and his outgrown bangs. His skin looked smoother and cleaner than normal, complete with a soft bloom of blush in his chubby little cheekbones, and his eyes were much clearer than they had ever been before in her own eyes. He took his spot in the chair right next to Sam in her hospital bed, and she wondered how he was able to climb up onto the bed next to her the day before.
Even though Sam was asleep since the end of September, the nurses kept waking her up every half hour to check her blood and her vitals. Add to this, she kept on wondering as to how everyone in the room found out it was her and found out that she had gotten herself into such a bad accident in the first place. When she finally managed to fall asleep, she woke up to the bluesy guitar of the Scorpions through her head like a veil of black lace. She remembered that he was coming for her that morning.
Thus, when he entered her room, she gazed on at him as if he was the hallucination in her coma dream. It also didn't help that she hadn't eaten anything since she left the glass shop in Scarsdale. He took his spot there next to her and shivered under his coat; he shivered even more when he ran his hand over the crown of his head.
"What would you like for breakfast?" he asked her.
"I really want pancakes," she told him. "A big stack of pancakes with a knob of butter and some berries on top."
"I might have that, too," he confessed. "It doesn't help that the breakfast buffet back at the hotel isn't all that decent, either. I also could only afford a single room, too—they wouldn't even let me have breakfast."
"You're kidding!" she exclaimed, to which Alex shook his head. He peeled off his coat and then he doubled back out of there and asked the nurse for directions to the cafeteria. He then doubled down the hallway, complete with a quick glimpse back at Sam with his finger raised to her. She nodded at him and he disappeared behind the wall. The nurse meanwhile checked on the painkillers in her arm as well as her heart rate and the pan at the foot of the bed.
"It's gonna be a while," Sam assured her.
"Tell me if you start menstruating, though," the nurse said back to her, and she nodded her head.
"He's going to get me breakfast, too," Sam added.
"Oh, good! We were hoping that you would be able to eat something today, because we're going to try to get you to rehabilitate your legs today. You're progressing a great deal right now, faster than we had originally assumed before."
"Sounds good by me! I don't really want to go in a pan on my bed, either." The nurse nodded in agreement and then she bowed out of there, which in turn left Sam alone in the room.
But within a few moments' time, Alex doubled back to the room with two big plates filled with full stacks of pancakes: the one in his right hand had been loaded up with maple syrup and butter, while the one in his left had been topped in fresh blueberries accompanied with a little pat of butter. He handed her the one in his left before he sat down. He took a glance over at the table underneath the window and the drifts of snow: more and more drifted down from the dark sky over the New York skyline.
She thanked him and she could feel her face growing warm as a result.
"Have you seen any of your cards yet?" he asked her with a gesture to the top of the table.
"No, well—I haven't been able to get out of bed. Every time I have to use the bathroom, the nurses have to get a pan for me. But I feel my knee coming back, though." She took a big bite of pancakes and she realized that they both had at least more than five cakes each in their stacks. The butter was smooth and the blueberries were lush: she took a glimpse over at Alex's plate and the perfect drizzle of syrup on top of those cakes. He shoveled a rather large bite into his mouth and then he closed his eyes as he relished in those flavors. He swallowed it down and took another bite, and that time he took a glimpse over at her.
"How're you doing?" he asked her.
"These are delicious," she replied once she swallowed down her first few bites.
"You know—" Alex bowed his head and cleared his throat. "There's one other thing I forgot to tell you yesterday after you woke up. And that was the fact you underwent actual reconstructive surgery for your knee."
"Seriously?" Sam gaped at him.
"Yeah—I really hope that it doesn't ruin your appetite, either. But I guess you banged it up pretty bad, too. The surgeon told us that there was no way it was going to heal on its own—they put screws in and everything."
"So, I can literally say that I'm a metal chick now," she joked, and he burst out laughing at that.
"Literally, though! If they put a metal plate in your head, like say, if you genuinely needed that type of reconstruction; you could literally say that you're a metal head."
She giggled at that, that is until her back and her hips both ached from the sudden jerking movements. She grimaced in pain and Alex did as well. They returned to their pancakes again for a few more moments when she remembered the question that ran through her mind when she awoke from her nap earlier.
"There's one question that's been hanging over me since I woke up," she began. "And that's how did you guys find out about the accident so quickly?"
"Well... the guy who hit you was freaking out, and I guess he recognized you almost immediately. There was a phone right up the block and his wife ran over there and called the medics. A bunch of people stood around the scene until the ambulance showed up—it probably goes without saying that your car's totaled, too. At that point, they thought for sure you were a goner because there was blood all over the steering wheel and down on the floor. They thought you suffered a fatal concussion and that you were bleeding."
"Where did the blood come from?" she asked him, and she felt her heart sink in her chest.
"Some of it came from your mouth, because of your broken ribs and your punctured lung, and some of it came from the gash in your knee." He fell silent right then and Sam realized what he was talking about. Indeed, she moved the blankets back for a better look at her left knee. The surgeon had made a diamond shaped incision on the side of her knee and then stitched it back up, but at the front of the cap, Sam could see the perfectly oval scar left behind on the skin. Almost four months and it had already healed up, but she still shuddered at the thought of having banged up her knee so bad that the skin there had punctured along with her lung. She shook her head and she tried to not focus on that, and instead she returned to her pancakes and the accompanying berries.
"Anyway," he continued, "someone in the crowd called up Scarlett and told her what happened, and then she called up Lars, because he's frequented the gallery as much as me, and then she called me for the exact same reason—I was getting ready to come here to New York anyway, but I called up Eric and then I called your parents. And then Lars called Marla and Belinda—I guess they had just gotten home, too. Just this big phone tree in your honor." He scooped up another large bite of pancakes; Sam took a second look over at his plate and she realized that he had taken seven for himself. He spoke again once he swallowed them down.
"Eric and I got here as fast as we could because Lars said you lost a bunch of blood and apparently, you're a universal recipient, and the medics said you were hanging on by the skin of your teeth. We thought it wasn't going to be enough between the two of us and then Greg showed up. It was like a miracle. Yeah—I, an agnostic, looked at Greg and said with a straight face, 'are you an angel, dude?' The three of us sat down and the nurses put the iodine on our arms and stuck the needles in. Because we got there on such short notice, neither of us had eaten anything prior to then. So, once they took the needles out of us, Eric looked like he was about ready to barf, and I thought for sure I was gonna pass out."
"How did Greggy handle it?" she asked him as she picked up another bite for herself.
"Greg closed his eyes and fought his way through it. Although, when we were finally able to walk out of there, I thought for sure he was going to faint because he was sweating a bit and his skin was whiter than this wall here. Eric and I were both like, 'dude, Greg, you wanna sit down?' but he was insistent on it, though. He kept on assuring us that we were on the right track with it all. He never did collapse, but we were both certain it would happen, though. His knees buckled a bit at one point and that was when we started making jokes and whatnot." Alex shook his head and he took some more bites of pancakes for himself. He was more ravenous than her, and she had been out cold for a whole season all the while.
"I should tell you," she started again; she scooped up some berries and slipped them into her mouth. Tart and sweet at the same time and they complemented the cakes just right. He turned to her with an inquisitive look on his face.
"What's that?"
"Right before you showed up," she told him, "I had a dream about the Scorpions."
"The band? Or the eight-legged friend?"
"The band, of course. Remember when we first started hanging out down in L.A., and you were telling me of your influences?"
"How could I forget?" he said with a smile on his face.
"It's like—you mention the Scorpions once and that was enough for me to remember."
"It just stays with you," he told her as he picked up a bite of pancakes and syrup.
"You stay with me, even once you leave the room," she retorted back to him. "Like venom."
"Like a gray streak." He ran his fingers through the sliver of gray over his forehead, now the size of his entire palm.
"I see you're letting it grow out now," she remarked.
"Yeah, I might as well. I'm in my mid-twenties now. Forget making me stand out for a second—"
"It makes you look distinguished," she assured him.
"I was going to say, it makes me look like I'm at that age now. The age of full adulthood. But—really? It makes me look distinguished."
"It does. If you must know, Alex, I've always felt that way about your streak, too. Although, I can see it overtaking your entire head in the future."
"Nah, it would have to take a bunch of things for that to happen, I'm sure."
"Really?"
"I dunno, that's just a guess." He sloughed off another bite of pancakes. He moved at a slower pace at that point and Sam lowered her gaze to the band of his jeans.
"Getting full?" she asked him.
"Kinda," he replied. "I don't know if you can see it or not, but I've put on a little weight since we saw each other. A little weight or not—it's allowed me to eat a bit more than normal."
"Yeah, I can see it," she told him as she leaned her head forth a bit. "Getting a little thick in the waist, Alex."
"That's what I get for sitting around and reading and polishing up more on guitar and whatnot," he said in a single breath. "It's not a lot, though. But it's something."
"You're eating well and living up to your nerdy self," she assured him. "Something I feel everyone should do even as they get older."
Indeed, he polished off those seven pancakes and leaned back in the chair. Sam finished out her five and set her empty plate on the tray next to the bed. Alex then showed her a little pamphlet of lined paper which had been stapled together at the corner.
"Lars' letter to you," he told her. "I didn't read it, just out of respect for his and your privacy. But I did catch a little glimpse of the back, though. I guess he kept paralleling your accident to that from Cliff."
"Well, to be honest with you, Alex—after you left yesterday, I couldn't help but think about Cliff myself. Like, he's gone now and I'm here in this hospital bed."
He gazed on at her with that pensive expression firmly plastered across his face.
"Did you dream about Cliff at all?" he asked her in a near whisper. "Like, when you were out? Did he come to you at all?"
"No. But I did have a dream where it felt like I was walking through fog. I didn't know where I was headed to, but all I knew was I headed for somewhere."
"Sounds like life itself," he assured her. "I'm headed for somewhere myself but where I go after that is another question altogether, though."
The nurse then returned to the room with a metal walker in her hands.
"Finished your breakfast, Sam?" she asked her.
"I have, yes!"
"Oh, boy, this should be eventful," Alex remarked. He stayed back in the chair as the nurse peeled back the blankets for her and careful not to bring any more pain to her pelvic bone or to upset her stomach. Sam dangled her legs over the edge of the bed. She glanced down at her scarred knee and the red patch of skin on her left ankle, and the small markings on her right shin.
The man who ran the red light had crashed into her on the left side and she was surprised that she didn't sustain any more damage to her arm beyond the sore spot on her wrist all the while. Shards of glass must have hit her other leg.
"I'm made of scars," she said aloud as the nurse set the walker in front of her.
"Just signs that say you survived," Alex assured her.
"Exactly!" the nurse declared. Sam curled her fingers around the bars at the top and she inched forth off of the bed. "Easy now—tell me if you feel any pain in your hips or in your knee."
"Nothing in my knee, and I have more of a pain in my back than I do my hips," Sam assured her. "It's like a sore feeling—like I've been hunched over a desk for too long." Her toes thus touched the floor and she eased onto the soles of her feet. Cliff burst into her mind right then: he was reunited with Jan at that point. She knew that, a bit of a skeptic herself given it was science and the kindness of Scarlett and the man who ran into her that saved her, they were watching over her and cheering her on up in the wings.
The nurse held out her arms as if ready to catch her in the instance of Sam falling forth.
"She's got it," Alex assured the nurse.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've got it," Sam grunted: her left arm quivered and her hand ached, but she shuffled her feet across the tiles. Her back surged with pain and her hips thus throbbed from the scar tissue on the fracture, but she took one step forward and then another step forth with her weight exerted on the walker. The screws in her knee held together and she was able to walk without something underneath her hand.
"You've got it?" the nurse asked her with her arms still stretched out to catch her in the instance of her knees buckling.
"I've got it," Sam told her. She straightened out her back, albeit with that sore feeling persisted within her. She rested her feet flat on the floor. Her pelvic bone still had a bit of that nagging sensation, especially near the base of her spine, and her shoulder and her arm continued to ache as if she had worked out a bit too hard, but she was standing up. She pushed on the walker to keep her steady and she walked forward. The nurse stayed by her side.
"The power of ginger snaps," Alex declared with a chuckle.
"The power of ginger snaps!" Sam echoed him, out of breath. Her lung was scarred, however, and she could feel she had a fair amount of scar tissue upon her ribcage as well, on the left side and on the side of which she usually slept on no less. But she was walking, albeit with the help of the walker before her.
"Walk on over to the door and then back here again," the nurse encouraged her. Her bare feet on the floor and she did just that. Careful not to cause any more aching to her pelvis or her spine, she turned around at a slow rate and she walked on back to the head of the bed.
"Are you in pain at all?" the nurse asked her.
"My back is sore—well, my whole body is sore, actually," Sam told her as she came back towards her. "It's kind of rough, too. I mean—I can do it but—it's bit of a chore, though."
"You're going to be sore for some time," the nurse assured her; Sam let out a low whistle and leaned against the edge of the bed.
"You're going to be out of breath for some time, too," the nurse added.
"At least she's walking again, though!" Alex declared. "That's huge."
"Oh, absolutely!" Sam took her spot there on the edge of the bed once more.
"I'm definitely going to have to call my parents now," she told them, still out of breath. "You know, tell them that I can walk again."
"Please do," the nurse encouraged her. "And I'm sure they'll be more than happy to hear your voice, too." She then took a glance over at Alex. "Are you going to take her home?"
"I walked here and she lives over in Hell's Kitchen," he replied as he stifled down a slight belch, "so there's no way I can to be perfectly honest with you." He shrugged his shoulders. "I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could, though."
"Snow's coming down awful hard, too," Sam added. "Tell you what, I'll call Marla and Belinda and tell them what's going on here."
"Well, even though you're walking, we'd rather you stay here a bit longer, though," the nurse told her. "All just because you said you're really sore when you move around. Call your parents in the meantime, like your boyfriend said." She flashed her a wink and she bowed back out of there before either Sam or Alex could tell her that they weren't in a relationship; in the meantime, she had left the walker there at the side of her bed just in case she needed it any further.
"I've got to get going myself," Alex announced, and he stood to his feet.
"You're leaving me?" Sam was taken aback.
"Yeah, I came here to record for the Savatage album. Remember?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right. Didn't know it started up today, though."
"Didn't I tell you it was?" he asked her, and he knitted his eyebrows together at that. "I could've sworn I told you that recording started today."
"I don't remember," she confessed with a slight shake of her head.
"Well, I start today," he corrected himself. "No harm, no foul." He put his coat back on and he shivered from the chill of the room.
"One thing that Marla promised me—before the accident of course—was to take me to Coney Island," she recalled.
"Ooh, that'd be fun! I've always wanted to go to Coney Island, too. I'm afraid I can't really do it at the moment, though. You know."
"Oh, yeah."
"Maybe we can do it after the sessions wrap up," he suggested. "You know, if you're not doing anything in a couple of months' time."
"I don't think I'll be doing anything significant in the time being, Alex," Sam assured him. He picked the phone off the table and set it down on the tray next to her.
"Would you like me to turn on the TV for you?" he offered her.
"Please," she told him. He switched on the television on the other side of the room and turned it towards her.
"Yeah, watch a little Ren and Stimpy," he said with a chuckle and a smirk on his face. He set the remote down on the tray next to the phone. "We finish out at five o'clock today—what say I get you some dinner then?"
"Please," she replied.
"I'll see you soon," he promised to her. "By the way, should I say to that nurse that we're not together?"
"I'll tell her," she promised him. He then flashed her a wink and a smile, and then, with one hand on his full stomach, he padded out of there and into the hallway. Sam sighed through her nose and dialed her father's number first. She and Ruben spent a full thirty minutes on the phone before she called her mother.
And at that point, it was nearly noon and she was ready for lunch as well as a sponge bath courtesy of the nurse. That soft loofah with the warm soapy water all down her back never felt so good! Add to this, it definitely felt good given she hadn't bathed in almost four months to boot as well.
By lunchtime, she had picked out a sandwich for herself as well as some chips and salsa. Come two o'clock, and the nurse had checked out, that gave her time to sleep, at least until Alex showed up after his recording session with Savatage.
Indeed, she awoke at about a quarter to five and Arsenio Hall had Megadeth on as his musical guest. Strange to see Dave there on her television screen with his long red hair spread over his shoulders and a ragged flannel shirt over his body. There in the doorway next to the television, she recognized that tall stature as well as a head of smooth dark hair. She recognized him even if he had a fresh beard on his face. He carried a bouquet of sunflowers in one arm.
"Hey, there's one of my donors!" she declared.
"There she is!" Greg loomed over and put his free arm around her, but he held her tighter than he had ever done before with her. He then showed her the flowers: the outside of the wrapping was coated in a few bits of snow; but the yellow petals were bright and bold and healthy as if they had bloomed right outside of the hospital there.
"Beautiful," she breathed out. "How'd you know I liked sunflowers?"
"Your sweet mom," he told her in a hushed voice, and he pulled up a chair next to her bed and took his seat. "It was either that or orchids, but I decided on these 'cause they're easy to take care of. The nurse told me you can walk!"
"I can, yeah. But I'm gonna be here for a little while longer, though, just because I'm still pretty sore when I do it, though. Sore and out of breath."
"The three of us did what we could," he told her with a shake of his head.
"You guys did excellent," she assured him. "And really, that was so sweet of the three of you, too. To give me your blood like that on such short notice."
"Did Alex tell you we each almost collapsed afterwards?" he asked her.
"Yeah, he did! You poor boys."
"I thought I was gonna fall ass over teakettle at one point. Never did, just because it was one of those things where I thought it would go away soon. It did but—it sucked in the meantime, though."
"You boys need to take care of your bodies for me," she told him. "Especially after what happened to me."
"I quit drinking," he said. "Just went completely cold turkey. Eric did, too, well, and I think Rebecca's presence might have something to do with it, too. But yeah. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since the accident."
"He—Alex—told me that he and Aurora reconciled things after the accident, too," she added. "It took me almost dying for everyone to straighten up and fly right apparently."
"Not necessarily," he told her. "I'm thinking of bailing out from Testament once this new album is signed and sealed. And when this next upcoming tour is done, too. I'm thinking that'll be the time to go."
"Why is that?" she asked him.
"Same reason Louie left," he told her. "It's getting crazy on their end, because Chuck's a family man now and Eric's getting more and more withdrawn every day it seems. Even after the accident, he wasn't really all that communicative with us—so unlike him, too. You know, Eric's usually real upfront with things."
"Oh, yeah."
"And mark my words: Aurora's involvement in everything just adds to it, too. Like, I can literally see as to why she and Alex were at each other's throats for as long as they were, too. I can also see why you and her went through a period of not speaking to each other, either."
Alex's gray streak emerged in the doorway before them.
"Speak of the devil," Sam proclaimed.
"Talking about me?" Alex said with a smirk on his face as part of his greeting to them. The nurse followed him in as well, that time to check on Sam's legs and her walking ability. Once more, with Alex and Greg off to the side, she gripped onto the walker and she tried it out again. That time, her back had not all that much of an ache to it as before, even though she continued to feel it.
"Don't look like you're struggling as much," Alex told her. "This morning, I could tell from right behind you that you were in pain to even so much as walk about like that."
"Bad boy, Alex," Greg teased him. "Looking at Sam's open gown like that."
The nurse chuckled at that and Sam reached to the foot of the bed, still out of breath but not in nearly as much pain as before.
"You gonna take her home with you, Greg?" Alex asked him. "I can't. I've gotta walk myself—I also have to go back to the studio to talk to Criss about something real quick, too—the guy at the helm of the whole thing, Criss Oliva."
"Might as well," Greg replied with a shiver. "I'll drive you, too, Alex. Just so you don't have to walk through all that snow again."
"Eh, it's snow. We're all a part of it. But I'll take it, though." The two of them stepped out of the room for a few moments while the nurse helped Sam put her clothes back on. Indeed, there was a massive bloodstain on the left side of her jeans as well as her left sock. At least she wasn't wearing any of her colorful socks at the moment of the accident, but it was still a shock to see a white sock having changed to solid red. Nothing a quick wash of her laundry and a shower wouldn't cure, however.
The nurse lent her a cane for her to walk into the lobby with; Greg and Alex helped her out of there and to the car parked outside of the front doors. They both eased her into the front seat and, once she was buckled in, the latter took to the back seat right behind her with all of the cards, the balloons, and the bouquet next to him. Greg put on his sunglasses and switched on the heater once he fired up the car's engine. Sam shivered from the cold: the accident took place right when the last moments of summer still held over New York and thus the pains all over her body became the least of her problems.
Greg drove them out of the parking lot and up the street to the recording studio in question. Once they pulled up to the curb, Alex leaned forward to Sam's right ear.
"Wish me luck," he told her in a hushed voice; she thought he was going to kiss her on the cheek before he stepped away from the car and he bowed inside of there. She watched him go into the corridor behind the sheet of smokey glass, and then he ducked around the corner to meet up with those guys, Savatage.
"Want me to take you home?" Greg offered her.
"Please. I'm gonna need a new car, anyway."