"Love in the Great Pine Woods" by Gratiana Lovelace (2015-2016) (Completed)

Ch. 10 (PG-13, S): The Impatient Patient

"Love in the Great Pine Woods", Ch. 10 (PG-13, S): The Impatient Patient, December 16, 2015 by Gratiana Lovelace (Post #844)

(An original story copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace; all rights reserved) [(1) story cover, left]

[From time to time, I will illustrate my story characters with: Richard Armitage as Sam Wakeforest, Marcia Gay Harden as Sam's older sister Tessa Wakeforest Shoop Delaney, and Emily Deschanel as Tessa's sister-in-law Olivia Delaney, Viola Davis as Pauletta Perkins, Cicely Tyson as Nellie Newton, and Anna Sophia Robb as Alice Trent, Kevin Spacey as Roger Delaney, Sam Heughan as Todd Wakeforest, Idris Elba as Dominic Perkins and others as noted.]

Authors Content Note:  "Love in the Great Pine Woods" is a mature love story with dramatic themes of love and relationships. It will mostly be at the PG and PG-13 movie levels. Specific chapters or passages may have a further rating of: L for language, D for dramatic emotions, and S for sensual themes. And I will rate the chapters accordingly. If you are unable or unwilling to attend a movie with the ratings that I provide for a chapter, then please do not read that chapter. This is my disclaimer. And as is my habit, I will summarize the previous chapter's events at the beginning of the next chapter.

Authors Recap from the Previous Chapter:   Sam Wakeforest's car accident swerving into a tree on the way home from staying with his brother Todd at Valleyview Hospital after his operation on Wednesday, December 2nd was a wake up call for him. And Sam wasted no time in proposing to his love Olivia Delaney from his hospital bed. Though the hospital was not romantic like the Delaney garden gazebo in snow atmosphere that Sam had planned, he still had his mother's diamond solitaire engagement ring that he placed on Olivia's ring finger. The thirty five year Olivia has been in love with Sam for a long time, so she eagerly said yes--and they hoped to fast track their wedding. But as the Yiddish proverb says "Man plans and God laughs".

"Love in the Great Pine Woods", Ch. 10 (PG-13, S): The Impatient Patient

The Wakeforest County Hospital doctors insist upon keeping Sam Wakeforest overnight for observation to monitor the effects of his concussion from the accident this Wednesday, December 2nd. They are worried that Sam could have a possible stroke, or worse--bleeding in the brain that could cause death if they don't operate swiftly to relieve the pressure, however rudimentary brain surgery is in 1955. And Sam obliges the doctors by acquiescing to staying overnight in the hospital. He doesn't feel all that well anyway, given the throbbing pain inside his head and on his forehead with his yet to be stitched up gash.

And equally determined to stay by his side is Sam's new fiancé, Olivia Delaney. With the rest of the extended Delaney-Wakeforest family leaving the hospital around 7:00pm Wednesday evening, Sam and Olivia eat light dinners of Swanson turkey tv dinners [(2)] in convenient foil trays--there being only a limited hospital kitchen staff at night--since Sam's being admitted to the hospital was technically after the 5pm dinner hour had been served. Then Sam is helped by an orderly to the bathroom down the hall to pee--Sam will not allow Olivia to assist him back and forth to the bathroom as a point of manly pride. And the nurses take his vital signs again and gave him a slight sedative to ease his pain and to help him sleep.

Finally, Sam's hospital room is very quiet for now around 9pm Wednesday evening--but for the constant hum of the heated air blowing out of the wall register. Sam is dozing and Olivia sits in a chair next to his bed--her arm weaves through the bed rail so that she can touch his arm and have some contact with him. She is sitting in a rather awkward and not very comfortable position for her--with her face leaning on the metal railing, pressing a groove into her cheek.

But that slight discomfort is nothing for Olivia. She knows that she could have lost Sam in the accident today, and Olivia trembles reliving the accident as if she had witnessed it. She has flashes of an altogether different result--in which Sam did not survive. She tries to push that vision out of her mind. But it lingers forebodingly. Olivia can, perhaps, be forgiven for her somewhat fatalistic worries considering her mother died when she was so young--with Olivia just barely in college. The shock and grief of her mother's passing has never really left Olivia--it is a hole in her heart that can never be filled, until she has her own children.