Elijah Ross

Elijah

Elijah's eyelids fluttered gently as he rolled over onto his right side. Reaching his arms out he felt the bed next to him. He heard a hard clunk come from the kitchen. Elijah flung the covers off his legs, which immediately felt the effect of the cold, covering themselves in goosebumps. His socked feet made barely a whisper as they brushed against the smooth wood floors. Elijah grabbed the newspaper Merrin kept by her nightstand. He rolled it up in his palms, making a quite menacing cylinder.
He heard more rustling in the kitchen and snuck closer, bit by bit. He jumped around the corner of the hall and into the kitchen holding the paper high above his head.
Merrin stood at the stove, wearing Elijah's favorite button down shirt, scrambling eggs in a skillet.
"Look who made it" she sarcastically remarked and turned her head towards Elijah, gently tossing her unbrushed hair. Elijah stood and willed his heart rate to go down. Merrin being gone from bed had given him quite the shock, if anything had happened to Merrin... well he just couldn't imagine.
"And you brought me my crossword? Thank you, honey" Merrin left the stovetop and waltzed over to Elijah, kissing him on the cheek. "Why is it all rolled..." Merrin began to ask before she put the pieces together herself.
"Oh Eli, if I were a spider I would have been in big, big trouble, wouldn't I?" Merrin teased him, raising up to her tiptoes to be able to see eye to eye with him.
Elijah put both his hands on her waist and held the girl he loved most close to him.
"No, no. I gotta stir the eggs!" Merrin fake struggled to escape from Elijah's strong grasp. She wriggled against him in distress. "The... egg..." Merrin dramatically collapsed to the floor, feigning death. Elijah bent down and scooped her up from the ground, carrying her like a princess to the stove.
"Put me down" Merrin laughed and kicked her feet in the air.
Elijah gently placed her by the stove and she picked up the spatula waving it in his face. "Ahaha!" Merrin took up a fencing-style position towards Elijah, holding her spatula as her sword. "En garde!" Merrin leaped menacingly in his direction.
Elijah crossed his arms in front of his body, fists clenched, and then brought them out to his sides, signing "Save me".
"Well hold up now, what was that, could it be trash talk?" Merrin advanced towards a cornered Elijah, who shook his head quickly before signing "garbage" and "talk".
"I must pretend I know what you just referred to." Merrin tossed him her spatula, grabbing another from the kitchen drawer for herself. "Now we find ourselves in a fair fight". Merrin laughed and took a slow motion swing at Elijah, who easily blocked it with his own weapon of death. Merrin lept onto the couch, Elijah's shirt she was wearing catching air, making her appear as a balloon.
Elijah's smile lit up his face as he took a swing at Merrin, crouched on the sofa. "GOOShhhh" Merrin muttered sound effects as she blocked the hit. Merrin took a side swing at Elijah, contacting him. He fell to his knees, clutching his side, watching Merrin's face flood with love. Reaching one hand into the air he fell to the ground.
Merrin scurried down from the couch, kneeling on the floor at Elijah's head. Running her fingers through his hair she dramatically cried, "What have I done!"
Elijah's eyes snapped open, and he signed quickly "Not dead", and rolled over taking a fatal shot right to Merrin's stomach.
"Arrrggh!" She yelled before pushing Elijah over. "I hate you so much" she laughed.
Elijah just held up his left hand towards her pointing towards his fourth finger, where his gold band lay. He raised his eyebrows, tilting his head with a half smile, until Merrin lifted her left hand. Her diamond sparkled in the early morning sunlight as they touched their wedding rings together. "Clink", Merrin whispered before grabbing Elijah's face in her hands, pulling him close.
Elijah's eyes closed tightly as he felt Merrin's lips contact his.
...
Elijah giggled as he was chased around the doctor's waiting room. His brother was on his heels. Certain death approaching him in the form of his older brother he zoomed past the fish tank with all the tropical friends he had made.
"Elijah Matthew Ross" his father said Elijah's full name to the receptionist behind the counter, filling out a form. "Six years old, uhm birthday? October twentieth". The pen danced across the paper in almost illegible handwriting. "Tonsillectomy".
"Thank you sir, it will just be a few moments." Tucking her hair behind her ear, the receptionist noticed Elijah's father had no wedding ring. Consciously pushing out her chest, she shyly smiled and bit the corner of her lip. Elijah's father just turned around to gather his kids who were still running around giggling.
Elijah's dad grabbed him mid-sprint and held him high above his head.
"Noooooo!" Elijah screamed in protest. It would certainly not do for his brother to catch up to him. His legs kicked highly when the nurse came in to get him from the waiting room.
"Elijah?" She called and Elijah's dad put him back on his feet. He stumbled clumsily to the door, trying to regain his balance. The nurse sat him down on a gurney and wheeled him out the door. Elijah's face peeked through the door's window and caught a glimpse of his dad and brother, making a sour face at them, waving, he yelled, "Bye!".
The rest was a bit of a blur. There was a pink face mask they put over Elijah's mouth and nose. They asked him to breathe in, it smelled sickly sweet.
"Count to 100", a nurse asked him.
"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8..." Elijah's mind wouldn't think. What came after eight? He frantically racked his brain. And then he blinked.
When he opened his eyes he wasn't in the operating room anymore. It was really bright and Elijah squinted. He opened his mouth to talk and could only make a hoarse groan.
"Elijah!" His brother Samuel peered over at him. "My birthday is in eighteen days, you know how old I will be? I will be nine". Samuel ran to Elijah's side excitedly.
Elijah strained to talk, he wanted his father. Samuel, forever intuitive about his brother's feelings, understood and went to get his dad from the reception desk.
"Elijah's awake! Dad, Dad, he's awake!" Samuel pulled on his father's pant leg with unbridled enthusiasm.
Elijah's voice was but a raspy whisper as his dad grew near. "Don't worry dear, it's common to have your throat hurt after getting your tonsils out. You'll be fine", Elijah's dad reassured him.
A hurried nurse with a clipboard clicked her pen nervously as she stepped past a curtain into Elijah's room.
"Elijah Matthew Ross?" She spotted the young boy in the hospital bed as he nodded. "Hey sweetie. I'm just going to do a quick check, open?" She asked him as he opened his mouth. She shone a little light down his throat to check the swelling.
"Oh... Thank you Elijah." She shook her head and wrote quickly on her paper.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Elijah's dad asked frantically.
"Oh, it's probably nothing, just excess swelling in his throat, most likely he was sensitive to the equipment. Just to be safe I should take him into the back for a re-evaluation." The nurse then turned her back on Elijah's family, talking into a phone on her belt line.
Elijah raised his eyebrows questioningly at his dad. "You'll be fine. Just cooperate with the doctors."
The next part was a bit hazy for Elijah. He was taken back into the room. He was asked to open wide, and he did. He heard the doctors talk and it didn't sound all that promising.
"Oh. What do we do. Who did this? I can't believe it. What do we tell the father?"
Elijah's father was called into the operating room.
"We've cut his vocal cord. A utensil must have slipped while we were operating. We cannot take a needle down there without rupturing his larynx, it's just too risky."
"Please do something, he has to talk, it's my boy..." Elijah's father began to tear up as he trailed off.
"Why don't we just keep your contact number, if we find something we can do to help, even years in the future, he can come back here and we will do all in our power to fix it." The doctor pleaded.
Elijah's dad looked over him, laying on the bed and Elijah saw the tears gently spill over onto his cheeks.