Regretful Love

Chapter Eleven

                  

It was dark when he awoke, and peaceful. Machines clicked; his drip steadily dripped; moonlight glinted off the clear morphine liquid. Beside him, the girl watched, quietly, her eyes open and her hand still on his. He wondered how long she'd been waiting, but had no way to tell. He hadn't dreamed, just slept a solid sleep.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, when she realised that he was awake.

Kell sighed and tried to move, but found that when he did it pulled uncomfortably at the needle in his arm, so he settled for stretching his legs out instead.

"For a lot of reasons," he said, finally. "You seemed to have your own problems at the time and I didn't want to add to them. And... well... and because putting things into words always makes them sound so real, don't you think?"

"It is real though, Kell," she said.

She didn't often use his name, but it sounded good on her tongue.

"I guess I needed to make a little peace with it myself," he admitted. "Ain't told no one except the priest, and now you. It's not the sort of thing that's easy to find words for."

"And are you at peace with it now?"

He stretched his legs again before answering. "Mostly," he said. "It's... frightening. I'd be a liar if I said anything else. Not knowing what's going to come, not knowing when. That scares me."

"Do you believe in heaven?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes. Yes, I do. But don't know if I'm going to get there. All I can do is hope. I think it's a place that's quiet. A place where there are those that have loved you. A place where the temptations are gone, where you can't make bad decisions, where there's no need to justify things to yourself. But what do I know?"

"Maybe heaven is just the place that you need to be," she said.

He eyed her. "You sure you're not a priest yourself?"

The girl laughed. "Pretty sure."

"As for the other stuff, I think I'm all right with it. It's hard to imagine not being here, but then that's because I've never not been here; you know what I mean? Like, I couldn't imagine being on top of a volcano in Iceland. Ain't never been, and got no idea what it's like over there. Same thing. Just not existing, not being—it's a strange thought."

"Stranger for those you leave behind, I should expect," she observed, her hair briefly catching the moonlight.

"Not got many of those," was all Kell said, before cursing himself for saying it because he had, or thought he had, her. But he didn't correct the statement.

For a long time they said nothing, but he noticed that her hand stayed close to his, and he was comforted by it. The night was starting to fade, the room getting greyer.

"You should sleep," she said, eventually. "They'll be moving you tomorrow."

He didn't see the doctor again. When he woke up in the bright light of morning, a nurse was fussing around his bed and the girl was nowhere to be seen. He submitted himself to a bed bath, figuring he could use the wash, but objected when the nurse tried to dress him in a new hospital gown.

"If I'm going outside, I want my own clothes," he said, firmly.

He might need to make a run for it if he saw a chance and he wouldn't get far in an open backed hospital gown, that's for sure. The nurse argued, but in the end she relented, allowing him to sit up on the edge of the bed to pull on his jeans.