Undercover

39. Progress

In about three weeks, they moved Aiden out of the ICU. They had said that he was out of danger. I had just found out that they had him in an induced coma. I guess it must have been a dire situation for them to do that.

I sat there holding his hand. What I heard from the doctors was that he could wake up soon. Cayden and Ingrid would come by telling me that I should go home and sleep, but even when I did sleep, nightmares would wake me up. In them, I would get kidnapped, rescued, then they'd come after us. They would shoot me and then shoot Aiden. There wasn't anything I could do to help him, and in most of them, he died. I often woke up crying my heart out and I would look to the machine to make sure that his heart was still beating.

I would go home to shower. But I would come back after I showered, just to be with him again. I didn't want him to wake up and not have anyone there with him. And besides, it would help me fall asleep faster, easier. It wouldn't take as long and I was reassured that he would be there when I woke up. It's a silly sentiment, I know but it kept me calm. I just wanted him to be up and about again. None of us knew how extensive the damage was. They just said that they tried to save everything they could.

I walked up to him and bent over to kiss his forehead. I grabbed his hand in mine and feeling his warmth reassured me that he indeed was alive.

"Hey Aiden. I don't know how long this will take you but I'll be here. I've been here since the beginning, I'll be here for another four more years, if that's how long it takes. I just want you to know that I'll be here when you wake up.

Being here also helps me sleep a little better. I keep having these nightmares where they shoot us both and I can't help you. You always die and I always live. No matter what, and it scares the hell out of me, Aiden. I just want to close my eyes and not see them. I want to close my eyes and see nothing. Or at least have better dreams, instead of nightmares.

That night, after the nightmare woke me up, when you got into bed with me. I didn't even remember having another nightmare. Sometimes, when we're out of milk, I go back to sleep and I have another nightmare. That night, even though I didn't get the milk, I didn't dream. I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you know me so well or how you can calm me down with a touch of a finger, but whatever it is I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose you. I thought I had already lost you before and that almost broke me. Losing you without knowing what had happened to you, completely threw me off guard.

I've never been so scared. I wasn't even that scared when Daniels kidnapped me. But when that Julliards guy shot you, when I saw all of that blood, my shirt soaked...Aiden, I was convinced that you were going to bleed out right in front of me while all I could do was watch. I thought I had lost you. At least the first time, there was evidence that you were still alive. This would be definite. You wouldn't come back this time.

I just want you to be okay. That's all I want and I want you to be here, next to me. We're supposed to get married Aiden. We're going to do that. And believe it or not, we can't really get married if you're not alive."

He squeezed my hand then. In the movies, this was usually the part where I would look up and see that he was smiling at me or something. Except when I looked up, his eyes were still closed. The doctors had told me this was normal. They said that he had suffered severe enough damage from the bullet, meaning that it would require more time for his body to work its magic. I don't know, maybe I had understood wrong. They were looking at me like someone had died, and I wasn't really listening because I was freaking out the whole time. You don't have to tell me that I'm kind of horrible for me to know that fact. I know that. But I just wanted to know that Aiden would be okay, and it was only until they said that he would be when I truly listened.