TaNkGiRly 的網路日誌

Endymion



Chapter 10



“………….”

When I slowly regained my conscience, I heard two people talking.

“…………….”

“…………”

“……….She seems alright now”

“Are you sure? She still looks a bit pale to me……………”

It was like as if you were in one end of a long tunnel and those voices were coming from the other end. First all you heard was some sorts of mumbling voice, then as you moved forward towards the voicing source and tried slightly harder to concentrate on what they were talking, it began gradually clear; it was also like as if you were tuning the radio. For quite some times the frequencies didn’t seemed to be exact, so all you heard was some kind of distance chatting voice and none of them made any sense. Then all of the sudden the frequency just overlapped and you started hearing the conversation clearly.

“………..I am a nurse, for Christ sake.” Now this was Zoë’s voice, she sounded slightly stress and frustrated. But whom was the male voice belonged to? It sounded awfully familiar: “Her temperatures just settled earlier, was it? Plus we had just given her some more medicine. Trust me. She will be alright from now.”

“…………..Okay.”

“…You don’t look convince, do you?”

“………No.” the voice admitted honestly.

“Well, did Doctor Owen just come to check on her? He said she was fine, did he?”

“ I supposed so.” He signed.

Now who the hell was this? I searched my memory hard and wide for any recall about this voice.

“Now, Can you please go back to your room? It’s like 1 a.m. now and if Doctor Owen doesn’t see you at your bed when he’s there tonight, he’s not going to be a happy chappy, Alex.” Zoë signed.

Oh my goodness!

That was Alex!!! How could I forget?

The Alex I thought……………

I thought……………..

I tried to open my eyes, however this seemed to be quite a mission as they weight an awful lot more than they supposed to all of the sudden.

“I am not going bloody anywhere.” Alex sounded a little bit frustrated and angry: “Now I am not gonna be a happy chappy if I am not here when she awake!”

“I will let you know.” Zoë assured him.

“I don’t want you to let me know, I want to see it myself.”

I finally opened my eyes, after some kind of struggle. Once my eyes gained focus (another mega mission, Crickey! My body bits wasn’t very cooperative these days), I saw Zoë, standing next to my bed, adjusting drips; and Alex, in the wheelchair, not very far from her, looked a bit tired and grumpy. Neither of them seemed to have rest for quite some times.

“………Hi.” I cleared my throat and tried to make some noise.

Their attention turned straight towards me.

“Thank goodness! Isabella! Your are awake!” Zoë signed: “Crickey! You almost gave me a heart attack!!! You past out, remember? Right in front of me and Alex!!”

“Did I?” I was puzzled.

“Yes you did. It turned out you’ve been having Influenza for days. You should have seen the temperature! Man! That scared the wits out of me! Now don’t you tell me you were fine again, because you bloody weren’t!” She was literally in tears. Sweet Zoë.

“…Well, that explained why I had this terrific migraine.” I tabbed my temple and gave her a weak smile.

“You are a nurse!!!! Don’t you know when there is something wrong with your body? Shouldn’t you sense something was wrong when there are more than one person told you that you don’t look good?” Zoë got all emotional about this, not noticing her voice were getting louder and louder.

“Relax, Zoë! I am just waking up here, loud voice making my head aching!” No, I wasn’t joking about this one, my head was indeed started pounding like some drumstick was bashing it.

“….Oh, sorry dear.” Zoë quickly lowered her voice down to whisper state (a bit too extreme): “ … I just… just…”

“No worry, just…please talk quietly here for a moment.” I smiled at her: “I need time to adjust.”

“Now someone just told me to trust a nurse.” Alex joked, giving her an evil, with a huge relieved smile on his face.

“Just this one, let me tell you. She’s still a nurse in training. Well,” Zoë threw Alex a glance and walked towards the door: “I better go let everyone know you are awake. Especially Owen, he will be very delighted to know this.” She winked at me and took a quick look at Alex again, sighed: “And I suppose I will have to tell him a patient of his is here as well, just in case he thought the patient had went missing or being kidnapped.”

Off she went.

Now there was only Alex and I in the room.

Great, just what I needed.

We stared at each other.

Now where were we before I passed out?

Right, let’s see, Alex just confessed that he was interested in me. And I had just discovered I had the same feeling towards Alex the Endymion. But silly ninny me (What was I thinking?) rejected him by using the most terrible excuse of all: his legs. Alex was hurt and hasn’t talked to me for weeks (well, part of the reason was because I wasn’t in the hospital for weeks), and I’ve been feeling extremely guilty about this whole thing and have no idea about how to repair this stupid damage…

That didn’t sound good, didn’t it?

But he just stayed at my bedside while I was unconscious…

Now I wasn’t sure what should I say? “Oh! Thanks for worry about me.”, “Gee! That’s very nice of you to stay at my bedside.” or “ Haha! That was embarrassing enough, wasn’t it?”

What about “Oops! Not very graceful, all nurses’ good reputation ruined (and gave him a guilty smile).”

I was just trying very hard to think of something to say and out of my biggest surprise in my life, Alex moved his wheelchair forward and said: “You surely don’t know how to look after yourself.”

I blinked my eyes, and blinked again. This was quite astonishing. He was talking to me, right? I wasn’t dreaming or still in fever, right?

“And you are a nurse and part-time personal career, “ He looked at me for a couple of second, then reached his hand out to pull a few string of hair that was covering my forehead, now this was really way out of my expectation: “silly. Now look at you.”

My eyes widen. This was a bit too good to be true.

“Perhaps they should consider retraining you from scratch.” He said.

“……………I had my paper to save.” I weakly defended. Goodness me! I still found it was hard to breath when being this close to him: “everything else was minority.”

“I did say I was going to help.” He joked.

Now I must have definitely been dreaming. I quickly glanced at the bell not very far from my bed; perhaps I should ring someone to check my temperature?

“That was before…………..You didn’t even want to talk to me……….” I closed my eyes and whispered. This was bigger than I could handle right now: “I am sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this………..” I quickly apologised again. No, No, No! This wasn’t like me. Now I acted like a three-year-old…I…My emotions suddenly went over the edge. Tear started disobeyed my best effort and dropping off my face: “I just……………..I just………..”

Alex quickly moved forward and sitting next to me, looked at me for a couple of seconds then interrupted me by starting to wipe off my tears, gently kissing my chins, and give me the tenderest hug.

My body started to shake uncontrollably.

Christ! I wished this hug could last forever.

We finally parted and looked into each other’s eyes. For another wee while we were just sitting there and looking at each other. Then Alex signed: “…Isabella………..”

Then he kissed me.

This was better then I expected.

Way better.

Well, considered the state we were at just before I passed out.

The kiss was sweeter than I could remember last time. It lasted slightly longer and Alex’s lips were even tenderer, as if I was very, very fragile.

The familiar warmth and softness of his lips set my head spinning in a madness state.

I sighed with satisfactory secretly, worrying if I showed any move or made any sound it would all disappeared.

“No, I am sorry, Isabella. I am so sorry.” Alex apologised: “I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I behaved like a child. You have every right to blame me. I shouldn’t be this harsh on you.” He signed: “I am truly sorry.”

“No, I shouldn’t be telling you we couldn’t be together because you have no leg. It was my fault in the first place. I owed you all these………..I……………..” All the sadness, terrible guilt and stress I’ve been holding for the last couple of weeks all turned into tears. I found I couldn’t stop crying.

Alex looked at me with sympathy and very slowly, he pulled me into his arms again.

Now I knew I wasn’t dreaming.

“No you don’t, Isabella.” Alex said when he finally stopped: “I was the fool one, watching you bearing everything, trying hard shedding your tears, feeling my heart aching and missing you terribly when you weren’t in the hospital but still couldn’t bring myself to stop just because of my stupid dignity. It was until you past out in front of me two days ago…yes, you’ve been unconscious for two days.” He gently teased as he saw my eyes widen in surprise: “That sent me into the panic state. I realised how deep I’ve been falling for you, Isabella. I don’t really care if you don’t want me because I have no leg, all I want is able to be with you and being able to keep caring about you. The rest are not important.”

“You do??” I looked at him with disbelieve.

Now I was pretty sure I must have been dreaming about this one.

Did he just make a confession to me?

“Yes, I do.” He looked at me passionately: “I am falling for you greatly, Isabella. I think I love you.”

“Do you?…..” I whispered quietly.

Alex gave me a sweetest smile: “Yes I do.”

Now this wasn’t just astonishing, this completely blew me away.

How could the last few days made such a huge a difference?

“…Say that again.”

“I can say this a million times,” Alex’s lips pressed against mine: “I LOVE YOU, ISABELLA.”

This time I kissed him back.

“Now I know I am not dreaming all this.” I smiled at him in tears when we finally parted.

“No, you are not.”

“And I’ve been trying to tell you this for the last couple of weeks, Alex.” I touched Alex’s face, which was slightly stubble and tickled my palm a bit: “ I’ve realised the fact that you have no leg isn’t such a big issue to me. I am a coward. All I worried about was what other people would think. Deep down, I actually don’t mind at all.” I stopped and enjoy watching Alex as he raised his eyebrow.

“Are you serious?” Now it was Alex’s term to believe in what he heard: “you mean you are…you…”

I nodded: “Yep.”

“But you said your heart was with someone else….”

“I also said that person’s heart was no longer on me and solely me any more.” I smiled: “then I realised………”

“Then you realised…” Alex looked at me anxiously.

Felt slightly embarrassed, I looked away for a couple of seconds.

I’ve never been a mushy kind of person, let me tell you. Making confession in front of the person that I had fallen into was not my couple of tea (normally I let the others making the confession, or just writing them some sorts of hinted love note instead). Therefore this was, of course, rather uncomfortable for me. I took a deep breath, then another, and finally, spilling the feeling I have had towards Alex pretty much since the first time I saw him: “ Then I realised my heart had no longer with him anymore as well. It had been with you for all these time. I think I love you too, Alex. I am not sure how long has this been going on, and you have no leg had no major effect on this whatsoever at all. It all happened before I even notice it…”

Alex didn’t let me finished whatever almighty speech I was going to say, he grabbed my arms and pulled me into his arm again, kissing me so passionately that I almost running short of breath while mumbling some words (now this might sounded a bit ‘eeeeeeeeeeeewh’ to some of you, but hey, I was just described what just happened in the room here, so grabbed yourself some brum and vacuum cleaner and tidy up your own goosebumps, okay?): “Oh my god! You love me! Do you have any idea how effective those words to me? After waking up from COMA and realising the body I once knew was gone forever, I thought no one…I thought absolutely no one would love a wrecked, heartbroken and useless person like me. And I was going to accept that. Now…I can’t believe what I just heard, the women I had found myself fallen into had just said she loved me!!!! Isabella! You are an angel! Oh my god! You are truly an angle…I can’t bloody believe it….”

For the second time (first time was when I found out Alex started talking to me again and told me he didn’t mind whatever nasty things I said to him, he still had this feeling for me), I felt totally blessed.

Do you know that feeling? The feeling that you had just realised you loved someone and that person loved you back in return; the feeling that made every inch…perhaps every cell of your body was singing with joy and relaxed at the same time (which was considering another phenomenon as I had never heard of a cell could be able to multitask); the feeling that you wouldn’t really care if you died right there and then, just because you were absolutely happy; the feeling that all of the sudden, all the right things had just felt into the right places, and there was totally nothing you need to worry about for a very long time; the feeling that you no longer needed to hopelessly painstakingly search something (which you had no clue what that was) anymore, because that thing was right in front of you; the feeling that you know very certain your heart was bumping, right where it belonged, without even checking?

I believed you all know what I mean.

Perhaps I should have this Influenza thingy more often.

When Alex finally let go of me and looked into my eyes again, he asked: “Say that again to me.”

“Say what?”

“What you just said.”

“What did I just said?” I looked at him, eyes twinkling with playfulness.

“You know what I am asking for.” Alex gently rubbed his fingers against my chin.

I sighed: “Yes I do. I LOVE YOU TOO, ALEX.”

“And you don’t care if I had no leg.”

“No, I don’t.” I smiled: “And you are not useless. ”

Alex bended over and kissed me…for the….alright! I think I lost count. But I knew every time it was a bless.

Then we noticed Zoë stood at the door, jaws dropped, colour faded from her face.

Actually, there were a few people standing at the door. We had Eddie Owen, Joanne, Carl, and Daphne, all seemed in some kind of shocking state.

“…………….Alright, what have we missed?” Zoë asked after nearly a long century’s dead silence.