thing.
I understand the need to bend it.
We find ourselves needing to speed it up when going through difficult or traumatic moments, and slow it down when we’re feeling satisfied with love and contentment. But the thing about time is that it’s consistent. It truly doesn’t change as much as you’d wish it would. It’s consistently there, ticking away, reminding you that there is an end to everything. That our time is limited, and whether or not we use it correctly, is up to us.
But with every end, there are also beginnings.
Feet approach us and I notice the black scuffs on the Doc Martins immediately. Looking up, I see a man in his early forties, his dark hair speckled with the evidence of a stressful career.
“Are you the family of Johanna Brooks?”
“Yes. Yes we are,” Hawke answers immediately.
I clear my throat, standing awkwardly as I hold my ankle up. Hawke joins me at my side.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“Is she alright? W-what did she…what happened?” I ask, ignoring his concern for me.
“She’s, well she’s—”
“Can we go see her? Is she asking for me?” I interrupt, feeling impatient.
The way he pauses and the hesitation in his eyes suggest he’s anxious to tell me the next bit of information.
“She isn’t asking for anyone at the moment,” he says sadly. “She’s…not awake.”
“Awake, what do you mean? She’s sleeping right now? She’s tired? What did she take?!”
Hawke places his hand on my shoulder, sensing my impending spiral.
“She took more than her body could handle. It shut itself down in order to self-preserve. She’s in a coma.”
I fall back against the wall.
“I’m sorry, sir. The fentanyl we found in her system caused her respiratory system to slow to such an extreme rate that the brain was deprived of the oxygen it needed. Luckily, upon arrival, we administered Naloxone to reverse the effects. She’s been intubated and we are currently breathing for her. We’re keeping her stable, but are unsure if there was any further brain damage at this point.”
“Fent—” I exhale loudly. “I’m sorry, did you say Fentanyl?!”
“Yes.” He sighs wearily. “It appears she had a mix of cocaine and a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.”
“Holy fuck.” I fall down the wall, my eyes wide as I stare into the floor, attempting to digest the words. These pricks are cutting coke with fentanyl?!
“She’s lucky you brought her in when you did. It doesn’t take long for systems to slow to a point of no return. We’ve had multiple cases lately of kids coming in with similar symptoms and, sadly, some fatalities.”
Jesus Christ.
“Can I see her?” I ask, with hopeful eyes. “I need to see her.”
“You are family, correct?” he asks suspiciously, trailing his eyes from me to Hawke and back.
“Of course. I’m her husband,” I spit out quickly.
I feel Hawke’s eyes dart over to me before he nods behind me.
Doctor Silver Fox looks at my left hand, cocking a brow, noting the missing ring.
“We’re new age. We don’t believe in the traditional inconveniences of modern marriage.”
“Mhmm…” he hums, pausing as if deciding what to do, but shrugs, given the circumstances. “Well, come on back.”
Monitors are beeping, cords are hooked up to her everywhere, and there’s a tube running into her mouth. Her color has come back some. The bluish tint on her lips isn’t there anymore, and it gives me hope, while the entire image of her in this hospital bed breaks me yet again.
I feel my jaw tighten as I fight the tears I feel building. I gave her the tools that put her here. Guilt is a bitch. The shame I’m feeling is crippling me. As Hawke walks towards her, I take in a shaky breath. I fall at the bedside, grabbing her hand in mine and bringing it to my mouth. I can’t even face her. It hurts to look at her.
Hawke gently fixes her hair, his kindness making my tears spill over.
“My baby,” I say with a shaky breath, kissing her knuckles. “Fuck, Johanna, I’m so sorry.”
Suddenly the fear of seeing and touching her fades, and the need to immerse myself in her smell again comes over me. I lean forward, kissing her forehead, then eyebrow, then cheek, before laying my head near the crook of her neck.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Hawke says near me. “I’m going to go check on Cole again. She’s a floor up.”
Cole.
I instantly pop my head back up, finding his eyes.
“How is she?” I ask quickly, my eyes wincing.
He sighs, looking down at Han, then back at me sadly. “Physically fine, they are just checking her over, but mentally…not good. But she’ll be alright. She’s a strong girl.”
I look back down at my fingers intertwined with Han’s. This was supposed to be the happiest day of Cole’s life. An engagement to the man she loves more than anything. Yet here we are, the second most painful day she’s ever known. She found out the truth behind her mother’s death, while her sister lays in limbo from an accidental overdose that could’ve killed her.
“As fucked up as this sounds, I’m glad for everyone’s sake this happened.”
Hawke contorts his face, looking at me suspiciously.
“She needed to know.” I nod, looking down at Jo again. “And she needed to let it out.”
His teeth press down on the corner of his lip, nodding in a silent agreement. As much as it probably pains him to think of Cole finding out this unfortunate truth, it might be the key to fixing their turbulent relationship. Han and Cole can finally grieve the way they need to together.
“I just wish it didn’t happen like this,” I say, fixing Jo’s bangs as my tears build again.
“Sometimes truths break free whether we want them to or not,” he says softly, shrugging his shoulders. “Universe shit.”
I sigh, appreciating his honesty. “Universe shit.”
A few hours later and I’m still next to her, staring. My mind is racing with positive and negative thoughts. I’m in disbelief that this is my reality at the moment. She’ll come back to me. Of course she will. She has to. She’ll push through like the fighter she is.
Then her words infiltrate my toxic mind. Helping someone cross over when they can’t help themselves could be considered the greatest form of compassion.
No. Never. I refuse to believe we’ll make it to a situation where that sentence rings true. Besides, she even admitted it kills a part of the living to do it. She’d never want me to kill off a piece of myself. She’s coming back to me. She has to.
I turn off my overthinking mind and focus on counting her steady breaths until I reach 1,253. A nurse in neon colored scrubs with a perfectly formed Afro pinned back by a matching headband walks in, and I sit up a bit.
“How’s our girl, darling?” she says, immediately checking a computer monitor next to the bed.
She’s got a motherly vibe, I can already tell. It’s comforting.
“If I knew, I’d tell ya,” I reply, running my hands over my face.
“Well, keep talking to her,” she says, looking at some monitor paper that’s printing out on a long sheet before her. “It appears she likes it.”
My eyes dart from her to Han and back. “She can hear me?”
“By the way this is reading, sweetheart, I’d say she knows you’re here.” She smiles and winks at me, heading towards the door again before pausing. “Which is why I’m not letting the other family in quite yet.”
Other family? Her father?
I’d hoped the bastard would be here. But how would he know?
Han’s finger twitches slightly in my hand, bringing me back to her.
“I’m here, baby. I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper in her ear, gripping her hand against my chest as I lean over her frame. “I love you. I love you so much.” My fingers brush across her cheekbone and I sniff lightly. “My Snuffleupagus. My crazy little jellyfish that never dies. That’s you, Han.”
I kiss her forehead and cheek again before settling back into my seat again beside her. I think of a memory of us to myself, but decide to voice it all in case she is listening like the nurse who left the room suggested.
“So, remember when I was at your place for the first time? The time we tripped on acid?” I say the sentence, then quickly look around with wide eyes.
Jesus, the hospital staff really doesn’t need to know all this. The doctors will definitely lock my crazy ass up.
“The time we skipped on placid,” I correct myself. “Well, anyway, I never told you but your buddy Norbert…he really likes me.” I smile, thinking of how wild that night was.
“Remember how I said he started talking to me while you were helping to take care of me? You were getting me a glass of water, and he started spouting off at the beak.” I roll my eyes. “He said I was so naïve, and that you’d never let me in. The prick.”
I just called a dead duck a prick. Living my best life.
“Ya know, he even asked me to bring you back to him, as if I could somehow save you…like he ultimately knew that I was the one to break through and reach you.”
I pause, needing to grind my back teeth. We’ve come so far since then.
“Well…” I clear my throat, blocking the pain so I can continue. “Actually, he told me to bring the band together. That bringing that twisted little mariachi band together would somehow bring you back again…to him.”
Sucking in a breath, I blink wildly as my brows knit together.
“Bring you back…” I whisper to myself, my mind racing.
My eyes narrow as I stare at the pale blue and white pattern on the blanket covering Han.
“The band.”
I scratch my forehead.
“You found the other ones. Somehow they were taken away from you, dispersed, but you found them, didn’t you? The duck with the harmonica, the stuffed toad in the colorful poncho playing the banjo…” I drag out the words.
“The squirrel wearing the black sombrero with maraca in his twisted little arm! I saw him!” I shriek, my eyes wide.
The fucking squirrel!
“Your attachment to Bran! Y-you said there was one piece left,” I stutter at the realization. “One thing that held you to him. It wasn’t just your job, it was that squirrel! That motherfucker stole your squirrel, and you’ve been searching for him ever since! That’s why you were looking in his safe that night, breaking in to see if he hid it there. That’s why you’ve been calling Gerald’s Gem’s looking for it to turn up like he said. Gerald…”
I pause again as everything pieces itself together.
“I went to Gerald’s,” I breathe. “I met…” I stall for a second as it truly connects.
“I met Larry,” I tell her while nodding vigorously. “Your Larry. Y-you said he got sick. He is sick, but he’s with Gerald now. Larry made you that band in his workshop, as a celebration, a way to break you free from that past that held you down. He’s been there at Gerald’s shop trying to help you find the pieces, Han.”
I stand up out of my chair, the bottom of it screeching against the tile floor, as I lean over her.
“Larry told me we belonged together,” I whisper in disbelief as the realization continues to hit. “He said we fix each other, but only after all the pieces have broken, all the cracks in place.”
I shake my head, looking her up and down. It’s why she looked at me all crazy when I uttered those words to her. She’d heard them before, from him. We are broken. Completely shattered, all of our cracks in place. Now we can finally fix each other.
“You had no idea what Bran did with that squirrel,” I continue, voicing my thoughts. “No idea where it went after he stole it. It’s why you’ve tried to remain close to him…it wasn’t only to protect me when you realized I was on his radar. It was to find that last piece. The last mate to complete the band.”
Her pinky twitches in my hand again.
Oh my God. It’s all real. Norbert’s words spoke the truth. Complete the band and bring her back.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I say confidently into her ear, holding her hand to a new and determined heart.
“I’m about to get that fucking squirrel.”
