He didn’t remember the receptionist at the hospital, either, or asking for Gwen’s room, though he knew the number and floor. If pressed, he supposed, he could probably recall a few details. The majority of his memorable time that day, however, was attributed to the hospital elevator.
Initially the ride proved unremarkable. The pair of nurses near him left on the second floor, and he was due to reach the sixth. Yet, as the elevator droned on, his lungs felt starved for air. He breathed deeply, and felt no reprieve. Deeper and deeper Isaiah urged his lungs to expand, and yet no amount of air reached his body. Alarm grew to palpable levels. His heart thudded mercilessly. A familiar chilled numbness took his extremities, creeping up like fog permeating his body. A cold sweat punctuated his trembling hands. Stars subsumed his vision. Soon, every sound he strained to hear came from a hundred miles away. Soon he couldn’t see.
When the elevator doors opened, he could not fully stand. Instead, Isaiah crawled out of the elevator and leaned himself against the cool slate-faced wall. I have absolutely nothing to panic about, he reminded himself repeatedly. Gwen is fine. She would’ve mentioned complications in her text, or not texted me at all. She doesn’t know who Scholomance is. No one here knows who she is. Nothing is going badly right now. There’s no reason for this.
Then, he thought of her second text.
When he was certain he could stand once more, Isaiah pulled himself to his feet. He stumbled down the hall at first until feeling returned in full to his weak legs. Exhaustion claimed the place of panic while numbers passed him by. Finally he found Gwen’s room, as nondescript as the rest, with the whiteboard next to the door reading her name in old-fashioned cursive script. He knocked twice before entering.
“I brought you something. Hope you don’t mind.” Isaiah gestured to the small, black and orange gift bag that he obviously reused from an edgy clothing store. In a few strides, he claimed the visitor’s seat next to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
The knocks echoed into the white sterile room and Gwen opened her eyes just as Isaiah entered the room. “You came” Relief was evident in her face upon seeing him. Why relief, she wasn’t sure, but Gwen was terribly happy to see him as he made his way to the chair alongside her bed. If she could have she would have thrown her arms around his neck and curled herself into his lap but physically it was impossible. Being connected to devices and IV’s not to mention just feeling utterly sick and weak was enough to keep her in her bed.
“You didn’t need to.” She answered as she eyed the black and orange bag in his hand for a moment before turning her gaze back to hazel eyes. It was comforting to have him close to her, and the anxiety that had been building inside of her, courtesy of a lack of distraction, was slowly easing. “Thank you, though.”
Glancing down at herself, well wrapped up in the normal lightweight, white blankets Gwen couldn’t help a wry laugh. “I’ve been better.”
Feeling a need to try and sit up more after having slid down the bed some in her dozing, Gwen shifted herself to her right side so she could push herself up some. She was careful not to bend her torso any more than needed and she pushed upwards, managing to hoist herself a bit higher in the bed. The price was paid though as she felt herself grow more sick. “Jesus christ, I don’t know how you dealt with this.” She said with closed eyes, lifting her good arm up in indication to the IV that protruded into her hand. “I almost would rather deal with the pain than feeling like I could throw up at any moment.” Which was probably not a problem considering she hadn’t attempted food yet. The only thing housed in her stomach was water that the nurses were making sure she drank enough of.
Opening her eyes she looked at Isaiah again and frowned slightly. She could see he looked tired and drawn. None of this had been her intention. The fight, her idiotic decisions and need to prove herself. Why? She’d never felt a need to jump into something like that before. Immediately she felt her mood shift from content to somber. “I am sorry.”
Isaiah wagered that Gwen looked and felt at least a thousand times worse than he did. She looked pale, with dark circles settling under her eyes. Her body looked taxed. Even her hair spoke of snarls and a lack of its usual shine. As much as he wanted to touch, he knew very little about her injuries. “So where are the problem spots? I don’t want to accidentally make it worse,” he added with a show of his palms.
Her complaints of nausea and the obvious nod toward morphine left his smile faltering. “The first time is always the most intense. Granted, my first time was with something a little more dangerous than morphine, but… I threw up on my boyfriend. Twice. You get used to it after a while. They can probably give you something for the nausea.” Arms came to rest on the armrests, and his fingers curled to grip its steep curve. They felt like a gargoyle’s claws over the edge of a precipice, he thought. Here he was watching over Gwen, as if his presence might somehow ward away further injury. Or death - even that wasn’t off the table. Sepsis was a very real risk.
Not that Isaiah knew.
“Why are you apologizing?” He looked to her with his best quizzical glance. “I don’t think anyone just decides to get themselves put in the hospital. Munchausen's aside.” Carefully he moved the clear cannula above Gwen’s arm, then looped it around one of the railings to the bed. Afterward he swept the bag off the table and placed it in his lap, where he dug around for its contents. First, he produced a card, which he then set upon the nightstand. Then, he withdrew a long adorned loop, much like a necklace, adorned with at least a hundred wooden beads. At the end came a rustic old pendant that showed its age. He held the gift toward her and allowed her to choose which hand to claim it with; he knew not whether one or both hands suffered injury.
“Story time.” Isaiah retracted his hand and folded the pair into a familiar bone lattice. “When I was recovering, I was part of a twelve-step program. They’re not just for AA, really. And, I’m not sure how common knowledge this is, but, there’s a requirement in the later steps to surrender yourself to a higher power. Most people choose God, some choose some unknown form in the universe, and what have you, but... “ He paused, smiled, and snorted in light humor. “I chose Enlightenment. And, I know, no one is going to look at me and think, yes, that guy is definitely Buddhist, but those were the practices I followed. Obviously I’ve fallen out of habit for most of them now.
“So, what you have there are japa mala. Buddhist prayer beads. There’s a hundred and eight beads, and you’re supposed to use them to keep count of your mantra repetition in meditation. It’s… Basically how I survive any hospital visit. I thought you might want it for grounding purposes. Oh, and I have one more thing to add to that.”
Isaiah rustled around in the bag a last time, and produced a small pouch of rice in a zippered burlap bag. It sat within an old wooden bowl with peeling lacquer. He retired them to the counter alongside the bag. “Since you’ll burn through 108 mantra repetitions pretty fast, what you’re supposed to do is drop a grain of rice into the bowl for every full circuit. I figured, if you decided to use these, we could count the number of grains when you got released. Maybe I’d give you something special.
“I won’t ask what happened, because frankly, by the look of you, it was probably traumatizing. But since I’m here, is there anything you wanted from the apartment? Anything I can get you now?”
At his question of her wounds, Gwen hesitated. She felt...ashamed? No...Worthless? She couldn’t quite decide exactly how she felt about the whole thing. True, Isaiah didn’t know why or how she’d received the wounds but it still bothered her that she’d been unable to defend herself. Nervously, she bit her lip before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly through her nose. “Well, it’s a bit of a menagerie. Um, bruised ribs and blunt trauma is about the least of my issues. Otherwise I had a dislocated shoulder.” She nodded to her left side. “And was stabbed in my abdomen. I’ve...not chanced a look at that yet. With how I feel right now though I don’t think I’d feel any actual pain if you touched something.”
She felt terrible. Like Isaiah had stated the morphine was doing a number on her. Since waking they had upped the dosage when she had shown signs of pain when the nurse came to tend to her surgical site, and had since spent most of the time letting herself drift in and out of sleep to avoid the sickening sensations. “I’ll say something when the nurse comes in again.” She hadn’t complained about it considering that the last thing she wanted was any more medicine being pumped into her. “I feel like if I move too much I’ll be doing the same thing you did to your boyfriend. I feel more dizzy than I ever did while drunk, I think.” She gave Isaiah a wry smile. “It’s also oddly...relaxing despite feeling sick though. I mean, I know I should feel pain but I don’t. It’s a bit surreal.”
Isaiah’s soft chastise to her apology caused Gwen to smile slightly. Even though he didn’t think she needed to offer apologies, Gwen did. She knew the circumstances of what happened, of how she had acted. An apology was the least she could do at this point in time. Still, she didn’t counteract him and instead watched as he fished around in the bag.
Blue eyes followed as he placed a card on the table before being drawn back to the odd necklace her held in her hand. She reached up with her right hand to take it from him. Fingers caressed the worn beads taking pleasure in the texture of them as she held it in front of her, part of it resting on her chest as she was drawn to the pendant. She listened carefully to Isaiah’s story as she kept her focus on the necklace in front of her, looking up only when he rustled in the bag for something else. She couldn’t help the tired, but genuine smile that lit up her face. “Leave it to you to bring such an odd, but probably most useful gift.” And she meant it, truly. With how she had been on such a roller coaster of emotions lately, something like this to help ground and ease her mind was extremely valuable to her.
Carefully she reached over to place the beads on the table beside her as Isaiah remarked about what happened. Again guilt crashed over her body, making her feel cold and hot in succession. Thankfully, he wasn’t going to pry and Gwen was quite willing to let it pass over. “My phone charger.” She remarked and paused. “And a sketchpad and pencil? I am not sure if I’ll be able to draw much but having it here if I need a distraction will help.” She would have requested one of her own pillows or blankets but knew it wouldn’t be allowed. Not when she was being monitored for any possible complications or infections.
Laying there watching Isaiah at her bedside, Gwen reached out her hand to him, mentally thanking the fact the chair had been on her right side and not left, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to seek out the physical interaction as easily. With how cold and sterile the room was, Gwen felt the need for the warm touch of her now-boyfriend. “Hopefully I won’t be in here too long.” She said drowsily. “I’d much rather be at home with you and Reilly.”
The outreach was received well, and Isaiah clasped her hand in both of his. He leaned both elbows against the rail and brought her hand to his lips, where it rested against them in a pensive position. He listened quietly while she listed off a few items to bring by when possible - the charger, sketchpad and pencil were each fairly easy to remember. “What about flowers?” He asked against her hand. “I can’t bring you a landscape to draw, but I can do a still life.” Bringing art gum and kneaded erasers was easy enough, and an accompanying set of pencils for lead softness might help more than settling for a mechanical pencil alone.
Mentally he argued with himself over the efficacy of bringing more versus bringing less. He wondered how Gwen would interpret a set of pencils and erasers over simply bringing one: would she consider it an insult for not following her requests to the letter, or would she find it flattering for having brought so much, or possibly anxiety-inducing for bringing too much? The simple considerations of such a straightforward request amplified his own steadily-growing anxieties.
“I don’t know enough about hospitals or, well, stab wounds, to tell you how long they might keep you. The nurses might know. I’d ask for you, but they’re not going to tell me anything since we’re not related or married. Actually, even that wouldn’t matter.” HIPAA laws required a release of information before anyone could mention a damn thing. Even receiving her hospital room was technically a breach of privacy laws, but he wasn’t going to complain.
For a time, he fell silent. He considered her experiences on morphine and compared it to his own with heroin. He found, within that, a deep-seated yearning toward those experiences, especially when framed against his own hospital visit. How easy it would be to simply call Sidney and check in on her task…
And with that thought came another rush of anxiety.
“Have you gotten much sleep? When I was in here, they kept waking me up every few hours.” And they wouldn’t let me smoke, he thought bitterly. Every other damned nurse told me I should quit and handed me a dermal patch. At least Gwen won’t have to face that problem. “And they had some pretty terrible food. I can’t promise that I’ll do any better, but I’ll stock up on some easy foods for when you come home.”
“Flowers would be lovely.” She said with a broad smile as she relished the physical contact he gave her. “It’ll be so much nicer than being forced to draw this dull room. Not to mention they’ll add some great color in here.” She paused and thought for a moment. “If you’re going to bring flowers, could you grab a few other pencils for me? Might as well practice with them if I have the time and a still life will be perfect for that.” Normally Gwen opted for basic mechanical pencils in her drawings, especially if anything she was doing involved moving objects. She didn’t need to fuss with different levels then, but still life’s were a perfect means to practice with the varying degrees in pencils and why not waste time with them? She’d be able to get so much more detail out of them.
Gwen felt herself drowse a bit during the lull in conversation. With Isaiah still holding her hand she felt safe and warm which made sleep a hard thing to keep at bay. Still, she did her best to fight off the drowsiness,, not quite ready to let herself doze off because she knew there was a good chance, when she awoke again, he’d not be there. Especially if a nurse felt the need to shoo him out for whatever it was they’d need to do to her.
“Mmm…” She responded softly to his comment about the stab wound and nurses as she pulled herself back to focus on him. “Let’s not worry about it.” She murmured softly, blinking her eyes to bring the room back into focus.
With her hand still against Isaiah’s lips she moved her hand in his to gently cup the side of his face as she let herself lean slightly towards him. Half lidded eyes indicated the effect the morphine was having on her and how much she was fighting the want to fall into slumber. “I guess? I am not really sure. They keep changing my bandages and poke and prod at me. I don’t know why.” She murmured before blinking hard to refocus. “I mean, I know why they keep changing the bandages. They have to I guess, but it’s not fun.”
With a gentle push and nudge of her hand, Gwen attempted to draw Isaiah’s face to her own as she leaned forward slightly. Lips sought his own in a needy but loving lock as her hand rested on the side of his head.
Ice nodded once in agreement. “Sure, easy enough. I’ve still got plenty from my old college days if you want to use those. I’ll bring a variety.” Pure graphite pencils, colored pencils, watercolor pencils and charcoal pencils in combination sounded like a fair arrangement to Gwen’s requests. Perhaps it was a little overboard, but he rather she have too much to do than wait through the days with dragging boredom. He imagined the days would grow terribly long for her if she was used to balancing powered life against a busy lifestyle like he did - and nothing sated it, either.
And if she had the same morals complex as some of the knights he met, she would wear away her days worrying over who was dying and who she couldn’t save and building up guilt for that. If that were the case, she needed more than just pencils and prayer beads to pass the days.
“I’ll bring a book too,” he mused into her hands.
She looked terribly tired, and Ice smiled at her warmly before he released her hand. “Of course, you might just sleep through everything. You look like you’re going to.” The moment felt very reminiscent of the fire time he introduced Sidney James to heroin. She, too, struggled with nausea, and eventually caved to the relaxing drowsiness that accompanied the drug. He remembered quite clearly how she fell asleep across him, one arm draped over the side of the couch, while they watched the first episodes of The Walking Dead on a friend’s Netflix account. He imagined he and Gwen would’ve shared a similar moment in a world where Isaiah Zähne wasn’t clean.
And in that moment, he soured his own mode with the remembrance of what was waiting for him at the apartment. He weathered it well, however, and kept his countenance carefully neutral. The touch to his face called him from such thoughts, and for a moment, he felt incredibly strange and out of place. He’d entered into breeder relationships before, but nothing so mainstream and potentially monogamous - was he really kissing a lover gently while she lay in the hospital? He never imagined he’d partake in such a scene over the course of his bizarre, uncommon life.
He did, however, return the kiss with equal gentleness as he laid such ideas to rest. “Don’t sit up too much,” he warned as he clasped a hand on her lower thigh and shook the knee gently. “They’ll yell at you for that.”
Sleep. That sounded like a fantastic idea and something that Gwen was going to soon lose the battle to. Rolling her head slightly away from him as he admonished her she sighed in an attempt to sound overdramatic, but what came out as more of a half tired acquisition to his words. “Don’t care.” She murmured softly with half ladden eyes as she looked at him. “Well worth it.”
Gwen absently stared at Isaiah through had lidded eyes as she reminisced over the fact that somehow or another, she had managed to find someone like him. Sure, they weren’t a couple whom looked like they belonged together, and Gwen certainly could understand that, but in that moment she was terribly pleased that life had managed to direct her to someone that could deal with her own emotional baggage while she helped him sift through his own.
Feeling a burning inside of her, Gwen continued her unabashed gazing of her boyfriend. Spurred by the moment and need she reached up again for him, but this time when their lips locked Gwen was anything but gentle about it. Maybe Isaiah’s nature was rubbing off on her already in small ways, but Gwen lamented the physical barriers that were her injuries. Deepening the kiss in her desperate want, Gwen eventually and reluctantly pulled away as she felt a pulling in her abdomen, but not before giving Isaiah’s lips one last graze of her teeth.
“Dammit.” She said quietly as she let herself fall back to the pillows, breathing increased from her little display. Absently she paused a moment as she lay there, waiting for the tell tale sign of blood to tell her that she had managed to pull or rip her stitches. Thankfully, nothing seemed amiss, but Gwen wasn’t quite willing to take the plunge to look at the bandages herself. That was one wound she’d not been ready to fully face yet besides knowing it was there.
Worth it to get injured just so you could sleep on morphine? That doesn’t sound like Gwen at all. Isaiah kept his opinions to himself, however, as Gwen pursued him once more with far more carnal intentions in mind. He responded gently at first, expecting the same light kisses as before, but received teeth in response. This was a procession that Isaiah felt far more accustomed to, though not with Gwen - judging by what occurred with Matthew, he assumed she needed far more light touches and fluffy boyfriend interactions to outweigh the bad memories. These endeavors felt more like Sid.
He responded with some restraint, however, which kept his tongue rings pressed to the back of his front teeth. As much as he wanted to further their nonverbal discourse, he knew it to be a terrible idea. Yet, the last brush of teeth against his lip stole a slight sigh from him as his arms flushed with goosebumps. “Careful,” he warned teasingly, “I don’t want to walk out of the hospital with a stiffy. These aren’t the pants for that.” It would, at least, give the nurses something to talk about.
“You look exhausted, though. It’s still early in the morning; if you want to take a nap, I can drop by the apartment and grab the stuff. Won’t take me too long.” He looked down at her then, and wondered to himself if Gwen was the masochistic type. She might’ve been, given how she acted.
Now wouldn’t that be a surprise?
As much as she might rue the idea of letting herself fall into slumbers sweet embrace, it felt more like she was going to be clobbered over the head with it soon. The comment about his pants caused a sly grin to slide across her face. Still, she nodded her head at his suggestion of a nap even as her eyes finally lost the battle they had been waging against the morphine and her body’s need to heal..
“Mmm. Ok.” She said quietly. “Don’t take too long, love.” She shifted her head so that it was facing in the direction she knew Isaiah was, arm outstretched towards the edge of the bed as if still seeking his touch. It certainly did not take long though for sleep to claim her as he breath gently slowed. Not even the annoying beeps and whirrs of the machine disturbed her.
Kolina
