Those two words sent her reeling.
He’s alive. Overwhelmed, Nylah spirals as her breath comes in rapid pants and her hearts thunder against her painful ribs. It’s too much. All of it. She needs to be alone, to not have anyone else’s hands on her. She needs Kieran and the safety he offers. She struggles in Ruarcs grasp, desperate to not only escape his touch, but to find Kieran. All the touching. Her voice grows shrill. ”Let me go!” It carries down the halls of the hospital as she continues to be combative. Until she feels the sharp prick of a needle in her arm. Then she’s angry. And the entire hospital floor hears her anger. Ruarc is already familiar with her flying fists and she doesn’t land a second one as he wraps her in a vice like grip, her arms pinned, until her body goes limp with the sedative.
When she wakes, she’s in a room she doesn’t recognize. Again. Slowly, she blinks, looking around the room as she fights through a medicated fog. Her limbs feel like they are made of lead. There’s a small moment of peace, a brief lapse in time when she didn’t remember a thing. Before the beeping of the monitors reminders her that she’s in a hospital. And why she’s here. She struggles to sit up and even under a layer of painkillers, her ribs still scream in protest. It’s enough to take her breath away, to have her hissing between clenched jaws. Smartly, she’s also secured to her bed, her wrists wrapped in soft cuffs to prevent her escape. The beeping behind her picks up speed as she feels the panic rising. Adrenaline collides violently with the sedation. Her already battered body struggles to keep up with demands of her mind.
Her limbs are clumsy as she tugs at her bindings, pulling hard until she hears the faint sound of material ripping. She only needs one hand free. Desperation is a powerful emotion. Nylah is unaware of her tears as they stream down her cheeks. She’s not even aware that she’s been sponged clean, something that seems to make her bruises even more glaringly obvious, and she’s been changed into a hospital gown.
With one hand free of its soft cuff, she tugs the other off her opposite wrist before she very nearly falls out of bed. Her knees buckle and she just barely catches herself on the edge of the bed. The dizziness is all consuming as she struggles to right herself. Her grip is white knuckled as she tries to fight through the dizziness and nausea. On those same white sheets, it’s impossible to not see the splotch of red. Blood. She swallows thickly. Her blood. Her miscarriage. She knows it, deep in her bones, she knows it. Her period isn’t due yet and it’s never this heavy. Time stretches on as she just stares. The idea of being pregnant is such a foreign concept to her. Nylah has never even considered having children of her own. Did it to hurt to lose something she hadn’t ever considered a possibility? What hurt is that once again, a man has stripped her of her choice. Her autonomy ripped from her grasp and she’s left to pick up the blood pieces. Again, she didn’t get to decide. She had no voice.
The sob that parts her lips is a broken sound. It makes her sick to her stomach. It unearths the past and pushes play on a tragic movie. She’s reminded of the pain, the uncaring thrust of hips against her as her virginity was torn from her body. The bruises on her wrists eventually faded, along with the finger tips that pressed into her hips until they turned back and blue. But the memories remained. The feeling of his cum dripping out of her and onto their bed when he was done with her is branded into psyche. She stopped counting how many plan B pills she choked down in secret. Her second husband was marginally better, but she still remembers the night he drugged her in an attempt to soften her resolve. The sluggishness in her arms that night is the same as it is now. The defenselessness is suffocating. Unable to fend him off, she drowns in the wake of her own helplessness. Her lower lip quivers as she’s dragged backwards, remembering everything that has been taken from her. Even before her father married her off.
The first time her father placed a gun in her hand and told her to kill a man. He deserved it, her father assured her. The barrel shook in her hands as she aimed it at the mans chest. She squeezed her eyes shut when she pulled the trigger. Before she could reopen her eyes, her father’s calloused palm stung as it landed across her cheek. He scolded her for closing her eyes, for not looking the man in his eyes as she took his life. He made her shoot him again and again and again. Until she could stare at his mutliated body without flinching. Until she was as unfeeling as the dead body at her feet. Her childhood ended that day. Days after the death of her mother.
Throwing the blankets over the stain, she turns from it as the room blurs with a fresh wave of tears. Flinging open her door, she startles a nurse that’s in hall. Wide eyes meet hers before the woman immediately tries to usher back into bed. But the moment the woman’s soft hand touches her elbow, Nylah implodes. ”Don’t!” She snarls as she throws yet another punch. This woman isn’t Ruarc. She doesn’t see it coming. She doesn’t duck. Nylahs fist collides with her pretty face and she sends the woman to the ground with a brutality that has been repeated beaten into her. She doesn’t hesitate to step over the woman’s body as she continues down the hall.
The commotion is quickly noticed. More nurses trickle into the hall, but none are quite brave enough to approach her. Except one. The grey haired woman approaches slowly, her hands held up in surrender. Her soft voice makes Nylah curl her lip in disdain. ”Let me help you.” Her nostrils flare and her eyes narrow distrustfully. ”My husband. Now.” She forces the words out between her clenched jaws. ”Who’s your husband, dear?” Like a caged animal, her weight shifts back and forth as her eyes dart around them. ”Kieran.” The old nurse smiles softly, as if she’s not the least bit surprised. ”This way.” She extends a hand in offering that Nylah doesn’t take, though she does take a slow step towards the woman. Not close enough for anyone to grab her, to touch her.
She’d led to another door. The smaller woman pushes it open and steps inside, holding the door open for Nylah to follow her. Immediately, she finds Kieran. His bandaged chest rises and falls steadily, while the machines around him beep with signs of life. Pale green eyes track the woman’s every movement as she walks up to the only bed in the room. Nylah tenses defensively. Her hand disappears into one of many pockets and Nylah nearly lunges. But she produces a small silver key. The nurse hums quietly to herself as she unlocks the cuffs that have been secured around Kieran’s wrists, keeping him chained to his hospital bed. Inching closer, Nylah is still shifty at best. ”I’ll leave you two alone.” She murmurs, like such a mayhem is the norm in her hospital. ”Please try not to hit anyone else.” A knowing smile curls her aging lips before she leaves. Nylah huffs.
Alone, she stands at his bedside, just outside of his reach. All Nylah can do is stare at him. Aside from the bandages and tubes and wires attached to him, he looks very much alive. Slowly, she inches closer, drawn by the need to touch him, to feel the warmth of his skin, to truly know.
"Nylah, Nylah, Nylah."
And then he'd been dragged down somewhere far beyond awareness, and he thought of nothing at all.
Kieran spent the rest of that night and well into the following morning on the operating table, barely clinging to life. The doctors called it a miracle that he even made it to the hospital; by all rights, he should be dead. Somehow, the bullet had narrowly missed the target of his heart, managing to skim across its surface and through the neighboring lung, collapsing it. There's a hairline fracture on his temple from where his head had slammed into the kitchen island, but no underlying permanent damage. By all rights, Kieran should be dead.
But he can't die.
Not when Nylah is still out there, and she needs him.
Not when he needs her.
They're wise to keep him sedated once he's stabilized and recovering from the surgery. Even through the thick haze of his confusion and the heaviness of his limbs, the first thing Kieran does is try to roll himself out of the bed—not that he gets very far—with Nylah's name still on his lips, ignoring every soothing attempt to tell him that Ruarc is getting her, that she'll be alright. He won't believe them until he can see her with his own eyes, hold her in his own hands. They have to sedate him even further, and the next time Kieran briefly awakens, his wrists are cuffed to the bed.
He fades again, drifting thoughtlessly through a sea of black waves.
When he wakes again, Kieran isn't alone. He can immediately tell by the prickle of awareness creeping across the back of his neck; his eyelids feel like sandpaper, but he manages to drag them open, expecting to see Ruarc sprawled in the chair in the corner. He's quite certain that the last few times he'd momentarily blinked awake, Ruarc had been there, watching him. Standing vigil. But right now, the chair is empty.
His brow furrows slightly, and he raises a heavy arm to scrub at his eyes with thumb and index finger, only to pause and pull his hand back, squinting at the faint impression in his skin where the handcuff had been. That arm drops back down to his side as he rolls his head the other way to see if his other hand is free, and he briefly notes that it is before the corner of his vision catches movement, and his skull pivots the rest of the way. He glances feminine hands, familiar hands, and a choked little noise catches in his throat before his eyes have even reached her face.
"Nylah," he whispers, his voice rough and scratchy. Instinctively, Kieran reaches out for her, his fingers trembling slightly, but he stops shy of brushing her skin; the hospital gown she's dressed in is a stark reminder of how they got here—of what may have been done to her. The thought makes him sick, makes him want to wrap her up in his embrace and shield her from all the world's horrors that have a twisted obsession with her. Kieran swallows hard, his plea soft and broken and uncertain as he ventures, "come here, baby."
The look in her pale green eyes is fathomless.
Kieran’s eyes slowly flutter open and Nylah lets out a breath she’d be holding since the night he was shot. He rubs his hand over his face, which draws his drugged stare to his hands. Any other time, she might have laughed but any trace of humor had long been stolen from her. She too looks at the faint cuff line pressed into his skin. Nylah. A melancholy smile lifts one corner of her mouth. Otherwise, she’s quiet. Even as he reaches for her. She’s immediately aware that he doesn’t touch her, that he pauses - even drugged - he waits. What she’s done to deserve Kieran, she doesn’t know. Nylah doesn’t hesitate. She slides her hand into his, a sob finally cracking her silence. Her lower lip trembles against her will. He’s okay. She’s not gotten a single detail beyond a pacifying ‘he’s okay’. Like she’d honestly take their word for it. But as his fingers wrap around her hand, she’s reassured and the relief is immeasurable. Her shoulders sag as that weight is lifted. It also leaves room for everything else to rush in.
Come here, baby.
Just a few simple words, a shattered plea, drags her forward. She braces her hands on the bed without thinking, fully intending to lift herself onto the bed. But she’s savagely reminded of the blows to her ribs. It rips her breath from her lungs. Her body goes ridged and she freezes. The pain makes her nauseous. With closed eyes, she rides out a wave of pain that slices right through her painkillers. When it dulls to something manageable, she pushes a couple buttons to lower the entire bed so she could easily slide in bed beside him.
It takes great restraint to gingerly wrap herself around him, to not fling herself at him like her life depends on it. She’s desperate for his touch. For his security. Her breathing grows erratic and she can’t get a grip on the tears that well in her eyes. Spilling over and down her cheeks, her tears aren’t just for what’s happened to her, what she’s lost. Nylah has spent countless hours drowning in grief. The images of Kieran being shot played over and over and over again in her mind. She hadn’t need the constant reminders her captors supplied her with that he was dead, rotting in the middle of their dining room. Lost in the back hole of her own emotions, she eventually stopped feeling each fist, every boot that slammed into her. Payback he had said, something about her killing his brother. It had fallen on deaf ears and her lack of begging only infuriated the man more.
Nylah got her own revenge.
It wasn’t enough.
Even after Ruarc had told her that Kieran was alive, that he had somehow managed to survive his injuries. More devastation dripped down her legs. She couldn’t even consider how she’s going to tell Kieran. Insecurities rise and distrust festers. Even as she glues herself to his side and buries her face in the crook of his neck. Breathing him in, he smells distinctly of the hospital, but he’s still Kieran. He’s warm under her hands. He’s alive. The mantra plays over and over in her mind. It’s accompanied by a slew of questions. Questions that she can’t ask, not yet. Mostly because when she opens her mouth to speak, the insurmountable wall that surround her emotions, crumbles. It’s one of the few times in her life that Nylah has truly let herself cry. She lets it consume her. The loss. The relief. The grief. The anger.
But more than that, it’s the realization. Kieran has tended to her blackened heart from day one. Thrust into her life, unwelcome, he never had demands, no expectations. He nurtured her trust like it was a precious stone. She’s not sure when it happened, or how, she didn’t even know until the night their lives fell apart. Now she does. She knows it with every fiber of her being. Maybe she’d known the moment she sank that first blade into the man who had shot him. ”I love you.” She breathes the words out, her voice shaky and raspy. The words tumble from her lips before she can stop them and she stills - a habit.