Waking up

*Zac*
It seems she is once again sleeping in my bed, kind off and not as comfortably as I am willing to make it for her. She is sitting in a chair, bent at the waist, her face resting on the mattress near my hip, one hand tucked up beneath her cheek, the other curled around my wrist as though she seeks to keep check the continual beating of my pulse.

The shadows filtering through the room, the solitary lit lamp, indicates it is still night. And there is a stillness to the residence that only comes when the sun bids farewell to day. How long have I been wandering through the maze of healing?

I remember experiencing bouts of delirium and the suffocating sense of being wrapped tightly in a shroud. Her voice was always near to calm my erratic heart. Her fingers caressed and cooled my heated flesh. And sometimes, when I was very, very fortunate, she would look at me just right, perfectly, and the lamplight would capture the glow of her eyes in such a way that a memory teased and I latched on to those eyes with the full knowledge that they alone kept me tethered to this world.

Had she nursed me in the war? She has not said, and I have not dared to ask for fear of discovering it is one more thing I should never have forgotten. She had not been there when I had last awoken in hospital, but judging from my scars, some still pink as though newly formed, others appearing older, I assume that I have been wounded on more than one occasion. It is not something I had thought to ask before leaving for home. All I had wanted was to escape as quickly as possible, the unknown that haunted me and the horrid place they called a hospital made it worse.

The physician had been sure the answers would all return to me in time, with adequate rest, as though the mind heals in the same manner as the body. “It’s just the trauma," He had said. But his words had lacked confidence, had seemed more a
question than an answer.

Perhaps I should seek out a more knowledgeable physician. Quite suddenly, I am very much interested in knowing exactly how Calliope’s life intertwined with mine.

She has given birth to my son. But how had we met? I am beginning to understand why I might have been drawn to her. She has a caring nature, and an inner strength that isn't quite visible at first glance. I am not even sure how I know it exists. It isn't as though we have had much involvement since her arrival. A walk. A dinner. A mortifying midnight visit, when I had been forced to succumb to the pain and weakness in my leg. Yet, I instinctively know that she would not break any promise she makes to me.

Draco would have. If he thought anything the physician recommended to be the best option, he would feel honor bound to do what is best regardless of how I might have preferred to handle the matter. Draco has never taken a misstep, has never doubted his course. He studies, he examines, he researches. He never goes with his gut.

I had trusted my gut instincts. Of the three other people in the room, at that moment when so much was at stake, I trusted Calliope the most. Pity for her. I expect she would rather be saddled with a man who went with his heart.

Does she dream? Not the ones that accompany sleep, but those that are of larger things, that hovers nearby when one is awake? She had come here expecting to find me dead … not breathing and available for marriage. Her father had demanded it, but she has not spoken a single word of it. What sort of woman doesn’t desire marriage? What sort of lady gives all she has to nurse the sick? No, not all. She still manages to make time for someone who is incredibly special to her.

I had awoken once to see her holding our son. I had only squinted at her, not wanting to alert her to my wakefulness, not wanting to distract her from her purpose. Besides, she would have poured more laudanum down my throat, and I was sick to death of it.

I know my leg is still there. It throbs unmercifully, but the pain is a different sort than it had been before. Then I felt as though demons were slicing through my muscles. Perhaps they had been. Now it is just the weary pain of flesh mending.

Even the pain in my head seems duller.

It takes little movement at all for my fingers to graze her chin. Her eyes flutter open. “Off with you now,” I order in a voice raspy from disuse. “Get some proper sleep.”

Jerking upright, she immediately reaches for my brow. “Your fever’s gone."

I try to nod, but that motion seems beyond me. Where had I found the strength to touch her? I am exhausted. I have no idea how long I have been sleeping, but I want to roll over and return to slumber.

“Thirsty ?” She asks. “Yes, of course you are. Hungry, too, I suspect. I've managed to get some water and soup down your throat, but not nearly enough.”

So it hadn’t all been laudanum as I had thought. My ability to taste had been playing tricks on me, or perhaps I had simply been too fevered to know exactly what was going on around me. I think I remember my mother. What else has transpired?

Calliope pours water from a pitcher into a glass. Slipping her arm beneath my shoulders, she lifts me slightly and brings the glass to my lips with a measured efficiency. She has no doubt done this for others. Has she done it for me? I despise the constant ignorance that hounds at him, the questions that plague me.

The water is cool, and I wonder how something with no flavor can taste so damned good.