46 comments/ 16142 views/ 15 favorites Bill and Karyn Ch. 02 By: mordbrand ***After reading some of the comments and thinking about how I left the story, I've decided to continue it to a real conclusion. There will be a third and final part to the story, but since I write fairly slowly, it may be a while.*** The first thing I noticed as I regained consciousness was wetness on my upper lip and the taste of pennies in my mouth. I briefly wondered why I would have put pennies in my mouth, but then I felt someone putting a wad of paper towels under my nose and looked up and to the left. It was Karyn, my wife, and she had a look of horror on her face. I glanced down at the mess of paper she held on my face and noticed two things; One, I apparently was bleeding profusely and two, the table had a small pool of scarlet as well. It looked smeared, I thought blearily. "Bill, I called 911, the ambulance will be here soon, please hang on!!" I knew she was upset by the look on her face but What the fuck had happened? I couldn't recall anything from the moment I got home. I could remember my past, and even what I had done today at work, but everything from the moment I parked my car was a blank space in my mind. While I was contemplating this emptiness, I noticed something else. I could feel the paper on my face, but only on the right side. It felt like the left side had went numb, like an arm that you had laid on all night. The numbness extended down to my arm, which was laying at the edge of the spreading pool on the dinner table. I didn't want the blood to stain my work shirt, so I moved it out the way. Well, I tried to, but it apparently didn't want to listen to my brain. I think I tried to laugh, because it was the oddest fucking thing, but I only heard a sound like the harsh caw of a raven. I also noticed that there was spilled milk and cereal all over the table, slowly blooming with red as it co-mingled with the blood. "Guess no Cap'n Crunch for me today, don't want to go near the ocean with this much blood," I thought blearily. Then that horrible rasping laugh left me again. I felt confused and slightly anxious, I felt my wife's hand on my shoulder, and I felt wetness as one of her tears fell upon my right cheek. Then I felt nothing and my world faded to black. The next moment of awareness was an overpowering brightness...light was hurting my eyes. I couldn't focus...everything was blurred. There was also this incessant beeping, somewhat like my ancient LED alarm clock, but it wasn't stopping. I raised my right arm up to try and cover my eyes with it, but I felt something like tubes all over it and a pinching sensation in my hand. Throwing caution to the wind, I used my fingers to force open my eye. I hoped that letting more light in my normalize my vision a bit. My perspective was skewed, but it looked like I was my back in a hospital bed. I could see a call button remote gadget near my left arm, but it when I went for it my arm still wouldn't work correctly. It twitched a bit, like before, but there was no real motor control. Scared, I worked my right arm over my body, noticing that it was setup with an IV and a finger monitor. I could feel the tape pinching my skin again near the entry point of the needle, but it wasn't a severe enough pain to override my need to know just what had happened. I touched my left arm, but while I could feel the contact with my right arm, the left seemed to be devoid of sensory response. With a grunt, I moved my dead feeling arm out of the way with my working one and grabbed up the remote, thumbing the call button repeatedly. After what seemed like hours later, a nurse in scrubs came into my room and stood by me. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and even without makeup, she looked quite pretty. I tried to ask her what had happened, but all I heard was nonsense talk coming from my mouth. I tried to speak again, but it was unintelligible. She obviously couldn't figure it out; hell even I couldn't and I knew what I was trying to say. I had another moment of panic, a flashback to the video 'One' by Metallica. The video used scenes from a movie called "Johnny Got His Gun", an 70's anti-war film about a World War One soldier who was horribly wounded and kept artificially alive by military doctors. I ended up watching the movie on VHS and had been horrified. What if I had been in that situation, I remembered thinking, how could I have communicated? It became an obsession. In the years to follow, while in college, I had learned both Morse code and ASL, both of which my future wife thought were completely unnecessary. She used to joke about how I was wasting my time on an archaic language and one that I would never need because I wasn't deaf. "Who's laughing now, Karyn?" I felt part of my lip curl up at the thought. I hoped the nurse knew ASL because I had gotten pretty rusty on my Morse. I waved my right hand, drawing her attention to what I was going to attempt. "Y am I here?" I signed out slowly. She appeared stunned for a moment, but I wanted to yell with victory as she signed back in response. "You had an Aneurysm that led to a minor Stroke." I noticed her signing was far faster and more well formed than my own. While I was contemplating this, wondering if perhaps she was hearing impaired or knew someone who was, she signed again. "Are you hearing impaired, sir?" She glanced at my chart while she did this, I assume wondering if there had been an error during my admittance. "Odd story...not impaired, learned college." It sucked only having one functional arm to sign, since some words require both hands. For instance, I had to spell out college using just the alphabet. She understood the issue because I could see a small smile appear on her lips when I hesitated before spelling it out manually. "That's pretty cool," she said, "I had to learn because I was born with hearing problems and only recently have been able to hear better with an implant." She motioned toward her chest and signed out that her name was Ashley. Ashley said she would be my daytime nurse and that she would get the doctor. Her voice was very nice, even though it was slightly distorted since she had grew up without being able to hear well. I signed "U b here, translate?" She tittered and replied that she would be here to make things go smoothly. I was so relieved, and I signed that to her. I think she could sense how upset I would have been if I couldn't have communicated in some fashion to another human being. "Hell, of course she understood, having her own difficulties for all of her life" I thought. Still, I thanked her multiple times before I laid my arm back down and tried to relax my nerves a bit. So, I had a stroke from anna-something, which seemed odd as I didn't have a family history of strokes and I was only in my thirties. I was fairly routine with physicals and didn't have high blood pressure or cholesterol, so I was at a loss. "I guess God just decides to throw a curve ball now and then," I thought, although that brought me back to the events from a few months ago and made me wonder if God was secretly Preacher Roe, throwing me spitters instead of curves. I glanced about as much as I could with my limited movement, but I didn't see Karyn anywhere in the room. The bathroom door wasn't closed, so I doubted that she was in there. "Where the hell is she at?" I wondered; It was very unlike her to not be hovering over me like she had been since I busted her cyber-ing. I didn't get much more time to contemplate it, however, because Ashley had returned with what I assumed to be my doctor. Her badge said Dr. Ghatak and she was frowning at me, somewhat reminding me of my Mom when I lied about something as a kid. "I am glad to see you are awake and present with us, Mr. Davis. I must tell you that I as happy as I am, you made me work very hard to save you. I fear if you continue experimenting with illicit substances, my work will be for nought, so you must promise me you will look into treatment once you are released!" "What...the...fuck?" I thought, my mind blown, figuratively this time. I don't do drugs, simply because other than weed, it's statistically not going to work out in the user's favor. The last time I smoked a joint was literally when I was in college and I didn't care for the way it made me feel, so I didn't get into habitual use of it. My Dad, philandering bastard that he was, was a drinker and smoker, so I never gravitated into those habits either. I needed to get more information. "No drugs, clean," I signed. "I'm afraid that your blood work shows you recently used a popular new drug, a designer one that combines the some of the effects of MDMA and Rohypnol. I am told the street name for this concoction is called 'E' or 'Ex2', it has generally minor to moderate side effects for it's users. However, in your case, it caused your blood pressure to spike drastically, which led to two effects." She paused, looking as if she was trying to find a way to give it to me in layman's terms. "You had a small clot in your leg that was dislodged by the spike in blood pressure, this clot traveled through your heart and lungs without causing a blockage, because of it's size. But upon reaching one of the arteries in your brain, it lodged and caused a minor stroke; this would not normally be so hard to resolve, but the back-pressure from the clot caused the wall of that artery to balloon out and tear." She looked at the readout on the monitor briefly, "Your pressure now is good, so as long as you are careful, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and avoid these designer drugs, you should live for some years yet." Fuck, she wasn't going to believe me. I'm sure all drug users claim to not be drug users, just like Karyn claimed to be a faithful wife instead of damn near causing my death. I was boiling; I mean what is the likelihood that a few months after I caught her talking about drugging me, with something that just happened to be referred to by the same name the good doctor had thrown out, that I picked the one box of Cap'n Crunch that had been sweetened by chemicals instead of sugar? The next thing I knew, the monitor started beeping like crazy and Ashley, whom I hadn't even noticed leaving the room in my fit of rage, rushed back in with a syringe filled with liquid. I started to try to sign something to her, but very soon after she injected it into my I.V. I felt a seductive warmth spread through me. Time seemed to slow and I felt very tired, so I followed that warm feeling back into the darkness. I heard a voice calling my name, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I was fumbling around in a dark room, feeling about for some point of reference. An abyss seemed to open up around me and I fell, screaming and out of control. The voice came again and I realized that it was Karyn's, "You wanted an explanation, so let me explain." It was not the same tone that I recalled when we had the argument, but more sinister. "You are a fool, Bill, but one that makes good money. Your idea of sex is so plain jane though that it kills me with boredom. If you would just open your eyes and let me show you what swapping is like, you would love it. That is why I drugged you, but you fucked that up too, didn't you?" Karyn's voice continued, "Now you are stuck in here, your short term disability is barely covering our bills and this extra cost, and I am going nuts with lack of sex. Isn't that sad, Bill, I'm starving for even a taste of your vanilla method? But I won't be for much longer." I wanted to answer, but I couldn't. I seethed over how someone I loved so dearly could be so cold and brutal to me. How did I ever trust this woman? Then I decided, perhaps to save my psyche, that this had to be a dream. I must be passed out from whatever meds they gave me and this is just some fevered, hate-filled nightmare. I couldn't have been so blind to have married a cold, calculating whore like this, I just couldn't. I dealt in facts, odds based upon hard statistics. "You fooled yourself into marrying when you know from the stats, and personal experience, that marriage doesn't work most of the time," my conscience gleefully chuckled. It became quiet again and I floated in the black sea of my mind, drifting to islands of doubt and continents of anger for a time. Then I felt, again, as if I was surging forward towards true conciousness, the light warming me and my eyes both came open. I still felt some numbness but my other eyelid worked and, emboldened by this discovery, I tried to move my left arm. Hallelujah, it moved, albeit not at one hundred percent capability. My mouth felt very dry, so I nudged the call button on the remote. A different nurse came in this time and while nice, she was obviously busy. I tried ASL, but she didn't appear to undestand it, so I mimicked a drinking motion. She got the point and fetched me a pitcher of water, which she poured some of in a cup with a straw. Then she left to do her rounds. I reached forward with my right arm and grasped the cup, bringing the straw to my lips. As I sipped, I felt that marvelous sensation and taste of cold water that you only really notice when you are extremely thirsty. It was magnificent, so I slurped it up greedily and clumsily managed to pour more in the cup after I wedged it in my left claw. I drank again and again, until I felt almost too sated. I noticed the television was on, tuned to some show about flipping houses. I killed time watching it until soon I felt the urge to go. After beeping for another nurse, I saw Ashley come in to answer the call. With relief, I signed that I needed to urinate. I figured that she would assist me getting up and to the restroom, but she simply nodded and grabbed a pitcher type contraption that had been hanging out of sight on the bed. I was even more shocked when her warm hand reached under my covers and grasped my penis, guiding it into the opening at the end of the pitcher. I tried to relax and let the flow begin, but I was extremely embarrased. I hadn't been with anyone but my wife in a long time, especially not someone as hot as Ashley. I knew that this was just a job to her and I'm sure it wasn't the first time, but it was severely off-putting. "Don't mind me, Mr. Davis, I've done this before. Also, you have nothing to be ashamed of, if you don't mind me saying." She giggled. Like magic, piss started coming out into the pitcher at a high volume. I signed that she should call me Bill, now that we knew each other, followed by L-O-L. I must have been saving up, because I damn near filled the pitcher by the time I finished. Ashley used a napkin from the tray table to wipe me off and tucked me back under my gown, before carrying the pitcher to the bathroom toilet and dumping it. As she walked back, I signed, how long have I been here? "Well, you have been in this recovery room for about 2 weeks, before that you went through a number of procedures and were in and out of ICU for about 2 months. You first woke the day after we moved you from ICU to here, but your pressure spiked and we had to induce a controlled coma state." "U sure u r not Dr.?" I signed jokingly. She laughed. "No, but I scored really high on my MCAT and I read a lot. I want to be one someday, but finding the time to go back to school is hard when you are a single mom." "U 2 young to be mom, lol." "Now you are just trying to make me feel flattered, Bill," she said as she stuck her pretty little pink tongue out at me. "Nope, glad 4 u, I want kids also someday." I signed "Well, you have a long time to work on it, according to the Doctor. But she was right about the drugs, I've heard some really bad things about the one you were on from my friends in other hospitals." She looked at me, almost into my soul, "Be honest with me, Bill, were you taking the drug?" I shook my head as best I could, while signing "No!" She stared at me, hard, for about half a minute, then she nodded as if I had passed some sort of test. "I believe that you didn't take it, well, that you didn't do it knowingly." She paused, before asking, "Did someone else give it to you, Bill?" "Think my wife did." I signed slowly. "Hmm, I wouldn't put it past your wife, she seemed very shady and pre-occupied every time she came in for a visit. Well, at least until she stopped coming a few weeks ago, after you had a setback in ICU." "Setback?" She nodded, "She was visiting you and your pressure spiked, causing a minor bleed in the last surgery site. They carted you and then took you back in to the OR, but thankfully they hadn't replaced the section of skull they removed to help with swelling, so you were an easy fix. At least according to Dr. Jameson, he was the on-duty surgeon that night." "Thank u 4 keeping eye on me, Ash, tired now." I really wasn't, but I could feel my anger rising again and I didn't want to blow something again. I thought about all of Karyn's pleas and lies, her drugging me when she had to know what my response would be, and how I had so stupidly forgiven her evil ass. Then I crammed the feelings back down inside, deep. It was best that they fester there instead of keeping me ill. Because I was going to need all my capabilities when I got done with healing and rehab. I just hoped that the Fire Department was on call, because there was going to be a huge bonfire when I was done.