? DISCONTINUED ? Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

"Everything in me
Wanted to bow down, to offer up,
To go barefoot, foetal and penitential, And pray at the water's edge."
—Seamus Heaney | 'Triptych: At the Water's Edge'

• • •

I don't usually do this.

He stared down at the old yellow notepad thrown down haphazardly in front of him and forced his pen to paper.

This is pussy shit.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

I've caught my baby doing it a couple of times though and figure if it helped her, then maybe it'll help me.

I hope it helps me.

Paul looked out through his bedroom window at the bed of dying grass below him.

It's been almost two weeks and she still hasn't opened her eyes yet. Doc said it'd take time, that her body's healing as fast as it can, and that her mind needs time to catch up too. He said she'd make a full recovery — that the only scars she'd wake up with were the ones she'd already had before. I didn't believe him at first. But I watch the nurses check her bandages everyday and her skin is slowly starting to go back to the way it used to be.

I thought I knew what fear was when I got the call from Sam saying I needed to head to the hospital after that night with Quil. I thought seeing her laying there all lifeless and hooked up to wires and shit was a nightmare formed from the deepest parts of my psyche. So I thought maybe, you know, this time would be fucking different. But yet again I'm fucking wrong. Because it's been thirteen goddamned days.

And I'm fucking sick and tired of not seeing her pretty blue eyes already.

Yours fucking pathetically,
Paul

---

It was the smell that got to him the most. That too-clean, biting scent of antiseptic that tried in vain to hide the stench of death that lingered underneath. It burned at his nose, made his lungs ache with each breath he took in, and ignited a pounding headache on either side of his skull. It was the smell that made him want to turn tail and bolt like a little kid in the presence of a scary clown.

But it was the reason he had to be there that was even worse.

He'd resigned himself to visiting only a couple of hours at a time. At first he'd stayed every day, every night, but after discovering that sitting in that stupid yellow chair only made him angrier, and sadder, and his ass hurt like never before, he'd decided to try and be more proactive with his time. So from now on he walked through the door every afternoon at two o'clock. Then once the hour hand struck eight, he'd trudge his way back home to his empty house and lay back down in his empty bed. Every night he'd dream of her.

Yet most of the time, she'd only visit him in nightmares.

It was like his brain had concocted its own short film to play for him every night before he fell asleep. It would start out with him on the battlefield, his pack brothers snarling and snapping at his sides. Then the fighting would begin and he'd watch them tear the enemy Vampires limb from fucking limb until only the last few bloodsuckers remained. The Cullens would be there — ripping off heads and crushing skulls. And amidst it all, thoughts of her would plague the back of his mind. Was she okay? Was she warm enough? Was the fighting so loud that she could hear it from all the way up there? He'd hope it wasn't. She didn't need to bear witness to such horror when she was so soft herself. After all, she'd been through so much already; she didn't need to add the haunting sounds of death to her already long list of lived-through terrors too.