JUST LIKE THE FIRST TIME

Since Alistair was not suddenly going to wake up and find her not there, Ahnna let herself be talked into going to bed in an empty room. Her head had barely touched the pillow before she was sound asleep. All the next day she sat by his side, waiting for reports on how his levels were doing. The next day was the same. Uninterested in eating, she was losing weight but didn't care. During that night, though, they had begun to wean him from the ventilator and by lunch time had extubated him and he lay there with a cannula rather than the horrid tube taped to his mouth.

"He'll be waking early this afternoon," the doctor explained. "We've stopped the sedation."

"Then we'll know?" she asked, her chest tightening a bit.

"We'll know a lot more, yes," he nodded.

She sat then beside him, tensed, waiting for him to move his hand, for an eyelid to flutter. He had to still be there, still be Alistair. Two hours passed before his head moved slightly on the pillow. She stood, gripping the bedrail tightly with both hands, watching his face intently, almost dizzy with the level of her concentration.

The tip of his tongue came out just a little, running across the top of his lower lip. She got a tiny ice chip between her fingers and touched it to his lip, his tongue following as she moved it. "Alistair?" she whispered, leaning low. "Alistair?"

His eyes were still closed, but he made a little sound down in his throat which made him cough. The doctor came in, quickly checked the monitors, then opening Alistair's mouth, shown a small light down his throat. Turning to Ahnna he said, "Your husband will be coughing some, so don't be alarmed." 

Alistair made another sound, coughed again. The doctor waited, giving him time to wake up. Slowly Alistair's eyes began to blink, as though the lifting of the lids involved heavy effort.

He couldn't seem to focus at first, two blurry things were leaning over him. It was easier just to let his lids close again and he started to do that, jarringly interrupted by a firm male voice saying, "Reverend Harris. Wake up now. Time for you to wake up."

No, he didn't want to wake up. It wasn't...comfortable. He grabbed at the fog with what remained of his will power, but there was nothing to hold on to, and the voice kept saying, "Wake up!"  He tried to turn his head away from it, to make it stop, but the voice was insistent, like sharp little hooks in his consciousness, not letting it drift away. He made a sound of protest, then his lungs turned inside out and someone was sitting him up, holding his head, which was far, far too heavy for him to hold up himself. It was the pain and effort of the coughing that drove him out of the fog and when he finally lay back on the now-raised head of the bed, he was exhausted, wanting nothing more than to know the oblivion of the friendly fog again.

A female voice was saying a name, was it his name, over and over, the sound of it jagged and breaking with emotion. He opened his eyes half-way, drawn somehow by it but not knowing why. A white face, surrounded by thick, dark hair hovered just out from his and he tried to concentrate, to look at it, make some sense of it. It was beautiful, sad and pale, and...beautiful. He closed his eyes again. So this was dying. An angel had come for him. He'd always wondered how that would be. He drifted a moment in the vestiges of the fog fingers that still wafted in his mind. What had happened to him that he was dying? Had he been in the car with Jenny after all?

The male voice came again. "Reverend Harris, try to wake up!" it pressed irritatingly.

Ahnna was going downhill fast. He'd looked at her, for a moment there he had looked straight at her, but she'd seen no recognition in his eyes, none at all. She bit her lip, her chin trembling. "Alistair, PLEASE!" she almost sobbed.

Blinking his eyes open once more, he stared at her again. "Beau...beautiful," he murmured, then coughed hard.

"Well, he hasn't lost the ability to form words," the doctor said, trying to be encouraging.

"But he's looking at me like he's never seen me before," Ahnna moaned. "Alistair, please remember me, darling. You know who I am. I know you know who I am!"

He smiled slightly. "A...angel. Beau...beautiful angel."

She gripped his right hand, pressing it to her cheek. "I'm YOUR angel, Alistair. Yours!"

His smile widened. "My angel." He nodded just a bit. "Yes. Come for me. Yes."

It dawned on her what he must be thinking. "No, Alistair. Not like that! Not that kind of angel. I'm Ahnna...your wife. Alistair, I'm your wife." Tears were dripping down her cheeks.

Jenny? He strained to see this face so close to his. Jenny? He didn't say the name aloud, an inadvertent blessing for if he had, Ahnna's heart would have cracked in half right there on the spot.  No, not Jenny. Jenny had died. In the crash, yes, she had died, along with his unborn son. The reality of that rushed in on him, more present than where he actually was, and several large tears welled up, tracking down his face.

Ahnna didn't understand. "Oh, darling, you're crying!" She looked desperately at the doctor. "Why would he be crying?"

"He's very weak, very vulnerable right now, Mrs. Harris. Any emotion will be very raw for him, right at the surface. But we'd have to know what he was thinking to know the reason for his tears. He's probably still very confused, disoriented." Ahnna had straightened and so the doctor leaned over the bed. "Reverend Harris, you are in the Coffs Harbor Hospital. You were in a fire at the mill where you live. You're not burned, but you've suffered severe smoke inhalation. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He turned his head toward the doctor. What? "Hos...hospital?"

"Yes, the Coffs Harbor Hospital. You've been on a ventilator for some days. Your wife is here, Reverend Harris."

He looked again at Ahnna. "Wife," he said and she couldn't tell if he meant it as a statement or a question.

"Alistair, I love you, darling. I love you with all my heart." She kissed his hand over and over.

He stared at her, blinking slowly, and she held her breath under his scrutiny. He remembered that face, remembered it as it had turned, regarding him for the first time with its enormous sad eyes. She was doing that again, just like the first time. "I...iris?" he asked. "Do...do you have blue iris?"

The laugh that burst out of her was wet with the sound of her tears. "I do, my darling. I have tons and tons and tons of blue iris...and all for you. All of them, all for you!"

He coughed several short little coughs. "Ahnna?"

"Yes, it's me, Alistair."  She kissed his cheeks, his lips.

"The mill...burned?"

"Just your office, darling, and it was mostly smoke." She wiped the tears off her cheeks. "We've been so worried about you. All of us, we've been so worried."

He looked at her, his love there, shining in his eyes. "My wife," he whispered.