Beautiful Disguise

Prologue

Sitting quietly in the stiff hospital arm chair I watched the rise and fall of Calum's chest where he lay sedated on the hospital bed. Two days it had been, two days of watching him breathe, two days of listening to his steady heartbeat on the monitor, two nights of falling asleep to the sound as if it were a lullaby. The doctors were unsure if he would make it, his injuries too severe to assess without the potential of hurting him. So now it was a waiting game, me sitting here by myself, silently praying that Calum would be okay.

I counted each heartbeat as if I were counting sheep, my eyelids beginning to fall with exhaustion. Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three. The heartbeats continued until I fell asleep, curled up as well as I could be in that hospital chair.

Soon I stirred awake, rubbing at my eyes and glancing at Calum, an unsettled feeling in my chest. It dawned on me that I had woken up because the heartbeats had stopped, and now only a single, extended note sounded from the heart monitor. My heart raced as I stood, frantically pressing the call button for a nurse, my fingers shaking as I squeezed Calum's hand. I watched his face anxiously, wishing I could glance into his eyes once more, apologize for everything that had happened.

With a start I realized Calum's eyes were now looking back at me, his hand grasping mine back, a new pattern of heartbeats on the monitor as he kept looking at me, sighing my name before his eyes fell closed once more as the nurse rushed into the room, my hands still shaking as I stood back, settling into the chair once more.

His heart had stopped. He had been dead. But now he was breathing and his heart was beating again. He was alive.