Close Your Eyes, Remember Me (TBF Book 1)

Elijah

The sound of a medical cot trundled its way towards the ward and both Elijah and Sariyah leapt from their seats to peer through the open door. Blonde bob nurse was pulling it from the front with Dr Farris steadying it from the side and smiling pleasantly at the pair. Elijah's eyes, however, snapped straight to the body in the bed.

Eyes closed, lips ever so slightly parted, skin two shades lighter than her usual bronze tone, black curls splayed against the pillow... She looked ill, but feverish ill, not recently fell from the heavens onto marble like a dramatic recreation of a renaissance painting ill. But then that was what they needed to be worried about, wasn't it? The internal injuries were what they had to fear. She was breathing though, and her heart was beating. She was still in there.

The hospital bed entered the room and was wheeled into the only empty bay of the three on the ward and the cousins followed it like a pair of puppy dogs looking for their owner.

"Well?" Sariyah whispered, much to Elijah's relief, he was too nervous to ask but he desperately wanted to know.

"From the front she looks good, huh?" The good doctor said as he shuffled through his notes and scans distractedly, "The back of her, however, looks like Picasso's Blue Nude."

"Her brain?" Elijah finally managed to gasp out.

"Oh, yes." Dr Farris held up a large scan gingerly, "See here, CT scan, surprisingly it shows no bleeding or fracture." he dumped it on the bed to pull out a second scan which looked, to Elijah at least, almost exactly the same except that it was slightly larger. "And this one? MRI. Her brain tissue looks pretty okay."

"Pretty okay?"

"She's a very lucky lady." He nodded to himself, sifting the scans into an order he deemed appropriate and sliding it into the plastic box hanging from the end of the bed, "Her back is severely bruised and she will most likely need some spinal adjustment from a chiropractor when the inflammation and soreness recedes - especially for her neck - and I have no doubt she will have a rather nasty concussion." he waved over blonde bob nurse who scurried to his side.

"How nasty?" Elijah asked hesitantly.

"Oh, a grade three for sure. She's unconscious." Dr Farris raised his eyebrows with a look that was clearly accusing Elijah of being a grade three moron, "Did you not see how far she fell?" he muttered to the nurse a list of machines he wanted moved and attached and how he wanted hem set up.

"I did," Elijah began, "but I mean what does nasty mean in terms of her health?"

"Well, we'll be watching out for vomiting, dizziness, amnesia, light or noise sensitivity, a slur in her speech... there are a lot of symptoms." He said offhandedly, "Of course, this is all assuming she actually wakes up, she could slip into a coma!" he ticked a few boxes on more forms handed to him by nurse number two who had darted into the curtained off area, barely glancing at Elijah as he doddled.

"Thank you, doctor." Sariyah growled through gritted teeth.

"Either way, we're not going to know until she does wake up, so until then I shall leave her under Julie's watchful eye." At the mention of her name, the human nurse began attaching monitoring apparatus to Lucia's body via various wires. "You may stay with her if you please but please try not to get in my staff's way."

"You're leaving?" Elijah asked incredulously.

"There is nothing I can do until she wakes up, she has no broken bones for me to set or bleeding for me to halt. I will return for hourly checks or when she wakes up, whichever comes first."

And with that, the good doctor waddled away with nurse number two scurrying behind him.

"So, we gonna do this in shifts?" Sariyah was managing to keep her voice surprisingly upbeat, perhaps she had read more into what the doctor had said than Elijah had.