Kate remained in a semi-coma-like condition while nurses and doctors came and went, some dropping in while on the way to being helicoptered from other areas of need, usually after the emergency they'd flown to had been taken care of or when the injured or ill had been transferred elsewhere.
As yet, no one had the answer as to whether there was a connection between the injected drugs, her amnesia and now her state of unconsciousness.
The good news was that her blood-pressure had stablized and the raging fever she had suffered, was gone, making significant improvements in her health. The difficult news to relate was that she was still unable to be awakened and there were no answers as to why...
Two weeks passed and Richard had visited twice-weekly, unable to speak with her but to sit at her bedside watching the monitors at work monitoring that she breathed with a regular heartbeat and was alive.
If he asked once, he asked half a dozen times, "How could we allow this to happen?"
*****
It was early morning and the hospital facility came alive with day staff arriving on duty to change with the night staff.
Music was turned in the small room where Kate lay, as it had been, daily for the past two weeks.
After the nurse checked the monitors and left, satisfied she could report their patient as 'improving', Kate stirred. The music was soft and gentle, hymns from era's past, some she had heard in church, others new to her, or now, maybe not so new as the doctors believed her subconscious would be taking the music and voices in.
The repetitive chorus caused her to come to consciousness. It seemed to be calling her... home...
Kate did not think of heaven, but a picture of her home on the coast of North America came to her mind. "Come home," the hymn repeated.
Opening her eyes, she dragged the oxygen mask away from her face while struggling to sit. Her efforts pulled against the tubes connecting her to monitors.
She was being called, "Come home."
Her home was in a beautiful location, not far from the ocean...
It was home, her home...
She had seen it in a picture in her mind...
Although weak, she managed to sit right up. In trying to swivel around onto the side of the bed, she caused a warning signal to switch on with a flashing red light that showed up in the monitoring room.
Before Kate could push herself forward to stand, two nurses rushed into the room, both expecting that she had flat-lined as the heart monitor clip had come off her fore-finger.
"Good morning Kate; you're awake. But, let us help you..." A male nurse took Kate by the shoulders and gently pushed her before lifting her to sit around on the bed. "We need to free you first before you can get up..."
"I want to go home," Kate said, adding, "Why am I here, like this? What did you do to me? I just want to go home..."
The two nurses began to disconnected her syringe pump and other devices. Another, entering the room, turned the music video off.
Richard stepped into the room but the nurses shook their heads at him. One said, "Wait out of the room, Sir. We won't be long." She smiled, pleased to give good news, "Miss Kate is wide awake and wants to sit up."
Invited back into the room, Richard dragged a chair to the bedside and took her hand in his, saying, "This is the answer to prayer we've longed for, Kate." He bowed his head, saying, "Thank you God. Thank you." With tear-filled eyes, he blinked and squeezed them closed. He was happy, but so tired...
"I remember you, Richard. I do remember you. Last time we talked, it was on our laptops, I think, and it was only the second time we saw each other..." She wanted to say more, but he pulled back from her, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Staring into her eyes, looking from one to the other, he frowned and his head jerked back away from her. He shook his head.
"What's wrong?" she asked, recognising a look of utter disbelief.
Standing, he paced across the room and back.
Sitting, he again looked into her eyes, blinking. His brow creased in a deep frown and he closed his eyes again, shaking his head as though trying to clear it.
Kate frowned back at him. Lifting her hand to her check, she asked, "Is something wrong with my face? What is it, Richard?"
"Your eyes; I'm just trying to get my mind around them..."
"My eyes? What's wrong with them?"
"You had green eyes, definitely not these eyes! I remember you telling me, back when you were ten years old and I was twelve... you told me that you had green eyes. I used to call you 'green-eyes' after that. Then, when I saw them for the first time, they were emerald green so for a while I called you 'Emerald' in my letters...He shook his head.
Standing he demanded, "How can this be?"
Kate was shocked at his fervour, the anger she sensed.
He stood, saying, almost with a snarl, "You —you can't be Kate!" He turned back to her, repeating his words with finality in his voice, "You're NOT Kate!"
Turning, he stalked across the room, back and forth, looking at her, then looking at the floor, pounding his fist into his open palm.
Before she could think of what to reply, what to say in defence, how to say it, he stormed from the room.
She could only weep...
She mulled Richard's words, his accusation that she was not who she was. It saddened her and she felt confused, accusing herself for the many secrets they'd kept from each other. Whispering aloud, because she wanted to hear her voice and try to understand why they'd kept so many secrets for so long. She spoke as though to him, "Of course we had secrets, Richard. You told me from the start you had secrets and that for every one of yours, I could keep one too. We agreed to allow each other to keep our secrets and enjoy our friendship online, and by writing letters. Yes, when you told me you had another secret you had to keep, I told you that I had added to mine. That was when my father left my mother... but we gave up telling each other about any new secrets. How old were we then? —I was fourteen, you must have been sixteen. We wrote a letter every month. I have a shoe-box filled with yours...
"Online, we focused on sharing verses and songs, and even prayer... we both told each other that we wanted to be friends forever."
Folding her arms she closed her eyes, remembering the last time she'd spoken to him. It was on her iPhone. How long ago? She didn't know, maybe a month or more before she had been taken. He'd wanted to meet her, have time with her. "You said it was time to share all our secrets and to talk about our future, maybe a future together. Before that meeting could take place, I was kidnapped. It was horrible. One moment I was asleep in my bed and the next, I was dragged from it. They held me down..."
She tried to think what happened next. It must have been when they drugged her, or gave her the injection...
Here she was now, thinking, What a mistake we made... if I kept such secrets as my eyes and my sight, my parents, and not to talk about the lies I told, he doesn't know about what I had to cover up... but, what kind of secrets has he got? This place, the comings and goings?
"What is he into that uses helicopters, guards and bunkers?" she asked, this time quite loudly, answering, "My condition of heterochromia is nothing compared to this, but it answers why I'm so blurry in vision; I need my contacts to help me focus and also to make my eyes the same color."
She whispered, "I've never stopped believing in you, Richard, but I am doubting... us. Oh God, please help Richard to believe in me again, please, dear God."
Climbing from the bed, she said, "I have to get my strength back. I have to go home." Holding to the side of the bed, she shuffled around it, before returning the other way. Pulling herself upright by holding to the chair she stepped to the back of it, supporting herself by leaning on it. Pushing the chair across to the door, she used it as a support to walk. Turning and pulling the chair around, she shuffled back across the room before turning and repeating her walk, this time, moving around the small area of floor...
Two nurses who were there before, entered the room, taking the chair and leading her back to the bed.
"You can walk tomorrow Kate. We need to pace your recovery. You must promise us you won't walk alone. It would not be good for you to fall and hit your head. Today you must rest."
"I just want to get well and go home," she said.
"We will help you do that. Perhaps, tomorrow, if the weather is suitable, you can walk outdoors, with our help..."
Kate agreed to rest today if she could do as they promised her, to walk outdoors.
*****
(Note: Google images show many different cases of Heterochromiac eyes — google images — "Heterochromia eyes" and click on 'images'.)