JENNA'S POV:
What an exhausting day. I think it was actually more exhausting TALKING about what happened, than it actually was to LIVE it. I really think so.
And damn this IV. It aches! I didn't FEEL dehydrated. I'm sure I could have just drank some water, couldn't I? I guess there's special electrolytes in this solution. Hospital Gatorade, if you will.
I miss Ethan. I miss him so much. Is he forgetting about me? Since we're not in that intense circumstance anymore....will he still like me? I hope so. But if he doesn't, I wouldn't be mad. I mean, I'm just a fan. I'm nobody. It was fun to talk about escaping and living together in real life, but I'm sure he has much better, busier things to do.
Not that it wouldn't KILL me, though, to be done with him. I truly do love him.
And I didn't even have to wonder if I loved him because of who he was. That was the good part.
I guess he was smart in not telling me he was Ethan fucking Shean from the start. I can't be mad at him for that anymore. He was right. I'd always have to wonder if I loved him for HIM, or for who he was.
But now I don't. I was totally in love with him before I knew. Him being Ethan Shean actually complicated things, rather than make it better, honestly. There was a part of me that was sort of disappointed that he was a celebrity. Because he'd never be just....mine. I'd always have to share him with the world.
And relationships with celebrities never work out. Even when BOTH parties are celebs, so me NOT being one....yeah....it would never work.
I have to stop thinnking. I have to stop trying to save myself, and talk myself out of him. Last I heard, he loved me. And I love him. Hopefully he hasn't changed his mind ALREADY, right?
The way he held me today in that wheelchair? The way he sobbed so hard that his entire body was hitting me? The way he looks at me directly in the eyes.....there's no way he doesn't love me.
Unless he's as good at acting as he is at music. Heh.
I just know that this has been a LONG ASS FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had like 2 hours to tell my entire story to the police and the doctor. I had a visit from Brooke. I'd been blood tested, examined, questioned, fed, had a shower, and even a few short naps in between. And I STILL haven't seen Ethan.
The paparazzi probably got to see Ethan earlier, and I didn't.
Dammit, I want him to be holding me right now. I want to feel the tingles. His warmth. I want to be safe in his arms. I want to nuzzle my face into his neck and smell his skin. I want to run my fingers through his moppy red hair. I want to feel his soft red facial hair on my cheeks. I want his lips on mine. God, I miss him!!!
Hopefully tomorrow they'll let us be together. Maybe we can leave tomorrow, actually. We're fine, right? They're just checking us over, making sure. I'm fine. Right? Ethan's fine, right?
I don't know what all that blood was on his mouth earlier...or what really happened in the room with Marcus, or how Vince caught him....IS he ok?
Is he still in the next room? What if he's not? What if he's hurt?
Stop it Jenna. Just stop. He's fine.
More tears welled up in my eyes. My face was still sloppy soaked from crying all day. Crying while I told the entire story. Crying while I told Brooke as much as I wanted to tell her, which wasn't much...mostly about Ethan. Crying from relief and exhaustion when I drifted off into naps....
Crying with Ethan earlier....
It seemed like I'd never stop crying!
In the quiet darkness, I heard something roll into my room. It was sort of creepy and slow...I rolled over to look quick. I guess I'm still jumpy from "people" coming into my room, and never knowing what to expect.
In the darkness, I could make out moppy, messy hair, with a slight red glow from the light in the doorway.
It was Ethan! He was rolling his IV pole to come see me!
I got out of bed, and he closed the door and rushed over to me, almost knocking me back into the bed, he came at me so fast. But his embrace was so strong, I didn't even move. He didn't forget about me. He still loved me.
And then came the tingles.
Oh Ethan.....
I had a gajillion questions ready for him after we got finished hugging in the dark hospital room.
We laid on my hospital bed together and snuggled under the covers. It was sort of new to snuggle, since we had a pillow now! This made everything different in the way our bodies lay together. We usually had one arm under our own heads as a pillow. Now, we had an extra arm, so we didn't know what to do with them now! We laughed a little as we tried to get comfy with this "new pillow contraption", as Ethan put it.
We got it all figured out and I got right to business.
I asked him what happened in our room with Marcus. And everything else after that. And I told him my story in between his story, when he asked.
I told him everything.
How it had taken Sir a few seconds to realize what Ethan was doing when he sprang up and lunged at Marcus. How Sir wasted no time in grabbing me and putting me right in front of him, so if Ethan got the gun, he'd have to shoot through me to get to him. Coward.
But then as the struggle ensued, Sir decided to just pull me down the hall, to that room with the table bed and straps.
I had put up a good struggle, but as scrawny and stringy as Sir was, he was too strong. Plus, stopping me from breathing by locking his arm around my neck didn't help my struggle at all.
I did manage a good shot in his junk with my knee at one point, though. To which he'd promised that I'd pay for that. I'd pay no matter what, so I was still happy about the knee shot. A small victory in the big war.
When I heard the shots, I freaked and spazzed, but at the same time, got so weak with sorrow, and that is when he was able to get me up on the table and strapped up. I had all but given up, basically. I didn't have any more fight left in me, thinking Ethan was gone. I just wanted to be next.
But, of course, Sir had his usual sicko plans for me. I realized at that moment, how suprised I was that this was the first time he actually touched me. He left it to his evil guards to do all the dirty work.
I wondered why, as he tore my white tank top off, followed by my white cotton boxer briefs.
I told him the joyous relief that flowed through me when I heard a loud "NOOOOO" in the hall, and looked over to see his wonderful face in the window. Just knowing he was alive....those shots did NOT touch his beautiful self...made what Sir was doing so much easier for me, because after I told him to "GO", I thought for sure we'd be saved. I'd just have to endure this, and it'd be over, I'd hoped.
I told him how Sir laughed and laughed the entire time he was on top of me. He laughed out "He won't get very far." He laughed out "Now he's going to DIE for this."
And how the more he laughed, he louder he got. And the louder he got, the rougher and faster and harder he got. I told Ethan how Sir slapped me over and over. Everywhere on my body.
And how when he was "done" he'd shoved into me so hard, I thought he'd surely punctured through my uterus, it hurt so bad.
And I told Ethan how Sir had said when Marcus got in here, he was next in line for me. Followed by Vince. And that when they were done, he'd be ready again, and so would they. And that they had another mixture of drugs made up for Ethan, that they'd give him, just to add in the fun.
He was quite a sick, perverted man.
Ethan cried silently and rubbed my arm as I told him all this. I felt horrible each time I heard his sobby breath catch. I didn't want to tell him all of this, but....we'd gone through this all together. And I wasn't going to lie or hold anything back. This was the last bit of hurt he'd have, and it was all over.
He told me about making it to the outside, but being totally blinded by the sun, and how he yelled like he's never yelled before in his blind desperation, and how the police told him that's how we got rescued. Someone DID hear Ethan when he screamed. Someone DID see him, and call 911.
The description, "a guy with red hair", made every available police and SWAT team member show up, because they were sure this could be the missing Ethan Shean. They didn't know who Ethan meant about a girlfriend inside, but they'd find out it was me. That other stranger that had disappeared the day after Ethan. (no one would have noticed I was gone until the next day, obviously.)
He told me about the gun right in his back, and how horrible and sad he felt as he walked back in to me, having failed me.
He told me about his final thoughts as he was shackled to the wall, about to die.
He told me how it got to be too much to watch me struggling and flipping out so helplessly.
He told me how he even wished it was ME that was about to die, so I wouldn't have to hurt so bad, and endure more after he was gone. It sounded weird being said, but I knew exactly what he meant.
I told him how I had wished it was me, too a few times.
We talked together about the final events, and the shock of Vince killing Marcus and Sir. And how it wasn't registering in either of our heads, and how confused we felt.
He told me that a SWAT guy had just about gotten his shackles off, and he saw me sit up quickly, and start to fall over, and how thankful he was that the SWAT guy working on me was quick to act, and caught me in mid fall. He told me I would have hit the ground head first if that guy didn't catch me.
When he was finally free, Ethan said he pushed the SWAT guy out of his way to get over to me and take me from my SWAT guy's arms. He later told him sorry, and thanks for setting him free, and they both said they have wives...they would've done the same thing, and that no offense was taken.
He told me they pulled in a wheelchair for him and gave him a blanket, because he was shivering at that point, because the adrenaline from almost dying was wearing off a little, and the pain and exhaustion was setting in, but he refused to put me down, even when they begged and reassured him to.
So he sat in the chair, and cradled me in his arms, and leaned his head on my chest and cried happy tears of relief, until he felt me wake up. And he used the blanket to cover my naked body, instead of warm himself up. Awww. My Ethan. How I heart him.
I'd never noticed before, probablly because everything was so horrible, but everything he told me sounded so.....romantic! Like, he was such a romantic, loving, caring guy. I knew this already, but not quite in that way. The way he'd always try and save me. The way he'd hold me after bad things happened. Even the way he flipped out and lost it that one time in the room when he threw the mattress....THAT even seemed romantic to me, looking back now.
And the way he'd describe his thoughts about me, TO me....he was like a knight in shining armor! And I was too busy being scared and tortured all this time to really see it!
At that realization, I swear I could actually FEEL my heart swelling up with so much more love than I already had for him. I was shocked that there COULD be more. I thought I loved him as much as possible already.
Ethan looked confused when my heart was busy swelling up. I realized that I was squeezing him harder and harder as my love for him grew.
I told him why.
It was embarassing and I kept telling him I felt like a big dork, but he ended up smiling from ear to ear while I told him about his knight in shining armor...ness. Ha ha ha.
He told me I was daft, because HE had already saw me in that exact light, from the second we met. Only not as a knight, but as an Angel, sent from above.
He saw how romantic it was when I'd do anything to save him. How loving it was when I'd scream in vain when they were hurting him...
"I'm more girly than YOU!" he told me.
And that made us laugh. And even though it wasn't THAT funny, we laughed and laughed hard. We couldn't stop laughing. We were rocking back and forth on our sides, cracking up. To the point where it hurt to try and catch our breath.
And when we finally stopped, we both took a huge cleansing breath, and Ethan said "Everything is going to be ok now", and kissed me with an intensity I'd never felt before. Not even from him.
And I felt it. He was right. Everything WOULD be ok now. Everything WAS already ok.