Beside You

“Hey baby girl,” someone said quietly and I felt a kiss being placed on my forehead. I opened my eyes and smiled at Marc sleepily.

“Hi.”

“How you doing, Mads?” he asked, taking a sat on the chair that was next to the bed to my right.

“Little tired, but okay,” I told him and squeezed his hand when he took mine. “You?”

“Good,” he smiled warmly. “Much better since you woke up.”

“Same here,” I joked, but he didn’t find it very funny. “Oh, come on.”

“It’s not funny at all, Madison Grace,” he said sternly. “We were this close to losing you! If you expect me to laugh at that, you’re insane.”

“I’m here, Marc,” I pointed out softly.

“Thank God,” he nodded. “Think you’re up for having a few guests?”

“Definitely!” I grinned and sat up carefully.

Since I’d woken up for good about a week ago, I’d been mostly confined to this damned room. Which I kind of got, I mean, I did have a major accident and brain surgery and other injuries, but it was boring as hell. A lot of the time I passed by sleeping, but lying around was only so much fun when you’re an active person like I was.

My hospital room was... interesting to say the least. There was a ton of stuff the guys had brought over, presents from my brothers, other family members, friends, teammates, even fans... Mom had a whole box with ‘get well soon’ cards that we read together when I could focus enough. My head sometimes hurt a lot, which the doctors were sure would go away with time, but more than the headaches it sucked that I had troubles focusing. There was no visible brain damage in the tests and so far none of the other tests I’d gone through since last week had come up with something. As of right now everything was considered normal for my condition.

I didn’t remember anything from the accident, I didn’t remember anything from that day really, which was normal, too. A lot of patients lost memory of their accidents when concussions and head injuries were involved. To be honest, I was kind of glad I didn’t remember, because it probably wasn’t a nice memory to have. Maybe sometime I would ask Abby about it, she had been there, but she probably wouldn’t want to talk about it. I had talked to her on the phone twice and she was flying in next weekend.

One thing I hadn’t asked anyone about yet was Lady. Because I knew the answer to that question and I’d rather not hear it spoken out loud. If she’d been fine, someone would have said something already, so I knew that when I returned to Thunder Bay, whenever that may be, I would come home to only owning one horse. That ached more than my head.

While Marc went to let the guys in, I fiddled with the blanket a little and ran my fingers through what was left of my shoulder blade length hair. That was one of the things that bothered me the most, besides having to lie around all day. For the emergency surgery on my head they had to shave off some hair where they’d put the incision and drilled a hole into my skull to release the bleeding. That spot was at the back of my head where I couldn’t see it, so who knew how hideous that part of my head looked now. I had seen it from the front where they had cut many inches off to sort of even it out and it looked hideous. Never mind that I looked pale enough to pass as a corpse in a horror movie in general.

“Miss Staal!”

“Mister Prust!” I basically shouted back at him, like he had spoken quite loudly. “Awww, for me?” I held out my hands for the flowers he was carrying.

“No, for Marc,” Dubi joked and leaned over the bed to give me a small hug in greeting.

“Hi Maddie,” Mike smiled and gave me a hug, too. “How’s it going?”

“I wish I would be going,” I scrunched up my nose as they took various seats around the room, Prusty sitting on the end of my bed shamelessly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Marc frowned at me seriously. “She tried to walk on her own, didn’t work out so well, did it now, Madison?”

“Hey, you lie around for basically a month and tell me if your muscles are gonna be up to par right away, idiot,” I rolled my eyes at him and the guys laughed.

“You will be just fine, no brain damage whatsoever,” Dubi attested.

“Can’t be said for you though now, can it,” I shot at Marc, who didn’t even comment.

The guys only stayed for about an hour, then my strength was drained and they left. Marc stayed for a little longer, at least that was what Mom told me when I woke up just in time for dinner.

.

The days passed very slowly. Even if I wasn’t awake for much of the day, being cooped up in the room was making minutes seem like hours. Every time someone was there with me, mostly my parents, that made it easier.

In some ways it was lucky that the accident had happened in the winter, because that meant there was nothing too important Dad needed to do on the sod farm and so he could be here with me. Sometimes when he looked at me, I could see that he was scared. Dad had always been strong for everyone, had always been SuperDad, especially for me. I could tell in the way he looked at me and he would hold me a little tighter, kiss my forehead a moment longer, that the fear of losing me had gotten to him a lot.

Mom was more vocal about that. She fussed about me all the time and I let her, because that’s just how she did things. Even if my brothers didn’t want to admit it because they were big, strong, independent men now, we all enjoyed how Mom always took care of us.

My accident had changed a lot of things. Everyone in the family seemed a little closer, a little clingier, a little more concerned about the others. Not one day went by without my brothers that weren’t in New York checking in on me. Even Jordan.

No one would really tell me what had happened while I was in the coma, but something big must have happened for Jordan to call me and text me, to just show any kind of interest in me all of a sudden. I was confused because it was just so out of the blue, but the accident had probably affected him just like it had everyone else. Deep down I had to admit that I loved every second of it, but I was also scared that when the shock of the accident wore off, he would go back to how he used to be.

.

Seeing Abby again was a pretty emotional moment. I couldn’t wait to be reunited with my best friend and I also hoped that she would maybe tell me a lot of the things that Mom, Dad and Marc refused to talk about.

“Hiiii!” Abby beamed, bouncing into my room. I sat up slowly and wrapped my arms around her as she hugged me tightly. “Oh my God, I missed you,” she sniffed and I couldn’t keep in my tears either.

“I missed you, too,” I whispered and hugged her as tightly as I could.

“I was so scared,” she told me and I could only nod. If Abby had been in my place, I would have been sick with worry. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it had to be to witness the accident. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” I agreed and pulled back to wipe my cheeks. “Nice toque.” She was wearing a toque that was actually mine, but that she always stole.

“Yeah,” she nodded and pulled it off. My jaw dropped and I heard my mom take in a sharp breath.

“What happened to your hair?” I gasped, touching the short brunette strands. Where her shoulder length hair had been, was now a pixie cut.

“I figured, if you didn’t have long hair, I didn’t want long hair either,” she told me and I could only cry all over again. Leave it to Abby to know, without even seeing me, that my extremely short hair was bothering me a lot. I mean, I still had a bandage on my head and was usually wearing something on my head because it got cold up there, but to go from shoulder blade length to almost buzz cut was hard to stomach.

There were no words that could express what this meant to me, but I hoped Abby knew anyway, she always seemed to know what I wanted to say even without saying it. I could only stare at her and felt so overwhelmingly grateful that I had a best friend this great. Who else would chop of their hair just because their best friend had had brain surgery?

Some time later I was completely content chilling out with Abby on my bed as she caught me up on the happenings in Thunder Bay. She had brought some more cards and little presents from our classmates and other friends and there seemed to be a ton I had missed, and would still miss because they weren’t releasing me too soon.

“What about Matt?” I asked quietly, noticing that she was leaving him out as she told me about each of our friends. Abby paused and glanced at me.

I wasn’t stupid, of course I had noticed that my boyfriend hadn’t sent any cards, hadn’t called or texted and that no one in my family ever seemed to mention him. There had to be a reason for that, although I really couldn’t think of one. Everything had been perfect between us, before the accident happened.

Abby let out a soft breath. “He’s... it’s hard to explain,” she started. “He said he couldn’t deal with the accident because it reminded him too much of when his cousin had a riding accident, too. Never woke up.”

I blinked a few times and tried to keep my breathing even. Matt had told me about his cousin before, I knew the tragic story, but I didn’t think it would affect our relationship. If there still was a relationship, that was. It was difficult to stomach Matt not being there during this at all.

“But I did... wake up,” I pointed out quietly. “He’s gotta know that, right?”

“Yeah, everyone knows,” Abby nodded. “I don’t know, Mads... if he can’t be there for you, he’s not worth it.”

I blinked a few more times and swallowed. Guess that meant our relationship was over. Matt had broken up with me without me having a chance to even do anything about it, for something that wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t change. It hurt. A lot.

“You’ll find someone better and your brothers will definitely beat Matt up in the summer,” Abby tried to soothe me, but I knew she knew that it wasn’t helping. I nodded anyway and she changed the topic to something better.