Chapter Six: Adrian’s Shattered World
1302 Words
The hospital corridor was endless. White walls, humming fluorescents, the tang of antiseptic that clung to his throat. Adrian sat hunched on a plastic chair, elbows on his knees, hands trembling around a Styrofoam cup that had long gone cold.
Every few minutes, footsteps echoed past...nurses rushing, orderlies pushing metal carts, a security guard chewing gum with blank indifference. Life went on, even here, even in this suspended purgatory where everything he loved hung by a thread.
He stared at the double doors marked TRAUMA UNIT – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Beyond them, Elena was fighting-or maybe already slipping. He had no way of knowing. The not-knowing was the slowest death.
The first officer had been clumsy, thrusting a clipboard into Adrian’s hands as though bureaucracy could order grief into neat lines.
“Sign here, sir. Next of kin.”
The words stung. Next of kin. As though her life had already been itemized, reduced to paperwork.
Adrian scrawled his name, the letters jagged, barely legible. The officer didn’t seem to care.
Another uniform approached. Older, steadier. Inspector Mwangi. He knelt beside Adrian rather than looming above him. His voice was low, measured.
“I know this is difficult, Mr. Mureithi. But I need to ask you some questions.”
Adrian looked up, eyes bloodshot. “Is she alive?”
Mwangi’s jaw tightened. “The doctors are doing everything they can.”
It wasn’t an answer.
Mwangi flipped open a leather notebook. “Why was she at Lusaka Jewels tonight?”
“She… she went to buy me something.” Adrian’s throat constricted. “An anniversary gift. We were supposed to have dinner. She was late, and then...” He broke off, covering his mouth with his hand.
“Did she mention anyone following her? Any threats? Anyone from her past?”
Adrian blinked. “Her past?”
Mwangi’s gaze was sharp, but unreadable. “Did she ever tell you about her time in Samoa?”
Adrian hesitated. Elena had always been evasive about Samoa, changing the subject, brushing off questions with a kiss, a laugh, or silence. He’d assumed it was heartbreak, maybe debts, maybe nothing at all. But the way Mwangi framed the question, it was as if Samoa was a shadow that had followed her home.
“No,” Adrian admitted. “She never told me much.”
Mwangi scribbled something in his notebook. “If she wakes, ask her. And if you remember anything-anything at all... call me.” He pressed a card into Adrian’s hand. The ink smudged against his sweat.
Hours bled into each other. Adrian tried to anchor himself with small things: the hum of the vending machine, the shifting light as night deepened, the pattern of tiles on the floor.
He replayed their reunion in Nairobi, just months earlier. Elena at the arrivals gate, her smile trembling, her arms thrown around him like she would never let go. The way she had whispered, “We made it.”
And now - this.
A nurse finally emerged, peeling off latex gloves. Adrian leapt to his feet. “How is she?”
“She’s stable, for now,” the nurse said cautiously. “But the bullet caused significant internal damage. We’ve controlled the bleeding, but she’s in a coma. The next twenty-four hours are critical.”
Adrian’s knees nearly buckled with relief and dread. Stable. Coma. Critical. Words like fragile bridges over an abyss.
“Can I see her?”
The nurse hesitated, then nodded.
The room was dim, machines casting pale blue light against her skin. Tubes snaked from her arms. An oxygen mask hid half her face.
Adrian sat beside her, his hand trembling as he reached for hers. Her skin was cool, almost waxen, but her pulse was there - thin, fragile, but alive.
He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against her knuckles.
“Elena,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Come back to me. Please.”
Silence answered.
He wanted to scream, to break the machines, to tear the world apart for daring to put her here. But all he could do was sit, and wait, and remember.
In the suffocating quiet, memories attacked him.
Elena laughing under a downpour in Hanoi, dragging him into the street to dance as motorbikes splashed past.
Her scribbled letters from Samoa, where she always said “I’m fine” but never explained more.
The way she traced invisible scars on her wrist when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Had he been blind? Had love made him too willing to accept half-truths, too eager to believe the façade?
Inspector Mwangi returned the next morning. His suit was wrinkled, his eyes shadowed from too many hours awake.
“She survived the night,” Adrian said hoarsely, as though defending her.
Mwangi nodded, glancing at the monitors. “Good. She’s stronger than most.”
Then, quietly: “But Adrian, you need to prepare yourself. That shooting wasn’t random.”
Adrian’s stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
“The witnesses said the gunmen targeted her specifically. They ignored the jewels at first. They spoke to her. As if they knew her.”
Adrian shook his head violently. “No. No, that doesn’t make sense. She didn’t… she wouldn’t…”
Mwangi’s gaze softened. “Love can blind us to the past. Ask yourself: what did Elena leave behind in Samoa?”
Adrian swallowed hard, gripping Elena’s hand tighter. For the first time, he felt fear not just of losing her-but of discovering who she really was.
Days blurred together. Adrian stopped eating. Coffee became his only sustenance, bitter and scalding. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw blood on the jewelry store floor. Every time he opened them, he saw Elena motionless under fluorescent light.
Friends came and went. Colleagues texted condolences. None of it mattered.
At night, he walked the city streets until dawn, punishing himself with distance, as if the asphalt might bleed away the helplessness gnawing his bones. He returned to the hospital smelling of rain and exhaust, collapsing into the chair by her bed.
The chain she had chosen for him sat in an evidence bag, tagged and sealed. He stared at it for hours, the one gift she had meant to give him.
One evening, as he drifted into uneasy sleep by her bedside, Adrian heard something.
Her lips moved. Just slightly.
He leaned close, heart hammering. “Elena? Love, I’m here.”
Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake. Her voice was barely audible, breathy, broken.
“not… robbery…”
Then silence.
Adrian jerked upright, terror and resolve flooding him at once.
Not a robbery.
She knew.
From that night on, Adrian was different. The grief remained, but now it sharpened into something else: obsession. He began questioning nurses, pressing Mwangi for updates, scouring news reports.
Who were the gunmen? Why her? Why that store, that night?
The police clung to their narrative of a “botched robbery,” but Adrian felt the cracks widening. He imagined shadows in every corridor, strangers watching him from the street, whispers carried in the static of the hospital intercom.
And through it all, Elena lay silent, her secrets locked inside her battered body.
Late one night, Adrian returned to her room and found Inspector Mwangi standing at the foot of the bed.
The detective’s expression was unreadable, his hand resting lightly on the evidence bag containing the silver chain.
“Mr. Mureithi,” he said softly. “I think it’s time we talked. About Samoa. About who Elena really was. And why someone wanted her dead.”
The machines hummed between them, steady and fragile as a heartbeat.
Adrian looked at Elena, then at Mwangi, his chest tightening.
For the first time, he realized: his grief was only the beginning.
End of Chapter Six.
- Writer
