Undone by a Broken Angel

29.) Overwhelming

“Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved, and if I refrain, it does not go away.”

-Job 16:6

Abigail:

I wake up cold.  I have a death grip on the blanket and I was pulling it tightly around me, but it wasn't staving off the chill.  Cracking my eyes open, I notice that the fire I had lit the night before has gone out, the cave eerily quiet.  There's nothing but my pack, the blankets, and the smoldering ashes from the fire.  There's a cricket chirping deeper into the cavern, and there's water dripping, the sound echoing off the walls.  A shiver rocks through me.

Where is Abraham?

I sit up and white hot pain shoots up my harm from the palm that I use to prop myself up with.  I fall back down, landing on my shoulder, and rock my hands close to my chest.  I groan through the pain, tears pricking in my eyes.  The throbbing in them is more intense than it was yesterday and it's too overwhelming.  The black dots are back and vertigo grips me, a cold sweat breaking out over my body.  I gulp down air, trying to take control of my dizziness.  It takes a long time for the spike in pain to subside, and when it does I notice that they've been bandaged.  Abe must have taken care of them after I passed out from exhaustion.  Upon closer inspection, it looks like he used an extra shirt to bandage them up and the white fabric is now red with my blood.

Conscious of my hands, I roll onto my elbows and prop myself up.  Finally on my feet, trying to ignore feeling that my hands are twice their size, I walk out of the cave in search of Abe.

“About time,” I hear his voice shout from above me.  I find him sitting above the cave entrance, his feet dangling over the edge.  He doesn’t look particularly happy, but relieved that I’m up and walking.  I scan him and I notice the wound on his head has scabbed over, but he still looks green around the gills and a little unbalanced.  “You ready?” he asks.  “We’re behind a day and a half.  Dianna will be worried.”

The dark circles under his eyes indicate that he didn't sleep at all last night, but that was probably a good thing because of his concussion.  He may have never woken up.  "We could walk for the day," I offer, "to give your head a chance to heal some."

"I can heal from the air.  We need to get you to the bunker.  I need to heal David so he can heal you," he insists, getting up from his perch and climbing down to the cave entrance where I stand waiting, keeping my hands close to my body.  "The question is, will you be okay flying today?"

No, but I have to be.  We're behind as it is and I came on this trip intending not to slow him down.  "I can do it," I say with more confidence than I feel.

"Can I look at them?" he asks, placing a gentle touch onto my forearm.

I flinch from him and the shadow that permeates him, pulling my hands in tighter.

A grimace twists his face into pure hurt and his eyes look at me with betrayal.  "I'm sorry, I know I make you uncomfortable."

I didn't mean that.  He has to know that I didn't mean it the way he thinks it did.  "No, it's just they hurt even when they're doing nothing."  The damn breaks then and I cannot stop the tears as they stream down my face, my sobs and yells seem to help me cope with the pain.

He steps closer to me and wraps one arm around my shoulders and pulls my head to his chest with his other hand.  I sob into his chest, wondering if the pain will ever go away.  "I don't f-f-feel uncomph," I suck in some snot, "uncomfortable around you.  It's the shadow around y-y-y-you," I wail out.  "It's your illness I feel bad around; you feel good and w-w-w-w-arm."

He only holds me tighter, his lips coming down onto the top of my head.  He rocks me back and forth until my tears slow down.  "You can feel it?  The illness?"

I peak up at him and his big brown eyes are filled with baffled curiosity and I nod, trying not to rub my snot all over his shirt.

"It's okay, I don't need to look at him," he assures me.  "I got a pretty good look at them last night when I cleaned them up.  I don't have the skills to heal wounds of this... severity," he finishes with a small smile.  "But we should get going before another pack sniffs us out."  That's when he goes back into the cave to pack up the blankets and then we're off looking for a place to take off from.  "I scoped out a little bit while you were sleeping and it looks like there's a big enough break in the trees a couple hundred feet this way," he tells me, steering my steps with his hand on the small of my back.  His hand feels big compared to my small waist.

The break is small and I watch him fly through it with expert precision, but I doubt I have the balance to pull it off with my hands tucked to my chest.  I take a running start anyway and take one big pump with my wings, then I tuck and roll through the small hole, shooting them out open again to join Abe higher in the air.  He nods when he sees that I've passed through the treetops and then we're off towards the bunker, the miles falling behind.

It's slow going for me.  Abe keeps looking back at me with worry, but honestly I'm more worried about him.  I know his head aches and I can't decide if he's too prideful to say anything about it, or if he's concerned about getting to the others in time.  I try to keep my mind off of the throbbing in my palms, but it's a lost cause.  If it's not the wind jostling them around, it's me trying to keep my balance.  I break out into tears multiple times just wanting the pain to go away.

To my immense surprise, he pushes us on well into the night and only land when the mountain range meets us in the air.  The white peaks pop out in the clouds where we soar and the wind pushes us around them, our wings gliding freely around them.  Abe loses himself in the euphoria of being weightless and spins, his head thrown back with a peaceful smile on his face.  Spotting a cave high up in the mountains, we decide to camp in it and lay down the blankets to cozy into for the rest of the night.

"You feeling any better?" I ask when we're under the covers, our bodies closer together, craving each other's heat.

“I’m fine.  How are your hands?”

“They’re still painful,” I reply honestly, keeping them safe against my body.

"Any chance you'll let me clean them in the morning before we take off?  We have another day of flying ahead of us," he asks, and I can hear in his voice just how worried he really is.

The silence I give him is telling.  "I'll try," I force out.

A feather light touch, his fingertips, brush a few stray strands of hair out of my face and tuck them behind my hear, his fingers running down the length of my neck and over the top of my shoulder.  "I'll be gentle," he promises with a hushed voice and it sends a shiver up from my toes to my scalp.  It leaves me breathless.

"Do you think your brother can help me?" I wonder, my voice going horse with the threat of more tears.

He hums with thought.  "My brother is a talented healer.  I have faith in him."

I don't say anything, my mind thinking if I'll ever have use of them again.

"He'll like you, you know," he says with a short laugh, "though anyone would be crazy not to.  However, I think you'll butt heads."  He says it as a joke, a way to take my mind off of my pain, but it only makes me curious.  Abe has always spoken highly of his brother; this is the first time he's hinted about what he's like.

"You love him," I observe.

I can tell in the dark that he nods.  "He's my big brother; he's my hero."

"I can't wait to meet him," I say and I wonder if that makes him sad since he stays silent.

"You will tomorrow.  Maybe."

His anxiety is palpable in the space around us and I know that he's worried about him, me, and if I can be so bold, worried about me falling for his brother.