Chapter 16
1310 Words
**Alexander's POV**
"Eliza!"
My keys were already in my hand.
I didn't think or breathe. I immediately moved , scooping her off the floor, ofcourse the shattered glass crunching beneath my knees.
Her blood was warm and wet against my hands, and my shirt. Her head lolled against my chest and something inside me cracked so wide open I couldn't even feel the edges of it.
"Stay with me," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine...it was desperate this time. "Eliza, stay with me."
I carried her to the car. Laid her across the back seat as gently as I could with my hands that wouldn't stop trembling. I pressed my jacket against the back of her head and held it there with one hand while I drove with the other, running every red light, every stop sign, my foot was totally flat against the accelerator.
She was so still. Too still and that deepened my regret.
"You're going to be fine," I told her, even though she couldn't hear me. "You hear me? You're going to be fine. I've got you."
---
The emergency doors flew open the second I pulled up.
"I need help!" The words tore out of me before I even had the car in park. "She's bleeding from her head ....please, I need someone now!"
They came fast. First it was nurses rolling a gurney. They lifted her from my arms and I stood in the middle of the entrance with blood on my hands and watched them wheel her away through doors that swung shut behind her.
And then there was nothing. Just silence and me.
I grabbed two fists of my own hair and pressed them hard against my skull.
"What have you done?" The words came out broken, . "What have you done?"
I paced. I sat down. I stood back up. I couldn't stay still, couldn't think, couldn't breathe properly, couldn't do anything but move back and forth across the waiting room floor like a man being punished, because that was exactly what I was.
You pushed her. The thought circled me like a vulture. She fell because of you. She's bleeding because of you.
"Sir?" A nurse touched my arm gently. "Are you alright?"
"Is she alright?" I turned on her so fast she stepped back. "The woman they just brought in .. is she..."
"The doctors are with her now. We'll update you as soon as we can."
"It's my fault." I said it out loud, to this stranger, because I needed to say it to someone. "She fell because of me. I pushed her and she fell and I never meant ....I never wanted.." My voice gave out completely.
The nurse looked at me with something soft in her eyes. "Let the doctors work. Try to breathe, sir."
I sat back down. Put my elbows on my knees and my face in my bloody hands and stayed there for a long, long time.
The doctor came out just over an hour later.
I was on my feet before he even cleared the door.
"How is she?"
"She's stable," he said and I felt my entire body exhale for the first time in hours. "It's a minor head injury. Significant surface bleeding but no serious internal damage. She was very lucky."
"Lucky," I repeated. The word tasted like ash in my mouth.
"She'll need rest. No stress." He looked at me carefully. "And she needs care at home, Mr. Steele. From someone close to her. Recovery moves much faster when a patient isn't alone."
"She won't be alone." The words came before I even decided them. "I'll take care of her. Whatever she needs. I'll be there, She is my Wife."
He nodded. "You can see her now. She's resting."
The room was quiet and dim.
She looked small in the hospital bed. I pulled the chair right up to the edge of her bed and sat down.
Then I reached out and took her hand.
Her fingers were cool. I wrapped both of mine around them and held on.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly, to her sleeping face. "I am so sorry, Eliza."
She didn't answer. She just breathed slow and steady and I sat there in the dark watching her chest rise and fall, holding her hand, not letting go.
At some point, exhaustion pulled me under. My head dropped forward onto the mattress beside her hand, her fingers still laced through mine, and I was gone.
Something tapped the top of my head.
Light and gentle. Once, then again.
I lifted my face.
Eliza was looking down at me. Awake. Her eyes were tired but clear, and something in them I couldn't quite name flickered when she saw my face .... surprise, maybe. Or something softer than surprise.
"You're still here," she said. Her voice came out rough and quiet.
"I never left." I sat up straight, still holding her hand. "How do you feel? Are you in pain? Should I call..."
"Alexander." She stopped me gently.
I stopped.
"I'm sorry." The words came pouring out of me like I had been holding them under pressure all night. "Eliza, I am truly sorry. The things I said to you last night , the way I spoke to you ... none of that was right. It doesn't matter how angry I was. It doesn't matter what was happening between us." I swallowed hard. "And then I..." I stopped. Started again. "I never should have put my hands on you. Ever. That was my fault. All of it. I was wrong, and I am sorry."
She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes went glassy at the edges.
"You held my hand," she whispered. "All night."
"Of course I did."
"That is not the Alexander I know."
"Then maybe it's time you met a different one." I tightened my grip on her hand. "From today. I mean it, Eliza. I'm going to do better. I'm going to be better to you. You have my word."
A single tear slipped down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. She just let it fall.
And then slowly, she smiled.
"Okay," she said softly. "Okay, Alexander."
We were discharged early that morning.
The drive home was quiet — but a different kind of quiet than before. Not cold. Not hollow. Just still and peaceful.
I helped her inside, settled her carefully onto the sofa, tucked a blanket around her legs, and went upstairs to shower. When I came back down, I had on grey sweats and a loose shirt ... and Eliza was staring at me from the sofa with her brow furrowed.
"You are not dressed for the office," she said slowly.
"No." I dropped into the seat beside her.
"Alexander." She sat up a little straighter. "It is a weekday."
"I know."
"You are not going to work?"
"No."
She blinked at me like I had just told her something in a foreign language. "But ...why?"
"Because you need to be taken care of," I said simply. "So that is what I am going to do."
Her eyes drifted toward the hallway. "There are maids, Alexander. A whole house full of them. That is their literal..."
"Eliza."
She stopped talking.
I looked at her, completely serious and said, "Will you just let me do my job? As your husband?"
The words landed between us and sat there.
Her lips parted. A flush crept up her neck and spread warm across her cheeks. She turned her face away quickly, like she didn't want me to see it ...but I saw it.
"This," she said, her voice barely above a murmur, "is the first day you have ever missed work."
I said nothing. Just leaned back into the cushions, looked at her, and let her sit with that.
- Writer
