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Waking up for the second time in a hospital bed was completely different from waking up the first time. This time, he came back to consciousness in a panic, afraid, choking for fresh air he knew he’d never reach. Then his eyes focused on the white sheets, and remembering that they were both alive made him gasp in a breath of relief that set his raw lungs on fire.
Coughing made his whole body spasm in pain. He twisted sideways and leaned over the edge of the bed, spitting dark phlegm into his hand. He had just formed a coherent thought about how he was glad that Anne wasn’t there at the moment to see the mouth she’d been kissing smeared with sooty grime when he heard her quick footsteps beside the bed. Her hand slid behind his neck, steadying him through the coughing fit. He hadn’t realized how badly he was shaking until he felt how steady she was.
His vision was swirling with gray spots by the time he was able to stop coughing and look up at her. “I’m getting water; don’t move,” she ordered him. He focused his bleary vision on her brown hair, soft against the silky tan of her shawl, as she poured from the pitcher on the stand beside the bed. He shifted in the bed to watch her, and a flash of fire from the burns across his chest reminded him that it was so much less painful being asleep. But he doesn’t want to forget again, for even a second in a nightmare, that they’re both still alive.
Anne must have read the pain on his face when she turned back with the cup of water. “Told you not to move,” she chided him, but he thought her tone was more worried than rebuking. She drew up her chair and sat down close to the bed. He wanted to sit up and kiss her again, but instead, he leaned over and dry retched more sooty bile.
By the time his stomach decided to stop waging battle with his lungs, he was shaking so badly he couldn’t take the cup of water from her. But he managed a half-smile for Anne anyway, because it really didn’t matter that he felt like shit. They were both still alive.
Anne’s touch against his neck was almost as soft as her eyes, but he could see the exhaustion in her face. “What time is it? How long have you been here?” he rasped, as he tried to remember if it had been morning or evening when he’d first woken up to see her holding his hand. He couldn’t even tell if it was morning or evening now.
“I think it’s around eight o’clock at night,” Anne told him, her thumb moving back and forth against the skin of his neck as he fought to stop shaking. “The fire was almost twenty-four hours ago. You woke up here this morning, remember?”
“I remember,” he assured her, and even though his hand was shaking, he couldn’t help reaching up to tighten his fingers around her hand on his neck. “But that was this morning? Anne, have you been here the whole time? You need rest.”
Her eyes flickered in an emotion that seemed to be more sad than tired, and he remembered then that Anne and W.D. had lived in the circus building. Anger at the thugs that had destroyed her home surged in him. “Where’s everyone else?” he asked, because surely, building or no building, her brother would not be keen on seeing Anne exhausted.
“W.D. was here earlier, telling me the same thing.” There was a half-smile on her face now, coexisting with the sadness. “Then Letty showed up and said she’d sit with you for a spell, so W.D. and I went out for a meal and coffee.”
“And then you came back,” he croaked out. “Anne –”
“Hush, you sound like an elephant grunting.” Anne moved her hand, and he felt the cool rim of the water cup against his lips.
The water helped, but the raw burn in his lungs didn’t go away. It wasn’t that he minded the pain, or regretted his decision to willingly fill his lungs with smoke in order to save her, but being able to breathe was somewhat necessary before he could leave the hospital, and leaving the hospital was necessary to ensuring Anne would have a job and home again. But Anne should leave for the night, even if he couldn’t yet. “Anne, I’m fine,” he whispered. “I’ll be better in the morning. You need sleep; you should go – wherever W.D. is staying.”
“They’re all in a hotel,” she told him, setting the cup down. “But it’s cramped. I think some of them are just sleeping on the floor. Honestly, this chair is more comfortable.”
“I want to be a gentleman and offer the bed, but since I think I might fall over if I try to stand up – ”
“Absolutely not. You’re not going anywhere,” she told him firmly, but her red-tinged eyes were shiny again, like they were earlier in the day when he’d first woken up.
“I don’t need to. There’s nowhere I need to go, if you’re insisting on staying here.” Maybe he sounds like a lovesick fool, but he didn’t care. She was here with him, and their hands were clasped together on top of the hospital sheets.
“Go back to sleep, and we’ll leave together in the morning,” she murmured, and rearranged herself on the chair so her feet were tucked against his legs on the bed.
But in the following minutes, it was Anne who fell asleep first. Phillip felt her drifting against his shoulder, then heard her soft breaths deepen against his ear, matching his raspy inhalations. And although he would have been content with dying in that fire in order to keep her breathing, he was thankful with his entire being that he had been given the chance to stay at her side.