Page 96 of Her Marine
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Journee had just finished giving Killian a sponge bath and was brushing his teeth when Gena walked in. She held a bag, and Journee could smell the bacon begin to permeate the air.
“Hey, honey. How is he?”
“Hey, Gena. He’s…the same,” Journee responded, focusing on her task so as not to let her mind wander to negative places.
“The same is good because while it’s not better, it isn’t worse.” Gena took a seat in one of the chairs against the wall. “At least his same isn’t hurting and in pain.”
Journee had to agree with her because she was right. It could have been worse; that was the last thing they wanted. She’d been trying to be positive, but it was hard when no progress was made. At least, none that could tell them when he would awaken.
“I’m going to take your laundry and wash it when I leave. Ziggy will bring it back when she comes to visit this evening.”
“Thank you,” Journee responded. Gena and Ziggy had done the same thing the previous week, and she was grateful to them for it.
When she finished her task, she wiped his face and went into the bathroom to rinse the toothbrush. She washed her hands, and Gena handed her a breakfast platter when she exited. Journee thanked her, taking the chair beside her instead of her normal one beside Killian’s bed.
“I thought we could go for a walk after we ate,” Gena stated after a few minutes of silence.
“I don’t want to leave him.”
“I know you don’t, but you’ve been sequestered in the room for almost two weeks. I doubt you remember what it looks like right outside the door.”
Gena had her there. Looking outside the door now would be like seeing it for the first time, but when you’d been to one hospital, you’d been to them all. It wouldn’t be too foreign to her.
The other woman’s words made her realize that it’d been two weeks since she’d arrived. Two weeks that, her boyfriend had been in a coma, and to Journee, it felt far longer. Each day felt like a lifetime.
“I just…I don’t want to leave, and that be when he wakes up. I want to be here when he does. I guess I want to be the first person he sees so he knows that I’m here, that I was always here.” She paused briefly. “Selfish, right?”
“Not at all, honey. I understand. There’s nothing selfish about wanting to see for yourself that he’s okay when he wakes up. There’s nothing wrong with wanting him to know you were by his side.”
After that, they continued to eat their breakfast in comfortable silence, and when they finished, Gena threw their trash away while Journee checked the time. They had an hour before a nurse came in to check on Killian. Gena retook her seat, angling her body towards Journee.
“Has Killian ever told you what he said to me when I told him he would have a younger sibling?”
“No, he hasn’t. What happened?”
“Well, Thomas and I had been married a little over a year when I found out I was pregnant with Ziggy. We weren’t necessarily trying to have a child but weren’t opposed to it either. I was trying to think of the right time and way to tell him because he’d been an only child for twelve years. I knew sometimes that could affect kids.
I was almost four months pregnant when Thomas and I sat him down and explained that he would be a big brother. Do you know that he looked at me and told me it was about time I said something because he wondered if I’d figure it out before I had her?”
Journee couldn’t help but laugh. She could picture little Killian saying that, even imagine the look on his face when he did.
“This child had already figured out I was pregnant and thought I hadn’t. That I was oblivious for months,” Gena laughed.
“I can see him doing that. It would be out of character for him to react any other way,” Journee responded.
“I also had nothing to worry about in terms of him not wanting a sibling at his age. He went with me to a few appointments even though he doesn’t like hospitals.”
“He doesn’t?”
Gena shook her head. “No. At first, I think it was just the sterile environment and how everything smelled while I was pregnant. Then, when he was fifteen, his father’s cancer, which he’d been diagnosed with a few years before, became terminal, and he spent the last six months in the hospital. I took Killian to visit as often as he wanted, and he wouldn’t step foot in one after he passed.”
Journee knew that his father had passed when he was a teenager, and he’d told her it was from cancer. She could understand how a situation like that could cause him to dislike hospitals. The one they were currently in was doing the same to her.
“I can understand how that would affect him,” Journee stated.
“If I’m honest, I don’t like them either for that reason. His father was a good man, and to see him like that would bother anyone who knew him. We ended on good terms and were still friends. We got pregnant young and married, but that hardly ever works out. It was hard losing a friend and harder watching my son slowly lose his father.”
