In Another Life by Carys Jones Page B

and she twirled and laughed as around her Azriel glimmered and grew.
     
    “You were born to be here,” Orion called to her over the music, his eyes sparkling with admiration.
     
    “I said that you were always a princess, do you believe me now, Marie?”
     
    Marie ceased dancing and looked directly at Orion, her head tilting to the right.
     
    “Who is Marie?” she asked simply before shrugging and returning to the dance. 

Waking
     
    Six hours and thirty nine minutes had passed since stimulants had been drip fed in to Marie’s system and still she slept. Exhausted, Sebastian sat beside her, clutching her lifeless hand in his own. Her skin was cold and clear, as if she were made of marble.
     
    He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave her side. At any moment she might wake up. At any moment she might return to him.
     
    “It takes time,” Angela Crenshaw whispered as she came over to check Marie’s vitals for the third time that hour.
     
    “But she’ll wake up?” Sebastian queried hopefully. He already knew that there were no finite answers but he just couldn’t help searching for them. He needed something to cling on to, some hopeful statistic to anchor him during his darker moments.
     
    “I-” Angela looked away from him, focusing on the thermometer she was placing in Marie’s ear.
     
    “You don’t know,” Sebastian sighed, answering for her. “No one does.”
     
    “Exactly,” Angela nodded sadly.
     
    “But the stimulants usually work though?” Sebastian couldn’t stop himself from trying to find answers like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when deep down he knew rainbows were just fragments of light and nothing mystical.
     
    “I don’t know,” Angela said apologetically. “I’m pretty new, I don’t have all that much experience.”
     
    She saw the disappointment in Sebastian’s eyes, almost hidden by the exhaustion which cast dark circles around them.
     
    “You need to rest,” she urged. “It could still take hours yet.”
     
    “Or she may not wake up at all,” Sebastian felt his final shred of hope fluttering away in the breeze as he accidentally let it slip from his grip. It carried off in to the air conditioning vent, leaving him alone with only doubt to sour his thoughts.
     
    “You can’t think like that,” Angela gave him a pitiful glance and then looked at Marie who lay frozen between them. An unknowing participant in their discussion.
     
    “She’s beautiful,” she complimented. And she was. Angela wasn’t just being kind, she could see beneath the oxygen mask, the web of lines and the swelling which had started to subside that Marie was beautiful. She had the petite frame most women envied and long, dark lustrous hair.
     
    “You should see her when she’s awake,” Sebastian smiled fondly. “She’s always so animated. When she tells you a story she gets so involved in it, her eyes light up and she starts throwing her hands around. She holds your attention as though nothing else exists but her.”
     
    Sebastian gazed at Marie but looked past her current state, remembering his fiancée as she usually was; alive and exuberant.
     
    Angela glanced at the clock on the far wall. She still had observations to take on a dozen or so patients but she sensed how despondent Sebastian was becoming and she pitied him. Marie was the first patient she’d had to deal with in a coma and she wanted her to wake up as much as Marie’s loved ones did.
     
    “How did you guys meet?” Angela could spare five minutes, she’d forsake some of her lunch break. She wanted to envision Marie as a living, breathing person, not this body which lay like an empty vessel on the bed.
     
    “Well,” Sebastian’s face instantly broke out in to a wide smile and he sat back in his plastic chair, enjoying the memory which had suddenly surfaced.
     
    “It was on a flight. I was running late for boarding and just powering through the gate.  Guess when people are in a hurry everyone is