Emptying my Brain

Sometimes I have random story ideas that I have to get out of my head before I can focus on whatever story I'm writing at the time. This scene and these characters I came up with while watching CW's "Beauty and the Beast", season 2. I haven't read over this or edited it at all, I just wrote it down and now I'm putting it up here. :)

It was in a hospital that Marella opened her bleary eyes. She didn’t know it yet, but she had been there all night. She’d had intensive surgery to remove a bullet from her abdomen. She was going to live. The bullet hadn’t done any damage to her insides that the skilled surgeons couldn’t repair. Besides, her body had been through worse.

Indeed, perhaps that was why she seemed so surprised when she came to. She had blacked out before being found. She had been sure that she would bleed out before anyone would find her. Yet, she found herself alive, in a hospital bed with oxygen tubes in her nose. She knew she was alive because she could still feel soreness in her belly, but with all the painkillers in her system, she mostly felt a little woozy. But her biggest surprise was yet to come.

She blinked to clear her eyes and tried to look around the room. Even that small effort made her dizzy. Her eyes fell on a figure sitting beside her bed – a man, leaning on his knees and watching her over clenched hands. Marella had to rub her eyes and blink a few more times before her eyes were clear enough to see who it was.

The soreness in her belly seemed to vanish along with everything else in there as shock enveloped her. She felt as if her limbs had gone numb, for she could no longer move. All her senses were forced onto the man beside her; a man with short, dark hair, eyes filled with intensity and scruff all around his jaw. He didn’t seem able to move either as his gaze met her’s without blinking.

Marella barely found her voice. “. . . Dad . . .” her voice came out a whisper.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t move at all, as if he was still trying to figure out if he was in a dream or not. Marella frowned at him. “Dad . . .?” she said again, a little stronger.

She lifted a trembling hand. The man’s eyes flicked to it for a moment before looking back at her. Marella swallowed and closed her eyes again. Her fingertips found the scruff on his cheek. Her breathing was unsteady as she slowly traced her fingers across the contours of his face. She nearly stopped breathing altogether when she knew where all the dips and curves would be before she felt them. She knew this face. She had memorized it long ago.

“Daddy,” this time her voice broke.

The man took her hand away from his face and clasped it between both of his. She hadn’t realized how cold her’s were until he did. He placed a rough kiss on her knuckles.

“Hey there, kiddo,” was all he could manage to say. Emotion of every sort welled so high in his chest and throat that it was a miracle he could speak clearly at all. Marella didn’t dare open her eyes for fear he would vanish if she did.

She felt the warmth of his hands spreading through her entire form like a soothing current. Yet, even so, she could speak with no more ease than he could.

“Are you –” she sniffed. “Are you really here?”

“Yeah, I’m right here, bud. I’m not going anywhere.”

The cragginess of his voice had never sounded so sweet.

“Is it time to go home now?” Marella’s words barely came out as a breath.

Her dad brushed stray hair off her brow like he’d always done to her out-of-control bangs as a child. “Almost,” he said. “I promise I’m going to take you home soon.”

Marella let out a sob. She rolled onto her side as best she could and reached out to hold her father’s hand in both of hers. Still she didn’t open her eyes as she wept in her pillow. Her father kept smoothing her hair away in the softest caress his rough hands could manage. It brought such warmth to Marella’s heart, yet it made her cry even harder. She didn’t know why. She didn’t quite understand all these feelings bursting within her now. There was only one thing she recognized and she was holding tightly to it with both hands.

For the first time it what felt like an eternity to them both, they were together.

Outside the room, the cop who had found her and called her father in walked past. She glanced in the window, not intending to pry, just checking in, but the sight in the room made her smile. Though she couldn’t see the father’s face, she could feel something coming from him – something that could only be described as joy, yet even that word seemed so lacking. She wiped a stray tear from her eye and turned around, giving them some privacy. She smiled for a long while too.