Read with BonusRead with Bonus

8: Elise

WHEN I came to, I was covered by a blanket and I was sitting on Gian’s lap in the backseat of a vehicle.

When I started to move, I realized his arms were wrapped securely around me while one of his hands held a towel to the wound in my head. And he growled.

That, and that he was in the foulest mood I’d ever felt him in, froze any further movements I might have made.

We were silent until we arrived at the hospital.

Four stitches were done to close up my wound, and an MRI scan was performed on me. I was in a hospital bed where I never ever wanted to be, and I normally would have been fidgety, except Gian kept glaring at everyone and everything so I didn’t want to cause any more problems for everybody.

He was scary, as if he was going to explode if anyone made one wrong move or said one wrong word. The doctor and nurses were walking on eggshells.

Madame Soniah was there, too, and she was still in her party gown, worried about me and very guilty because she was the one who had invited Shiela’s grandmother, therefore the crazy granddaughter was able to go to the party.

She was convincing me to sue, complete with expressive hand gestures in the air, because she was also very angry.

“I didn’t know she had gotten that worse. Why didn’t you tell us about the ruckus she did in the office? We didn’t know. Her lola didn’t know. If we had known, Lucia would not have allowed her to come. But no matter, you have to sue, my dearest. We can’t let this go. Oh no… what will your mother say? She’s going to kill me! We can’t possibly just forgive this…”

As I half-listened to the rant, I watched Gian. His face was still dark with anger and, I suspected, his own shock about what happened to me despite his promise—and his efforts—to shield me from his Ex’d.

I must admire Shiela. Now that I had calmed from my ordeal and my injuries have stopped hurting due to pain meds, I could almost appreciate her craftiness.

If she hadn’t beaten me up in her obsession with my boss, I could have almost forgiven her. On the surface, one would say she was madly in love.

But she wasn’t madly in love.

She was just mad—as in literally mad. And her mental illness found, as its focus of obsession, Gian. I wouldn’t be surprised. There were a lot of beautiful and accomplished women who wanted him. But none of them was remotely as ill as Shiela.

There was something about Gian, not just the obvious reasons or his supposed prowess in bed that she was fixated on. Something else.

Again, the whispers about his past dogged me.

But I shook my head, thinking I shouldn’t go there. Not my business. Not my thing.

When the doctor said I had a slight concussion and I had to remain in the hospital for the whole night for observation, I couldn’t be quiet anymore.

“I want to go home. I don’t want to stay here,” I begged.

“Absolutely not!” was Madam Soniah’s dismayed reaction.

But I was looking at Gian, who turned to me. He knew hospitals gave me anxiety. It triggers attacks, which were easy to manage if I didn’t stay here long enough, exposed to white walls and beddings and the smell of antiseptic and alcohol.

But there were nightmares to contend with, too. And those were difficult.

I was three years old when my biological father left to supposedly visit his family in Germany.

He never came back.

I was five years old when I learned why from other people.

“He is buried in the ground and he can’t escape from there. Your pale tatay can’t come back here anymore.”

It was a cruel attack on my mother disguised in a joke from a jealous relative, thinking a five-year-old wouldn’t know any better to talk about it.

She was right.

I was waiting for my father. They said he passed away and had gone to heaven, but I still waited because he promised me he would come back. He always did what he promised he would do.

I remembered my father very clearly.

It was weird, but until now I could still sometimes hear his loving voice when he woke me up every morning so I could eat hot pandesal bread with him.

However busy, there was never a day he hadn’t played with me. There was never a night that I went to sleep without a bedtime story from my Itay Fritz.

My five-year-old self had a simple premise. If my Itay wasn’t coming back, he must have been held against his will. I drew my own conclusions about what was keeping him away.

Like what I heard from this unscrupulous relative…

“He is buried in the ground and he can’t escape from there. Your pale tatay can’t come back here anymore.”

In my five-year-old nightmares, he was alive under the dirt, begging to get dug up so he could fulfill his promise to come back to me and my mother.

My mother guessed what was going on in the very first nightmare that woke me up, screaming, and begging that they dig my father up because he couldn’t breathe.

The very next day, she went to the relative and filed a complaint against her to the barangay captain, making it public what she did.

And although it hadn’t escalated to the courts, she hadn’t talked to the said relative for many, many years. They only faced each other when said relative got sick and needed help financially, so my mother visited the hospital to help.

But I knew the deed, though forgiven, wasn’t forgotten. My mother was like that.

I suffered. My emotional connection to my father was so strong that it took me a long while to accept that dead people were just… not here anymore.

Through the years, the nightmare would come back in stressful situations.

And hospitals with their sick people could trigger my anxiety. I would think of my Itay Fritz dying in his hospital bed.

And I would imagine him lying under the dirt, alive, wanting to dig himself out…

The few times the nightmare visited me, I would wake up with a blank memory about the dream, but I would be covered in sweat and hyperventilating.

I knew it was about him confined in his coffin under the dirt. I just couldn’t remember.

“I can’t stay here,” I continued to protest. I could feel tiny tremors in my hands that always started the anxiety attacks, and I clenched them in fists. When I looked up, Gian was staring at them.

“Okay,” Gian said.

Madam Soniah turned to him. “But Gian, she’s seriously hurt!”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll not leave her until I’m sure she’s alright,” he promised his mother.

“Are you sure? I’ll ask for a nurse to be with her through the night. Let’s—”

“I’ll drive her back here if something goes wrong.”

I thought Madam Soniah would continue to protest but she abruptly paused to stare at her son, and then she reluctantly nodded before coming over to my side to hug me very carefully.

“We will make this alright. We will. I will personally make sure Shiela will not get away with this,” she promised me. Her face was contorted in pity and anger. “She needs intervention, and I will be it!”

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter