“The rhythm of love is the heartbeat of my soul.” --Klaus Meine ~~ Justin’s POV It was an eerie, supernatural feeling; the stuff nightmares were made of. I’d wake up, thinking I’d finally come back to the real world, only to find myself waking up again, having not actually done so the first time. My conscious mind was trapped in unconsciousness. I was in a kind of purgatory, confined to a dungeon where there were no walls to pound on, and even if there were, I had no hands to pound with, or voice to shout out. Complications. That’s what Brian later told me they’d told him; the surgery had minor ‘complications’. God knows what he’d thought of that. A ‘complication’ could be anything from the I.V. tube slipping out to a cardiac arrest. My ‘complication’ had begun with premature regaining of consciousness, two hours into the operation. Not enough to feel the pain or anything as horrendous as that, but enough for the anaesthetist to decide to give me a second, more powerful dose of the aesthetic. This, they said, was unusual but not unheard of. What was slightly less routine for them was my sudden and unexpected decent into ‘temporary respiratory apnoea’. For those less familiar with medical terminology, this meant I had stopped breathing. Through a technical version of rescue breathing, the doctors and surgeons had managed to get oxygen circulating through my lungs again before there had been any permanent or temporary damage done. I later learned that I’d stopped breathing again twice after that, but never for a period as long as the first. When they put a breathing tube attached to a respirator down my throat, the problem ceased entirely. The surgery was able to continue, although the recovery peirod was necessarily prolonged. All in a day’s work in the world of medical miracles. But it had scared Brian shitless. He told me afterwards that he had almost had a real panic attack when they came in to tell him why my recovery was delayed. He told me he’d been so scared he could hardly breathe himself. He could have completely lost it; I know I would of. But he didn’t. Not my Brian. Light bearers never lose their way in the storm. I was told afterwards that the two aesthetics I’d received had been of different magnitudes, and had continuously conflicted with each other. This accounted for the nightmarish sensation of surfacing, only to be dragged back into unconsciousness again. When I did finally wake up for good, some thirteen hours after I’d been put under, it was to find Brian, pale, exhausted and with a tear streaked face, waiting by my bedside. ~~~ Brian’s POV Terror. Helpless, gut-wrenching, blinding terror. The night of Justin’s prom, there had been a real possibility of him dying; if not in my arms on that concrete floor, then after he reached the hospital. But back then, although I knew by that point that I loved him, he was still just the boy who had proven to me that there was more to being with someone than just fucking. Four years ago, if he had died, I may have been able to survive. Today I knew that Justin wouldn’t die; it was only a ‘minor complication’, he’d only been in real danger for a matter of minutes before they’d managed to coax his unconscious body into breathing again. But today, he himself was the more significant side of the equation. He was my life, he was my baby, my future, my fiancée. My everything. Wherever he went, I would go to. If he jumped, so would I. And so when I put my head down on my arms and wept the same frenzied, helpless, terrified tears as I had the night of his prom, I wasn’t ashamed of myself. That prom night, and the hours in which I waited for him to return to me now, were the same. A combination of different parts of an equation with the same distressing result. And I could do nothing but wait. I sat by his bed, watching his beautiful face, partly obscured by the breathing tube, as I held his right hand in mine, willing him to hold it back. I was crying then too, but they were steady, controlled tears that the on-duty nurse pretended not to see them. My vigil was interrupted only once, by appearance of the million dollar surgeon himself. He had come to check on Justin, and to bring news of the surgery’s results, among other things. I listened, but the implications of what he said lay on the surface of my consciousness like oil on water, unable to sink any deeper. The seconds ticked steadily into minutes and they slipped unnoticed into hours. I watched his heart monitor jump rhythmically to the steady beat of his heart. Blip…blip…blip…on and on and on. I knew I was in those heart beats. I could feel their reverberations within my own chest. As if we were two people with one heart. The powerful rhythm of our steadfast love. ~~~ It was the tiny flick of his finger that roused me. It wasn’t a noise or any physical quality; it was that tiny movement of his index finger that hauled me back from the black hole of reflection in which I’d been submersed. The idea that I had actually dozed off was laughable. I doubted I would ever sleep again. I was wide awake instantly, and moving so fast it made me dizzy, I bent down to him, squeezing his right hand, desperate for some kind of a response. The nurse- Lisa? Lucy?- who had been in the room with me for the last 90 minutes came to lean down beside me. As Justin began to stir and I felt the thunderhead of anxiety that had been hanging over me suddenly break and rain a torrent of intense relief and liberation over me. I felt the weight of a mountain-sized boulder roll slowly off my chest. “Justin?” The nurse- may be it was Lisle- spoke softly to him. “If you can hear me, open your eyes.” His eye lids fluttered, and it seemed to take him a tremendous effort to open them a crack, before clamping them shut again in the blinding light of the room. Desperate to touch him, I glanced at Lucy (or Lisle), and she gave me a small nod of consent. “Justin,” I whispered to him, leaning down close to his ear, and laying one finger softly on his cheek. “It’s me. I’m here, Sunshine. Open your eyes and look at me.” Seeming to make an effort akin to moving a mountain, Justin opened his bleary eyes again at the sound of my voice. His irises stood out electric blue against his the blanched pallor of his skin. He shifted his gaze towards me, and I tried to smile down at him. It was a challenge because I was again fighting back tears. Not trusting myself to say anymore, I stroked his cheek and the bridge of his nose tenderly to let him know I was really there. A look of fright and panic was settling rapidly across his features and I thought I knew what the source of it was. Waking up lost and disorientated was distressing enough, but to find oneself immobilized and voiceless must have made it hundreds of times worse. Justin made a feeble movement with his free right hand and uttered a soft, strangled sound of distress. I laid my fingertips on his cheek again, caressing it very gently. The name I called him by then came out of its own accord, but I wasn’t surprised or ashamed of it. “It’s alright, Baby. You’re OK. There’s a tube down your throat to help you breathe, so you won’t be able to talk yet.” I touched his left hand gently. “This arm is hooked up to the I.V. so they’ve made sure you can’t bend it. But you can you feel me touching it, right?” Justin seemed to be taking this all in very slowly, as if the information had to diffuse through some kind of semi-permeable barrier. His eyes were riveted on me, as if I were the only object in the entire world. And to him at that moment, perhaps I was. I hadn’t realized the nurse had left my side until she returned to it, accompanied by two other people, a male nurse and a woman I took to be a technician. I listened as the older of the two women explained to me what they needed to do, and I nodded and turned to relay it to Justin, whom I sure wouldn’t listen to anyone else just then. “Sunshine, they’re going to take the tube out of your throat and put a smaller one in through your nasal passage instead. They’re not sure you can breathe sufficiently by yourself yet, but you’ll be able to talk with this one in, OK?” Justin still didn’t seem to be able to make any coordinated movements of his head or free arm, but his eyes told me that he understood what I was saying. He still looked a ghostly pale and more than a little bit scared. I squeezed his hand and spoke gently to him. “Good boy. I’m not going to leave you, but I need to call your Mom to tell her you’re alright. We’ve been real worried about you, Baby. Let the nurses do what they need to, and I promise I’ll be right back, OK?” This time there was an almost imperceptible nod, and I got up and out of the medical team’s way. I could feel Justin’s eyes try to follow me as I went over to the room’s cordless phone to inform and sooth an hysterically anxious Jennifer, who’d been waiting by her phone on tenterhooks for the past eight hours. ~~~ An Hour Later “Better now?” I asked, holding onto Justin’s wrist to guide the water bottle to his lips, not entirely trusting his limp fingers to do it unaided. He nodded slowly, and I reached up to his face to brush a strand of hair from his sweaty forehead. His skin still felt cold and clammy. His throat had been rubbed raw by the breathing tube and he could still only speak in a harsh, rasping whisper which I tried my best to discourage. Even with the pain medication, any contractions of his abdominal muscles caused him searing pain, but fortunately, the bed had a crank that allowed the head to be raised without the occupant actually having to actively sit up. The nurse had ‘suggested’ (AKA, demanded) that he drink the whole bottle of the solution they had give to re-hydrate him. It was mainly water, but there was something in it that would lubricate and sooth the rawness of his throat. After forty minutes, he’d only managed to down half of it, but I resolved to be patient and insisted that he complete the task. “Bri…” he rasped, but could even finish the word. He looked frustrated and irritated at his inability to converse, and I could only imagine how helpless he felt. “Shh. Don’t talk.” I told him gently, reaching out to cup his cheek in my palm, running my thumb softly over his cracking lips. He’d let me put some lip balm on them, but it didn’t seem to be helping much. Justin shook his head and moved his lips again against my thumb, desperate to communicate something. “Did…it..wo-ork?” He asked in his painfully hoarse whisper. His eyes were pleading with me to answer the question that had apparently just occurred to him. He had more right than anyone to know the answer. “The cancer is gone, Sunshine.” I assured him, trying to get him to take another sip from the water bottle. “The tumour was fully contained and they took it all out.” Under my rather insistent prompting, Justin obediently drank a bit more of the concoction before pushing it feebly away and shaking his head again. I knew what he was really after, and to save him the stress on his vocal chords, I finally gave him the answer he wanted. “Because of…what happened, he only managed to save about 50% of the nerves,” I told Justin, touching my fingertips to his lips again. “That’s what he told me. But that’s enough, Baby. That’s enough for you to still feel most things.” The disorientation and trauma of the last day had left his emotion raw and exposed on the surface, and I wasn’t all that surprised when he burst into tears of relief. His face crumpled, and he put a hand out weakly, grabbing pathetically at my arm, trying to draw me towards him. I found my way around the various tubes and wires attached to his body to hug him as tightly as I dared. I stroked his hair and face, whispering soft, calming words in his ear, trying to sooth him. It wasn’t that I thought this a bad way to vent this powerful emotion; I just knew sobbing would only lead more painful muscle contractions. “Shh…quiet, Baby. It’s alright. Stop crying- they won’t be too happy with me if I make your nose run with that thing in.” I indicated the new breathing tube, now placed in and under his nostrils and wrapping around his face. He smiled a little and I wiped the tears from his cheeks with the edge of the soft white sheet. When he’d calmed down, I helped him to take a few more sips of the solution before telling him what I knew I had to. “The surgeon came to see me while you were asleep, Sunshine.” I told him, catching the bottle just in time as it slid through his uncoordinated fingers. “He told me something funny.” Justin looked up at me expectantly. What I was going to tell him was not funny at all, and I think he knew it. I was about to tell him we were a long way from the edge of the woods. But at least we’d be lost in it together. “He said we’d have to practice. We’re going to have to ‘practice’ fucking. Everything is going to be a little different from now on; I’m gonna to have to do different things, and it’s gonna feel different for you. You know that, right?” Justin nodded and I could tell from the expression on his face that he knew I was afraid to go on. And it scared him. He moved his right hand to lay it on top of mine and dipped his head a bit to look into my eyes. “Tell…me,” he rasped, the words coming out haltingly because he was also afraid of them. “Justin…he said he didn’t think you’d be able to cum anymore. He said if you were able have orgasms, but they would be dry. He…he wasn’t really sure you’d be able to have them at all.” I waited a tense moment, letting the news sink in. “I…will” Justin resolved fiercely, looking so ferocious suddenly that I could almost feel heat radiating from his expression. “I can…have them, and I will…I’m not giving up.” “I know you won’t.” I whispered, leaning forward to kiss him on the forehead. “I’m so proud of you, my brave Sunshine.” I wished then with all my heart and soul that I didn’t have to go on. But I knew better than to wish to change things that I should face instead. “That’s, um, that’s not all.” I admitted. “The surgeon said that it is going to be really hard for us to have sex now. Well, to have sex and enjoy it. He said I was going to have to try very persistently and repeatedly every time to bring you to a climax. He said he thought may be we needed to explore other non-sexual ways of- what did he say?- ‘enjoying each other’s company.’” I reached out a hand and put it on the side of Justin’s neck, stroking my thumb along his jaw line. His expression had broken, it was full of distress, anxiety and deepest sorrow. It wrenched at something inside me, and I picked up his right hand, squeezing it tightly. “I won’t let that happen, Sunshine. I won’t.” I promised him fiercely, meaning every single syllable, “It’s going to work for us. It will, I promise. I won’t give up, Justin; I won’t ever give up on you.” I was looking straight into the very depths of his eyes, and he was staring back at mine, the contact disrupted only by the sheen of tears building under his eye lids and beginning to slide down his face. I put my other had to his face, holding it between my palms as firm and gently as I could without disturbing the breathing tube. “I’ll do anything, you know that. We’ll practice until we get it right, even if we don’t always get what we want. I won’t give up until you’re happy; until I can give you what you want.” “But what about you?” Justin protested, the tears now cascading down his cheeks, gripping the sleeve of my shirt tightly with his free hand. His breathing was accompanied by a gurgling sound, and I knew there were tears and mucus in the breathing tube. But I had to tell him now. I shifted closer to him, caressing and kissing his face, his cheeks and eyelids and nose, tasting the saltiness of his tears on my lips and tongue. I leaned my forehead against his and closed my eyes, one hand behind his neck and under his jaw. “I’m yours now. The only thing I want is what we can have together. I’ve done enough fucking in my life to last six life times. But now all I want is you. I’m yours, Sunshine, forever and ever and always.”