The Woman in the Woods (Saul Silva x OC)

Chapter 3: Awake

After the mammoth effort Saul made in getting out of bed just so he can pee in the bathroom, he slept the rest of the day away but not before the woman, Maja, reinserted his IV and made him eat soup. There was little conversation to be had but he remembered being handed a shirt, the same one he wore before, patched up on the part where he got himself stabbed, its right sleeve a completely different color (black, of course) and fabric. She helped him put it on which, despite the needed proximity for her to do that, wasn't anywhere near erotic because he felt more like a helpless toddler than a stud.

When he again woke up, it was morning. It was a small cabin and the banging around the kitchen carried easily to the bed, but it was the smell of coffee as well as the sizzling of eggs and sausages on a frying pan that roused him. His mouth watered as though it had been such a long time since he last had breakfast. Ages. But once the remnants of sleep left him, the reality of his physical situation returned. The short of it was, he felt dead or nearly dead that he almost wished he didn't wake up. It was as though he was at least ten times heavier than before, but also, he felt skinny that the bed might as well swallow him up. His head throbbed and his joints felt funny, especially his left knee. And his abdomen, the whole of it not just the right side, was too tender and battered.

What a baby. He was sure he could get up if he wanted to. He did it yesterday; but he took a second to prepare himself.

It was strange to finally see the cabin properly. Even though he was already aware that it was small, he didn't think it was this small, only slightly bigger than a regular-sized hotel room cramped with a kitchen. Everything was within a few steps. Bed and sofa on one side, kitchen/dining room and study on the other. Beside the sofa was a door that led to the bathroom, a small fireplace was between sofa and study, and the door leading outside between study and kitchen. Yet she managed to cram every available wall space with shelves, hanging and standing, all brimming with books.

He pushed himself up, grunted just a little and proved that he was right, he could get up. Maja had her back to him, humming as she cooked, wearing another dark gray shapeless dress that looked more like an oversized t-shirt but with short sleeves. Her hair was again unbound, swaying as she bobbed her head, her feet bare. She spun on her heels, frying pan in hand, and placed the contents on a plate atop the table, noticing him almost immediately.

"Oh hey," she said, smiling as she placed the pan back on the stove. "How are we feeling today?"

He thought about how his head felt too heavy for his neck and how he wished he didn't have an abdomen anymore and said, "Wonderful."

"What kind of soup do you want? I have mushroom, tomato, chicken..."

"Those are my options?" He eyed the table, other items on the menu there for him to see.

"Pumpkin?" she proposed before clarifying, "You haven't eaten anything solid for three days. It might be tricky."

"How about pancakes?"

He had the pumpkin soup, with bread, but at least he got the coffee. And he had it in bed even though he insisted he can make it to the 'dining table'. Meanwhile, she ate her eggs and sausages next to him, using the nightstand as a table and letting the smell waft to his nose as though testing his resistance. He must have eyed her meal too many times that she relented and said, "Oh, you can have the eggs," so that he took a slice directly from her plate.

He took the chance to see more of the tattoos and the scars on her arm. The tattoos were a sprawling design of the moon, clouds, and stars of different sizes, their growing rays beaming down to her elbow while the clouds provided a coiling background on her entire upper arm. The scars, he now realized, weren't merely lines; they went around her forearm in circles like bracelets, slightly bulging white. It wasn't pencil thin. Rather, they were each around a quarter-inch thick. She saw him looking and probably waited for him to ask, but he didn't. Instead, he tried to figure out why his fevered brain would think that this woman who had nursed him back to life, watching over him for days on end, whose face was something close to celestial, would then haunt his dreams in the darkest ways possible. Why couldn't he have more of her being naked? That seemed like a normal thing to dream about.