“but I need to get you to a doctor. Please stay with me. We’re almost through this.”
The journey is slow as he guides the horse back down the pass, leading with one hand and balancing Alba with the other as she lie’s resting on the horse’s back. It takes another night and day to reach the nearest town, and Roderick goes without rest the entire way. With Alba doing little more than breathing, he becomes anxious once more and desperate to find help.
Night has fallen again by the time they arrive in the tiny village. Roderick pounds on the doors of homes until he is able to find a doctor, which fills him with relief because not all places so small have one. Despite the lateness of the hour, the doctor is very kind in how he responds to Roderick’s plea for help, having Roderick immediately bring Alba in for examination.
The doctor, however, doesn’t know what to make of the injuries. Several of Alba’s bones are broken, and she has other severe injuries. Yet, her body as a whole remains strong, at least that is how the doctor explains it.
“I can’t really tell you why,” he says bewildered, “but strength seems to be returning to her body despite how broken it really is. The way her bruises and cuts have so quickly healed speaks to that. There’s little I can do but set the fractured bones back in place. The rest will be up to her, particularly the waking up part, but with head injuries that’s never a guarantee.”
Roderick thanks the doctor, who returns to bed after stabilizing her. Roderick remains by her side, wanting to stay awake despite his heavy eyelids. She may not be conscious to experience her suffering, but he is. It torments him. He wishes so much that they could somehow trade places.
When the sun rises, the doctor returns to check on her, waking an exhausted Roderick to give him an update.
“Remarkable,” he comments on her progress through the night. “This kind of healing normally takes days, not a few hours. I guess she’s just not meant to pass on right now.”
Encouraged, Roderick goes into town and buys a small carriage. The doctor helps him convert its bench into a narrow bed for Alba. Roderick then offers the carriage to the doctor as a gift if he will but drive them back on the week’s journey south to his estate. The doctor agrees, and Roderick spends most of the trip kneeling by Alba’s side on the carriage floor.
It takes a couple more weeks for Alba to wake up. At first, she is uncertain of where she is because Roderick is not in the room. She panics a little and tries to get up, but her aching body reminds her to take it slow. Carefully, she stretches out her arms and legs, bending her joints back and forth to find that other than some soreness, each works as it should.
Once she feels comfortable, she stands up and walks to the window, parting the curtains only to become overwhelmed by the brightness of the sunlight. Her eyes are slow to adjust as she stumbles back and closes them again. When she opens them back up, she immediately recognizes the large garden that stretches out below the window, and a quivering, elated smile fills her face.
“Do you remember what happened?” a familiar voice calls out from behind her.
She turns to find Roderick standing at the doorway but doesn’t run into his arms, though she nearly bursts into tears at the sight of him. She instead pauses and looks down, taking the question seriously because she wants to remember. She wants to understand how it is that she is in this peaceful place when she fell so far and was gripped by agony and death for so long.
“Just pieces,” she recalls, looking back up toward Roderick, who approaches her with soft footsteps. “I remember slipping and falling. After that, my eyes felt like they were sealed shut. As though I was paralyzed in some lost dream and couldn’t escape. There was a lot of pain, but it didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real. Not until I heard your voice.”
Roderick places his arms around Alba as she begins crying into his shoulder. His touch warms her, calming her trembling body and granting her the composure to continue speaking.
“How did you find me?”
He smiles at her, ready to tell her the truth.
“I was the one who planted the flowers there.”
Alba begins to laugh and cry at the same time, looking up and smiling as she does so.
“What’s so funny?” Roderick asks, getting emotional himself.
“I went up there because some traveler told me about flowers he saw growing in the pass. The way he described them, I knew they were peony. I wanted to find one to bring back to you.”
Her crying then overwhelms her laughter, but she pushes through it to finish her words
“To give you something that is valuable and precious beyond words like you’ve been doing for me. To tell you that I’m tired of walking down that road and fighting the urge to turn and run back to you and never leave you again because I miss you so badly when I’m not with you. But now that I know that you planted those flowers as well, I’ll have to go find new ones.”
Alba smirks as she finishes, forcing a chuckle out of Roderick even though he, too, is tearing up. They embrace again, but after a moment, he pulls his head back and looks affectionately into her eyes. She smiles at him playfully, leaning up and kissing him suddenly, unexpectedly.
Years later, she does find something precious beyond words to give him, but it is not some rare treasure that she finds growing in a serene mountain pass. Rather, it is something that she grows inside of herself. A beautiful baby girl.
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