The Bond of the Broken

Tatyina lifted her shaky hand and pressed the spoon she held against her pale lips. It had been the first time in a long time since she had been able to eat without the aid of a tube. After she was rendered unconscious in her fight with Dark Angel, she had slipped into a deep coma. During that time, her muscles had atrophied. When she woke up a few weeks ago, the slow process of recovering begun.

The hot broth trickled down her throat and she winced at the heat. Her hand crashed down to the bed and the little bit of soup that remained spilled against her bed sheet. She leaned back. She felt exhausted just from doing that much. But she needed to do more. Tatyina closed her eyes and sunk back into her bed. Things were rough and she'd been in a terrible melancholy since she woke up. No one had come to visit her. She had no friends or family aside from Emily, who HAD come to visit her. That put her at ease but it was still troublesome.

However, there was also something else. When she awoke, she was practically in a forest of of flowers. They were all sent by an anonymous person. It made Tatyina fret and worry but still, it also helped to ease her mental state.

Now she was just trying to recover. Eat. Get back to normal. Be able to live a normal life. Had she EVER done that, really? She felt the urge to wrestle more and she kept the television on AFW. It seemed the place continued to sink into depravity. That violence and spiteful people continued to collect and form a cesspool of rottenness. That made her said too. She needed to be there. Just to try and fight against that.

As she struggled with everything she had on her plate, she was surprised when the nurses began to wheel in another patient. She was in the long term care ward and they were bringing in another girl. She seemed similar to her. About the same stature but with deep, chestnut brown hair. She looked peaceful. Tatyina felt remorse for her situation. Suddenly she felt silly for all her troubles. Here was a girl who had been through a terrible incident and Tatyina began to softly weep when the nurses left.

"I... I hope that you recover." She said in her voice, which was barely a whisper. "Soon..." She managed as she leaned over as much as she could and looked at the unconscious girl.

Talia's mind had trapped itself in her past. She kept dreaming of her youth, of her old friends and family. It was almost like watching old family videos in her head as she lay in the coma. Her mind had to do that just to keep her grounded and sane. Many moments of her life were casually relived as if everything was entirely normal. Memories, both positive and negative, slipped in and out of her head like a long term dream slideshow. Despite all of it, though, something was off in every single memory. She couldn't breath. And when she could, it hurt catastrophically. No one else in her dream seemed to care. They were all too preoccupied with their own actions. There were times when she could hear people talking but couldn't see either. And even though it was a dream, the pain and fear felt as real as ever.

After what felt like three lifetimes, Talia had one last dream. And it took her an hour to realize she wasn't dreaming. Her eyes were open and she was staring at one specific spot on the roof of the room. The lights were dimly bright but still made her eyes hurt. She blinked twice and looked away from them. There was a blur in her vision where a light had been. She suddenly felt really sick; like she had moved more in the last five seconds than years. She groaned and tilted her head down. Despite being delirious, she knew what she was looking at wasn't right. There was a tube leading from some machine into her mouth. As she noticed it, she suddenly felt a lot of pain in her throat. She groaned and weakly reached up to grab onto it.

Talia pulled but realized her it was tapped onto her mouth or something. And to make it worse she couldn't open her mouth. She didn't know why. The girl started to freak out and desperately tried to open her mouth but something was forcing it shut. Thankfully by then a nurse had seen her moving and immediately rushed in. "Talia, Talia don't move, you'll hurt yourself." The nurse gripped onto Talia's hand and easily pulled it off. Being asleep for so long had left Talia far weaker than she had ever been before. "You have a headbrace on; your jaw is fractured, try to calm down." The nurse then slowly undid the bandages on Talia's head. As they came off, the pressure was released and Talia opened her mouth to breath. And it hurt. A lot. The nurse seized the moment to pull the tube out of her lungs and all the way out of her mouth. Talia whimpered weakly and the nurse bandaged her mouth tight again. "There, is that better?" she asked. Talia was too in shock from the pain to answer.

Where was she? What day was it? What had happened? Being asleep for so long had left her completely delusional and unaware of her surroundings. Only her recent dreams seemed clear in her head. The nurse patted her gently and said she'd get the doctor. Talia breathed through her nose quickly and groaned again. Her insides hurt even more than her jaw had. It was hurting to breath and she knew she had to. She closed her eyes and relaxed hoping to just drift back to sleep where her dreams would distract her from all of these problems. But as she breathed, she smelled something nice. Flowers. Talia opened her eyes and tilted her head to the side where she saw a ton of flower bouquets. She didn't know why, but they made her feel very sad. They were lovely and there were a ton of them around. Were they for her? They must have been. Then she saw another bed out of the corner of her eye. She didn't turn her head towards the person, however, that was far too sharp of an angle in her position. And personally, in her state, she didn't want to acknowledge them. Not while she was like this.

Tatyina watched. All she could do was watch. The dull, gray eyes stared at Talia indiscreetly. She had no idea who the girl was. It didn't matter who she was. Right now it was the closest person to a kindred spirit that Tatyina had. Someone who was in a similar state. An unknown, obscured shadow left at the mercy of the dancing flame. Pushed around by its will and not her own. Tatyina began to cry for the girl, her whimpers were silent as the tears streamed. If she could trade places, she would. She didn't even attempt to try another bite of her soup as she stared at the girl, feeling like she was being bombarded by the girl's energy.

And then, Talia blinked.

Tatyina gasped when Talia tried to breath, as if she could so it in surrogate for her fellow bed ridden soul mate. She remained statuesque except for her darting eyes when the nurses came in and tried to soothe and diagnose Talia.

Tatyina tried to sit up. It was hard. Probably harder than lifting the spoon, but she did her best and manage to put herself into a sitting position. She started panting and looked over. It was at that moment that the doctor came in, seeing Talia awake and Tatyina sitting up, he smiled.

"Oh! It seems we have a host of miracles today." He said as he looked at Tatyina. "How are you feeling, Tatyina?" He asked, looking at the red headed girl. She smiled and nodded. "It's hard... sitting up... but..." She whispered. "I ... feel overwhelmed... with joy..." She said as tears began to leak from her eyes. She then asked the doctor for a pad of pen and a paper and for him to set one of the many vases of flowers on her little food desk.

Then the Doctor turned to look at Talia and checked her over thoroughly. "And, you're awake too, Talia? I came down as soon as I heard the good news. I'm certainly glad you weren't out as long as Tatyina. She was comatose for months. I know you're in a lot of pain, but now that you're awake, the healing can begin at an exponential rate.

The sight of the doctor eased Talia's anxiety a little bit. She was still confused and delusional but at least she suddenly felt in good hands. But his inspirational words didn't answer any of her questions. When he mentioned Tatyina, Talia stared in confusion. She knew that name. But she couldn't remember where at that moment. That answered who was the person in the other bed at least. How long had she been out though? And...why was she out? She groaned trying to ask a question but the headbrace prevented her from opening her mouth. She frowned in frustration and managed to ask, "What happened?" through her teeth but it came out too muffled to be legible.

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. She hadn't really heard Tatyina's words but they did immediately have something in common. Talia weakly lifted up her left hand and made a signing motion as if she had a pen in her hand. She hated not being able to talk but she at least wanted to communicate. She couldn't make sense of what was going on. Her memories weren't linking together properly. All she could remember where the visions of the dreams she had the last few weeks. Had she been in a car accident? What could possibly had done this much damage to her?

When the doctor did bring her a pad and pencil, he held it up for her as she sloppily wrote the question, "What happened to me?"

The doctor watched as Talia wrote down her message. He looked at it and frowned. "Well, Talia, you're a professional wrestler. You were in a match that ended with... well... you in this state." He turned and looked at Tatyina. "It's the same with Tatyina. She was also put into a coma after a wrestling match."

The doctor shook his head, putting his hand against his forehead. "Honestly, it happens more than it ever should. That AFW keeps us well supplied with patients. So much so, we've practically opened a dedicated wing. It's a serious problem but all we can do is try and treat the injured."

He tilted his head at Talia. "Are you suffering from memory loss, Talia? Do you remember any of it?"

A lot rushed back to Talia at the mention of 'wrestling'. Unfortunately so. She remembered her first match and how badly it went. And her second match...and how badly it went...and so on and so on. She must've run into someone hellbent on destroying her. They must have succeeded. For that moment, though, she didn't care about how she got here. She remembered why Tatyina's name was familiar. Coma? Sure there were other Tatyina's in the world but how many were put in a coma during a wrestling match? And Talia now remembered very vividly what she had done to her.

"N-No," She lied through her teeth. The doctor probably didn't understand her so she wrote it down on the paper. She didn't want him to talk about Tatyina anymore. She didn't even look in her direction. All the flowers now made perfect sense to her. After all, no one would've sent flowers to Talia. No one. She still didn't recall what specifically had happened but there were some gray images in her head that she didn't want to ask about.

Talia wrote down, "Why do my jaw and breathing hurt?" on the paper. Being unable to talk was really getting annoying but it hurt so much when the nurse had taken off the brace that she accepted it wasn't feasible. She just hoped it wasn't permanent.

The docotr remained grim as Talia asked her question. It was very difficult to have to say, but she needed to know. "Three of your ribs were broken during the match. One of them punctured your lung. The surgery's been done and you'll recover from that in time. That was the most life threatening injury but it is also the one that will be able to recover fully."

The doctor frowned. "Your jaw was also fractured during the match. While that will also heal, I'm afraid that during times of extreme stress, you may find it tightening. You'll be otherwise normal when it heals, but if you get too angry or stressed, you may find that it seizes up and puts enough pressure on you to keep you from talking for a few moments. I would prescribe pain killers but it will only happen under stressful conditions. You won't have to worry about eating out of a tube or anything. I'm sure you'll barely notice it as long as you maintain normal stress levels." The doctor said, trying to ease Talia's mind.

"Do you have any more questions?"

Talia frowned as the doctor spoke. He wasn't gentle at all about the truth. And even if she'd recover completely from the serious one, the image of her ribs breaking into her lungs made her feel the pain all over again. The idea that her insides looked like that was enough to make her want to go back to sleep and escape this reality. The news of the permanent injury made her feel even worse. He said she'd be mostly good but in her head she imagined having this head brace on for the rest of her life. Talia sniffled a little bit and shook her head in response. As the doctor walked out, Talia's eyes watered and she tried to turn her head away from where Tatyina was. She didn't want to cry in front of her. Who the hell had done this to her? As she pieced things together, several images crossed her mind that she'd rather have not remembered.

Talia remembered leaping nearly to her death off the turnbuckle and having her face crushed while she couldn't see. As weak as she was, the girl started to cry. She had never been so scared in her life. It seemed she had survived but only just. While that should have been a relief, it wasn't. In her time in the AFW, many people had hurt her. Some of them had even enjoyed hurting her. But never before had someone nearly killed her. The thought that her opponent...who she now remembered was Cassie actually wanted to kill her brought a whole new level of fear into her head. Talia's right hand began to tremble and she was crying even more than before.

What had she done to deserve all this? When she was nice, she ended up in the hospital. When she was mean, she ended up in the hospital. Even when she was winning, all she was doing was making her inevitable downfall that much worse. It was the worse feeling in the world to have failed in everything she had wanted to accomplish and nearly died in the process. Maybe she was better off dead. She could barely even sob with her jaw tightly wrapped around but she did anyways.

Tatyina watched as the doctor left and her attempts to get the pad of paper and the other things she wanted. Her head fell for a moment and she slumped backwards into her pillow. Her hands came up and rubbed her temples. Tatyina sat up once more and slowly began to turn her body so she was facing Talia.

The pale skinned girl then began to slowly ease off of her bed. She slid one shaky leg onto the cold hospital floor. She shivered but felt safe. She then slid her other leg off of the bed but was still sitting. Tatyina began to slowly inhale and exhale. The next step was the hardest.

Tatyina pushed off the bed and stood up for the briefest of moments before her knees buckled. She reached out for Talia's bed but her arms were as weak as her legs and she crumbled into the space between the beds. She lay there staring up with a soft smile on her face. "I'm... glad.... you're... awake..." She whispered, hoping her soft voice would reach Talia.

Talia quietly sobbed to herself until she heard movement from her side. She turned her head quickly to see Tatyina trying to walk. It had been a long time since she had seen the redhead and the sudden sight of her approaching made Talia squirm and cry in fear. The girl was out to finish what Cassie started and Talia wouldn't be able to defend herself. Or not. She tripped and collapsed to the ground. Talia watched with hesitation at the girl's smile and quiet statement. Why was she so polite after all Talia had done to her? Unless...she didn't know that it had been her.

On the plus side, Tatyina seemed to be doing far better than before. Her injury had haunted Talia for quite some time. At least the guilt of nearly killing the redhead had been lifted. Even if now she practically had to live with the memory of it right in front of her. Talia tried to speak through her teeth but it came out as gibberish. She looked down at the pad and pencil in front of her. She bravely reached down with each hand to pick up each item. Weakly, she wrote the words, "Are you okay?" in big letters and showed it to Tatyina. It had two meanings, one of which Tatyina wouldn't understand.

As if wanting to test whether or not her assumption had been correct, Talia proceeded to write more on the pad of paper. "What happened to you?" was written below the precious question and showed it to Tatyina. Even though she was happy to see the girl alright, now knowing what it was like to be her, she needed to know what the girl knew. After all, if Cassie had coincidentally been put into a bed beside Talia, she wouldn't know what she'd do. Probably something crazy.