WILL
Six weeks and four days.
I didn't set eyes on her face, for six weeks and four days.
I often feel conflicted when I think about it. James Reynolds is gone. They used his full name like that in the news reports because it seemed to work better with the respected professional image they painted him with. But he's gone now and he's never coming back, while Izzy and I have the rest of our lives together.
There's times I'm angry about it. I'm angry that Izzy had to deal with things alone, that he left me with issues that I'll have to manage for the rest of my life, that people tried to blame us, and that it took so long for us to have anything that even vaguely resembled a normal life afterward. But in the end, I always come back to the same thing.
We're both here, and I am so grateful for it.
Izzy and I essentially hit pause on our life for the better part of two years while I recovered. That's a long time to have to do that. I never doubted that we'd see it through, nor did she, but I think we both struggled with blame.
Izzy felt that everything was her fault, and she found it almost impossible to accept the fact that she could have taken a life, regardless of whose it was. I'd have happily taken responsibility for it, but the more she thought about Jamies last moments, about the look in his eyes and the way it made her feel, she knew without a doubt that it was her who did it.
I replayed other moments in my head over again, wondering if I could have done something different. Should I have tried to get to her sooner? Should I have gone for help like she said? If I had swung at him elsewhere or earlier, would he have been able to use the knife at all?
I don't have any of the answers. I never will.
When I woke up, I didn't really know what had happened. Izzy had to explain everything. Some of it sounded familiar, but it was more like a story I had been told rather than a memory. I had little snippets of it wedged in my mind, but very little. Eventually it all came back to me, but sometimes I wish it hadn't.
It took awhile to figure things out. I wasn't able to do much at first, least of all walk. Just about everything else was fine, but my legs had completely forgotten their job. Not forever, just for as long as it took for me to build the strength back into them again.
Extensive muscle damage. That's all I really remember them telling me in the shock of it all. Izzy would know all the technical terms, she could write a book on it by now. She made it her mission to learn every single thing should could about the injuries I had. She wanted to know the best ways to treat it all, the complications, the recovery times, all of it.
She prepared for every single scenario, even the bad ones. She did it all so that I didn't have to, all I had to do was focus on getting better.
In the heat of it that day, I suffered a collapsed lung first. The puncture was large, which meant there was a lack of oxygen to my brain. Cerebral hypoxia, I've heard those words more times than I can count.
Izzy said a paramedic had to do needle decompression on the floor of our apartment to stabilise me and make sure I was getting oxygen. That's a fancy way of saying that she rammed a needle into my chest to let the air out. I feel like the way I tell it sounds better. But either way, it's down to what the paramedic did and how quick she did it too that I didn't suffer a brain injury.
I don't think anybody expected me to be out as long as I was though, especially not the doctors. I'd had multiple seizers the first few days after I arrived at the hospital, and two different infections throughout my stay that they treated and cleared, so at first they could put it down to that.
Then when I was showing brain function on the EEG, they said that they couldn't say for sure what I'd be able to do or what damage there was going to be until I woke up, but the longer I was out, the less hopeful they were.
I came in and out of consciousness for a few minutes during the third week, so by then, they were all out of any real explanations for the amount of time it took for me to fully come around.
At one point all the doctors could do was shrug their shoulders at my family and Izzy and say that it was some sort of trauma response. Annie loves to tell people that I was being dramatic and enjoying the attention too much to get up.
The only time I actually remember waking up was the big one. In a weird kind of haze I could hear Izzy singing away to herself. As much as I say she can't carry a tune, hearing her voice in that moment is something I'll never forget.
I had come in and out a few times at that stage, so when she looked up at me and smiled, she thought this time was going to be just like the others. I think she almost lost her life when I said Hi.
I don't know what she expected me to do when I finally woke up, but it wasn't that.
She cried for easily an hour, calling everyone while doctors hovered around me with questions and tests. She says it was the best day of her life. I hope to change that.
I spent so much time in physical therapy afterward that it became a second home. I was determined to get my ass up and walking again. I had a woman I wanted to meet at the end of the aisle and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to be standing there to meet her.
It's hard to say when I first noticed that she was wearing the ring. I knew I hadn't actually asked her, and I did recall trying to tell her it was in my jacket pocket, but it's kind of a running joke between us now that she had simply decided we were engaged while I was in a coma.
I like to tell her it's the reason why three years later she still hasn't gotten me down that aisle... yet.
Izzy went to five different dress shops to find the one she wanted. Five. I genuinely wondered what I was getting myself into. Annie made it to the first three appointments, Sarah to the first four, but most surprisingly was that her dad made it to every single one.
From the second I arrived at the hospital, he was there for her in all the ways he wasn't when her mom and grandfather passed. I think he made it his mission to be a better father to her this time around.
He looked after all the things she didn't have time for. Groceries, laundry, even my apartment. I don't think they'll ever have to stop working on it when it comes to their relationship, but it's in a much better place now than it ever has been, and that means enough to the both of them to keep on trying.
That's what Izzy was doing when she invited him dress shopping. She felt that if she couldn't have her mom, then it was important to have her dad there. It's certainly not his area of expertise, but Izzy said she knew she had found the right one when she came out of the dressing room and he got all choked up when he saw her. I've yet to see her in it of course, but I expect that when he walks her down the aisle to me, I'll know the feeling.
We decided to let ourselves really enjoy the planning process of the wedding, we knew it was going to be a long one, but that didn't matter.
It was a while before we were able to choose the date because we had to work with however I was doing, but she'd happily spend hours sitting with me, looking at locations and venders online together. It was something to occupy us, it let us know that the future was coming, we just had to meet it along the way.
I was so focused on walking, that when it came, I had trouble accepting all the little things that would remain an issue.
I'll have balance and coordination problems for the rest of my life. Putting on shoes isn't the simple job it once was, and I have to keep a stool on stage on the rare occasions I'm on one now, just in case I lose myself. There's headaches and dizziness, even some numbness in my fingers at times, but I know it could be worse. Much worse.
Once the hospital had ran tests and all of that stuff, they told me that there wouldn't be any reason that I couldn't play guitar professionally again. It would just take awhile.
The singing took a bit of a hit at first too. I confused words sometimes, completely forgot lines and lyrics altogether. That didn't last too long, which I'm beyond thankful for, but it did knock me sideways for a bit.
I never really went back to playing with the band after everything. I had put so much of my focus back into recovery, that by the time it was an option, the drive to pick things back up with them just wasn't there. Small Edit had become something without me, and I didn't want any of us to move backward. They always had space for me, I never felt otherwise, but it wasn't the same.
On the plus side, I had already fallen in love with something else.
I had decided to keep going with writing. When I had first sold my songs, it didn't really excite me. It was just something to do really. But on the days that I was frustrated with my progress in the hospital, I'd take time away from things and spend hours scribbling down lyrics.
I ended out with notepad after notepad of material to use, it was an outlet, just in different way to how it was before. I wasn't writing to get something good out there anymore, I was writing to get something bad out of my head. And my god do people love to listen to sad stuff.
I never for a second thought that Jamie would be a reason for there being that many zeros in my bank account, but I try not to consider him as a factor too much.
Izzy and I weren't sure what to do with that much money at first. We donated some of it to the things close to us. We wanted to thank the treatment centre and hospital that looked after me too. We bought a house. A big house! In a nice quiet part of Ardeen, because that's where we always belonged and nobody was going to take it away again.
We deserved to be near the friends and family we loved, but also all the things we loved too.
We've had countless trips to Shadow Lake already, and I'm still able to make it up that trail before Iz, although I have my suspicious she lags behind to boost my ego now.
In the end, we found two things that we really wanted to put the money towards.
The first was to help Annie expand Benny's. She was running that bar like it was the most important place in the world, and I wanted as many people as possible to get a taste of the legacy my dad had left behind.
It's Annie's baby, she chooses the locations and makes the plans, I just finance it. We're currently in discussions for the third venue now. It's funny how it's gotten more expensive to do each time, but Annie swears it's inflation. As long as she's happy and it makes sense, I don't really care.
I thought she was going to take some time off this year, she and Adam are expecting their first kid, but it hasn't slowed her down a single bit. No real surprise there I guess.
The second thing we did was Izzy's idea.
While I was at physical therapy, I'd bring my headphones with me all the time. The therapist felt that I had more drive when I was listening to music. She started to play it on a speaker, and then began to incorporate it into the actual therapy sessions. She then tried out using it with her other patients too, and felt that it was really making a difference.
Izzy would watch on in awe on the days she came with me. She and my physical therapist were known to forget I was even there at times when they were that deep into their discussions about it. After thinking about it for a bit, Izzy began to look into Music Therapy.
After Izzy showed me some things she had researched, I became obsessed with the idea of it. We we're seeing first hand, in real time, how well the therapy worked, so we wanted to see if we could help other people with it. Very quickly, Izzy and I both knew that this was what we should do.
We took some time to talk to some professionals about it, and then we decided to approach the board of the hospital I was treated in to discuss it. Izzy gave the pitch, which shows how much she wanted it because that's not like her at all, but holy shit was she passionate, beyond so.
It was a proven method, so we couldn't see why they wouldn't introduce it if we were to fund it. Lucky for everyone, they agreed with us.
The both of us stay heavily involved as volunteers, but I use the term volunteer extremely loosely with Izzy. She's a bossy one. It's hard to disagree with her when she's paying for it, obviously her backround in music is an advantage though, as is the heart she puts into it.
We threw a big barbecue recently for patients and their families. Izzy asked me to play a few songs with the band again at it. She said that she wanted to show everyone exactly what the therapy can achieve, I think she just wanted to show me off, but why split hairs?
I think with all of this, the thing I've been most astounded by is seeing how Izzy has flourished. I know the situation wasn't ideal, I mean, would I have preferred not to have to re-learn the stuff I picked up as a toddler? Absolutely. But if I had to do it, I'm glad that I got to see this side of her with it.
The work she does now has given her purpose on the days she struggles, and a confidence that could rival my own sometimes. But most of all it's given her the self belief that she never had.
Jamie still lived inside her head at times when we first took it all on, making her second guess herself, and there was only so much I could do in terms of walking her through that. It was something she needed to conquer on her own, but she did it, and I've never been more proud of her.
Izzy knows who she is now, she knows what she wants and goes after it cocked and loaded. It's become my favourite thing about her. I honestly thought it was impossible to love her any more than I did, but she finds a way to make it happen every day.
And it looks like today is no exception to that rule.
When I think back on it, just about everything we've done these past few years has been in preparation for today. We might not have known it at the time, but now it all makes sense. We would have done just about anything to make it here together, no matter the distance, no matter how far we strayed, this is where we saw ourselves.
As she walks down the staircase towards me now with a cocky little smile on her face, I can't help but chuckle to myself. Only thirty minutes ago I was upstairs with her, wiping it off.
I technically shouldn't have been near her, but when she sent me a picture of her in those little stockings and suspenders, I felt a twitch right where she had intended, and it wasn't going to hold out until afterward.
I told the guys I had to use the bathroom and marched right on up there and ruined her pretty hair. It was worth every second.
And here she comes towards me now, not a single strand out of place. She is breathtaking.
As she meets me here, I take her in, every perfect detail.
"You look incredible," I tell her, meaning every word.
"You almost ruined the surprise," she says, looking down at her dress. I'm glad I didn't accidentally catch a glimpse of it until now, it's her all over. Stunning.
"I don't remember that being a complaint when I knocked on your bedroom door Iz."
I give a self assured grin of my own as she blushes, conscious of the many pairs of ears around us.
Her eyes literally sparkle as she looks around her in as much disbelief as I am that we've made it here. A single tear threatens her make up before she wipes it away and her eyes draw themselves back to me.
"Are you ready?," she asks.
"I've been ready since the day I met you Isobel."
We both turn to face the man in front of us together as he addresses the crowd that stands with us. The same people that have always stood with us.
And then he begins.
"Dearly Beloved..."