A New Relationship Starts.

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When the Warden left his house and family on that cold and dark night he went straight up to the prison block, stopping nowhere until he got through to the hospital wing.

"Mr. McNeill," Miss Adams said in her thick Irish accent. The nurse was somewhat surprised by the fact that he would come and visit Elizabeth at all as she still lay unconscious on the hospital bed, let alone at this time of night.

"Do you mind if I stay?" the Warden quietly asked as he grabbed himself one of the folding chairs from the other side of the room and set it up beside Elizabeth's bedside. The question was of course rhetorical. 

"No Warden, of course I don't mind." Miss Adams smiled to herself as she saw the affection spilling forth from the man that she had only ever known as ruthless and brutal for the last six years that she had been working at Alcatraz Island penitentiary.

The Warden sat down and reached out for Elizabeth's hand, gently holding it within his and silently praying to any God that would listen to him for the dark angels health to return to her. McNeill said nothing else for hours until around 11, after noticing a stifled yawn, he told Miss Adams to go to her own bed and get some rest.

The nurse nodded her head and without a word went off to her own bedroom that was connected to the hospital wing. McNeill sat quietly beside Elizabeth the rest of the night and well into the morning, fending off sleep every time it threatened to take him over.

Elizabeth finally awoke from her almost too peaceful slumber within the early hours of the next morning. It was dark all around when she opened her bright green eyes and the few shapes that she did see were blurry.

Sitting up slightly in the small and uncomfortable bed Elizabeth tried to blink the blurriness out of her eyes and felt a slight pinch in the crook of her right elbow. Reaching her left hand over the dark angel realized it was a needle that was attached to a thin tube and probably a bag on a stand at the end of it.

In a chair next to her bed someone was breathing deeply but she couldn't see whom yet or hear anything else coming from the room.

Elizabeth felt a massive thump followed quickly by a second and a third inside her head that could only be the onset of a severe migraine and she laid herself back down on the bed and fell back asleep.

She didn't dream. She wasn't rattled by noises. She was finally peaceful.

When she awoke next Elizabeth heard two people speaking to one another in quiet voices and some blurry shadows passed over her closed eyes.

"Will she wake up?" a familiar voice filled with nothing but concern. 

Elizabeth concentrated for a moment or two but couldn't remember who the voice belonged to.

"It's not looking likely that she will," Miss Adams replied in her thick Irish accent and Elizabeth heard a pen scratching away on paper.

"Doesn't look too healthy does she?" Elizabeth picked the voice straight away this time, it was the deep tone of Dean Sutton.

"Well let's just scare you half to death and see how 'healthy' you're looking afterwards," Miss Adams replied in somewhat of an indignant tone.

"He'd probably look better than he usually does," Elizabeth answered in a whisper with a smile and forcing open her bright green eyes that were marginally less blurry than the last time she opened them.

"Oh my goodness it's a miracle," Miss Adams exclaimed as she dropped her clipboard that clattered on the floor and rushed over to the dark angel. With tears of joy filling her eyes Miss Adams felt her forehead with the back of her cold hand then looked in Elizabeth's mouth, ears and eyes with her bright penlight to make sure everything was okay and all her responses were functioning properly.

"You feeling alright Oldin?" Sutton asked her with a smile as he walked up to her bedside and squeezed her bony hand.

Elizabeth smiled up at her friend. "Yeah, I'm feeling okay, just incredibly exhausted." Elizabeth looked down at her right arm and noticed that there was still a needle in the crook of her elbow and this time the small tube definitely was attached to a bag hanging from a pole.

Miss Adams continued flustering about her check-up routine as she checked Elizabeth's breathing and heart rate and so on then went and picked the chart up off the floor that she had dropped.

"Thank god you're awake Elizabeth," the pretty nurse said with her thick Irish accent as she held her patients right wrist and checked her pulse. "We were all thinking you would stay like that forever."

"What are you talking about?" Elizabeth looked from Sutton to Miss Adams in confusion. "It only happened yesterday didn't it?"

Miss Adams stopped immediately and looked at the confused young woman lying on the bed staring up at her with her bright green eyes and waiting for some sort of explanation about what had happened.

Sutton dropped his gaze to the floor and didn't say a word. His hand slipped off Elizabeth's and behind his back.

"Didn't it?" Elizabeth asked again with more force, a little panicked about the situation now that she wasn't getting any sort of answer.

Neither Sutton nor Miss Adams moved, both afraid of the answer that they would eventually have to give the dark angel.

Elizabeth pushed herself to sit up in the bed and attempted to move her legs but they didn't want to work.

"Lay back down Elizabeth, please," Miss Adams pleaded attempting to push Elizabeth back on the bed, knowing that she would most probably hurt herself if she managed to get up right now.

"No, I need to find out what happened and the two of you obviously aren't going to tell me." Elizabeth's left hand massaged her throbbing forehead as she still tried to get out of the hospital bed to find the date.

"It's March Oldin," Sutton answered her question and squeezed her hand again, looking apologetically into her green twinkling eyes.

"March? It's been four months?" Elizabeth fell back onto the bed in shock and both Sutton and Miss Adams caught her before she hit the mattress too hard and lowered her back into her lying position. "I was asleep for four months?"

"I'm afraid so." The grim look from Sutton told her that this was no joke.

"You weren't transferred to the mainland because you were in a stable condition," Miss Adams interjected in hope of explaining the situation better to her patient. "I was ordered to keep you here until such a time that you woke up or if your condition ever became unstable."

"Where's the Warden?" Elizabeth asked in a quiet voice, trying to comprehend the gravity of everything that had just been explained to her.

"He had to go off to the mainland today to speak with the District Warden," Miss Adams explained in her soft voice, her kind eyes still shining with happiness at Elizabeth's awakening. "That's the only reason why he isn't here right now Elizabeth. He's been sitting right here by your bedside as often as he could the entire time that you have been unconscious. He performed your muscle exercises everyday for me and bathed you too. And has been thinking very seriously about resigning from the post as Warden after what happened with you."

"What happened with him and his wife?" Elizabeth asked as she squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to fend off the thumping headache that was taking over her brain once again.

Miss Adams walked over to her desk, picked up the receiver of the large black phone and started dialing the number the Warden had given her to call immediately if anything were to happen while he was gone. "You should probably ask him that yourself Elizabeth."

As the hours of the afternoon and evening slowly ticked by, Elizabeth managed to eat quite a few meals and regain the strength in her legs to walk, albeit shakily. The dark angel was sent back to her cell after being given the all clear from Miss Adams after the dinner bell.

Sitting in her her cell again Elizabeth read the growing collection of letters that her attorney Nigel Summons had sent her over the months that she was unconscious. Warden McNeill had been replying for her as they conversed about the court dates, new evidence that could change everything and witnesses that could be called. In the end Nigel was writing to Warden McNeill rather than Elizabeth.

Her appeal that Nigel had apparently 'gone to great extremes to try and manage' had been pushed through to the high court 'in record time due mainly to the circumstances surrounding her particular case' and was set for the second of April, if she was able to be there of course.

McNeill had obviously not told Nigel anything about what had happened; just that Elizabeth was unable to reply at the moment and that she would hopefully be replying to him soon. In most of the letters Elizabeth read Nigel asking 'what's wrong with Elizabeth? Should I come out to the Island to speak to her?' but McNeill obviously hadn't explained anything in detail and continued with the prompt that 'it would probably be best if they continued conversing through letters until such time as Elizabeth herself could speak to him.'

* * * * *

Warden McNeill returned that night after 12 by way of bribing a young man with a boat seeing as the ferryman would be quite asleep in bed and unwilling to run out to fetch the Warden, if he were able to get a hold of the ferryman at all. When he arrived back on Alcatraz Island the Warden went straight through to the hospital wing where he had left Elizabeth in Miss Adams more than capable hands that morning.

"What happened?" the confused McNeill quickly asked when a sleepy Miss Adams finally answered her bedroom door to the Warden's insistent raps. "Where is she?" McNeill had returned to Elizabeth's bedside to find her not there and panicked.

"Calm down Mr. McNeill, didn't you get the message?" the nurse asked in her thick Irish accent as she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and brushed the black ringlets of hair back off her face. "I called the mainland prison as soon as it happened."

"What message? What happened?" There was nothing in McNeill's voice other than fear and panic for the woman he had become so attached to.

"Elizabeth woke up sir." With a smile Miss Adams reached out and squeezed the Warden's arm reassuringly. "Elizabeth woke up earlier today and she's back in her cell."

McNeill nearly fell to his knees as relief rushed over his body. "Oh thank god." As soon as the strength returned to his legs the Warden lunged himself forward and wrapped his arms around the nurse in a great bear hug, thanking her profusely and then nearly ran out of the hospital, leaving Miss Adams standing in her bedroom doorway with a contented smile on her face.

With a new spring in his step the Warden trotted off into the main cell house and straight on to Elizabeth's cell where he found her lying on her stomach on the bed and looking as though she were sleeping soundly

"Oldin, you awake?" he asked as he fiddled with the large set of keys on his thick leather belt. "Hey Elizabeth, come on wake up."

"I'm up," was the murmured mumble that seemed to come from within the pillow itself. Elizabeth lifted her head from the pillow that could have almost been suffocating her and looked up at McNeill through the bars. "I'm up Warden," she said again squeezing her eyes shut and then opening them again to get rid of the blurriness. "I've been asleep for months, the last thing I want to do right now is sleep."

"Can I come in?" McNeill asked quietly as he found the right key and paused in midair, holding the entry key in his hand.

"It's your prison," Elizabeth replied with a shrug of her shoulders and an uncaring look upon her pretty face that was no longer bruised but now looking rather gaunt instead. "You usually just go ahead and do whatever it is that you like remember, what's stopping you this time?"

The Warden unlocked the cell with a jingle of the keys and walked into the small cell, closing the door behind him and returning the keys to their position on his belt.

Elizabeth dropped her head back into the pillow as though she were completely exhausted then rolled over onto her back while still under the bed covers. The dark angel looked up at the Warden with her bright green eyes twinkling in the dim light.

"You are," was the answer that quietly came from his lips. McNeill didn't dare look the dark angel in her beautiful green eyes though, just in case he didn't like what he found on the other side of them.

"Sorry Warden but I've just woken up so what could I have possibly done this time?" Elizabeth asked as she rubbed a hand through her dark hair that had grown significantly over the 10 months of her incarceration. "Although last time I didn't have to do anything and," the dark angel paused, trying to remember what had happened on that fateful day that put her in the coma. "What happened last time?"

"You don't remember?" McNeill cocked an eyebrow and wondered how much Elizabeth really did remember from that day.

"I remember you yelling at me about my shirt out in the recreation yard, then the guards took me down to the dungeons... I remember bouncing off the stairs as I went down, who could forget that, then..." Elizabeth stopped and closed her eyes, trying to jog her memory of what happened next. "Then just waking up in the hospital wing."

With a small smile McNeill stepped forward closer to Elizabeth hoping that he was off the proverbial hook. "You don't remember what happened down in the dungeons then?"

"No. But why am I stopping you?" The dark angel reached her hands out above her head and grabbed a hold of the thick metal bars confining her to the small cell and stretched her shoulders out.

"Stand up," the Warden instructed in a calm and what he hoped was a friendly voice. His steely blue-gray eyes still wouldn't meet hers.

Elizabeth sat up in the small bed and rose to her feet, pulling her gray tee shirt down as she did so. The four months in a coma being fed nothing more than saline and glucose solution through a tube in her arm had made her skinnier than ever. The muscle that she had gained on the outdoor work assignment had faded away and left nothing but skin and bones in its stead. "It's cold Warden." Elizabeth's voice wasn't much more than a hoarse whisper. "What do you want?"

"I see four months asleep hasn't killed your spirit at all Oldin. Close your eyes." McNeill felt silly giving the order but he wasn't sure he would be able to say what he needed to if she was looking up at him with those beautiful green eyes. Something skipped in his stomach like when he was a teenager asking his crush to go to the town dance with him. He watched the pretty woman now standing in front of him as she shifted the weight of her body from one bare foot to the other on the cold concrete floor.

With plenty of good reason Elizabeth hesitated as she was given the order, she still didn't trust the man standing almost meekly before her now. Even so she still didn't want to make him angry just yet and risk the possibility of spending her first night awake down in the cold dungeons, like she had her first day on Alcatraz Island, so the dark angel closed her eyes. 

McNeill stepped closer to the dark angel; Elizabeth felt his breath bouncing off her lips he spoke. "You're stopping me Elizabeth because something has changed, something deep inside me, and I can't deny it anymore. I don't know what else to do about it but let you know how I feel." The Warden leant forward slightly and kissed Elizabeth's lips softly, hoping he wasn't hurting her even more by telling her this truth.

As the Warden pulled back from the kiss Elizabeth opened her bright green eyes with a confused look. Shaking her head the dark angel whispered, "you have a wife and children, Warden."

"No, I have children. Dawn and I decided it was probably going to be best for both of us if we got a divorce. We had drifted way too far apart for anything to be reconciled between us. Down in the dungeons that day, I couldn't lay a finger on you Elizabeth, I don't know how I-"

Shaking her head again, "shut up Warden," escaped Elizabeth's lips as she quietly cut him off. With a look of great affection in her eyes the dark angel stepped forward and kissed him back, her lips pressing hard against his and her arms wrapping tightly around McNeill's body.

Elizabeth fell asleep in the Wardens' loving and muscular arms that night, knowing that her life on Alcatraz Island had changed forever.

Many mornings after that night that had changed everything for the both of them, McNeill found himself quietly and cautiously tiptoeing out of Elizabeth's cell in the middle of the night or the dangerous hours of the morning and going back to his own small house on the Island that no longer felt like the home it once was, in hope that no one would see him.

One of the most illegal things a prison guard, let alone a Warden, could ever do in his career is strike up a relationship with an inmate, no matter what the circumstances. So if anyone within the prison found out what was happening between the two of them McNeill knew full well that he would surely have his career terminated by 7 a.m. the very next morning.

On the afternoon of March the 29th Elizabeth received another letter from Nigel, actually addressed to her this time. The letter said that he would see her at the courthouse on April the second. Her stomach cramped at the thought of the date that was almost 1 year since the night she had lost her son and the ordeal she had been through since then. The letter finished with a prompt to thank Mr. McNeill for his correspondence while Elizabeth was unable to respond to his letters and for being able to speak at her appeal.

"You're speaking at my appeal?" Elizabeth asked McNeill as she turned her body slightly to look at him, it was long after lock up and the Warden had once again found his way to the dark angel's cell.

They were lying on her small and uncomfortable bed together and the Warden was reading the letter from Nigel over Elizabeth's shoulder as he had done with all the letters she had received in the past month from him since she woke from her coma.

"Yes, my wife told me that she would have, but thought that it was probably better that I did, considering the history and the current state of our relationship." McNeill wrapped his arm around Elizabeth's barely clothed body and touched his lips to her shoulder.

Elizabeth nodded her head in understanding, dropped the letter in her hand to the floor beside her bed and closed her eyes; once again the two of them fell asleep in each other's arms. The dark angel was tormented in her sleep through the night with memories of April the fifth, one year ago. 

The next morning the seven o'clock wake up alarm went off and the overhead lights flickered to life while McNeill was still in Elizabeth's bed.

"Oh shit," McNeill sat bolt upright and looked through the cell bars, hoping desperately that no one would be there to see him.

Elizabeth had a look of panic on her face as she realized what could happen to the both of them if they were caught together.

The Warden clambered over Elizabeth and out of the small bed, he pulled on the pants and shirt he had draped over the table the night before and quietly kissed Elizabeth before unlocking and walking out the cell door, heading towards the exit.

"Warden McNeill," the voice came from behind him just as he had started off for his residence. Thomas Anderson, the Associate

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