“If you get all messy, you won’t be comfortable.”
“But don’t expect us to fan and feed you grapes when you get out of here and are recovering,” Mia says.
The vision of the girls treating me like a king makes me laugh in the ridiculousness of it all. A more accurate picture is them sitting at the island in the kitchen asking when I’ll be able to cook for them again.
“I may get you a glass of water, if you ask really nice.” Zoe winks at me.
My heart warms. They really care about me. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t all be here, gathered around my hospital bed. It isn’t like I was in an accident or sick. I did this to myself. I didn’t intentionally break my hand, but I wasn’t exactly thinking when I slammed my fist into the wall of the school either.
I don’t think any of us have spent any time in a hospital. At least it’s never been discussed. There have been a few emergency room visits because shit happens, but nobody has had surgery or anything like that. At least, not since we all met.
The only thing that would make this better is if Mary were here. She stayed at the hospital until they brought me up to a room, then left so the nurses could get me settled and didn’t want to be in their way.
I don’t know what to think. She’s mad and then got real silent after I said that I loved her.
It was too soon and I probably scared her away. Too much, too soon. I should have just apologized and not confessed my feelings. Now, I may have lost her.
“So, talk to us,” Sean finally says. “Why’d you hit the wall?”
“You know why I did. I was frustrated.”
They narrow their eyes on me. I get it. I do.
“It was stupid. It won’t happen again. I’m not that same person.” They share a few looks.
“Look, it was a wall, not a person. That part of me is gone.”
The door of my room opens and the guys part to let the person in. I hope the nurse doesn’t get pissed that I’m eating something not hospital prepared and approved.
The nurse that squeezes through, however, is my favorite one.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” If Mary came back I haven’t lost yet, right?
Usually visitors are supposed to be kept at a minimum, but since Dylan isn’t exactly sick and while his injury is bad, he doesn’t need the quiet and calm that most patients do. But, he is in pain. Then again, who knows what they’ve given him. There’s a good chance he might not be feeling anything at all, for the moment. Still, I’m surprised the nursing staff hasn’t tried to thin the visitors out a bit.
There’s a partial sandwich on his tray, along with fries. Alyssa is seated on the side of his bed and is feeding him the other half.
She stands. “You can feed him.”
I chuckle. “That’s okay.” That is far too intimate for what I’m feeling right now. They are close, friends and basically family. My feeding him is completely different. Not that I don’t care. I care too much.
That’s the problem. I still don’t know if his words earlier were to get around me because I was so pissed, because he really meant them, or the pain meds had him saying things he normally wouldn’t. I’ve been around enough patients who have been given some heavy pain meds and heard a lot of things that I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be saying if they had been in full possession of their faculties. It’s usually not much different from the drunk frat guy at a party invading your personal space to tell you how pretty your eyes are when he couldn’t even look at you two hours earlier because he’s too shy.
“So, how serious is this?” Mia asks.
“He didn’t tell you.” I glance at their individual faces. They are really worried and it makes my heart ache.
“He’ll recover. Dylan will probably have to go through physical therapy, but if he does the work he should be okay.”
“But, it’s surgery.” Kate’s eyes bore into mine. She’s really scared, but I can’t tell her what she wants to hear.
“Yes. He will be put under, which I’m sure he’d prefer to being awake. And yes, there are dangers every time a person is given anesthesia.”
She sucks in a breath.
“However,” I rush to assure her. “Dylan is young and healthy. He has no habits or medical conditions that make him a high risk.” I have the urge to promise that he will be fine, but I can’t. It’s the nurse in me. “The staff at this hospital is excellent. I’m not worried and this is my profession, so you shouldn’t be worried either.” I look back at Dylan. “If I had concerns I’d never let him have the surgery.”
Our eyes meet. We still need to have a talk about what happened earlier, mainly ignoring my texts, but I do care. I do love him and I don’t want to be that bitch who bails on him the night before surgery. Even though I’m not worried, he’s probably a little on edge. Besides, what we need to talk about can’t be done in a room full of people, no matter how close they are to him. They aren’t close to me.
“Okay, then I won’t worry,” Kate finally says. Her words are brave but the concern is still in her brown eyes.
“Kate, I’m going to be fine,” Dylan finally says. “Do you think I’m going to check out before I have my family back together? It’s a hand. Nothing else.”
She worries her bottom lip and then sighs and nods. “I’m checking on you tomorrow. I’m going to sit in the waiting room until you get out of surgery and I know you are okay.”
“Don’t you have to be with kids or something?”
“Kids?” I ask.
“She is a nanny to two brats,” Dylan says with a twinkle in his eyes.
“They aren’t brats. They are delightful,” Kate argues. “The family won’t be back from Florida until next week so I’m free.” She goes to his bed. “I’ll be at the brownstone to take care of you too.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“Yes it is,” she says. “I owe you,” she whispers so low that I almost don’t hear her.
“Kate,” he warns.
She puts her finger against his lips. “Let me.”
They are only supposed to be good friends, but I can’t help the jealousy that creeps into my gut.
Stop it! They have a relationship I could never understand. They all do and once again I’m reminded that I am just an observer to the tight group inside of Dylan’s hospital room.
46
I catch Christian’s eye and give a slight nod, hoping he can read my mind. If anyone can read me, it’s Christian.
“Well, we need to head out.” He pulls away from the wall. “The nurses are going to boot us if the party doesn’t end.”
We have gotten a few looks from the passing nurses. The door may be shut, but it’s got a big glass window in it so there isn’t exactly that much privacy in here.
One by one the girls come to the bed and give me a kiss on the cheek and leave, the guys following. Alyssa hands the rest of the sandwich she’s been feeding me to Mary. “He’s a growing boy.”
“I think he’s probably done growing.”
“Not all of him. You know how some things come and go.” Alyssa winks.
Mary’s face starts turning pink. “We are in a hospital.”
“You’ve got big curtains to pull around the bed. Send him off right.”
“I’m not going to die,” I call as she slips out of the room.
“Do you want this?” Mary holds up the sandwich.
As good as it is, I’m not really hungry. “You can put it on the tray, but don’t tell them I didn’t finish this.”
She puts it down. “It was really sweet of them.” Then she walks to the table across the room, shaking her head as she picks it up and looks at the stuff the girls brought in. “They are really worried aren’t they?”
“I don’t think any of them have had surgery before or spent the night in a hospital.” Except Zoe has spent time in the hospital, not that I can tell Mary the reason. That’s Zoe’s story to tell. I’d just forgotten until just now. “Kate’s mo
re freaked out than the rest.”
She turns around with a sigh. “I need to remember that all of this,” she gestures around the room, “can be really scary to people. I’ll make sure and check in with her tomorrow.”
How is she going to do that? “You’re not going to miss classes because I’m in surgery.”
She comes forward. “My new rotation is the pediatric unit, just down the hall. So, I’ll be here before they take you to surgery and be able to check on your progress.”
Inwardly I relax. “You’ll take care of me at home, right?” I’m trying to figure out where I stand with her. At least she came back to the hospital. It has to mean something, right?
“I think Kate already claimed that duty.” There is a sharp tone. Is she jealous?
“You do know Kate is like a sister, right?”
Mary blows out a sigh and sinks into a chair. “Actually, I don’t know what to think.”
Shit!
“You shut me out.”
I open my mouth to argue with her, but I did. It’s what I do.
“It wasn’t just me but your friends.”
How does she know that?
“When I went by the brownstone, I was told that you go out and walk when you’re upset.”
“Yeah,” I answer slowly.
“Why, when you have such an awesome support system? Friends who love you and care, you shut them down and go off on your own.”
I’m growing uncomfortable under her gaze.
“That’s wrong.”
“It’s better if I distance myself from people when I’m frustrated.”
“Because you hit them?”
My stomach drops. Who told her what?
“It was a wall, not a person. That part of me is gone,” she repeats the words I said right as she walked in the door. I didn’t think she’d heard me.
This day has got to be one of the shittiest of my life. It’s right below the day I lost my family. I have two choices, keep quiet and I lose Mary for good, or I come clean and lose Mary for good.
You used to take chances. You had dreams. Christian’s voice plays in my head. One of my dreams right now is to have Mary in my life but I won’t have that without taking a chance.
If things are going to work with Mary, I need to trust. “After my family was taken away, I developed anger issues.”
She nods.
“It was bad. I got into a lot of fights. Fists were my answer to everything. I got kicked out of schools, foster families asked the social worker to put me someplace else, and I spent time in Juvie. I wasn’t a good person.”
“You had a lot to be pissed about.”
Mary leans back and relaxes and doesn’t really seemed bothered by this revelation.
“So, what changed?”
“A therapist, Mr. Joe.” I automatically smile when I think about Mr. Joe. “He gave me my first journal and some pens. Told me that whenever I feel like punching the shit out of something or someone to write instead.”
“Were you in a foster home then?”
“Juvie.”
“That’s how you became a writer?”
“Yep. I wrote for a year.”
Her eyes widen. “You were in Juvie for a year?”
“I kind of put a kid in the hospital. It didn’t go over well.” I cringe. “I was in a really dark place.”
Mary reaches out and puts her hand over mine. “So, tell me about Mr. Joe.”
Just thinking about him helps me relax. “I met with him a lot. I wrote a lot. He read a lot. Talked to me a lot.”
“Good guy?” she asks with a smile.
“Yeah, he was.”
“So, what happened after you got out of Juvie?”
“Mr. Joe helped me get accepted to Baxter for writing.”
“Baxter?” she questions.
“It’s a high school for arts.” Mary knows that all my friends went to high school together so I need to be very careful about what I say. If it was just me, I wouldn’t care, but I can’t tell Mary everything because the full Baxter story isn’t for me to share.
“So, all of you guys went to a high school for the arts.”
She seems impressed. I guess it is impressive. You don’t get in that school without talent. To us it was a haven.
“Aren’t private schools like that expensive? I’m assuming it’s private.”
“They offer full scholarships to kids who can’t afford to attend.” She doesn’t need to know the rest. That all the kids have either been in foster care, halfway houses, Juvie, and all other places. Mia was in trouble a lot, but she was one of the few who had a parent who could write a check for full tuition, room, and board.
“Wow! That’s really cool.” The side of her mouth quirks with a smile. “So you got in for writing?” Mary is nodding like she’s impressed.
“Yeah.”
“And you quit hitting people?” She’s gone serious again.
“I learned to control my anger and worked through the issues that fed that anger.”
“Guilt?” she asks.
“Yeah, that was a lot of it. And, frustration of having no control. My life may not have been great, but I knew who I was, where I lived, and I had my family.”
“But you still haven’t figured out that you shouldn’t shut people out. The people that care about you.”
Fuck. She is still pissed. “You don’t get it,” I finally say.
“Then explain it because from where I’m sitting, you have it fucking good and are surrounded by people who love you and would do just about anything for you.”
She didn’t claim to be one of the people who loves me, but now’s probably not the time to ask her.
“It’s my thing.” I shrug.
“Thing? You can do better than that.”
I blow out a sigh and wish I had better drugs to make this easier. “I pull in when I’m anxious or angry. I reflect and control.”
“Why?”
She’s pushing and I hate it, but I’ve got to get through this and somehow make her understand. “I’m afraid that if I open and let it out, I’ll go back there.”
“To hitting?”
“Or be an ass, either one.”
“Yet you hit a brick wall today.”
“I haven’t hit anything since I was fourteen.”
She studies me. “Did it ever occur to you that if you actually talked to someone you may not want to hit something?”
That’s what Mr. Joe used to tell me, but it’s hard for me to talk sometimes. Writing is easier.
Mary stands. “Think about talking, Dylan, because I sure as hell don’t want to be involved with a guy who fucks me one day, but goes off on his own the next day when things go to shit and ignores me, and then turns around and says he loves me.” She leans in and kisses my forehead. “I’m not riding that rollercoaster. It’s all or nothing and only you can decide.”
Then she turns and leaves.
All or nothing.
Can I do what she’s asking? Can I talk to her instead of heading out to walk when I’m frustrated or worried?
I hit a wall today. I haven’t done that in years.
I can’t lose Mary, but if I don’t get my shit together, that is exactly what is going to happen.
I barely slept last night. There was so much on my mind. Dylan never struck me as having anger issues, but after he explained, I think I get it.
He was in Juvie? For a year? Put a kid in a hospital?
It just doesn’t match up with the man I know.
But, how well do I really know him?
He is a man now, and the dark place was before high school when hormones were kicking in and his life had just gone to shit.
Not that I’m making excuses, but that’s also not an age where best decisions are made.
He loves his family more than anything else, which is something I admire.
His friends know about his anger issues and were shocked that he hit a wall. I get that now, and it explains t
heir alarmed reaction when they learned. They’d probably thought he was done hitting things too.
He is probably the best guy I’ve ever met.
I’m falling in love with him.
But can I love someone who will shut me out?
No. I can’t. It would kill me to wonder what the hell is going on with him when he decides he has to take a walk or disappears for hours.
I gave him that ultimatum last night. It sucks, but I’m not going to be part time in this or be in his life only when things are good.
Anger happens. Arguments happen, and if he can’t deal with that then I can’t be with him.
The idea that what we have may be over is like a knife to my heart. But pain now is better than getting more involved and being hurt over and over each time he shuts down.
It’s like I told him. It’s all or nothing, and I have to stick with that.
The hospital is still pretty quiet when I walk in. I don’t have to meet up with the other students in my class yet, and I want to check on Dylan.
He’s scheduled to go into surgery in about an hour and a half. My classes start in an hour so we’ll be able to spend some time together.
Even though I gave him an ultimatum, I don’t want that to be on his mind when he goes under. Plus, I really want to know if he thought about what I said.
Hell, maybe I’ll go in there and he’ll tell me it isn’t going to work. Better to know now than worry about it all day.
I stop at his door and hesitate before opening it. A guy in his mid-thirties is sitting in a chair talking to Dylan. I’ve never seen him before, but it’s not like I know all of his friends.
Dylan glances up and our eyes lock. He smiles slowly and motions me to come in.
“Hey,” I say after I push the door open. “How ya doing?”
“Just waiting to go under the knife.” He grins.
“Well, I just wanted to check in.” I back up. “I won’t bother you since you have company.”
The guy who was sitting now stands. “No. I should go,” he says. “I’ve got clients starting in about half an hour.”
He hasn’t introduced himself and Dylan isn’t introducing us. It’s kind of awkward.
Rattle His Cage: The Baxter Boys #4 (The Baxter Boys ~ Rattled) Page 25