I saw the length of her throat bob and I sucked on my lips. I was missing something here; they were all keeping something from me, even Ethan.
“What the hell is going on?” I snapped at Bulk.
He sighed heavily as he squatted beside the nurse and took my hand out of Ethan’s but I pulled it back and grabbed hold of Ethan’s again.
“Jen, sweetheart, Boss has been hurt and they need to find out what’s wrong inside, what’s causing him to bleed.”
I turned to look at Ethan and frowned. “He’s not bleeding.”
“Inside, little lady. He’s bleeding somewhere inside and the doctors need to find it and stitch it up for him to make him better.”
I huffed and shook my head. Why the hell weren’t they listening to me? “Bulk, there is nothing wrong with him. Look at him. He’s got some bruising and stuff but he’s fine. What happened to him anyway?”
His eyes were so sad and I palmed his face gently. “Don’t be sad, Bulk. Why are you sad?”
“Jen,” he blew out a breath and swallowed heavily. “Boss has been beaten badly, sweetheart and… and you need to understand that… that he might not…”
I nodded and widened my eyes in encouragement for him to continue. E came up beside me now, all three of them looking at me with so much sympathy I knew something was really wrong here.
“He might not make it through the operation, Jen.” E said slowly and quietly as her voice broke and she choked out my name.
I rolled my eyes at her and laughed. “Don’t be daft, E. Ethan’s okay.” I smiled at her but her face was full of pain and anguish.
“Her brain is blocking the memories. It’s a natural instinct, a way of coping with what’s happened.” I heard the nurse say and I tutted at her.
Silly cow! There was nothing wrong with my brain; she needed to get her own tested. It was her mumbling something about mending things that weren’t broken.
Some more people entered the room and Bulk took my hand from Ethan’s again but I grumbled at him and tried to snatch it back.
“Jen…” Bulk chastised when I struggled against him.
He pulled me behind him to let the other people get to Ethan and a memory of Ethan pulling me behind him slammed into my brain.
I looked at the floor in confusion against the images. A slow stream of blood was trickling across the floor to me and I frowned at it. My head tipped to study it when it started to increase, the flow and spill swelling as it oozed towards me.
I took a step away from it but it changed course and followed me.
“What the….” My jaw dropped and my eyes widened when it started to merge into a shape, the globules coming together and forming a person. Then more people emerged from the pool of blood and my breath caught in my throat.
“Jen?” Bulk dipped his face and looked at me in confusion when I pointed to the mass of people generating from the now pond of bright red blood.
“Ethan?” he was stood in the middle of the people. He was the only one covered in blood at this point as each drop jumped from the other people onto him and swathed him in red.
Then they were hitting him, each of them soundlessly laughing as they smashed a piece of wood over Ethan’s head.
Ethan’s mouth was open, his silent screams and the agony on his face, ripping out my own scream.
I ran over to one of the men and tried to pull him off but as I went to grab him my hands fell straight through him.
I stared at my hands like they weren’t my own, “Jen!” Bulk near shouted from beside me.
I turned to him, “Help him, they’re hurting him. Don’t just fucking stand there!”
A doctor approached me slowly, his hands held out in front of him as though he was advancing on a stray dog. “Mrs Hart, listen to me.”
I glared at him before I tried to grab another man and pull him off Ethan but he disappeared.
Ethan’s screams were now loud and full of raw excruciating pain, each horrific thud of the wood shattering my soul piece by piece. “Oh God, somebody help him, please.” I begged as I looked at the people staring at me in the room as though I had gone mad.
Why weren’t they helping him? They were just stood watching Ethan get beaten.
The doctor got close as somebody’s hands wrapped around the top of my arms from behind and I tried to shake them off. “Get off me, I need to help Ethan. GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!!”
Someone scratched my arm and I turned, growling at the doctor who was shoving some stuff in my arm through a syringe.
“What the….”
Chapter 35
“Jen?” Bulk’s voice entered my senses and I turned instinctively towards his voice.
“Mmmm” I mumbled against the pounding in my head.
Wow, it was a real thump, thump, thump and I groaned as I tried to open my eyes but they were heavy and sore.
“Christ, what happened?” I asked as I literally pulled my eyelids with my fingers to open them.
Bulk smiled at the sight of me as I squinted through the slits that were now my eyes.
He moved in front of me and tried to peer through the small slots. “They had to give you a sedative. How are you feeling?”
I did an internal check on everything and nodded with a sigh, “Okay, I think.” I pulled myself up on the bed and ran my hands over my face.
“We need to talk” he said with a heaviness that had my instincts on high alert. He smiled softly and grabbed my hand, “It’s okay, don’t panic. They managed to find Boss’s bleed.”
I nodded at him with confusion roaring through me but I knew he had more to tell me so I waited and listened.
He blew out a slow breath and paused to form his words. “They’re not sure if… if he even comes through this that… that he’ll be okay, Jen.”
A funny choked sound flittered through my chest and up my throat but I nodded in understanding. “He took quite a beating to his head and until the swelling goes down…” he shrugged as if the gesture finished his sentence.
“Okay” I whispered. It was all I could manage but it was something in acceptance.
He palmed the nape of my neck and pulled me against his chest as he placed a soft kiss on the top of my head. “He will though” I said quietly.
He pulled back and frowned at me. “He’ll be fine. I know he will” I stated firmly as I also offered a shrug for a final gesture, not being able to explain my insight but I felt it through to my core.
He regarded me for a while before he nodded and smiled. “Yeah, he will” he agreed with a wider smile, “he will.”
We smiled at each other, an alliance building between us. Both of us accepting things, each other and whatever would be. We would deal; we were friends and friends dealt.
However Ethan came out of this, I would love him just as passionately as I had before, I would desire him just as much as before and I would stand by him, just as before but what differed from before was now, finally, I forgave him for what he had done. Because I now understood the pure, raw, visceral impulse of wanting to kill someone who hurt the person you loved through to my very core.
It was nature’s way of protecting your soul mate. Protecting the partnership that god had created for each person that resided on his creation and protecting your own future. It was pure natural instinct instilled into each of us.
A no-holds-barred instinct to kill to protect.
Simple.
***
“You’ll laugh at this; I know how much of a sadistic sod you are with other people’s misfortunes, especially mine.” I laughed as I poked a still unconscious Ethan in his now healed ribs whilst I dragged the razor across his foamy chin.
It had been a gruelling six weeks. Six weeks of lost hopes, lost prayers, lost dreams, lost moments and lost days that should have been spent relishing time with Ethan. Six weeks of operation after operation, of tears, of screams in the dark loneliness of my bedroom, even six weeks of prayers to god in church, somewhere I had never visited unless
for weddings and funerals.
Six weeks of a hell so cruel I now didn’t fear perdition.
“I went to update your fans at the gate, but I went to the loo first.” I paused and grinned at him as I wiped the remnants of the scum off his chin and twirled his nose with mine as I whispered ‘by the way…’ before I started rubbing his calves like a maniac, the way I had been shown.
“I was talking to a lovely woman who was asking how you were, I told her you were still being a lazy bastard, and a little girl tugged on my dress. You know that black dress that you said made me look like a biro, well that one. Anyway, I crouched down to her and she beckoned me closer to her.”
I started on his other leg, my fingers digging and torturing his redundant muscles as I chuckled to myself. “She whispered in my ear ‘lady, you have your dress tucked in your knickers’, epic, Ethan, bloody epic. Had those little flowery knickers on what you like as well. I guess my flowery arse is gonna be plastered all over the morning newspapers” I was laughing loudly, shaking my head at my own blunder.
“Only you…”
The rasp bounced around my head before it settled in the part of my brain that registered what it was.
My bottom lip trembled, my lungs emptied in a single glide of air before my eyes lifted.
He smiled faintly at me with the usual twinkle in his eye.
I passed out.
***
“Jen…”
“Jen…”
“Fuck” I bolted upright and searched the area.
He was smiling at me again and his damaged but still beautiful face lit up as my eyes found his.
“Ethan? Ethan?” I whispered, frightened if I raised my voice any higher it would wake me from my perfect dream.
Bulk helped me upright where someone had planted me in a chair, but I still continued to stare at him.
“Hi” he whispered.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “H…Hi” I breathed back.
His hand twitched from where it was rested beside his body on the bed and I stumbled from the chair over to him, my legs marginally slower than my body.
I was sure I was drooling because I couldn’t shut my mouth. I slid my hand in his and as his fingers curled around mine, the sob that had been stuck in my throat surged forward and I damn near choked on it.
“Ssshhh” he whispered as his thumb stroked clumsily over my knuckles.
I leaned into him as I gently rested my head on his chest, inhaling his delicious scent whilst I relished the lift and drop of his lung technique.
“Ssshhh, baby.”
That was it. The tears flowed heavily, like a dam erupting after months of pressure and turbulence. His hand then settled on my head, his fingers twirling lightly with a strand while he learnt to control his reflexes again.
“Ethan…” It was all I could say; his damn name. “Ethan…”
“I’m here, Jen. Ssshhh.”
I shook my head rapidly as I peered up at him; my eyes taking in the glorious delicate hazel of his, the soft twinkle of his soul displayed through his pupils and the small tilt of his lips as he smiled gently at me.
“We need to fetch a doctor to look at you.” I told him as I sat up and palmed his cheek, feeling his smile under my fingers and returning it with my own. He tried to lift his hand to mine but couldn’t quite manage to, so I took hold of it and placed it on my cheek for him, my eyes closing in contentment as my whole essence smiled in symmetry with my lips.
“They’ve been, while you were taking a little nap” he smirked. His voice was still hoarse from weeks of no use but it still held his unique sense of fun and I glared at him.
“We can’t all sleep for six weeks solid you know” I chastised playfully.
He grinned at me and glanced at my lap. “You still got those flowery knickers on, baby?”
His eyes sparkled with naughtiness and I pointed at him with narrow eyes. “No hanky panky for you for a while.”
He gave me a horrified look. “But little Boss will shrivel up!”
I grinned mischievously at him and nodded slowly. “He will, then he’ll drop off and I’ll be able to pickle him in a jar and put him over the fireplace.”
Bulk let out a bark of laughter, “Fuck the jar, an egg cup will do.”
“We can’t all be blessed with elephant cocks” Ethan snarled.
I sighed happily at their bickering.
My man was back!
Chapter 36
“Hey, it’ll grow back, baby.”
The look on his face broke my heart all over again as he looked in the mirror for the first time in eight weeks.
He was quiet and the silence was screaming loudly at me. “Ethan, look at me.”
He screwed his face up and turned away from me, “Just go, Jen” he whispered with his now familiar croak.
After many exploratory operations on his throat, the doctors had decided that his voice box was too damaged to repair back to its original condition and he would always have a throaty rasp. I didn’t mind, in fact it turned me on something bad but I didn’t tell Ethan that, he was still too emotionally raw at the changes to his body.
He had been eager for a look in the mirror since he had woken two weeks ago but he had been advised against it until today.
The half of his face that had taken the most beating was scarred to a limit that if he now stood to the side, his new profile was unrecognisable as Ethan Hart. His cheekbone had been crushed, his nose splintered in six places, his jaw had been broken twice and he had a funny little dint where his temple was.
But as he had taken the mirror and been brave enough to look all he had said was, ‘My hair’.
Of course his head had been shaven to accommodate for all the drilling he’d had on his skull to alleviate the pressure and drain the blood.
But now as pain and self-hatred filled his face it ruptured every single cell in my body, my love for him wanting to ease his upset and disgust with himself.
“Ethan, baby, it doesn’t…”
“GET OUT!!!” he screamed as he hurled the mirror across the room and pushed me away.
“Ethan…”
“Get – the – fuck – out – Jen!”
I swallowed heavily and nodded faintly, “Okay.”
Pulling my weary body off the bed, Bulk appeared at the door, a solemn and anguished expression marring his face. He nodded lightly as he held out his hand for me. “Come on, Jen. Let him be for a while” he whispered softly as he led me from the cold clinical room.
I didn’t know what to do. My nails scraped over my palms, my bottom lip trembled and my heart ached.
“Drag it in, little lady” he said as he lowered me onto a hard plastic chair outside Ethan’s room.
“I… I dunno what…”
“Uh-uh, don’t even go there. Boss has to deal with this, he needs to be the one to process and accept how things are now.”
I nodded slowly as E walked up the corridor with Lily in her arms, Jax and Romeo were laughing hard about something behind E and their boyish antics brought a much needed smile to my face.
E smiled softly as Jax frowned at me, “Jen?”
I looked up at him and sighed “He took a look in the mirror.”
E closed her eyes and matched my long sigh with one of her own before she placed Lily in Jax’s arms and walked straight in to Ethan.
We all cringed when something thudded against the door and Ethan’s shout reverberated around the corridor but E’s was louder and stronger, her singing voice giving her the advantage over Ethan’s now soft grate.
“You wanna go grab a coffee?” Bulk asked me and I smiled gratefully as I cricked my neck and stood up.
He held his hand out and smiled, “I’ll even buy ya’ a bun if you’re a good girl.”
I placed my hand over my heart and fluttered my eyelashes at him, “A man who knows the way to my heart.”
“Fetch me one” Jax barked in his own unique way and Bulk narrowed his eyes and held h
is palm out.
“Cash.”
Jax stared at him with a lifted eyebrow, then sighed and placed some money in Bulk’s open hand, “Tight bastard.”
Bulk grinned and nodded, “That I am. Come on little lady, let’s get out of here for a while.”
Bulk had religiously been at the hospital many hours per day, but I knew he was there to support me instead of Ethan. He had spent many hours outside the room to give us space, but to emotionally support me whenever I retreated outside for a breather and I couldn’t love him anymore for it. His friendship, comfort and strength had found their own space in my heart and I knew they would be there for many years, just as I knew mine would be in his.
***
“No, honestly she did” Bulk laughed and I slapped his arm playfully as we wandered back up the corridor to Ethan.
“She did not” I posed, “No way would a woman do that with… that!”
He laughed loudly which turned into a slight whine when we spotted Romeo and Ethan’s grandparent’s frantic faces outside Ethan’s room.
My footing stuttered and Bill, or Grandpa as he kept asking me to call him, gave me a pained looked. “What’s going on?”
“He’s gone, kid.”
I frowned and tipped my head at him in confusion, “What?”
He huffed and shrugged, “Gone – discharged himself and gone home.”
“What the hell! Why?” I breathed as I rushed into his room and picked up my stuff that had been strangely tipped out of my bag and over the rumbled sheets of the hospital bed.
“Noooo…” I choked out when I found the shredded photo of me and Ethan that he had taken when we had visited Great Yarmouth for the day.
It had been a happy photo of us both grinning at his phone camera like lunatics and he’d had it printed out and I had kept it in my bag for moments when I just needed his smile.
Thrilling Heaven (Room 103) Page 21