“I need to check the stitches on your abdomen. You want them to leave or stay?” She gestures to Nat and Max.
“Stay.” I give Nat a look that begs her not to leave me alone with this woman.
Max could stay or go for all I cared but I sure as hell didn’t want to be alone with this nurse and give her the wrong idea. I didn’t want Nat to get the wrong idea either. I had zero interest in anything at the moment except getting Nat’s soft hand back in mine.
She nods, fighting a smirk at my obvious unwillingness to be left with the lusty nurse. I pull up my hospital gown and push the blanket down far enough that she can see my stomach but nothing more. No following the happy trail. The last thing I need is to flash this woman the goods and have her practically humping my leg.
She gently presses the skin around my wound and I try not to wince. It’s still pretty sore, having happened less than a day ago. No way did it have time to get infected yet but I guess skipping my most recent dose of pain meds was going to start catching up to me. Getting sliced up took more recovery time than twenty-four hours.
“Everything looks good.” She says, softer than necessary, her eyes grazing over my abs before smiling up at me. Her back was to Natalie and Max so they missed her sultry expression. But I didn’t. And I doubted anyone within earshot missed her tone of voice which spoke volumes.
I give her an awkward smile and nod of my head, looking to Natalie across the room. “You hear that, Nat? I look good.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes as I lift my eyebrows at her suggestively. The nurse’s lips purse at my attention being directed at someone besides her. She obviously isn’t used to being turned down and I wonder how many patients she’s fucked in this hospital while they’re trying to recover. The thought gives me a shudder.
She takes a step back and jots something down on the clipboard at the end of my bed and I tug down my hospital gown, pulling my blanket back up where it was before.
“You’ll have to stay the night here since you have a concussion. The doctors removed the glass from your abdomen but you’ll have to return in a week to get the stitches removed. I’ll be back later tonight to check on you.”
She pauses in the doorway and turns to Natalie with a fake ass apologetic expression. “Oh, and visiting hours end in about thirty minutes. You’ll have to leave soon.”
When the nurse finally leaves the room Max walks to my bedside. He releases a deep breath and shakes his head.
“I better get back to the lobby and let Lacey know you’re all right.” He says. “You guys need anything tonight?”
He shifts his attention equally between me and Natalie. Did I miss something? Since when did he even give her the time of day? He must be more rattled by what happened to me than I realized if he found it in him to be decent to her.
I was happy that he hadn’t continued treating her like a leper when she was so visibly shaken. There was a nice guy still inside of him. At least something good came from this shitty experience.
“No, I think we’re ok.” She smiles at him gratefully. “I’m staying tonight so tell Lacey not to wait for me.”
“But the nurse said-”
“I don’t give a shit what she said.” Nat bites back.
He nods and smirks, as if he already knew that would be her answer. “I figured. I’ll let Lace know.”
He leaves without another word and shuts the door behind him, leaving us a semblance of privacy. A nurse or doctor could burst through the doors anytime they want. But for the time being it’s just the two of us. For the first time since I woke up I have her all to myself.
“Nat…”
“Yeah.” She scoots her chair closer to my bed and leans closer.
“You’re beautiful.”
She blushes and asks playfully, “How hard did you hit your head?”
“It’s true. I always thought it. Even back at my dad’s. I just was too stupid…too scared…to tell you.” I grab her hand on top of the blanket and lace our fingers together. “But you know my last thought when I was in that accident before I blacked out?”
She shakes her head, leaning forward in her seat and hanging on my every word.
“My last thought was that I never told you how I felt about you. That I was going to die. I was going to die and I was never going to get another chance to tell you.”
She gasps softly. “Tell me what?”
“That I love you.”
“You do?”
“I do. And not just as a friend. I love you that way too but this,” I motion between us. “This is more.”
“I…I…” She stumbled for words, looking shocked at the boldness of my statement. Grand declarations of feelings weren’t really my style but I just couldn’t hold these words in after what I had gone through. The morphine lowering my inhibitions might also have something to do with it.
“Don’t say it back. I don’t expect you to. I just wanted to make sure you knew. Seeing your life flash before your eyes kind of changes things and I’m just lucky I have a chance to tell you how I see you. How I feel. I don’t expect it to change anything, Nat. I just need you to know.”
She swallows hard and nods. She looks relieved to be taken off the spot but there’s still something troubling her now. “Chris, I love you too. I do. But I’m just…not ready.”
“It’s okay.” I reach out and stroke her hair back from her face so I can see her eyes.
The move drains me of the little energy I have left. I yawn loudly and my eyes grow heavy. Drowsiness blankets over me.
Before I fall asleep I move to the far side of the bed and pull back the blankets, a clear invitation for her to get in bed with me. Without thinking twice she kicks off her shoes and gingerly climbs up.
I hold my breath, waiting for her to get comfortable and settle in. Without any pain relief, I feel every dip and motion as she carefully shifts on the stiff mattress. I know if I complain or let her know that each shift of her weight was jostling my torso and tugging at my stitches she would jump out of this bed and sleep on the pullout cot.
I didn’t want that.
It was too far away, for one. No way would I be able to touch her from all the way over there. It also looked uncomfortable as fuck, although this mattress wasn’t much better.
So I kept my mouth shut and finally she stilled. It’s a tight squeeze with us both on the twin sized bed. We manage to fit side by side perfectly when I wrap my IV free arm around her shoulders. Her close proximity lulls me to sleep, erasing the pain and silencing that incessant beeping from my heart monitor.
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠
The nurse’s threat to return and kick Natalie out of the room after visiting hours proves to be empty. She never returns and apparently the shift changes because the next time a nurse comes to check on me it’s an older woman in scrubs with a loud pattern of Disney characters.
I breathe a sigh of relief that it’s someone new who doesn’t seem hell bent on making everyone uncomfortable. I’ve had enough of that for one night.
She quietly checks my vitals, leaving the lights dimmed while she works. She smiled down at Natalie nestled into my uninjured side but doesn’t comment or remind us that visiting hours have ended long ago.
Which is a good thing because there’s no way in hell I want her to leave. For all I know the visiting hours comment could have been a boldfaced lie. A ploy to get Natalie to leave me alone for Porno Nurse to play with.
The clock shows it’s just after three in the morning. It wouldn’t be safe for her to drive home at this time of night, groggy and sleep deprived. I would be worried sick until I knew for sure she made it home. No one needed anymore stress tonight.
I may even have discharged myself from the hospital against medical advice just so I could go home with her and make sure she got there safely, concussion be damned.
So, yeah, it was a damn good thing they decided to let her stay.
“Can you take out my IV?” I ask the nurse softly
, hoping my voice didn’t wake Nat.
She looks down at my arm. “Well you’re not dehydrated anymore. But the doctors are going to want you to keep it in for now. Just in case.”
I sigh in frustration but don’t argue. I hate having this needle in my arm, reminding me of the exhilaration they always gave me in the past. I want it out. And if she won’t take it out I’ll wait until she leaves and do it myself.
The nurse finishes my vitals and bustles off to her next patient. When the door clicks shut I sit up slowly, trying not to stir Natalie who is sleeping peacefully on her side of the bed. Just when I start pulling the tape off my IV and preparing myself to yank it out her tiny hand grabs mine.
I jump in surprise and let go of the cord.
“What are you doing, Chris? Leave that alone. You might need more meds.” She whispers sharply.
“I need to get this out.” I say desperately, grabbing it again and getting ready to pull. She tugs at my hand but I don’t budge. “Nat. Please. I mean it.”
I give her a meaningful look, not wanting to get into this shit right now. I’m an addict. That dawns on her and she seems to understand my desperation. She nods in concession and climbs out of the bed, careful not to jostle the mattress.
“Let me go get a nurse. Don’t pull it out yourself. Please. You’re making me queasy.”
Damn near every nurse had turned me down when I tried to convince them to take this damn IV out but I let Natalie try. I wait in bed for her to return with the Disney scrubs nurse who had just left mere moments before. The very one that declined my request.
The woman gives me an admonishing look when she walks in the room and finds me with the tape askew on my arm from obvious efforts to remove it.
“What do you think you’re doing, Mr. Davis?” She asks in a scolding tone, clucking her tongue and taking a closer look at my arm.
She must see the old scars in the crease of my elbow. The telltale sign that I’ve shot up in the past. I resist my first instinct to yank my arm out of her grip. She gives me a look of sympathy and understanding and begins pulling open drawers, pulling out antiseptic wipes. Gauze. Band-Aids.
Great. Now everyone in the fucking room understood what was wrong with me.
I wish she would just get the damn thing out of my arm already and move on to the next patient. Now that I looked like a lunatic junkie, I just wanted to be alone, IV and opiate free, to brood in peace. I didn’t need this shit. All these looks and suddenly being handled with care.
I wasn’t a child.
Natalie rubs soothing motions on my arm like she always does when I get worked up about something and I let the feeling seep in. The nurse pulls the tape the rest of the way off my skin and I look away, not wanting to witness the needle being pulled free.
It used to be a beautiful sight but that time was far in my past.
Natalie continues rubbing my arm but her other hand discreetly slides under the cover and begins rubbing my upper thigh. Way upper. And it keeps getting higher.
What the hell was she doing? She never touched me like this before and I wasn’t even sure it was happening now. Was I hallucinating or some shit? This could all be a cause of sleep deprivation, blood loss, morphine and wishful thinking.
But then her fingers massage my inner thigh, sending a sensation too amazing to be a figment of my imagination.
My gaze darts to the nurse to see if she’s noticed it but she’s too busy opening the sterile wipe. Her attention is focused solely on her task. It appears I’m the only one distracted by Natalie and her traveling touch.
The blanket remains still and undisturbed on the top. No one would be able to see what she was doing to me underneath. But I felt it and it was distracting as fuck. Natalie was always distracting me but this was on another level.
Underneath the hospital gown I was stark naked. This was the closest we had ever come to anything remotely sexual. A couple more inches and she would have her hands full.
Professing my love earlier must have affected her more than she let on.
Just when I think she’s about to grab my dick right here in the middle of the hospital room, in front of this grandmotherly nurse, she trails her acrylic nails over the apex of my inner thigh, mere centimeters from the danger zone.
I rock my hips as discretely as I can. A soft gasp comes from Natalie but she pulls her hand further away from where I really want it. Then everything happens at once.
She smirks and the nurse pulls my IV from my arm swiftly and efficiently. It’s over before I even register that it had started.
I realize it was all a form of distraction to draw my attention from the IV being removed. She knew it bothered me and I was trying not to watch. Trying not to feel it. And dammit, I didn’t feel a thing on my arm, my aching head, or even my lacerated side when her hand was so close to my dick.
If she was doing that on purpose so I didn’t look at my arm then mission fucking accomplished.
All I felt in that moment was her soft hand and my pounding heart. The monitor had picked up on the increase in my heart rate and was beeping more rapidly.
I lean back against the pillow and stare up at the faded ceiling tiles, unable to hold back a laugh. The nurse pins me with a serious stare before disposing of the trash and cleaning up her work tray. She probably thinks I’m high out of my mind and maybe I am.
High on Natalie.
The nurse leaves the room and I turn my head to face Nat, who is climbing back in bed next to me with a shit eating grin. She reaches over me, grabs the remote from my side table and turns on the small TV. There’s no mention of what just happened between us and I’m glad. I’m not even sure what exactly just happened other than the fact that my dick is hard as a rock, she had toyed with me and I loved every second of it.
“What do you want to watch?” She gives me side-eye and looks back at the screen, flipping through channels.
You.
“I don’t care. Just pick something.”
She keeps flipping until she finds an episode of Full House that only airs in the middle of the night when the world is asleep.
“Really?” I complain.
“I asked what you wanted to watch and you didn’t care. So suck it up.”
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠
By noon the next day I’m being discharged and given strict instructions on how to take care of my stitches and which pharmacy to pick up my meds. I don’t want them but I just nod and agree, since no one has listened the thousand times I tried to decline them.
I’m more concerned with how I’m supposed to shower if I’m not able to get the stitches on my stomach wet. That should be interesting.
There’s a crick in my neck and I can’t tell if it’s from the accident or from the uncomfortable hospital bed and being up half the night watching old sitcoms with Natalie. She fell asleep after one episode and I couldn’t reach the remote to peel it out of her hands and change it to something better without waking her or straining my stitches.
Having ripped some in the past, I knew better than to risk it. It would just buy me more time in the hospital, getting stitched back up. So I just suffered through two episodes of Full House and one episode of The Brady Bunch before I was finally able to escape the corniness of their family drama through sleep.
If I had been awake and forced to endure one more cheap ass sitcom I may have just opened a window and jumped. Surely that would have been less torturous.
The doctor finished up his spiel on how to take care of my stitches. I sign the stack of paperwork saying I won’t sue the hospital if I die after leaving their care and all the other shit no one ever reads. I sign each page after a brief glance, ready to get out of here and rest in my own bed without someone barging in every five minutes to make sure I’m still alive.
Or trying to fuck me like Naughty Nurse.
“Alright, Mr. Davis. That’s all I have for you. Make sure you schedule an appointment on your way out to have your stitches removed in o
ne week at one of our clinics.”
“You got it, Doc.”
“Don’t forget your papers.” Nat says, grabbing the packet that was for me listing the meds I had no intentions of picking up and signs of an infection in my wound.
Max is picking us up since Nat and I rode in the ambulance here and I no longer have a car. He already texted me on her phone letting me know he was waiting at the front of the building.
She flips through the papers and starts reading off instructions as she pushes the wheelchair they forced me to use despite my protests. We go down the sterile hallway, across the lobby and out the front doors. The last thing she reads off right before we get to the car makes me freeze in my tracks.
“No sex for thirty days.”
“What?”
“No sex. The doctor told you that before we left. You weren’t listening.”
No sex? Are you fucking kidding me? I finally told her how I felt, she finally halfway groped me in public and now I was banned from sex for an entire month? I already hadn’t had any in over a year.
This was all kinds of fucked up.
☠ Chapter Fourteen ☠
Natalie
The two chairs across from us at the table are still empty. We’re at the Italian restaurant waiting for the investor that scheduled a meeting with Chris to discuss funding opportunities for the treatment center.
The number he threw out was five-hundred thousand dollars. That was a complete game changer. The things we could do with that amount of money could transform the center to something incredible overnight.
The opportunity was beyond exciting. The second he got the call he asked me if I would come to this lunch meeting with him. Of course I agreed without thinking twice. I wanted to be supportive and help in any way I could.
We spent the entire week pointing out things around the center we could improve with the money if he was offered the contract. Hiring more staff and adding onto the facility were the main goals.
Flying High (Davis Brothers Book 2) Page 9