Erik's Absolution

by Kristine Allen

  When I slid home into her wet, welcome heat, I felt whole for the first time in years. It was even better than the other times with her. This beautiful gift of a woman was my savior, and I was a fool not to see it before. It was as if she had been sent to me to grant me the absolution I needed but didn’t deserve. Could I take it? Accept the forgiveness that was almost within my reach?

  Her sigh mixed with my quick inhalation. As the pleasure climbed to heights we had yet to experience, her heavy-lidded eyes saw into my soul and her full lips curled into a smile I would give anything to see every single day.

  Like I was crazed, I drove into her. Faster, frantic, grasping for the ecstasy only she could deliver.

  When my heart felt so full it was stretching at the seams she had stitched so lovingly, and my body felt on the verge of implosion, she rested her hands on my cheeks to frame my face… a featherlight touch like butterfly wings. Time stopped, and we were alone in the universe.

  “Erik, we had a baby boy. I named him after you. I love you….”

  My body jolted awake, and I started to pull at the wires tethering me down. Scorching-hot pain shot down my arm and through my chest cavity. The dream being ripped from me hurt nearly as bad, and I wasn’t sure which caused my tortured scream.

  My body was on fire, but not in a good way. Every movement was pure agony. Even breathing hurt. Alarms and beeping filled my ears as a nurse rushed in to silence the screeching tones. She checked the wires coming from my gown as well as the tubes that seemed to be everywhere.

  “Mr. Jaeger! It’s so good to see you awake!” Her cheerful voice was nails on a chalkboard to my raw nerves. How the fuck could every single cell of your body hurt that fucking bad? Not even after getting shot in Afghanistan did I hurt so much.

  “Fucking-A, woman, do you have to be so loud?” What I meant to come out as a sharp rebuke, was a scratchy, hoarse whimper. It was truly pathetic.

  “Shhh, you were just extubated today. Your throat probably feels a little dry and raw. Let me go get you some ice chips and tell the doctor you’re awake.” No shit, it felt dry and raw. I felt like someone had used a sandblaster down my damn throat.

  Voices registered from somewhere outside my room. “Give me my fucking coffee.”

  “Hang on, dickweed. Let me get in and set everything down.”

  “You can’t go in. That nurse made me get out when all his alarms started going off. She rushed out again, but told me to wait out here. She wouldn’t tell me if he’s okay or what. I heard him scream, man. I’m dying here. I called Snow, and I texted you. Fuck, I feel sick.”

  “Well, fuck that. I’m not standing out here.” The footsteps got louder as they got closer to my door. The voices carried down the hall, and it wasn’t long before the faces of Joker and Hollywood came through my doorway. Worry etched lines around their mouths until they saw me sitting up in bed watching them.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. You scared the shit out of us, bro,” Hollywood, my ever-poetic friend grumbled.

  “Goddammit, Hacker. Don’t ever do that shit again. That’s twice I’ve had to save your ass after you got shot.” And there was Joker… my little shithead friend, standing with two cups of Starbucks in a holder and a bag of something that had my stomach growling in desperate hunger. Unfortunately, he was right. He had been there to save my ass both times.

  “Like I did this on purpose?” my voice rasped out.

  “Shit, you sound like hell, and you look even worse.” Joker could always be counted on to make you feel loved. No lie, it was good to see them both, no matter how much I felt like a bag of smashed assholes.

  The nurse bustled back in the room with the doctor in tow. “I told you to wait outside, young man.” She shot a pointed look at Hollywood, and her loud voice rang out causing me to cringe, in turn causing me to groan with the movement. “Now see? You’re upsetting him.” Was this woman for real? What kind of nurse couldn’t tell that I was hurting, not upset by my fucking brothers being in here? Even rolling my eyes hurt.

  The doctor, an older man in greenish scrubs with the signature white doctor’s coat, approached my bedside. “Well, Mr. Jaeger, it’s good to see you awake and alert. I’m Dr. Simpson, the doctor on duty today. You took quite a spill on that motorcycle of yours, and we weren’t sure you were going to live to tell the tale. Do you want your friends to step out while I do my exam?” Shaking my head no nearly had my head exploding. He shined a light in my eyes, poked and prodded, which almost earned him a punch to the face, then had me doing all kinds of crazy-ass shit that made my unused and battered muscles scream. By the time he was done, I was almost in tears and I wanted to puke from the pain, but I would die before I let Joker and Hollywood see that.

  “You were a very lucky young man, Mr. Jaeger.” I sure didn’t fucking feel like it. “The swelling in your brain had us very concerned, as did the arterial bleed from the gunshot to your brachial artery. I sure hope they catch those poachers and you press charges.” Huh? “All in all, you were incredibly lucky for someone who took a tumble down the road at about sixty miles per hour without a helmet, and after catching a stray bullet.” Stray bullet? My eyes sought Joker’s for affirmation.

  Joker looked to Hollywood, who gave a nearly imperceptible shake of the head, then back to me before his lips pressed together and his mouth flattened. He shook his head at me and held his pointer finger over his mouth in a shhhh motion. My eyes narrowed at him, but I didn’t say anything to the doctor.

  “From what I understand, you have your friend here to thank for his quick thinking, or you probably wouldn’t have even been here to have this conversation. He’s a real hero.” A muscle clenched and ticked in Joker’s jaw. He hated being called a hero. He didn’t feel like he was a hero. None of us ever did. It was evident he was thinking about the same thing as I was—of another time I had him to thank for his quick actions. Neither of us really wanted to think of that day. Ever. It hurt too much. Opened too many wounds. Made us feel weak.

  There was a look on Hollywood’s face that told me he noticed our expressions. He didn’t know much about my time in the Marines Corps. Sure, he knew I had served and that I had worked with Marine Force Recon doing surveillance and security, but neither Joker nor I had ever discussed our experiences. We’d only shared general military memories and good-natured ribbing between the branches we had represented. Neither of us wanted to talk about specific missions. Some we couldn’t, even if we wanted to.

  “So, how long before I can get out of here?” Hospitals gave me hives. The sooner I could get out of there, the better. So what if I felt like a freaking Mack truck had run over me… then stopped and reversed over me. It was making me feel claustrophobic being in this room, shackled to this bed by wires and tubes.

  “Mr. Jaeger, you had a very close call. I’m not sure if you understand the seriousness of your condition. We kept you sedated for four days to give your brain a rest so it could heal. You were given two pints of blood, and you nearly lost your left arm. You’ve had vascular reconstruction, and there was some nerve damage. While we hope it will be temporary—”

  “Wait. What? So, am I still going to be able to ride?” Panic begin to set in at the thought of never feeling the wind rush by as the asphalt rolled under my two wheels.

  “Well, that will depend on how diligent you are with your physical therapy and how your body heals. I would like to keep you here in ICU until tomorrow morning to monitor you. You’re not quite out of the woods with your head injury, nor your arm. If there are no deteriorations, then tomorrow morning I’ll have you transferred to the step-down unit where we’ll start physical therapy coming by, and then as long as there are no further complications, you can be discharged. So, three days minimum. If there are no complications. Okay?” The doctor was waiting for my answer. That wasn’t really what I wanted to hear, but it was better than him saying I had to stay another week. I just knew, by the time I was cut loose, I would be climbing the goddamn walls. Not to mention, the
work I would be behind on.

  “Fine.” My eyes closed as I rested my head to the side on my pillow and let out a frustrated breath. It was starting to pound, and my arm burned and throbbed.

  “If you don’t have any other questions, Jodie, your nurse, will go over your PCA—your pain pump—we’ll be setting up. It’ll give you a little control over your pain management. Things will probably get worse before they get better in that department, I’m sorry to say.” I’m sure he thought he was being heartfelt, and maybe he was, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  The really loud nurse came back to my bedside and explained about this fucking pain pump that I could push a button and give myself a boost of morphine. She explained how it wouldn’t allow me to overdose but would give me some autonomy. Too bad. My life was so fucking sucky right now, I would have gladly succumbed to an opiate-induced haze that I never woke up from. If I couldn’t ride my bike, I couldn’t be in the club. They would medically “retire” me, which was just a nice way of saying I wasn’t any good to them. Just like the Marine Corps did.

  The founders had wanted to ensure the club stayed a motorcycle club and not a car club, so they wrote into the bylaws that you had to be physically capable of riding. The bylaws had stayed that way because everyone had agreed with that up to this point. So, unless I could ride, or the club voted I could stay, I was done if I didn’t regain function of my arm.

  After she left and closed my door, Hollywood spoke up.

  “Don’t worry about your arm, bro. We know you’re too damn stubborn to not regain use of it.” He cleared his throat. “So, I’m sure you caught that we know it wasn’t poachers, but we can’t let the hospital or the cops know the truth or they’ll stick their noses in our damn business. I’m also sure you know who we think it was. Now, tell me… what were those looks for? I’m not stupid, and I know Joker didn’t like being called your hero. I get the basic inference, but there was more.” My mouth stayed sealed as I stared blankly at him through heavy-lidded eyes. It must have been the pain meds kicking in that loosened my tongue.

  “I should have died years ago. But this motherfucker,” I pointed toward Joker with my good—no, better—arm, “he saved me. He saved me when he should have let me die.”

  “!Chingados! Goddamn it, Hacker, don’t. Don’t you fucking say that! You were my brother then, as much as you are now. I wasn’t going to let you lay there and bleed to death. Either time. Fuck that. And fuck you if you think I should have.” Frustration laced his words, and self-loathing crashed over me in waves. He’d gotten shot because of me. Because he’d been helping me and not paying attention when hell was raining down upon us from every direction.

  “Someone want to tell me what the fuck y’all are talking about?”

  At the sound of Reaper’s voice in the doorway, I muttered to myself, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  My loud-ass nurse entered the room hot on Reaper’s heels. Maybe she was actually going deaf and didn’t realize how loud she was. Whatever her excuse, I couldn’t wait to either be transferred out of here or for her to cart her big mouth home. “Excuse me! But there is a two-visitor maximum in ICU.” Reaper crossed his arms over his chest, turned to her, and gave her his best get-the-fuck-out stare.

  “Well, one of you is going to have to leave.” Her voice was actually a little quieter as she turned on her heels and rushed out of the room.

  “Thanks. She was annoying as shit.” My voice remained raspy but was laden with relief.

  “Joker?” Reaper focused his attention on first Joker, then me. “Hacker? One of you want to tell me what y’all were talking about when I walked in?” Fucker still had that damn Tennessee accent that he never seemed to be able to shake. Almost made me smile.

  Joker palmed his forehead before sliding it down his face. The look he gave me spoke volumes, and part of it was an apology for sharing a moment that we both wished we could forget. Shrugging my indifferent permission, I remained silent.

  “It was Hacker’s last tour in Afghanistan. We’d been working a hostage situation. The Taliban were holding a bunch of kids hostage at a school. Several of their parents were informants and interpreters for US troops, and they were trying to use the kids as bargaining chips to get them to turn themselves in. Of course, they would be killed, but if they didn’t, the assholes were threatening to kill the children one at a time. It was supposed to be easy.” His expression turned bleak as my stomach churned and my heart began to race. He didn’t look at me, just stared sightlessly out the window.

  “As you can probably guess, it didn’t go easy at all. We had followed intel that was supposed to get us into the building undetected to rescue them. We got all the way down the back road and through the back alley, with the school in sight. That’s when all hell broke loose. The school had been rigged with explosives. We tried. Fuck, we tried. There were kids screaming. Hacker ran in with a few of our guys. The rest of us were covering their exit. They were carrying them out when gunfire came in from every direction. We didn’t even know where to shoot back because the shots came from everywhere. Hacker and two of the others went down. I was closest to Hacker, so I made my way over to him. The kid… Goddamn… there was so much blood, I didn’t know if it was his or Hacker’s.” He took a shaky breath. Listening to him tell it made it run through my mind in technicolor. It was like being there all over again. I looked at my hands and saw they were covered in blood. Telling myself over and over it wasn’t real didn’t work.

  The memories were sucking me in. Blinding me. Cutting out all sound except the shrieks of dying children as I felt my life drain from me. That night, I had been shot in the leg, hitting my femoral artery. Fuck… just how many times could a man get shot in an artery and live? I mean, yeah, it was different arteries, but when you saw people in movies who had severed arteries, they bled out and died. Why were the powers that be allowing me to live? How was it that Joker was the one to save me both times? Wasn’t I meant to die even one of those times? These were all questions I would probably never have answers to.

  My heart didn’t want to be here anymore. If I had slipped into oblivion, as my lifeblood seeped from my body, I could’ve maybe seen my little angel. Could’ve gotten away from all my fuck-ups.

  “Fuck… Hacker! Look at me. Come on, brother, look at me.” Rapidly blinking and inhaling deeply, my gaze began to focus on Reaper as he spoke low and calming words. “We’re here, man. You’re here.” My heart beat a rapid tattoo so hard I felt it banging on my rib cage.

  Hollywood stepped closer to my hospital bed. “This is what you’ve been dealing with? Why haven’t you ever said anything? You know we get it. We’ve been there.”

  Eyes closed, heavy with the effects of the morphine, I muttered, “Kayde… Joker… got shot because he was trying to save me. Even shot through the leg himself, he didn’t let up pressure on my wound.” I hated that my words were weak. “He could have died, and for what? The kid died. In my arms. There was so much goddamn blood…. They all died. We weren’t fast enough. We weren’t good enough…. I’ve never been good enough.” The last was said so quietly, the guys didn’t catch it. Except for Joker. His face was a mix of anger and sorrow. I fucking hated him feeling sorry for me. Sometimes I hated that I’d broken down and told him my truths that dark, lonely night in Afghanistan.

  Hollywood spoke frustrated, harsh words meant to make me listen. “What would he have died for? What we all would die for, Hacker. The greater good. And brotherhood. There is no greater love than to give up your life for your friends… or brothers. There isn’t a one of us in this room, or in the club, that wouldn’t lay down his life if it mean we would save our brothers. Some may say that carries over from our military service. Some may say it’s just inherent in us. What drew us all together. Whatever the reason, we’re all here for each other and our families.”

  They all stood around me, looking solemn. Reaper, Hollywood, and Joker. My friends. My brothers. �
��I really fucking love you guys.” Not that I was certain, but my words might have begun to slur. Random thoughts swirled in my head.

  Kassi. So beautiful. Even pregnant.

  Pregnant.

  Wait. Was that a real memory or the fucking drugs?

  My eyes were starting to feel so heavy. “Check on Kassi. She’s pregnant with that fucker’s kid. I saw her. Fucking hate that. Well, not that I saw her. I mean… fuck, I don’t know what I mean. You see her?” By that time, I wasn’t sure if my words were clear or even made sense.

  Digging myself from the blackness that was clawing at me, I struggled to keep my eyes open. “Bring me my laptop too. Hey, where’s my cut?”

  Muffled words. Something about getting a new one. Hell no. No new cuts. Want my old one. So fucking tired….

  “Through Glass”—Stone Sour

  DAMN, I WAS GETTING tired of being in ICU. It had already been three full days, today being the fourth, since they shipped me to Sioux Falls after I hemorrhaged from the abruption and nearly lost Sebastian. Hunter had filled me in on the seven transfusions I had received before my brain reconnected with my body. Evidently, I had bled out a lot. They couldn’t get it to stop. The thought made me shiver at the possibility that my baby Baz could have been like me, without either of his parents.

  Since coming to, the day after he was born, I had been able to go down to see him twice. The first two days, they wouldn’t let me out of bed. By the third day, they allowed me to transfer to a wheelchair to go to NICU where I would sit outside the plastic incubator box and watch my tiny son lie there, feeding tube down his nose, IV lines running, monitoring wires a stark contrast to his almost translucent skin, tiny little chest moving with exaggerated movements each time he inhaled or exhaled.

  Today, I was supposed to be able to hold him, actually place him on my chest where I would be able to feel his soft, warm skin against mine. Kangaroo care, they called it. He had been eating the minuscule amount of milk I had been able to pump, so I knew he was at least getting the colostrum that held the nutrients and antibodies from me that he would have gotten had he been born full-term and I had breastfed him. Okay, so not eating, per se, but being fed through the tube. Worry plagued me that he wouldn’t know how to latch on or that our bond would be tarnished by this separation.