Chapter 5: Wakes Up

MILO'S POV

Someone is handling me roughly. A man, I hear the deep boom of his voice, almost inappropriately interruptive in the rest of the quiet, is saying something. I want to tell him to stuff it. I want to go back to sleep.

Then a cool hand touches my forehead, and I open my eyes out of curiosity. That touch is gentle, sweet. I haven’t felt soft skin like that in years. Living among soldiers, there’s not a lot of caresses and tenderness to go around.

I see the source of the noise. It’s a man in a very stained doctor’s coat, his eyes darting back and forth as though he wants to move on from my bedside. His face is blank, his thin lips turned down. If the grim reaper had a face, it’d look like this. I immediately dislike him.

The hand on my forehead belongs to a woman, and the second our eyes meet I feel something electric. She’s…she’s…wow. That’s all I’ve got. Saying she’s a looker doesn’t cut it. She’s a walking porcelain doll but without all the innocence. Raven black straight hair, except when she moves. Then, it gleams with dark auburn highlights. Big emerald oval eyes that turn down toward her nose just a bit at the corners. A straight nose with almost no profile from the side until it flairs into a delicate bulb above the distinct arrow of her philtrum. A pointed chin that makes her look mischievous, spritely even. Her skin is so pale it looks like milk lit up from within. Accounting for the rest of her features, that doesn’t seem to match.

The man with the booming voice is droning on, but all I hear is her voice when she says, “You’re awake!”

There’s something there in the way she says it, both like she’s pleased and a bit vindicated.

I go to answer her but my throat is so dry. I make a sort of rasp that grates my parched gullet. Damn. She brings a glass of water to my lips and warns me to drink slowly. I look at that pretty pale skin and have the urge to sink my teeth into it. That’s…that’s a strange thought. I’ve never been a rough man with women. Mom raised me better than that.

“Do you feel this?” the man’s voice gets my attention.

He’s poking me with his pen. It’s hard enough that I see my leg moving, rocking with each jab. I feel it, though the sensation is dull. Muted. And it takes time for the awareness of the point of contact to travel up my leg. I tell the doctor so. His face doesn’t change at all. He simply moves on to my other leg. The flatness, the delay, is the same on this side.

“As I thought,” he says, directing the comment more to the beautiful woman than to me.

“What’d you think?” I ask. They’re my legs.

“That the spinal damage would lead to this. It appears to be a gradual failure, as you seem to still have a bit of movement. My guess is that, as the pressure ulcers grow, that movement will be further impeded. We don’t have the means of operating on those ulcers, not in this depleted state. Unfortunately, young man, I have to tell you that this is not a condition you will recover from,” the man says the same way someone would tell you they got a flat tire on the drive to work. He says it like it’s an inconvenience in his delivering of his duties.

Silence falls. I haven’t been awake more than two minutes.

That f*cking voice breaks the hush.

“Your continuity of care will not change. Nori here will remain your nurse during the night shift. The name of your day nurse is…”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He’s already taken a step toward the man in the next bed.

“Devan, sir,” the nurse, Nori, reminds him.

“What?” he asks, another step away. I couldn’t care less. I want him to go.

“His day nurse is Devan. She’ll be here in about two hours,” Nori tells him.

“Good. Yes. Do you have any questions, Specialist Perez?” the doc asks.

The truth is I have a million d*amned questions. How long until I’m bedridden? Can I wipe my own *ss? Is there any way to stave this off for a while? How am I supposed to just be okay with this? But I don’t ask any of them. I don’t want him near me. I feel a firewall of anger, and right now it’s all directed at him. If he stays, I might punch him.

“He’s, he’s really not that terrible,” Nori tells me, seeing me struggle to sit up and offering her arm for leverage.

I manage to sit, but my body feels like it’s a machine gone rusty with disuse. Guess I should get used to that.

I level a look at Nori. She’s pulling her hair up into a bun, and the movement catches my eye. Even though she’s quite thin, I can see the play of muscle under her skin as she moves her arms. Eight years ago, before all this started, this is the type of woman I would have asked out.

One side of her lips turn up at my stare.

“Okay,” she whispers low enough for the doc not to hear, “I concede that he’s a total jack*ss. But he’s a decent doctor under that pisspoor bedside manner and, even if he wasn’t, he’s all we’ve got.”

“That’s more like it. Mom always says ‘Tell the truth or someone is going to tell it for you,” I say.

She sits on the edge of my bed, her rump not far from my arm. Don’t think that. What the hell is wrong with me? Apparently, I woke up about to die and the only thing my broken body wants to do is get my smash on. I don’t even know if that part of my body will work. Maybe he’s gone numb, too.

“I know it’s hard to hear. Do you actually have any questions or concerns?” she asks, holding my wrist in her cold hand, checking my blood pressure or heartbeat or whatever it is nurses do that for.

“Will my love hammer still work?” I ask, even though I could slap myself for such a stupid question. Again, what is wrong with me?

She laughs, a husky, throaty laugh that does nothing to get my mind out of the gutter.

“I can’t say with certainty, but most men with your type of injury can still achieve…um, climax. In fact, some of your sensations may heighten when others start to fade,” she says without a hint of discomfort on her face.

“Can I walk?” I ask, and even I can hear the rough edge of anger in my voice.

“Let’s find out,” she says, opening her arms for me like you would for a toddler.