these chairs are horrible for my back.” She squirms around. “You would think that they would have more comfortable chairs around here since you have to sit in them for forever and a day.”
“Ma,” I growl. “What did the doctor say?” I need to keep her on track otherwise she’ll start going down some weird-ass rabbit hole of chairs or some shit.
She huffs a little and purses her lips at me. “You’ll be fine.” I blow out a relieved breath. “After a few months of healing and rehab.”
“What do you mean?” I have a bad feeling.
My mother gives me an uncomfortable look before continuing. “Apparently, Elle got you pretty good son, and it was worse than they thought when they opened you up.”
I can feel my eye and cheek twitch. “How much worse?” I grit out.
“You had to have a Reverse Total Shoulder Replacement Surgery.”
“What the fuck is that?” I bark out without meaning.
My mother backhands my good shoulder. “Shh, keep your damn voice down.” She looks over at Elle to make sure that I didn’t wake her up. She looks back at me with a glare when she confirms that Elle is still asleep. “If you would quit interrupting me, I’ll explain it to you.”
The two of us just stare at one another until I nod my head. “Please continue.” I somehow manage to say in an even voice. I swear to God, if the woman asleep next to me doesn’t drive me insane, my mother sure will.
“Basically, the axe went in deep and tore your rotator cuff. But the damage was pretty bad, and it ended up messing up your joint pretty bad.” How the fuck is that even possible? “Basically, according to your doctor, they reversed your joint somehow.” She waves a hand in the air when I give her a questioning look. “I don’t know, he used a lot of different terms. The just of it is that they reversed your joint and put in a metal ball and a plastic socket or something. That’s where it started to get kind of confusing. Anyway, instead of using the muscles in your rotator cuff that is basically useless, you’ll now be using deltoid muscles to move your arm. He said that you should be just fine after rehabilitation.” She chirps out happily like I just had my tonsils out instead of major surgery. I have foreign objects in me, for fucks sake!
I just stare at her, unable to really form any coherent thoughts at the moment.
Elle stirs in her chair and shoots upright when she sees that I’m awake. She covers her mouth with both of her hands and I can already see tears forming in her eyes. Shit, I don’t do well with tears.
“Oh my God Noah, I am so sorry.” Her voice is a hoarse whimper. “I swear, no matter how many times I daydreamed about killing you, I swear that I was never actually going to do anything!” Well, that’s comforting, I suppose. “I swear this was an accident. I totally forgot that I was holding the axe.”
All I can do is blink at the woman crying while basically telling me that she hates me. Not that I can really blame her, but damn, it still kind of stings, even if I did have an inkling that she did.
My mother waves a hand in the air. “Oh sugar, don’t worry about it. Accidents happen.”
Elle’s hands fall to her lap and she stares at my mother with her mouth open and wide eyes. Yeah, it takes some getting used to the words that come out of Dee Ross’ mouth. Hell, I’m still not immune to it and I’m her son.
Elle turns her head and I can see the questions swimming in those gorgeous eyes. “It’s easiest to just nod and agree with her.” I drawl. “Best not to over complicate things.”
I would find the look of horror on her face comical at any other time.
“Well, since you feel so remorseful, sweetheart,” My mother starts gaining our undivided and uneasy attention. She has a gleam in her eyes that doesn’t bode well for anyone but her. “I think that it’s only right that you’re the one to take care of Noah.”
“Ahhhh.” Elle says as I go. “What?”
My mother gives us a smile that is truthfully somewhat creepy. It reminds me of the clown from the movie IT when he smiles. Although hers seems to be far more terrifying.
“Now Noah, you aren’t going to be able to