“Can I do anything for you?”
“Yes.” The word hummed through my chest, adding to the flames that had already ignited, a throbbing that had me clenching the blanket with my other hand. “You can give me some silence.”
“Pamela, let’s go get some coffee,” my father said. “We’ll be back, son.”
Once they were gone, the beeping was all that was left.
And the fucking thoughts in my head.
But those were as loud as any screams.
Three
“How’s your pain?” a nurse asked from my bedside.
That was the first thing everyone asked whenever they entered my room, followed by a series of much more invasive questions. Privacy no longer existed. I couldn’t even take a goddamn piss on my own since they hadn’t removed the catheter yet.
“It’s intolerable,” I growled.
All I could feel was pain. The only time it stopped was when the medication made me pass out, and then the agony would wake me again.
“On a scale from one to ten—”
“Ten.”
“I see,” she said and moved over to my IV. “Hopefully, I can help with that a little.” She began to play with the IV. “I saw in your chart that physical therapy came by and you were able to get on your feet.”
“I stood for about a second.”
That was all I had lasted before the intensity of the burning caused me to throw up on the bed.
“You’re doing better than you think.” She smiled as she checked the tape that held the needle in my arm.
“Better?” The throbbing made my anger boil. “The morning of the marathon, I ran five miles, just because. Now, standing with a gait belt around my waist and a walker in front of me is the biggest accomplishment of the day.”
Staying by my side, she moved her hands to her hips. “Baby steps—that’s what I tell all my patients. Healing is a long process. You’ll get there.”
“Will I?” My teeth ground together as a wave of electrical heat surged through me, my jaw so tight that it was giving me the wildest headache. “Will I be running five miles a day?” My voice was rising, and I couldn’t control it. “And waterskiing off the back of my boat and going skiing down the slopes this winter?”
Not a single goddamn person in this hospital could answer those questions when I asked them. No one knew what my mobility would be or what my pain would be like, going forward.
She gently patted my shoulder. “Remember, slow and steady.”
Slow was a word that only pissed me off.
Before I glanced away, I studied her eyes, something I did whenever someone came into my room. I knew I was looking for brown, a voice like a blanket, but I remembered nothing else.
“Hey,” I said as she turned to leave, and I waited for her to face me again. “Do you know the nurse who helped me when I came in? She had brown eyes …” I searched my brain for more, digging through each corridor, coming up blank.
She narrowed her old, wrinkly lids, blinking her blue eyes several times. “Dear, we’ve been staffed to the hilt, all hands on deck. We had to call in nurses from hospitals outside the city just to cover all the emergencies that had come in. I’m afraid there’s no telling whom it could have been.”
I nodded, and as she left, I looked toward the window. Although two of the panes were covered in blinds, one was open. The view was of another wing, dark brick and mirrored glass that shimmered under the sunlight. Nothing like the sights of Dubai that I should have been staring at right now. But anything beat the white walls or the television that had only shown the bombing on replay.
I couldn’t put myself through watching it again.
Aside from the beeping, my room was silent. Within the next hour, that would all change once my assistant arrived to discuss the matters that needed my immediate attention, and then my parents would be by along with Joe once he was able to escape work. Their faces would be filled with pity as they stared at me in this bed.
That was almost as torturous as this injury.
My door was like a turnstile, making it impossible for me to get much sleep. Aside from my personal visitors, there was a constant rotation of hospital staff. Someone checking my lungs, another taking my blood, doctors coming in to speak to me, the kitchen delivering meals. With each interruption, my patience weakened.
The pain was the one thing that