He let out a snort and stroked her hair gently. "I doubt you'll be doing much pacing, love. Just relax and let it all go," he said quietly. "I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere for a damned long time. Sleep for a while."
"That's good," she said with a sigh and rubbed her cheek to his chest. This was amazing, she loved the way that it felt. Even knowing that Ansell was in surgery she still found herself relaxing, letting go, and then was sound asleep in his arms.
Chapter Twenty
Two hours after they'd arrived at the hospital the surgeons came to speak to them. Ansell was going to be fine, there was some damage to an artery, thus the blood loss. But the rest was worse, he had torn ligaments and the joint had been damaged in the fight. They would need to do a secondary surgery for sure, possibly a third. They were going to do what repairs they could and then give him some time to let the swelling go down. He was fully out of danger and would heal well but they had to take things carefully because of his accelerated healing, which could put a damper on their efforts if they didn't take extreme care.
Once the surgeons headed back into the OR Zhubin called his mother. There was a lot of yelling, some shrieking and then there were questions after questions. He'd been right to wait and lucky, very lucky, no one else had called her. After getting off the phone he called one of the other Luhpynes to go and pick her and his fathers up from the Veil. They were indeed coming through immediately so they'd all be there when Ansell got out and woke up that first time.
Finally collapsing into a chair again, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. "Round one with Mother is out of the way. Round two will be in person. I really hope that she gets here just as they wheel him out, it'll save me from taking the brunt of the next batch of questions."
"Well let's hope that she will be easy on us because of me expecting and all that?" she asked hopefully. "And yeah, your mom will totally have a field day with us when she gets here. Let's hope and pray that she will give us a pass," she said with a smile. "But at least we know that he's going to be okay. At least we know that he will pull out of this." That was what was important.
Nodding, he pulled her closer to him and kissed her. "He is going to be fine, I said he would be and, as I mentioned earlier, I am always right." Grinning against her lips, he kissed her once more before leaning back in his seat. "And we have a little bit of time before they arrive to prepare for Hurricane Gennette to land."
"Oh, you are a bit of a brat," she said with a grin. "And yeah, we do have a little bit of time before your mom comes. How about you take me and feed me? Now that we know he's going to be fine, take me and feed me because I'm starving." She was always either starving or sleeping. Wonderful.
Laughing at that, he pushed back up from his chair and dragged her to her feet. "Damn, woman, you are just so demanding," he teased with a grin. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders they wandered into the hall and, after only getting lost twice, found their way to the cafeteria.
When they got into the cafeteria she inhaled the scents and sighed. "Oh lordy, this smells so good." She felt her stomach rumbling. "Damn all I seem to do is sleep, eat, sleep, eat and sex," she added with a grin. "There are times I swear that you boys hide from me because of my drive." Which was the truth.
"We don't hide from you, we never would," he said. Then he laughed softly. "Okay, so maybe that one time we hid out but it was the only time. I swear," he added when she glared at him. "You were off your rocker crazy that day, Lace, it was hide out or possibly lose some part we were fond of."
"This is very true. I swear that day I don't know what the hell came over me but I was desperate for you boys. I couldn't seem to get enough of you two. But at least that's a little better, right?" she asked with a grin. "Besides, you know you love my increased libido." She sure did.
"Yes, I love your increased libido, as long as it's not at work in the most inconvenient of spots. Like Briar's turf, that was damned embarrassing," he said, making a face. "I still can't believe she was laughing that hard, there was really no reason for that."
"Except for the fact that I shoved you into the corpse freezer so that I could jump you. I think that we should keep our office blinds closed from now on though because the cleaning lady the other night got far too much of an eyeful of us."
"Oh Gods, don't remind me of that." He groaned. Reaching the buffet line, he handed her a plate on a tray with utensils. Grabbing another for himself, he followed along with her as she started to choose food. "We'll likely get nailed with her bill for therapy."
"Yeah, no freaking kidding there. I swear that everyone and their brother is making bets on when and where I will attack you boys next." She giggled as they got into the line and she began to fill her plate up. "Oh god this looks good," she said with a sigh and licked her lips. "Yummers."
He snickered. "You should know that we're in that betting pool too. I won't share what our bets are, yes ‘bets' as in multiple, but know that so far we've been cleaning house on each and every one. So far we haven't been kicked from the pool but we're waiting for it."
"Oh dear lord, seriously?" she asked with a laugh. "That's too funny. I cannot believe that you boys are in on that pool." She hesitated and asked, "So how close have you gotten to winning the bets? And how many times have you pushed me to jump you when it was close to time for one of you winning?"
He popped a grape in his mouth and chewed, a smug look on his face. "Darling, we've won every pot since we found out about it. We're up nearly four thousand dollars, just to give you a clue how hardcore this all is. And we have never once had to push you into jumping us. Though, I will admit, we may have mildly influenced you once or twice into hurrying up your decision to jump our bones."
"Holy hell, are you serious?" she asked with a laugh. "Wow. I'm just so shocked that there is so much cash on the line. I mean for real? Four grand?" She laughed and then added, "You guys are so taking me on an amazing vacation before our child is born with that cash."
"Like we need it, we were actually just winning to ensure the others didn't. We didn't really have any plans for the money. If you want though, you can use it to get all the baby items you need to get or start his college fund or something of that nature."
"That sounds like a plan to me. I really think that we should do that. I look forward to being able to outfit our baby's room with everything that he will need, on both sides of the Veil. And sadly with Ansell being hurt, he will be home with me so I will pester him and make him sorry that he ever got hurt in the first place."
"Better him than me," he said. But with him stuffing more grapes in his mouth it was a little hard to be sure. Though the smirk on his lips definitely led her to believe she'd actually heard right.
That had her laughing. God, she couldn't help herself from laughing. She knew that was horrible, she shouldn't be feeling this happy with Ansell being hurting but she was. Weird, she knew. "I love you, Zhu, thank you for taking my mind off of all of this."
"It's better to laugh than to cry," he said with a shrug. "Besides, Ansell wouldn't want you being sad, he'd want you to laugh and be happy that he's just gotten stuck with you at home for an indeterminate amount of time. A time where you can boss him around."
"This is very true." She sighed and shook her head. "And yeah, he's going to be ready to kill me by the time he's able to go back to work. I'm sure that he's going to be begging to come back to work after a short time, won't he?"
He tipped his head slightly and then nodded. "Yeah, I'd place bets on that." He grinned. "He'll either be calling me by day three to let him come into work or he'll have settled his fate and ride it out. I think it may depend on what you do to him the first couple of days."
"See, exactly. And I plan on withholding sex from him until the doctors say that he is back to one hundred percent, so you can count on those calls," she said simply. "Poor guy will have a hell of a case of blue balls, but with what he pulled on us by getting hurt, he deserves it."