No Regrets, No Surrender(11)
Her silence seemed to be the answer. She shook her head, almost warily. “I don’t know. I think I felt better after twenty miles with a hundred-pound rucksack.”
“Amen.” A grin curled the corner of his mouth, one nearly as tentative as her head shake. “You look beautiful.”
She snorted.
Relief swamped him. The tension knotting inside snapped.
“Zach?” She reached up to catch his hand, holding it to her cheek.
“Yeah, babe?”
“What happened?”
His heart stuttered.
“I mean, you said I’m back in the States. It had to be bad. What’s the 4-1-1?”
He sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Her condition might not be the best subject.
Logan, however, took that decision right the hell out of his hands. “Skull fracture. Brain injury.”
He turned a glare on his best friend. “Logan—”
“Don’t.” Jazz interrupted him before he went further, and squeezed his hand. “It’s good. I need to know. My head is kind of full at the moment. Like there’re too many thoughts in it, and it’s kind of jumbled.”
“I can imagine.” Logan slid up next to the bed and perched near her feet. He dropped a couple of white bags onto the table over her hospital bed. “Burgers and fries, and you can have them if you want them.”
Her mouth twitched and the first real smile he’d seen on her since Italy made an appearance. “Not really. Thank you.”
Every moment she didn’t slip back into the fugue seemed to lighten the weight on Zach’s shoulders. “You hungry at all, babe?”
“No. It smells good. You two should eat. You look like crap.”
Logan laughed. The tension bubbling in the room burst. Zach chuckled and snagged one of the bags as his stomach growled in agreement.
She tried to shift on the bed, and Zach shoved the food bag away to adjust the blankets. She froze in mid-motion.
“I wanted to sit up.” The words were careful and wariness surged in her face.
“Carefully,” Logan advised. Irritation scraped across Zach’s nerves. She’d barely been awake five minutes, and Logan didn’t care if she sat up. They didn’t even know if she was allowed to sit up yet.
“Wasn’t planning to hit the course today. Just sit up.” Annoyance marched quietly beneath the words.
“Ease up, Zach. We’re right here.” Logan’s advice added insult to aggravation, but he pushed it away. This wasn’t the time or the place.
Logan pressed the bed control into her hand, guiding her finger to the button that would lift the head of the bed. She pressed down and held it. The bed inched up slowly until she still reclined but at more of a 120-degree angle than a 180.
“Better?” His best friend grabbed the white bag of food and pulled out a French fry. He munched it with all the nonchalance of sitting in a fast food restaurant rather than their girlfriend’s hospital room.
“Yes. Actually. Though—” The words broke off and her gaze went flat. The pupil in her right eye swelled and seemed to engulf the brown.
“Dammit.” Zach rounded on Logan. “We shouldn’t have let her sit up.”
“Maybe.” The easy expression fled from Logan’s face. He stared at her with a frown. “But we can’t coddle her.”
“She has a brain injury. We can coddle her.”
“No, we can’t. If she wants to push her limits, we have to let her.”
Zach clenched his fist. His eyelid twitched.
“I missed you guys.” Her voice punctured the anger weighing anchor in his belly. Zach jerked back around to find her looking back and forth between them.
“We missed you, too.” Logan didn’t miss a beat, even the strain seemed gone from his voice.
Zach couldn’t quite mask his own reaction as easily and it pissed him off. He released his fist, somewhat surprised he’d considered slugging his best friend.
Not like it would be the first time.
“Yeah.” Zach finally found his voice. And maybe his sense of humor. “We did, but you picked a helluva way to get a free ticket home.”
Chapter Three
“Squeeze my hand.” Reade, the nurse assigned to her care was in his late thirties, easygoing with a fast wit, and seemed more suited to combat than babysitting. He also worked with her on her initial physical therapy until she was ready to be signed over to the PT wing. His magic tricks alternated between the amusing and the irritating, either way, he got a reaction out of her. She was also sick to death of the tests.
“I am squeezing it.” Two weeks in the hospital and three surgeries later, she achieved sitting up in bed on a regular basis. They still refused to let her walk, insisting on a wheelchair or rolling her to her appointments on a gurney. Flexing the fingers of her right hand around a ball made up her current assignment. She couldn’t quite get her pinky and ring fingers to cooperate. Unlike the day before when it was her index finger and thumb.