Page 6 of Haze's Jewel
When I relax back onto my pillow and look up at him, I realize he’s wearing different clothing, not blood-stained like the last time I saw him. “Yes. Thanks.”
“Are you in any pain?” He looks so serious that it makes me wonder if he’s ever smiled a day in his life.
“No. How long have I been here?” Something tells me at least long enough for him to go home and get changed, so maybe overnight.
“You’ve been here seventeen days.”
I try to sit up because this isn’t making any sense. “What? How can that be.”
He presses me back gently and I let him. “Yeah, it’s been seventeen days. You were in a coma for eleven days and this is the third day you’ve woken up and we’ve had this conversation. They’ve already said that you’ll need to stay in the ICU for at least seventy-two hours after you stabilize.”
“I can almost remember a doctor telling me about all my injuries.”
“Yeah, about that,” he says. “You had a lot more injuries than I thought when I first pulled you out of that jeep. Do you want me to get one of the nurses in here to go through it with you?”
“No. Just tell me yourself. I need to know.” I hate the pleading sound of my own voice. It makes me feel vulnerable when I most want to be strong.
He gestures to a huge whiteboard on the wall in front of my bed. “I wrote it all down for you.” Touching his right arm with his left hand, he explains, “You probably already know that a tree branch smashed into your right arm.”
I squint trying to remember the details. “It was a small branch. It came through the passenger side window and jabbed into my arm.”
“Yeah, that was your most obvious injury when I gave you the once over. It actually broke your arm in two different places and wrenched your shoulder out of its socket. They had to put pins in to hold the bones together in order for them to heal properly.”
I look down and see that my entire arm is in a cast. “That’s doesn’t sound all that bad,” I say, trying to sound less freaked out than I am.
“Well, that’s not all. Your lung collapsed, your spleen was bruised, and you had internal bleeding.”
“Is that all?” I ask hopefully, because I really want that to be the full extent of my injuries.
Suddenly, the big biker gets cagy. “I believe you might want to talk to your doctor about the rest.”
I honestly don’t like the tone he’s using right now. “Do you know what’s going on?”
He gives me one succinct nod. “Yeah, but it’s pretty personal.”
I’m starting to panic a bit. “Just fucking tell me. Why are you playing games with me?”
He walks back to the whiteboard and jabs his finger at a string of words. I squint to see the words as he reads them to me. “Dr. Robinson said you had a traumatic rupture of your left ovary due to blunt force abdominal trauma.” Glancing over his shoulder at me, he adds, “You had a slow growing ovarian cyst that caused your ovary to rupture because of the violent nature of your crash. They couldn’t save it.”
My mouth opens and closes as the reality of his words swirl around in my mind. Just when I’m thinking that probably means I’ll never have kids, he clarifies. “Since your remaining ovary is connected to a fallopian tube, it’s possible for you to still get pregnant.”
I feel numb at this moment. “I understand why you wanted me to talk to a nurse.” My chest aches from raw emotions, rather than physical injury. Strange how easily I can tell the difference between the two. He gives me a few minutes to come to grips with what he’s told me.
When I look up, he’s quietly observing me, probably waiting for the freak out he’s sure will come. Instead, I ask, “Anything else I should know about?”
“Yeah, the device I put into your hand has a button. It’s attached to a morphine pump. Push the button when you feel the pain coming on. It’ll dispense a microdose of morphine to control your pain. It’s got a timer on it, so there is no way you can dispense more than your approved dose.”
“Jesus, I’m really messed up, aren’t I?”
“Many of your injuries have healed in the last seventeen days. The doctors are convinced you’ll recover quickly.”
I roll my eyes. “They probably said it in doctor speak.”
A slight smile ghosts over his face. “You’re right. They said your prognosis was good.”
I lift up my hand and stare at the fob, carefully removing my thumb from the button. To be honest, I’m not feeling so great. My body aches like it does when I spend too much time in bed. There is also a dull throbbing in my arm, and I’ll bet that if I moved around, I would find I need to stretch my muscles out.
Haze walks over and stands looking down at me with a worried expression on his face. This man is seriously handsome with his shoulder length, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a square jawline. I try not to gape at him because now is not the time.