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“How many do you have in there?”
“Just one, and it seems he’ll be born here in Germany.”
“He?”
“That’s right.” She clenched her eyes and gripped the bed rail. “Sorry,” she said a few seconds later. “Contractions.”
Several hours later, according to my nurse, Angus Miles Spencer was born in the hospital adjacent to the burn center.
My mum and dad were gone for quite a while, and I appreciated the respite, as short-lived as it was.
I had no idea what to expect when the male nurse came in to tell me it was time for a dressing change.
“This won’t be easy,” he said. “You might do better if you don’t look. At least in the beginning.”
“Wait.” I put my hand on his when he went to move the bedclothes. “The doc said ‘lower left torso.’ What does that mean?”
He put his hand near his hipbone. “You’re burned from here around to your backside.”
“What about the front?”
“Looks about the same as your arm.” He nudged me.
“Thanks. What’s your name?”
“Carson, and you’ll be right sick of me in no time.”
“You’re English?”
Carson nodded. “Your mum and dad made arrangements for me to begin your rehab here. That way, when you return to England, there will be a continuum of care.”
“Bloody hell! What’s that cost?”
“I reckon not as much as you’re worth to them.”
After giving me a hefty pump of morphine and applying analgesics to the left lower portion of my body and my leg, Carson began the process of changing my dressings. I took his advice and didn’t allow myself to look.
When he finished what I can only describe as pain worse than a thousand knives stuck into my muscles, and that was with the pain meds, I was wrung out. Evidently, there were more than a few nerve endings still functioning well enough to talk to my brain.
“Get some rest,” Carson said, patting my shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I rested my head against the pillow. “I’d rather you not.”
I was a week in and preparing for my second skin-graft surgery. They’d performed the first right after I arrived, while I was in the medically induced coma.
Carson was in the midst of a dressing change when the door to my room opened and Edge walked in.
“Aren’t you a sight?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “How the hell are you, Grind?”
Carson raised his head. “Who’s this?”
“Edge, this is Carson, aka Mengele.”
“You wanker, how many times do I need to remind you we’re in Germany, for fuck’s sake?” he spat under his breath.
Calling Carson Mengele was only one of the ways I paid him back for the pain he put me through on a daily basis.
I allowed almost no one else in to see me. Even the nurses knew not to initiate unnecessary conversation after I’d systematically berated them to the point where they must have taken to drawing straws to see who would be forced to come in and take my vitals.
