Page 21 of Johnston


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Finally.

I quickly pressed the button for the nurse before grabbing her fingers in mine. “Aaliyah, baby, can you hear me?”

She moaned softly in acknowledgment before her eyes slowly slit open. Slowly, so fucking slowly, she raised her left hand and patted the tubes inserted into her nostrils to help her breathe. I quickly grabbed her hand. “Easy, Red. Let the doctor and nurse come in to remove them,” I coaxed. “You’re okay.”

She tried moving her right hand, and her face scrunched up in discomfort. My heart dropped to my feet, but I kept my mask in place so she wouldn’t see the worry for her in my eyes. I needed to be strong. The doctor had warned me that due to the lack of oxygen to her brain, there may be some changes she’ll be faced with when it comes to bodily movement as well as thinking.

If she couldn’t move her right hand, then that was a sure sign she was about to spend the forseeable future in physical therapy.

But no matter what, I would never leave her fucking side. She was mine, and even if she lost some of her bodily functions for the rest of her life, I’d still never choose anyone else.

“Just relax, Red. It’s okay now.”

She slowly closed her eyes, her fingersveryloosely wrapping around mine.

Fuuuuck. It felt so good to have her touching me like this again, but I was so damn worried about what to expect now.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Aaliyah

“Easy, Red,” Johnston soothed as he helped me off the bed. I slumped against him, the right side of my body not doing much to hold me up. I was still too weak on it, courtesy of my stupid ex, who was now hopefully rotting in a prison cell for attempted murder.

I was torn between being angry and wanting to cry. I hated relying on others, and that was all I could do until my body decided it was ready to operate correctly again.

Ifit ever decided to. If was a word the doctor usually avoided when he talked to me about my recovery process, but he’d slipped up a couple of times.

Johnston hated the word. He had some kind of gut feeling that I’d recover.

I thought he was full of shit.

My optimism was pure shit right now. I wasn’t hopeful about anything anymore.

“I don’t know if I can walk,” I mumbled, part of my face feeling slack. I hated this shit. How the hell could Johnston still look at me like I was everything in the world to him when half my damn body didn’t work, and I was also recovering from a gunshot wound still?

There were so many other available women out there who would make a much better old lady than me. Why the hell was he sticking around still?

Time had passed since my surgery and since I’d been strangled. The doctor had kept me in the hospital for weeks, and hefinallydeemed it okay for me to go home, but I had to have around-the-clock supervision. Johnston didn’t even seem to care about how much trouble I would be—like he wasn’t even really taking into consideration what around-the-clock care actually meant. He just nodded at the doctor, promised I’d be back at the hospital for all my physical therapy sessions and all my follow-ups, and signed off on my paperwork without even blinking an eye.

He was being way too good to me. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, to be honest. I didn’t understand his actions right now, and when I didn’t understand things, I got agitated.

“You want me to carry you?” Johnston asked me. “Or I can get a nurse to bring a wheelchair. Just tell me what you want.”

I shook my head. I wanted him to tell me what he was thinking so I could figure out where the hell my life was going from here. But right now wasn’t the time to ask those kinds of questions. I just needed to focus on getting the hell out of his hospital. I was sick of it—been had enough of these endless white walls and overly-friendly nurses.

“Just carry me. I’ve bothered all of them enough lately as it is.”

He sighed as he lifted me, obviously not agreeing with me calling myself a bother. He cradled me against his chest like I didn’t weigh a thing, though I knew I’d gained weight while laid up in that hospital bed, since I hadn’t really been able to move around, and the hospital made sure I ate three meals a day. I grimaced at the mere thought of looking at myself in the mirror now. I’d been thick before, but it had been a good-looking kind of thick where my body was evenly proportioned. Now, I felt like a blob.

I linked my left arm around his neck, my right arm just resting over my chest, just about fucking useless.

Like most of me was. Fuck, I hated myself right now, and I hated my ex and his stupid wife even more.

Johnston pressed a kiss to the top of my head before striding out of the hospital room. “Let’s get you home, Red.”

Home.

Was home with him now?

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