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We’re all in the common area of the local specialized nursing facility. Bishop was moved here a week and a half ago after spending two weeks unresponsive in the hospital.
Kincaid wanted him back at the clubhouse, but his level of care meant he needed full-time nursing. He tried to persuade Sunshine, the best nursing assistant the world has ever known, to come take care of him, but she refused to leave her job to care for only him. She felt a responsibility to all of the residents at the facility and refused to give them up.
Cerberus, including Sawyer, have been a permanent fixture since he arrived.
The elderly ladies here swoon. The nursing staff have been extra helpful to the guys that come and sit at Bishop’s bedside. There’s a mix of probably ten different perfumes floating around us right now.
“I brought in homemade cookies today,” Susan tells Stormy.
The facility administrator has to be pushing sixty, but she doesn’t seem to think she’s pushing her luck as she blinks up at the leather wearing Cerberus member with her hand on his forearm.
“I love homemade cookies,” Big Daddy says. He’s Sylvie’s grandfather who is Spade’s girlfriend.
“Your blood sugar was elevated this morning,” another nurse says as she joins the fray. “Let’s see if the kitchen has any of those sugar-free butterscotch candies you like.”
Big Daddy grumbles about sugar-free things and how they give him the shits as she tries to guide him away. The man is amazing but being told he can’t have something always leads to him reminding everyone he didn’t fight for his country only for people to decide what he can and can’t eat.
“Sorry,” Sylvie mutters, but she’s not apologizing to anyone in particular, and I think everyone in the group thinks the man is absolutely hilarious.
“I bet your ass is still red,” Sawyer says, leaning in so only I can hear him, but then I see Drake, Boomer’s boyfriend turn his head, a wide smile on his face.
My cheeks flame with a combination of embarrassment and arousal.
We’ve been at it nonstop, and I would feel guilty about that if we didn’t also spend hours in the afterglow talking about us and life and the things we can see ourselves doing in a year, five years, or even twenty years down the road.
He speaks as if us still being together is a fact, not a possibility, and I sort of love him for it.
Not sort of. Completely love him for it. I knew I felt that way when I showed up at the clubhouse, but my fear of rejection had me testing the waters. The man hasn’t so much as flinched since I showed up that day.
The only time he had an opinion was when I needed to go back to my temporary apartment. He declared that I was to stay with him every second. I haven’t argued. I want to be near him. I want to be in his arms. I live for the days his eyelids lower and he issues a command.
“Sometimes the muscles move,” one of the nurses informs us.
I try my best to concentrate on what she’s saying.
Time has helped, but it hasn’t been a miracle cure for my guilt. Even Sawyer fights with it some days. What has helped is no one at the clubhouse blames me for what happened. Dixon made his own choices, and no one is to blame for his psychosis but him.
“There’s Sunshine,” someone says, and we all turn toward her as she approaches.
The woman is an angel. She’s been working nonstop. Her first shift is with the facility and then much of the time after spent in Bishop’s room. I visited once with Sawyer and we walked in on her talking so animatedly as she moved around the room we thought he’d woken up. He hadn’t but she doesn’t let him lying in bed with a feeding tube stop her. She says he’ll wake up when he’s damn good and ready and not a second sooner.
She doesn’t seem upset, but she’s also not smiling as she approaches.
“He’s not awake?” Kincaid asks, the hope draining from his voice.
“He’s awake,” she says, her eyes darting over the group.
We knew this was a possibility. The doctors had told Cerberus that there could be major neurological consequences of him having gone without oxygen for so long.
“Is it a stutter?” someone asks.
“Is he paralyzed?” another chimes in.
“He umm seems to have good motor skills. I’d say about what you’d expect after being comatose for a month. He’s…”
“If he’s giving you hell, he doesn’t mean it,” Stormy adds. “He’s a man’s man. He’s not going to be very happy about being in a bed with a tube in his di—penis.”
“He’s more confused than anything,” Sunshine says, her eyes locked on Rivet, one of the female team members of Cerberus. “He’s asking for you, and wondering why he’s here instead of Bahrain.”
