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“If you stopped helping me, this would go a whole lot faster.” Doc Summers chastises me when I get in her way again, but she comes through like a champ.
With the tube in my chest, a long tube snakes back to the wall, where it attaches to a suction canister. That suction drains the blood from my chest and allows my lung to heal.
What that means is, I’m tied to the wall by that tubing, like a leash keeping me in place. Doc Summers disconnects me from the wall and, with the help of her medics, wheels me and my hospital bed into a larger room. It’s not a patient room. It’s more of a general procedure area.
“You know,” Doc Summers says, “we could’ve just had you join virtually.”
She’s right about that. We could do this virtually—patch me into the meeting held in the Guardian building—but Doc Summers gets me. She gets what it means to be a Guardian.
“It’s not the same.” I’m in a grumpy mood, tired of others telling me what I can, and can’t, do.
“I know, and that’s why I don’t mind making this work.” She backs my bed up against the wall, then bends down to disconnect my chest tube from portable suction and connects it back to the suction coming from the wall. “Besides, it gives Mitzy a chance to mobilize her team and test their mobile setup.”
“I thought she kind of jumped on the chance too easily.” Talking makes me cough, and coughing hurts like a motherfucker when you’ve got a piece of plastic shoved between your ribs.
But pain is good.
Pain is life.
Pain reminds you that you’re still alive and have something to live for.
Still weak post-op, coughing leaves me breathless. I’m getting stronger, however. Some of my exhaustion fades. Most likely, because they pumped me full of blood after what I poured all over the highway.
“You okay?” Doc Summers pauses and gives me a once-over. Before I can complain, she sticks her stethoscope in her ears and places the cold metal of the diaphragm on my chest.
“Take a breath.”
“Doc, do we need to do this now?” People are looking at me and I hate feeling helpless.
“Deep breaths.” She doesn’t put up with my shit and waits with infinite patience for me to comply.
I take in a shallow breath but wind up coughing instead. Splinting against the pain, I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself,It’s just a flesh wound.Somehow, that seems to help.
A little.
“Here.” She shoves an inspirometer into my hand. “Keep up with your exercises.”
Technically called an incentive spirometer, the device measures the volume of the air inhaled during a breath. It has three plastic balls in three successive chambers. The harder and deeper I breathe, the more balls pop to the top of the chamber. I’m supposed to do that and keep them there as I strengthen my breath.
So far, I can lift only two balls, but I can’t keep them up there. Doc Summers knows this, and it’s a not-so-gentle reminder of how severe the bullet to my chest was.
“Use it. If you don’t, there’s no way I’m letting you out of this bed for a week.” Her tone tells me this is where she draws a line in the sand.
“Come on, Doc…” I try to complain, but when Doc Summers is in doctor mode, she’s a ballbuster and takes none of our flack. “I’ll do it later.”
“Then I’ll let you out of bed—later.” She gives me one of her looks and I roll my eyes. There’s no arguing with her.
My gaze shifts to the room and those who fill it. Using the damn inspirometer makes me feel like an invalid, and I don’t like that one bit.
“Do it.” She props her hands on her hip, and although a diminutive woman, manages to stare me down until I place my lips on the device and inhale in a breath like a dutiful patient.
“How’re you holding up?” Booker saunters in with Brady. He pulls a stool beside my bed and takes a load off.
I keep breathing in, barely keeping two of the three balls in the air, and feel like an idiot. Out of breath, I lay the damn thing in my lap.
“Alive, thanks to you.”
“No problem, man.” Booker waves his hand like what he did was nothing.
