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As he succumbed to the sandman, he thought he heard a voice say his name. Not just any voice, but Talia’s. He wanted to snort, but couldn’t muster the energy. He knew he was delusional. Talia wouldnotbe in the studio with him after she’d shut him down so righteously the evening before.No.He needed to be the one to make the first move to clear up the misunderstanding between them.
Make a move? That was putting it mildly. He had some serious groveling to do to patch things up. He slipped into dreamworld, visions of Talia’s beautiful blue eyes allowing him to drift happily away.
Fleet woke again, sometime later, and realizing he was screwed if he didn’t wake the hell up and get some work accomplished, concentrated hard on opening his eyes. With no success.
What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Sure, the headache that had been giving him fitful nights’ sleep was full on blasting away at the inside of his cranium, but since when did he just conk out with all his equipment still humming…
At least, he thought it was his equipment… Until he was sure it wasn’t.
Fleet, panicking a bit now, struggled to get his lids to budge, with no success. But as he continued working on it, he got the impression that a person was hovering above him.
“Fleet. Can you hear me?”
There it was again. Talia’s voice. He had to be dreaming. He remembered thinking he heard it a few…minutes? Hours, earlier? And now it was haunting him again.Cripes.If the headaches didn’t do him in, his imagination surely would. Way to go, fantasizing that the beautiful woman he wanted to get to know would actually be hanging around his sorry self.
“Fleet, honey. Open your eyes,” the Talia-voice said again.
Ah, hell.How could he say no to those dulcet tones? And what did he have to lose, anyway? Sure, the warmth he was feeling from the phantom-voice would dissipate as soon as he let reality back in, but there was still the need to return to his actual life. He had a shitload of work to do.
With a major effort, Fleet cracked one lid, then the other.
Huh.Not what he expected.
Everything was blurry. And the ambient light…hurt. He shuttered up his orbs again, but apparently his struggles had been witnessed.
“Oh my God! You’re awake!” The female who was talking—and it sure as shit sounded like Talia—reached across his body for something. “I’m getting the nurse,” the fuzzy figure yelped excitedly.
Nurse? Was he…in the hospital?
More awareness began to seep in, and he let himself reach beyond the preconceived notions he’d had that the noises were in his studio, and…
Yeah. Duh.Those were one-hundred percent medical sounds. And the antiseptic smell? Hospital. Abso-fucking-lutely. His fully functioning olfactory senses told him the odor was nothing like the slightly chemical tang of his acoustic panels.
Fleet attempted to unglue his lips.
“Mmmphri?” he managed.No.That didn’t come out like anything. He wanted to laugh. Since when had he been unable to articulate? He needed to try again.
“Where…” He paused. Man, it had been a lot of work getting that one word out.
“In the hospital,” came the rapid answer.
Well at least whoever hovered was able to make sense of what he wanted to know.
The hospital, huh? So he’d been correct.Shit.When and how had that happened? He remembered abandoning his board for some fresh air, heading out to his favorite spot to do some bouldering. Then…
He must have fallen.Dammit.He recalled feeling woozy, and…he thought he remembered puking before…nothing.
“Fall?” he asked, still apparently and frustratingly stuck in his monosyllabic state.
“Yes, Fleet. You fell. But it was because of…” the explanation inexplicably trailed off, but… He could still swear that was Talia’s voice. “I should let the doctor explain.” The person sighed with relief. “Here’s the nurse, now.”
“He just woke up,” his watcher explained. “He’s been in and out over the past hour, but this time he opened his eyes for real, and he spoke. That’s good news, right?”
Fleet digested the words and berated himself even more. Putting two and two together, he thought he understood what had happened. In the fall he’d taken that had just been confirmed, he must have suffered a head injury; a concussion most likely. Oddly, his first, in a sport that lent its share of TBI’s to participants.
That had to be why he was so muddled, and why it was clearly a good sign to the unknown speaker that he’d been able to pull two words out of his ass. He needed to reassure her, and the nurse, that despite his inability to articulate, he was totally with it, inside his cranial vault.
He attempted to raise his right hand because it might be easier than trying to talk again, but in his foray upward, he bumped into something soft. Even in his gummy-headed state, he knew a breast when he touched one. His male instinct was to root for a nipple, but before he could attempt it, his fingers were gently lowered as someone shifted their touch to take his pulse.
