Beneath Us, Solid Ground (Bad Beginnings #2)

1. MAX

MAX

Dying, in retrospect, is not the best way to start the day.

Nevertheless, I felt my life slipping away as I lay on the pavement, gasping.

It didn’t feel like much, come to think of it.

Just warmth crawling up my legs, then my hips, then higher.

Did I have regrets? Yep. Starting with having stepped into the road this morning with my coffee cup in one hand and my phone in the other. That hadn’t been my brightest moment.

My arms were numb. Huh.

“—ambulance!” a male voice was saying somewhere off to the side. “Right now! I don’t know how long pressure can hold it at bay, and—”

I tuned back out and re-focused on the warmth suffusing my body. I mean, I didn’t want to die, it definitely hadn’t been in my plans and it sure ruined the hell out of my morning, but if I was going to, this was pretty nice. Just warm and numb and drifting. I let my eyes flutter closed.

“Oh, no you don’t!” the voice said, closer to me this time.

“Eyes open, right now.” There was authority in that voice, and I couldn’t help obeying.

I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the speaker.

I got an impression of shaggy blond hair and pale skin, but my eyes wouldn’t focus any farther than that.

“-coming,” the man was saying when my focus sharpened again.

“Just stay with me. They’ll get you fixed up. ”

“S’ok,” I slurred through nerveless lips, closing my eyes again. I was so tired all of a sudden. And cold. Why was I cold? That was much worse than the previous warmth. I shivered.

“He’s in shock. Too much blood loss. Does anyone have a blanket in their car?

” he snapped, and I jumped back to reality with a jerk, startled by the volume.

“Good boy,” he told me when my eyes shot open reflexively.

A hand reached out to pet my hair. The hand was so warm I couldn’t help but snuggle into it.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware that my left leg was throbbing and my right was sending stabbing pains up from calf to thigh. I just didn’t care too much. Too busy shivering. Too busy trying to burrow closer into the stranger for warmth.

A soft weight came down over me, warming me slightly, though a cold spot remained on the side of my left leg. I tried to look down to see why—was someone holding an ice cube to that spot?—but couldn’t lift my head.

Tires screeched on pavement. Footsteps. I closed my eyes again. “Come on, buddy,” said my new friend. “Stay with me. The ambulance is here. Just stay with me a little longer.” He was so kind. So warm. So I forced my eyes open again, for him.

I squinted, trying to focus better so I could see him.

If I could just see him...but nothing. Still just a yellow-topped blur of white.

I thumped my fist on the ground in frustration, or at least I thought I did, but there was no sensation of movement, so maybe I didn’t.

“Who?” I managed to get out, drawing the last vowel out into almost a moan.

“My name is Lucas,” he told me, touching my hair again, and I tried to smile as I rasped out my name in return, but then the blanket was yanked off me and the cold air descended with the force of a hammer.

I tried to reach out to bring it back, but I was being lifted all of a sudden, flying through the air and then hitting something soft with a thump that rattled my bones, or at least what I could feel of them.

For a few seconds, my calf was the only part of me that was warm, instead of the only part that was cold, and then something was yanked around it, painfully tight, and not only was it cold again, but it was screaming.

I was screaming, hoarse though it was in my dry throat.

“Jesus!” said my mysterious companion. “Go easy on him!”

Nobody replied to him, and suddenly I was moving, rolling, then jerking up, then thudding down again. I groaned and closed my eyes, half-expecting my friend to scold me into opening them again, but nobody spoke, so I kept them closed.

And then I drifted away, still thinking about how dying hadn’t been in my plan for the day.

***

As it turned out, I didn’t die. I woke up in a hospital room.

I knew it was a hospital room because it was painfully bright and smelled like disinfectant, which my hotel room definitely had not.

Why was I in a hospital? Was I sick? I took stock of my body, expecting to feel the rattle in my lungs that signaled I had pneumonia, like the other time I’d ended up in the hospital, but breathing was easy and painless.

Everything was painless, actually. I felt like I was floating.

Oh. They’d given me some of the good medicine, then.

Were still giving me the good medication, going by the thick IV loaded into my forearm, a dangling button nearby.

That made it more difficult to detect why I was here.

I tried again to query my body parts and found most of them present and accounted for, if heavy.

My legs felt weird and miles away, mutedly throbbing on one side, the other prickling like it was still asleep.

I struggled to sit all the way up from where the bed had my head propped at a twenty degree angle, but dizziness took me.

I couldn’t manage it. God, this sucked. What was going on?

Footsteps tapped against what must have been tile flooring and approached me. “Good evening, Mr. Dion. I’m Ibrahim Addo, one of the trauma PAs.”

I managed a weak grunt of greeting, my throat sore and dry, and peeled my eyes open again to find a tall, dark-skinned man in scrubs studying me.

When he saw me looking at him, he offered me a slight, reassuring smile and then turned to look at the bank of monitors I was hooked up to.

“You’re at UCSF. You had surgery yesterday.

You’ve been in and out since then, mostly asleep,” he told me, glancing at the monitor and making a note on his tablet. “Can you squeeze my hand for me?”

I wouldn’t be winning any arm wrestling contests, but I managed that. He nodded and wrote again. “On a scale of zero to ten, what’s your pain right now?”

I considered that for a few seconds. “Heavy,” I tried to say, because it made sense to me even if it wouldn’t have to him, but it came out as a broken rasp.

The PA picked up something from a bedside table, then brought a straw to my lips.

“Your throat’s going to be sore. You had a breathing tube in. Small sips.”

I sucked greedily, swallowing down the cool water with relief, but he pulled it away again. “Don’t!” I said, and my voice was clearer now.

“We’ll go slow,” said the man. “Anesthesia can upset your stomach for a while after, and you’re getting fluids in your IV.”

“Don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, Mr. Dion?”

“Why...here?” I scratched out.

He nodded his understanding. “You were in an accident. You were brought in by ambulance, and you’ve had surgery. Your condition is stable, and you’re safe.”

I thought hard about that. I remembered waking up in my hotel bed and jerking off.

I remembered showering and dressing and leaving the hotel on my way to the office building where I was due to meet my new employer.

I remembered stopping for coffee, and then checking my phone and...

nothing. Nothing after that. I frowned, fighting the fog.

“What happened?” My voice was starting to even out, along with my racing thoughts.

“You were struck by a car while crossing the street,” he said.

So definitely not another bout of pneumonia. That made for...well, I wasn’t going to say it was a nice change, but at least it was a change. “Oh,” I rasped. “But...I’m...ok?”

“You’re stable, and your vital signs look good.”

His expression was serious, steady. Neutral. Professional. Uh-oh. Nothing good came with that face.

“The attending surgeon will come by later today to go over the details and answer any questions you have. You had severe injuries to both of your legs. Your right leg was badly fractured. The orthopedic team placed a titanium rod to stabilize the bone.” A brief pause, and I could tell he was watching me for…

something. “Your left lower leg was too extensively damaged to repair. To control the injury and prevent further complications, the surgical team had to amputate below the knee.”

I was speechless. They’d taken my leg? I lost a leg?

I...my leg was gone? Under the knee? How could my leg be gone?

It was part of my body! Body parts didn’t just come off!

Weren’t the doctors supposed to make me better, not throw up their hands and chop off parts of me?

“What the fuck?” I finally managed to say.

He took that without flinching or any apparent surprise.

“I understand this is overwhelming. The damage to your lower leg was not survivable, so amputation was necessary to save your life. I know losing a limb is traumatic no matter what, but please know that our surgeons are the best and I trust their judgment. If they said it needed to be done, it needed to be done.”

He paused and let out a little breath that might have been a sigh.

“Right now, your job is to rest and recover. We’ll take this step by step.

In addition to your surgeon, others on your care team will do rounds today.

Our social worker will stop to discuss the accident and figure out how to contact your family or other emergency contact.

And as I mentioned, the surgeon will go over everything in detail.

“Your personal belongings were brought in with you. Your phone is on the bedside table. The screen is cracked, but it appears functional. I’d recommend waiting until you’re feeling a little clearer before using it.”

“I…” Well, uh, at least my phone had survived? I laughed at the irony. My phone had survived, but my leg hadn’t. Well, fuck. Guess that fancy case had been worth it. I laughed again at the thought.