Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CAITLIN
“What do you mean I can’t leave?” I demand, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed and sucking in a breath as pain shoots through my abdomen.
The look the recovery room nurse gives me is a mix between I told you so and barely veiled impatience.
“I’m sure the scheduler explained this to you on the phone when she called yesterday to confirm your laparoscopic excision, and I know the admitting nurse explained it to you again this morning.
You just woke up from general anesthesia, which means you need someone to drive you home.
” She looks pointedly at the empty visitor’s chair.
“Do you have someone to drive you home?”
I roll my eyes, feeling my frustration rise along with the ache in my belly, but I ignore that in service of the greater good.
The greater good being getting the fuck out of this hospital, preferably without any member of my family ever knowing I was here.
“Of course I have someone to drive me home. Silicon Valley and a whole bunch of dickhead dude-bros using their billionaire status to compensate for the fact that they were the dorks who got shoved into lockers as kids have made it so everyone always has someone to drive them home. I have no fewer than three apps on my phone that can get me a ride with two clicks and in two minutes or less. If you hand me my phone, I’ll do that so I can get out of here. ”
“It has to be someone you know.” The nurse speaks slowly, like she’s explaining this to a child.
And yeah, I can kind of see how my attitude is giving less full-grown adult and more petulant toddler, but it’s almost noon and I haven’t have anything to eat or drink since ten last night and I just had a potentially life-altering surgery and right now all I have to show for it is a gnawing ache in my abdomen and Nurse Ratched holding me hostage in a bed with itchy sheets.
“You need someone you trust who can make sure you get home safely. When you were admitted this morning, you said…” She glances at the computer attached to the wall on some kind of mounted workstation thing and lets out an impatient huff.
“Hannah Evans was coming to pick you up. I assume the admitting nurse isn’t a romance reader and wasn’t aware you were giving her the name of one of the most famous authors in the country as your ride home instead of an actual friend or family member.
I’m sure Hannah Evans would be just delighted to drop all her very important authoring in Boston to come collect a fan from a Pittsburgh hospital. ”
With the nurse’s voice dripping in sarcasm and the pain in my stomach moving from dull ache to sharp and searing, this probably isn’t the moment to tell her Hannah Evans actually is a family member and would definitely be delighted to drop everything to pick me up from the hospital if it wasn’t for the whole Boston to Pittsburgh thing.
And also if I had told her. Or anyone, for that matter.
I definitely should have bribed a rideshare driver.
But I didn’t, and that was poor planning on my part.
Instead, I got myself up and to the hospital at five thirty in the morning and laid alone in this bed until they wheeled me into surgery.
I talked to my doctor, who assured me everything would be fine and in a few weeks I would have the answers I’ve been waiting for, an anesthesiologist who asked me three separate times when I last ate or drank and, for some reason, whether I have any loose teeth, and a surgical nurse who looked at that empty chair and then at me with pity in her eyes, promising to stay with me the whole time.
If I was in the habit of admitting hard truths to myself, I would say it was the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. That I’ve regretted not telling my family about the surgery no fewer than ten times since my alarm went off long before the sun came up. Regretted not telling Drew.
Drew.
My abused stomach lurches as his face swims into my brain.
I definitely should have told Drew.
But with four stitched-up holes in my stomach, a mouth that feels like I’ve been walking in the desert for thirty years without a drop of water, orders not to shower until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and the ugliest gray socks imaginable on my feet, I’m not really in a truth telling mood.
“Listen…” I glance down at the nurse’s hospital badge.
“Kelly,” I say, finally managing to sit up.
I regret it immediately—the pain is way worse this way—but I manage to stay upright through sheer force of will.
“I’m a grown-ass adult. A fucking lawyer, for god’s sake.
I can handle getting myself into a rideshare and making sure that rideshare gets me to my house that is a mere four miles from this hospital.
I’ll even share my location if it means that much to you.
Call you when I get home. Besides, I just got some cameras stuck in my stomach for a while.
It’s not like they hacked off my leg or something like that. I’m…”
“Fine, I know,” the nurse finishes for me.
“I’m sure the fact that you can barely sit up right now without your face turning as white as those sheets you’re lying on means you are so completely fine and definitely not in any pain at all.
But the fact remains that hospital policy states I cannot permit you to walk out of those doors until I lay eyes on the person who is going to make sure you get home safely.
It’s for liability reasons. I’m sure a…fucking lawyer such as yourself can understand that. ”
Touché, Kelly. Tou-fucking-ché.
She smirks at me and I huff out a laugh that dies immediately when a bolt of pain lances through my abdomen.
“Shit,” I mutter, hunching my shoulders against the sensation.
“Indeed,” the nurse says, nodding her head and coming over to sit on the edge of my bed.
“It’s going to be that way for a few days, Caitlin.
You’ll be sore and tired, and it’ll be nice to have someone to help you out.
Listen,” she says, laying a hand over mine.
“I’ve been doing this for a while now. I can tell the difference between the patients who really don’t have anyone and the patients who have a lot of someones but don’t want to inconvenience them, or burden them with your pain. ”
She gives me a pointed look, and the guilt I’ve been studiously ignoring for not telling my people what’s going on comes roaring back to life. “Direct hit there, Kelly.”
She nods. “I know. I never miss. Which means I also know all those someones in your life probably have no idea you’re here right now.”
I close my eyes, sucking in a breath and wondering how the fuck I got here.
Not in the physical way, but in the existential, I just had laparoscopic surgical tools digging around my insides to try to diagnose a serious issue I’ve had for fifteen years and not one single one of my friends or family members know about it way.
Exhaling slowly, I open my eyes, and when I mumble, “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I’m not just talking about the thing where moving into the hospital because I don’t want to call anyone to pick me up isn’t really an option.
Kelly reaches over and grabs my phone from the rolling table by the bed, handing it to me.
“Think of the person in your life who will ask the fewest questions. The one who will show up and be what you need right now. Today. Today you have very specific needs, and I suspect you have someone in your life who can meet them. Call that person. You can deal with everyone else another time.”
Drew.
His name comes back to me in an instant.
The man who researched sex for people with problem periods and made what could have been awkward and weird into one of the best nights of my life.
The best night of my life. And then four more nights just like that.
Four nights of homemade dinners and ice cream in bed.
Laughing in his kitchen or mine. Movies and talking and more orgasms than I could possibly count.
Connection, in a way I’ve never felt before.
Hot baths because he was worried I would be sore and nights sleeping with his arms around me and my head on his chest in the place I’ve come to think of as mine.
Wondering why I always think I want to be alone because after the last few days, I only want to be with him.
Every beautiful, broken inch of him.
I used catching up on work before the week started as an excuse to stay home last night because I had the surgery this morning and didn’t know how to tell him when I already spent so much time not telling him, but I realize now I could have. I should have.
I can call Drew.
I’ll be safe with him.
“Make the call,” Kelly says gently, patting my hand. “I’ll step out. And Caitlin?”
“Yeah?” I say, looking up from the dark phone screen I’ve been staring at while my mind raced.
“It’s okay to let people in. The right people won’t let you down.”
Kelly steps out, and I keep my gaze fixed on the curtain she slides shut behind her, turning her words around in my brain.
I have so many people who won’t let me down.
I know that. And maybe it’s time to start figuring out how to let them in too.
I think, once my stomach stops hurting like I’m being repeatedly stabbed with knives, I’m going to start making some different choices.
But first thing’s first.
I need to get the fuck out of his hospital.
Picking up my phone, I unlock the screen and find Drew’s contact, pressing the green button to make the call.