Chapter 28 Twenty-Seven
The first thing I registered was pain.
It was duller than I expected, throbbing hot and steady behind a wall of gauze bandages. The left side of my face was covered with them.
I tried to open my eyes, but only one responded. That tracked. The other side of my face was covered in bandages, after all.
I was in some sort of a residential bedroom with a popcorn textured ceiling. The air smelled like antiseptic and wood smoke.
Am I still in Alaska? The last thing I remembered was shooting at Constantine's eagle and it diving for my face.
I tried to speak, but my throat was dry, so I wound up turning my head. Lorenzo sat in a worn armchair beside me, head back, mouth open, snoring gently. I lifted my hand, or tried to. The damn thing felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Must've been whatever pain meds they had me on.
"Lorenzo?" His name came out as a hoarse whisper.
Lorenzo jerked awake suddenly. For a second his eyes were unfocused, wild, before they locked on my face. "Rafael! You're awake!"
He scrambled out of the chair and reached to take my hand.
"Where are we?" I asked. "How long was I out?" Neither was the real question I wanted to ask, but whether I still had a left eye could wait.
"Seattle. Diego's aunt Florica has a safe house here. Andrei's been treating you. It's been three days. I wasn't…" He paused and swallowed. "I wasn't sure you were going to make it."
"How bad is it?"
Lorenzo's jaw tightened. "You're alive. That's what matters."
"Lorenzo."
"You lost a lot of blood. Andrei had to give you transfusions. But you're stable now, and the infection risk is minimal if we keep the wound clean—"
"Stop." I squeezed his hand, or tried to. My grip was pathetically weak. "How bad is the eye?"
He squirmed and looked away.
"Tell me," I said. "Don't try to soften it."
Lorenzo exhaled slowly. "Augustus's talon caught you across the left side of your face. It tore through the eyelid and destroyed the eye itself. Andrei did what he could, but there was too much damage to the socket and the surrounding tissue. He had to remove what was left."
I stared at him and left the words hanging between us. Gone. My eye was completely gone.
I waited for the despair to hit, the rage or the grief or whatever I was supposed to experience when learning I'd lost a piece of myself. Instead, I just lay there, breathing through the dull throb in my skull, and thought about the snow.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well," I said, "it could've been worse."
Lorenzo blinked. "What?"
"I'm alive. You're alive. The kids are safe, right?"
He swallowed and nodded. "They're on their way to a ranch in Montana. Well, except for Eight. Jasper won't let her out of his sight, and Diego insisted she stay with them. They've got this weird two men and a baby thing going on… Except, you know… She's like nine."
He paused and chewed on his bottom lip, and irritation flared in my chest. "Don't bite your lip." That's my job, I thought, but didn't say it out loud.
Lorenzo sighed. "You're in shock."
"No." I started to shake my head but immediately regretted it. "I drew that eagle away from you and the kids on purpose, Lorenzo. I knew this might be the outcome. This, or worse."
His expression hardened. "You almost died."
"But I didn't." The words came out slowly, steadily, and a little slurred from the pain medication that was still wearing off. "God could have taken me in that moment. He didn't. That means there's still work to do."
Lorenzo opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, then closed it again. His thumb traced small circles on the back of my hand, and I let him have the contact. He needed it more than I did right now.
My bladder chose that moment to make itself known. Three days unconscious meant three days of IV fluids, and my body was ready to complain about it.
"I need to piss," I said.
Lorenzo blinked, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. "Right. Yeah. Let me help you up."
"I can manage."
"Rafael."
I tried to push myself up on my elbows. My arms shook, and I made it about three inches before my strength gave out. I collapsed back against the pillows, breathing hard.
"Okay," I admitted. "Maybe I need some help."
Lorenzo slid an arm under my shoulders and helped me sit up slowly. The room tilted, and I had to close my eye and breathe through the wave of dizziness. When I opened it again, the world had mostly stopped spinning.
"Easy," Lorenzo murmured. He moved around to my side and got me standing, taking most of my weight. My legs were about as useful as wet communion wafers.
The bathroom was only ten feet away, but it might as well have been a mile. Every step was a negotiation between my body and my will, and my body was losing. By the time we made it to the doorway, I was sweating and my breath came in short gasps.
"I've got it from here," I said when we reached the toilet.
"You sure?"
"I can piss by myself, Lorenzo."
He hesitated, then stepped back. "I'll be right outside."
I managed that part on my own, at least. Small mercies. When I was done, I gripped the sink and stared at the faucet, gathering my strength for the next challenge.
Looking into the mirror.
I lifted my head slowly and took in my reflection.
The bandages covered the entire left side of my face, wrapped around my head in layers of white gauze. Rust-colored stains had seeped through in places. A line of stitches ran down my right cheek where Augustus's talon had caught me, and my right eye was bloodshot and bruised underneath.
I looked like I'd gone three rounds with death and barely came out standing.
The bandages would come off, eventually. The stitches would heal. But underneath all that gauze, there was just an empty socket and scar tissue.
I studied my reflection, turning my head slightly to see the full extent of the damage. The movement sent a spike of pain through my temple, but I ignored it.
"Rafael?" Lorenzo's voice came through the door. "You okay?"
"Fine," I called back. "Just looking."
The door opened a crack. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah."
Lorenzo slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He stood there awkwardly, like he wasn't sure what to do with his hands, before finally leaning against the wall.
"You know," I said, still studying my reflection, "I once met a priest in Dublin who had a glass eye.
Father McCarthy. Lost his eye in a car accident back in the seventies.
" I turned away from the mirror to look at Lorenzo properly.
"He told me that if you can't laugh at what God takes from you, you'll spend your whole life bitter about it. "
Lorenzo was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was soft. "You planning to start laughing about it?"
"Maybe not yet. But I'm not going to be bitter either." I pushed off from the sink, swaying slightly. Lorenzo moved forward instinctively to steady me, but I waved him off. "I need to get cleaned up. I smell like death."
I gestured toward the tub. "Think you can help me with the bandages? I don't want to get them wet."
Lorenzo nodded and moved closer, checking to make sure the gauze was secure.
He helped me undress and get in the deep clawfoot tub and turned on the water, testing the temperature before plugging the drain. It was one of the biggest cast iron tubs I'd ever seen in my life, probably large enough to hold a family of four.
Lorenzo stripped off his shirt and jeans to join me, washcloth in hand. He soaked it in the water and wrung it out, then started gently washing my shoulders.
No, gently wasn't the right word. Reverently, like Mary of Bethany had washed Christ's feet with her own hair. He wasn't using his hair or kneeling, or doing anything particularly reverent, but something about his touch brought that old story to mind.
I don't deserve this, came that familiar voice of shame in the back of my mind.
I tried to swallow the tightness in my throat.
That voice was wrong, wasn't it? Maybe. I didn't know if I deserved Lorenzo's devotion, or to be worshiped, but I didn't deserve pain and guilt and all the things the Church had heaped upon me and called holy.
This was holier than a thousand prayers for forgiveness, than years of fasting.
Holier than the holes Constantine had driven into my palms as if I were Christ himself.
I'd never felt holy then, but with Lorenzo…
It felt right and good.
"When the bandages come off," I said quietly, "maybe I should get an eyepatch."
Lorenzo's mouth curved into a small smile. "You'd look hot with an eyepatch."
I dropped my arm back into the water. "You think so?"
"Yeah." He moved the washcloth to my other arm, his fingers brushing against my skin. "Like a darker, hotter Aemond Targaryn from that show with the dragons. Well, a much older version of him, anyway."
I splashed some water at him. "I'm not that old."
Lorenzo's smile widened, and before I could say anything else, he leaned forward and kissed me.
The pressure of his lips against mine pulled at the stitches on my cheek, sending a spike of agony through the swollen tissue around the bandages. I gasped against his mouth, and he jerked back.
"Shit. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking—"
"Don't stop," I said and grabbed him before he could escape. "Just don't kiss my face."
He stared at me for a second, water dripping from his hair, his pupils blown wide. "Rafael—"
"I want you, Lorenzo. I almost died on that tundra. I don't want to waste time being careful or pretending this doesn't matter."
Lorenzo's throat worked as he swallowed. Then he moved closer, crowding into my space, and pressed his lips to the right side of my neck. The kiss was gentle at first, but when I tilted my head to give him better access, he opened his mouth against my skin and sucked. Hard.