Chapter 3
Annalese
I wake up with the sun shining through the window, remembering very little of being in the emergency room. I remember them drawing blood, taking x-rays, and being wheeled into surgery at some point but that’s about all. What appears to be bright midday sun is shining through the window. The rays are warming my face, and it feels amazing, as long as I don’t open my eyes.
I grope blindly for the button to push to get a nurse.
A big, warm hand touches mine, putting the fob into my hand. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”
“The sun hurts my eyes,” I croak out, barely able to make words. I hear footsteps walking away and then the light on the other side of my eyelids dims. When my eyes flutter open, it’s to find the handsome biker pouring me some water.
When he brings the bent straw to my mouth, I sip over and over again and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I’m only thinking of my thirst when I should be wondering why this man is in my room.
“Is that better?” he asks quietly.
When I relax back onto my pillow and look up at him, I realize he’s wearing different clothing, not blood-stained like the last time I saw him. “Yes. Thanks.”
“Are you in any pain?” He looks so serious that it makes me wonder if he’s ever smiled a day in his life.
“No. How long have I been here?” Something tells me at least long enough for him to go home and get changed, so maybe overnight.
“You’ve been here seventeen days.”
I try to sit up because this isn’t making any sense. “What? How can that be.”
He presses me back gently and I let him. “Yeah, it’s been seventeen days. You were in a coma for eleven days and this is the third day you’ve woken up and we’ve had this conversation. They’ve already said that you’ll need to stay in the ICU for at least seventy-two hours after you stabilize.”
“I can almost remember a doctor telling me about all my injuries.”
“Yeah, about that,” he says. “You had a lot more injuries than I thought when I first pulled you out of that jeep. Do you want me to get one of the nurses in here to go through it with you?”
“No. Just tell me yourself. I need to know.” I hate the pleading sound of my own voice. It makes me feel vulnerable when I most want to be strong.
He gestures to a huge whiteboard on the wall in front of my bed. “I wrote it all down for you.” Touching his right arm with his left hand, he explains, “You probably already know that a tree branch smashed into your right arm.”
I squint trying to remember the details. “It was a small branch. It came through the passenger side window and jabbed into my arm.”
“Yeah, that was your most obvious injury when I gave you the once over. It actually broke your arm in two different places and wrenched your shoulder out of its socket. They had to put pins in to hold the bones together in order for them to heal properly.”
I look down and see that my entire arm is in a cast. “That’s doesn’t sound all that bad,” I say, trying to sound less freaked out than I am.
“Well, that’s not all. Your lung collapsed, your spleen was bruised, and you had internal bleeding.”
“Is that all?” I ask hopefully, because I really want that to be the full extent of my injuries.
Suddenly, the big biker gets cagy. “I believe you might want to talk to your doctor about the rest.”
I honestly don’t like the tone he’s using right now. “Do you know what’s going on?”
He gives me one succinct nod. “Yeah, but it’s pretty personal.”
I’m starting to panic a bit. “Just fucking tell me. Why are you playing games with me?”
He walks back to the whiteboard and jabs his finger at a string of words. I squint to see the words as he reads them to me. “Dr. Robinson said you had a traumatic rupture of your left ovary due to blunt force abdominal trauma.” Glancing over his shoulder at me, he adds, “You had a slow growing ovarian cyst that caused your ovary to rupture because of the violent nature of your crash. They couldn’t save it.”
My mouth opens and closes as the reality of his words swirl around in my mind. Just when I’m thinking that probably means I’ll never have kids, he clarifies. “Since your remaining ovary is connected to a fallopian tube, it’s possible for you to still get pregnant.”
I feel numb at this moment. “I understand why you wanted me to talk to a nurse.” My chest aches from raw emotions, rather than physical injury. Strange how easily I can tell the difference between the two. He gives me a few minutes to come to grips with what he’s told me.
When I look up, he’s quietly observing me, probably waiting for the freak out he’s sure will come. Instead, I ask, “Anything else I should know about?”
“Yeah, the device I put into your hand has a button. It’s attached to a morphine pump. Push the button when you feel the pain coming on. It’ll dispense a microdose of morphine to control your pain. It’s got a timer on it, so there is no way you can dispense more than your approved dose.”
“Jesus, I’m really messed up, aren’t I?”
“Many of your injuries have healed in the last seventeen days. The doctors are convinced you’ll recover quickly.”
I roll my eyes. “They probably said it in doctor speak.”
A slight smile ghosts over his face. “You’re right. They said your prognosis was good.”
I lift up my hand and stare at the fob, carefully removing my thumb from the button. To be honest, I’m not feeling so great. My body aches like it does when I spend too much time in bed. There is also a dull throbbing in my arm, and I’ll bet that if I moved around, I would find I need to stretch my muscles out.
Haze walks over and stands looking down at me with a worried expression on his face. This man is seriously handsome with his shoulder length, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a square jawline. I try not to gape at him because now is not the time.
Instead, I ask, “Why are you still here after seventeen days? And why are the medical staff sharing all my personal medical information with you?”
His expression shifts into an uncertain one. “We found a partially completed application in your purse. It had your name on it, which we already know because you came to talk to us about a job. Since there was no other identifying information like a driver’s license or social security card, we didn’t have much to go on when it came to notifying your next of kin. Our club’s IT guy tried to locate your family but came up empty handed. Since you got injured on our watch, I convinced my club that we should stick by your side and make sure you’re okay.”
I tilt my head, trying to work out why he was doing this for me. His club isn’t responsible for my injuries. Those other bikers who set up the roadblock that panicked the other drivers were the reason I got injured. Still, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“The hospital shouldn’t have been sharing my healthcare information with you.”
He reaches up one hand to scratch behind his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Our club attorney might have insisted that as your fiancé, I’m legally your next of kin.”
Completely baffled, I stammer, “Say what now?”
“I didn’t want you lying here all alone with no one to advocate for you. So, I fibbed a little. Didn’t think you would mind. Especially, since your doctors wanted to keep you in a medically induced coma even after you started waking up. Lucky for you I was here to stop them.”
“Wait. Explain more about that.” To say I’m shocked would be an understatement. Who in the hell wants to be intentionally put into a coma? Not this girl, that’s for damn sure.
He frowns as he recounts what happened. “To be honest, there was a bit of disagreement between your attending physician, the anesthesiologist, the orthopedic surgeon, and the neurologist tasked with treating what they believed to be a traumatic brain injury. The neurologist and anesthesiologist were worried that a medically induced coma following an eleven-day trauma-induced coma might make waking you up more difficult. The others believed that giving your brain and organs a prolonged opportunity to recover, would give you the best chance of living a normal life.”
A feeling of dread begins to creep forward from the back of my mind. To be honest, the idea of not being able to wake up from a coma fills me with naked fear. “So, I was in coma for eleven days and even though they decided not to intentionally keep me in a comatose state, it still took me another six days to wake up on my own?”
“Not exactly,” he says with a frown. “Like I said you’ve been waking up sporadically and it’s taking your brain a few days to jump start. This is day seventeen, the first day you’ve really been alert and able to hold onto information. This is the longest we’ve spoken for.”
Still trying to get my head around the whole situation, I ask, “What was the deciding factor that kept them from keeping me under intentionally?” I ask quietly.
He sighs, looking all kinds of conflicted. “As your nearest kin, they invited me to their treatment team meeting. My gut told me that since the neurologist was most knowledgeable about the innerworkings of the human brain and the anesthesiologist was an expert in putting patients under and bringing them back out again, their opinions should carry the most weight. I thought it best to err on the side of caution. I hung around to make sure they stayed on their toes.”
He glances away, looking somewhat embarrassed before adding, “I might as well tell you that most of the hospital staff hate me. I’ve been accused of micromanaging your care more than once.”
Some of the anxiety in my chest loosens as I listen to the thoughtful approach he took making life and death decisions on my behalf. A chill creeps up as I realize that my actual fiancé, or rather my ex-fiancé, probably wouldn’t have been so cautious. Most certainly my stepbrother would have just left the medical team to duke it out. God knows, my mom would have been a basket case trying to decide what to do and truly devastated by not being able to come to the hospital to be with me. It was best that this big biker with a heart of gold stepped up for me. But I still didn’t quite understand why.
“Tell me one more time, why you decided to create a farce in order to be involved in my care.”
He steps closer to my bed, looming over me. Instead of feeling threatened, his close presence makes me feel warm and safe. I feel myself blushing under his careful gaze. A little voice in the back of my mind is worried that this brain injury of mine might be messing with my ability to logic my way through this situation.
Haze reaches out to untangle my IV tube from around my arm before stepping back. His big hands are warm and gentle. I like his touch way more than I should. This man’s presence affects me in ways I can’t fully understand.
Haze explains, “My club decided that because you got hurt due to a conflict between us and another club, that we were obligated to make sure you got the best care possible. One of our club members is an older physician with admitting privileges in this hospital. He worked with the financial office to get your treatment covered under a charity program for the indigent. It’ll be activated once you prove that you don’t have health insurance and meet the financial requirements.”
I swallowed thickly, seriously touched by their dedication to doing the right thing. “That’s really generous. Please thank your club brothers for me.”
He gestures to a side table that was overflowing with gift bags, flowers, and balloons. “The woman who arranged your interview with the club is Mel. She’s been to visit several times and brings one of the old ladies with her each time. They’ve loaded you down with snacks, books, and other distractions to make your stay more bearable.”
I find myself tearing up, because no one has been this nice to me in a very long time. “I appreciate everything your club has done on my behalf. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay their kindness. Maybe if the job’s still open, I could work off my debt once I’m back on my feet?”
“That’s not necessary. In fact, making you work to pay off a debt that doesn’t exist in our minds, might be taken as an insult by most of my club brothers.” He hesitates for a moment before speaking again. “There is one more thing you should be aware of. Your medical team thinks your recovery is going to be intense and prolonged. They want you in a full-time rehab program for the next four to six weeks.”
I freeze as a feeling of dread settles in my stomach. “I’m not sure that’s going to be possible.” The only rehab program like that within a hundred miles is the one my mom is in. While it would be amazing to be with her, if I go there, my ex will know immediately because my stepbrother is on her contact list. I can’t chance running into Trevor. Also, and more importantly, there’s no way on earth I could afford the care. So I say, “I won’t go to the Rialto Physical Rehabilitation Center.”
A shocked expression jumps onto his face so briefly that I think I might have imagined it. Once it’s gone, he tells me, “That wasn’t the plan. The veteran’s administration opened a rehab center here in Las Salinas. It was a rural healthcare pilot project using a combination of federal, state, and private funding. They reserve fifteen percent of their open slots at any given time for local members of the community. One of our old ladies is a nurse who transferred there when it first opened. We think that because of your level of need, they might take you in.”
I can feel myself becoming emotional. “I’m unemployed and don’t have health insurance anymore. I was on my father’s plan, but he passed away a few months ago.”
“Then I guess you might qualify to get both your hospital stay and rehab paid for. Don’t feel bad about accepting charity. Those programs were created for people in need after all.”
When I nod a sharp jolt of pain shoots down my neck. I automatically push the button on the fob that’s still locked in my grip. Just then the nurse walks in. Her face lights up and she rushes over to me.
“You’re awake again, I see. That’s wonderful. How do you feel this time around?”
As I answer her, my new protector melts into the background. I find myself hoping that he doesn’t leave. My life has been chaotic as of late, and this man makes me feel safe.