22. Cord
22
CORD
“ Y ou’re an asshole,” said my brother Buck.
“Yeah? Fuck off.”
“I think I liked you better when you couldn’t talk.”
“You know where the door is, dickhead. Go home.”
I’d been in the hospital for thirty-six days, and while I’d moved from the ICU to a regular room, then to the rehab center, the beds were the same as was the decor. I was sick of being here and sick of my body not being the way it was before some sonuvabitch tried to kill me and I almost froze to death.
The doctor said my extreme mood swings were partially due to the medication I still needed to take and might have to for the rest of my life, combined with the length of my hospital stay and the active lifestyle I’d led before my “injury.” Not that I’d asked. Buck had.
Just hearing someone use the word injury set me off. I wasn’t injured . I’d survived an attempted murder, and just barely, at that .
Today, though, I was going home, but not to Colorado. I was headed back to the cottage at the Lilacs.
Buck said he’d done everything he could to get Six-pack to allow me to leave New York State, but in the end, the attorney had said that, unless it was medically necessary for me to be at a hospital or other facility in Colorado, I had to stay where I was. Given Crested Butte didn’t have more than urgent care and the medical center in Gunnison was nowhere near as good as this one, Six-pack had refused. Actually, he said the trustee had. Whoever that motherfucker was.
“Why are you here anyway?” I barked at Buck.
“It was my turn,” he snapped in response.
“I don’t need your help.”
His back was to me, but he turned around. “You do. You wanna know why?”
I folded my arms and stared at the wall.
“Because you’ve run everyone else but Juni and me off, and I can tell you, you keep treating her the way you have been, and she isn’t going to show up anymore either.”
Nobody—including Juni—got how much I felt like a prisoner in this place. Maybe Porter would, since he’d spent a few nights in jail after the accident, but otherwise, none of my brothers had spent any length of time in the hospital, let alone over a month.
They didn’t understand that people I didn’t know, and some I did, dictated my schedule from the time I woke up until I went to sleep. Half the time, I feigned it so everyone would leave me the hell alone.
The only person I wanted to be around was Juni, but Buck was right; there were times when I was an asshole even to her. Whenever I snapped in answer to something she said, I felt like shit about it. You’d think it would’ve made me stop, but it hadn’t.
On one of my worst days, when the doctors told me I had to have two of the toes on my left foot amputated because of gangrene, I railed at everyone I came in contact with, but none more than her.
She’d reacted the same way she always did. At first, she didn’t respond. Then, after several minutes of silence, she acted like nothing had happened and started up an unrelated conversation. My response that day? I’d lost it.
“Why do you do that? Why don’t you leave or at least yell back at me?” I’d shouted.
“Because I understand what you’re going through,” she’d said in her usual soft tone of voice .
I’d scoffed. “You understand? Right. You have no fucking clue.” When she went back to giving me the silent treatment, I told her to leave.
When she didn’t come back at all the next day, I was sure I’d managed to drive her away. Every time the door opened, my head shot up, hoping it was her. Which meant I was more of an asshole to everyone who wasn’t.
The following morning, when she was finally the one to cross the threshold, I almost wept in relief. I’d apologized several times, but when I asked why she said she understood what I was going through, she clammed up, only saying she was wrong and never should’ve said it. I knew she was lying, but I let it go.
What she couldn’t possibly understand—what no one else could either since I hadn’t told anyone outside of Dr. Oldham—was that there was one part of my anatomy that hadn’t yet recovered from my ordeal. My cock.
Before the day I almost died, just being around Juni was enough to get a rise out of me, so to speak. Now, even imagining her naked did nothing.
My doc suggested reading material that might help, and I’d tried it. Again, to no avail. Even the porn I’d streamed on my laptop had zero effect.
When Oldham told me to “give it time” as I reported my lack of results, it was all I could do not to tell him to get the hell out, like I had everyone else.
Maybe it would be best if Juni did stop showing up, but the idea I wouldn’t see her every day made it hard for me to breathe. Except, what did I have to offer her?
For one, whoever had tried to kill me was still out there, and from what I knew, the police didn’t have any leads.
The most obvious theory had been that Hoss Schultz, or someone who worked for him, figured out I’d been spying on him. However, given I hadn’t found anything to report to Pete, it made no sense that he’d try to kill me for it.
Plus, Beau confirmed that, after what happened with Jimmy Rooker, Hoss had been more than willing to terminate the contract between the Schultz Brothers and the Lilacs. Him targeting me for that also made no sense. I doubted he was the kind of person who’d give a shit that I’d shot Jimmy. Everything I’d learned about Hoss told me he was a man who was out for no one but himself.
It wasn’t until a few days ago, when Pete came to visit me, that I learned the real reason neither Hoss nor anyone associated with him was a suspect.
The day after I shot Jimmy Rooker’s kneecap out, the feds had raided Schultz Brothers’ main offices, along with every winery, vineyard, brewery, and distillery they held contracts with.
All except the Lilacs, that is. Knowing their assets would be seized, pending an in-depth investigation, Decker Ashford arranged to have Schultz terminate the contract. Since Hoss hadn’t known about the raid scheduled to take place the following day, I could only imagine what Deck might’ve had over him to make him do it.
The last Pete knew was that Hoss and the two brothers he partnered with, along with several of their employees, were under indictment for extortion, racketeering, and conspiracy to commit fraud—among other charges still pending, including attempted murder on the guy who was still lingering in a coma .
None of it changed the fact that someone had tried to kill me, and until they were caught, there was a very real possibility Juni’s life might be in danger too.
Secondly, as it related to what I could offer her, I’d be in New York for another ten months, three weeks, and three days. After that, I was going home, and the truth was, I doubted I’d ever set foot in New York again.
Lastly, I was a twenty-eight-year-old guy whose dick didn’t work. Who knew if it ever would again?
“I hear you’re breaking out of this place,” said the orderly who took me down to the rehab center most days and called himself Romeo. I still hadn’t figured out if it was his real name.
“You heard right.” I was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to go like I had been for the last three hours. The only problem was Juni wasn’t here. While she hadn’t specifically said she would be, I still expected her to come. “So, uh…” I stammered.
“What?” Buck snapped at me.
“Just wondering about Juni. Should we wait?”
My brother’s eyes scrunched. “Did you ask her to be here?”
“No, but…”
“It’s my day. I’m here. Let’s go. ”
I sure as hell didn’t want to stay in this room a minute longer than I had to. It just hurt that she hadn’t shown up. I pushed myself off the bed. “I can walk down,” I said to Romeo.
“Sorry, man. Hospital policy. Once you’re outside the main entrance, you can walk all you want, but until you are, your chariot awaits.”
I scowled but sat down. As soon as I had, the chair and Romeo lurched forward.
“What the hell?” I gasped.
“Oh my God. Sorry. Did I hit you?” I heard Juni ask and looked over my shoulder at her and Romeo, who was rubbing his backside. “I didn’t think you were leaving until this afternoon, but then I called, and they said you were being discharged this morning.” She put her hand on her heart and took several deep breaths. “Thank goodness I made it.”
She walked over to the wheelchair, and I reached for her hand. “Thanks. I know it isn’t your day.” I glared at my brother, who flipped me off.
“Not my day? Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”
I didn’t deserve her. Not even a little. But selfishly, I couldn’t stand the idea of not seeing her smile, holding her hand, listening to her sweet voice as she read Miss Cena’s journals to me, or even the sniffling sounds she made when she got to a sad part. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it, and she beamed.
“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go.” She motioned with her hand for the rest of us to follow her out the door.
“You don’t deserve her,” Buck leaned down and whispered, reiterating my thoughts of only moments ago. He was right. I just had no idea how I’d ever let her go.