Chapter 35
Roishin
D espite the pain and the blurry vision through my swollen eye, the marks on my hands and arms were beautiful. I held my right arm up to see the spidery red lines better.
The door opened and closed, a large, dark figure slipped in, blocking the light from the hallway temporarily. By the size, it was John or Bear . I’d asked for Bear , but could have sworn I heard John’s voice.
As he came into range, I realized it was Bear and held my hand out for him to admire.
“ Tattoo this.” It came out as a raspy, slurred command.
I didn’t dare talk more than that because my throat and my jaw were in agony.
I didn’t know what caused it— Carl or the storm, or the horrible way my whole body clenched in seizure an hour ago. But I was alive.
And I’d stay alive as long as I could.
We’d made it to the hospital, and Carl wasn’t dead yet. Which meant I couldn’t die. Not now, not soon. And certainly not before I had a chance to run my dagger through his chest.
Bear took the hand I offered and carefully turned it, but avoided the padded bandages at my wrist. The other arm had a similar dressing where the nylon cord melted deep into my skin.
I couldn’t feel that side, however.
“ They look like tree roots.”
“ Lightning .”
His jaw went tense. “ Yeah .” Without thought, his free hand covered the hammer hanging from his neck.
“ Let me see.” I couldn’t sit up, so Bear leaned close so I could finger the tiny symbol of his faith. I’d prayed to him. “ Thor .”
Bear caught my hand and buried his head against the palm of it.
I whimpered a little because his grip slipped to my wrist.
He quickly corrected it and held my fingers where the lines stopped their snake-like trails with hundreds of little tendrils branching from the darker red lines that ran from my wrists.
“ How far do these go?” He turned my arm carefully to check the path.
“ I think everywhere.” Because everything hurt.
If they didn’t travel the entire length of my body on the outside, they certainly did on the inside.
Even my right foot stung like it was still on fire.
Especially at the arch where I’d pressed it against the pole.
That foot was wrapped. The other wasn’t, but it was a curiosity to the doctors.
They’d ran instruments along the bottom, testing my reflexes.
Their words frightened me. Paralysis . Nerve damage.
It might be temporary, and it might not be. No one knew.
“ That would be one hell of a tattoo.”
“ Can you do it?”
His eyes met mine. His hand began to shake. Then , his head joined it. “ I don’t know.” The anguish in his expression pleaded with me to not ask such a favor from him.
“ I need photos so I can get it done later.”
His nostrils flared. “ Woman .”
“ Please ?”
He blew out a breath, as if I’d asked him to give up something dear or perform a dire act.
“ I’ll get the doctors to?—”
“ No . I’ll do it.” His tongue darted out to lick his lips. “ No one sees you but me.”
Was that jealousy in his growl?
But he vowed to be my enemy. If … “ I didn’t help Carl .”
So much swam on the surface of his expression.
Horror , pain, relief, guilt… it was hard to keep up.
“ I can see that.” His palm hovered over one of the bruises on my arm.
I didn’t need to be reminded of the blows that landed there and elsewhere.
They throbbed in time with the bloody mess of my wrists, foot and back.
Electricity traveled from the clouds to the flagpole top.
It exploded in a flash of white and seared down the wooden pole and the wet rope that looped around my wrist bindings before wrapping around the metal cleat buried under the stacked wood.
In under a second, I’d been freed but at a terrible cost. I might not walk again.
I might be blind in one eye. My skin had these pretty, but terrible burns called Lichtenberg figures etched into it.
The lightning traveled through me, back to the pole, and into the ground. I was damn lucky to be alive.
In that brief flash, I’d seen what mortals shouldn’t.
Pain was such a small price in hindsight. “ You saved me,” I told Bear .
He scoffed. “ Hardly . I got my ass kicked. And I was too slow.”
No , he’d saved me. His belief, his forgiveness… he found me. Which was a miracle of its own. “ I asked Thor to fuck Carl up. Please tell me he’s dead.”
Bear frowned. “ Hopefully soon. He’s on life support.”
I wanted to curse. But then remembered Beth . “ The bone marrow?”
A slow nod answered. “ John’s here. He’s quite bloodthirsty right now. And he’s notified the staff that Carl is his wife’s donor.”
Good .
A wash of peace swept through me as I closed my eyes to send a silent thank you to the universe for watching out for Beth .
“ Hey , don’t pass out on me. I need you.”
I opened my semi-good eye. “ You need me?”
His face was pale. “ More than you fucking know.”
The knowledge that he’d openly admitted such a weakness felt… amazing. Yet there was so much anguish in his voice. Was it because of my condition, or because of Carl ? Or …
“ Wait a minute, did you go to the meeting tonight?”
Bear shook his head. “ I came after you.”
He gave up his shot to be vice president. For me . “ I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “ Nothing to be sorry for. They voted me in despite that. Something about keeping KC in line and looking out for the club’s interests or some shit.”
I tried and failed to snag a braid. He leaned closer so I could tangle my fingers in his beard. The pain lessened, and I couldn’t remember what we were talking about for a moment.
“ You with me?” Bear asked.
“ I’m yours.” It came out so easily. As naturally as breathing. Maybe even more so because breathing was a fragile thing right now.
He cupped his hands around the elbow I propped against the sidewall of the bed. “ And I’m yours.”
And the club’s.
I smiled despite that reminder. “ I love you. But …”
“ No buts. I love you, too. When you’re sprung from this place, we’re going to figure out all the rest.”
That was a tall order. There were complications, and more than just my tenuous grasp on health right now. “ Beth ?”
“ She’ll get better. Have some faith.” His chin dipped, causing the chain and pendant to sway lightly.
Very slowly, I nodded. But tears gathered at my eyes. “ I was awful to you.”
“ You were honest. That’s not awful.”
“ I chose Beth over you.”
He leaned over me so I could see his face plainly. “ No . You didn’t. You chose your friend, and my friends, and a bunch of stuff over yourself. You ain’t going to do that anymore, got it?”
Oh , I got it. Bear was doing what he did best. “ Bossy old bear.”
“ Witch .”
That label felt so good.
“ Don’t leave me.” I found a grip in his hair again.
He detangled my fingers gently. Then kissed each one, taking time to really look at the marks there. “ You’re right. These will make one hell of a tattoo. It’s going to take forever, though.”
“ Don’t leave me. Please ?”
His stare was too intense. “ I’m going to ask you the same thing. Don’t you dare leave me. I wasn’t kidding when I said I need you. It felt like someone took a big ass construction shovel to my chest when you left. I was hollow. I can’t live like that.”
I knew what he felt. “ When it’s all gone, there’s nothing left, is there?”
His slow nod and tight lips spoke without words.
My grip tightened. “ I need you.”
“ I know.” He fiddled with the side of the bed so the rail was down and shifted around until he was half-lying next to me.
His head pressed against my shoulder. His hand wrapped over my waist. The night nurse found us like that.
She must have been used to such shenanigans because her directions were gentle.
“ That chair folds into a bed. You’ll be more comfortable.” While she directed Bear , she checked the stitches on his head. I hadn’t noticed before, but they were awful.
I felt more guilt.
Despite what I wanted, he needed more than I could give. I’d only hold him back.
When the next shift kicked him out and told him to return during visiting hours, I didn’t fight it.
He didn’t come back until late that afternoon.
In between, Tits sat with me, guarding my room like an angry tiger. I barely said two words to her, and likewise, she was scarily stoic.
But it was good to have someone around. I still couldn’t move my left leg, and my arm on that side was clumsy at best. While my fingers tingled so badly they burned, I couldn’t do more than make them twitch erratically.
And my toes had stopped curling in response to the external tests.
The burns that snaked over my body simmered with a raging inferno of pain. Between tests I asked Tits to take pictures. The marks on my arms blistered already. They’d be ugly soon.
“ Help me with this.” I tried to reach the ties to my gown.
“ You shouldn’t be moving.”
Right then, Bear strolled in. “ What are you doing, woman?”
“ Help me take this off.” I got a hold of something back there, but it wasn’t budging.
“ She’s trying to get a picture of the burns.” Tits handed Bear the phone in her hand as if he were interested in the photos she’d taken. He barely gave it a glance.
“ Go outside, no one in. Got it?”
Tits huffed out, “ They’re going to think you’re killing her.”
“ Say it louder so the central desk can hear you.”
“ I might,” she fired back.
“ Just guard the door.” Under his breath he added, “ Damn woman.”
“ Was that directed at her, or me?” I asked.
“ Your hearing’s getting better,” he muttered.
“ At least something is.” I tugged the string again. “ Help .”
He grunted and set Tits’s phone down as he let me lean on his chest while he undid my hospital gown. But he kept it in place as he checked my face for clues. “ Are you sure about this?”
I was. I wanted to capture the beauty of the marks before they became worse, or faded. “ Yes . Can you handle that?”
His nostrils flared as if scenting the challenge I’d laid down. “ I can.” But his jaw was tight and his mood anything but happy.
“ Do it.”
He carefully moved my hair out of the way. The strands were haphazardly unequal. A fraction of the length escaped butchery, but the main body of it angled sharply where the blade had sliced through. “ Did you find my athame?”
“ I went up there with Sketch and his metal detector today. Found it.”
I sighed with relief. “ I hope the rain didn’t ruin it.”
He laughed tightly. “ No , but I sent it to Fin .”
That was curious. “ Why ?”
“ Later . Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded.
He pulled my gown away and let it pile on my lap. His eyes traced the threads of red lines that shot wildly about in branches of scarring.
The cold air felt good. I breathed deeply, taking in the relief of having nothing touching my skin.
“ That’s damn beautiful.”
But that wasn’t what his face said. “ What’s wrong?”
“ It’s just… fuck…” His eyes met mine. “ It’s everywhere. You should be dead.” There was fear in those dark depths.
“ I know.” That’s what everyone told me today.
How lucky I was. How amazing my recovery was.
How miraculous it was that my heart hadn’t stopped, or my body hadn’t boiled from the inside out.
I was a living breathing tribute to the one in a million people who get hit by lightning in a year.
And of that, while 90 percent survived, rarely was a direct hit survivable.
Most of the victims were near, but not at the point of contact.
My skin prickled from the chill, bringing pain with it. “ Take those pictures.”
Bear glanced at Tits’s phone. “ Like hell am I letting her see this.” He dug out his own phone and began taking photos.
I rolled onto my stomach, getting my left arm slightly tangled as I did so, and an alarm blared. He snapped the photo right as a nurse barged in with Tits on her tail.
“ You can’t be in here.” She fussed with the machine that was blaring. “ And you, shouldn’t be rolling around with your…whatever he is.” Under her breath she was saying more, but I couldn’t make it out. I looked to Bear for insight.
“ She thinks we’re being kinky.”
“ It’s not kinky. I just wanted photos.”
The nurse froze. She stared at the skin she hadn’t covered with a blanket. “ I shouldn’t allow this, but… you’re probably going to do it anyway, right?”
“ Yes ,” I said.
“ She’s stubborn,” Bear added.
Tits snorted but held up her hands when Bear and I both shot her a look. “ I didn’t say a word.” With a twist of her right hand, she pointed at the hallway. “ I’ll be out there.” As she left, she muttered, “ God , I hate hospitals.”
The nurse helped me turn so my back was exposed.
There were pads taped to the skin she had to change because of the burns along my spine.
She pointed out the worst to Bear as she worked.
“ That’s where her spine made contact with the pole.
The specialist believes over one million volts ran along her skin but her hair insulated most of her spine. It saved her.”
I heard a thump.
“ Aw , damn it. He went down again. Your boyfriend is a fainter.”
I peered to the side where Bear was on the floor. “ Are you going to do anything?”
She shrugged. “ His head scans were good. And he’s not bleeding anymore so…” She taped up my wounds. Then pulled the camera out of his hand and proceeded to help me finish taking photos.
Bear woke up when she’d just gotten me tucked into a fresh gown and upped the painkiller in my IV . “ You’ll be kind of sleepy for a while.” Then she squatted by Bear . “ Do you need some water?”
He blinked. “ I passed out again, didn’t I ?”
The nurse nodded. “ You may want to get your blood pressure checked. And stop pushing yourself so hard. Your girlfriend is going to live, and I think she wants you to live, too. So , go slow, okay?”
He sat up, slowly. “ I hate that fucking word.”
“ Which one, stop or slow?”
“ Slow .”
The nurse made a frustrated noise. “ Embrace it, big guy. We all have our weaknesses. Yours happens to be burn wounds. You didn’t blink an eye at blood. But that”—she pointed at me—“had you down faster than a bullet.”
She handed off his phone as she finished her tirade. Then she gave me one last set of instructions to rest, but only directed half of it at me. The remainder of instructions went to Bear .
He pulled up a chair and scrolled through the photos.
“ Are you going to pass out again?”
He met my eyes. “ Naw . Weird that I can look at you here and it doesn’t do a thing. But …” Anguish covered his face when he met my eyes again. “ I don’t want you in pain.”
“ That makes two of us.”