2. LUCAS
LUCAS
Imade my way into the hospital nervously, unsure if I’d even be allowed to see him.
Unsure if they’d even know who ‘him’ was from the description I’d be able to give.
“Yes,” I told the receptionist as I stepped inside, “I’m here to see a patient?
I’m not positive I have his full name right, but I think it’s Max Dion.
I know his first name is Max and he was brought in yesterday morning after a car accident.
” The tentative last name, I’d gotten out of the EMTs at the scene as they sketched out their trip sheet.
She looked at me skeptically. “That’s all you know?”
I shrugged and nodded, crossing my fingers in my pocket, while she tapped on her keyboard.
After a minute, she looked up at me. “Are you a relative?”
Did that mean she’d located him? I resisted the urge to bounce with excitement.
“I’m, uh…” Shit, did I need to be family to be allowed in?
But I’d just told her I didn’t even know his name, so she wouldn’t believe that I was family even if I tried to lie.
Damn, damn, damn. Finally, I just sighed and told her the truth: “I was a first-responder to his accident. I was hoping to check on him and see how he’s doing. ”
“Hmm.” She tapped some more on the keyboard, squinting at her monitor.
“It’s almost open visiting hours, so just don’t hurry onto the elevator and you should be fine.
He’s in room 402.” She took my ID and photocopied it, then handed it back along with a Visitor badge.
“Go up the elevator and make a left, then another left.”
I thanked her and practically ran to the elevator before she could change her mind and stop me.
The ride up to the fourth floor was blessedly short, and soon I found myself tiptoeing —why was I tiptoeing?
Couldn’t tell you —toward room 402. I listened outside the open door for a few seconds, but didn’t hear any voices, so I knocked tentatively on the doorframe.
“Yeah?” said a rough voice.
I stepped in to find Max in bed. He looked small, even though I knew he was a sizable guy from having had my hands all over him the previous morning.
His sharp nose and thick, dark eyebrows stood out from a face that was pale under his golden skin tone.
I could tell he was handsome, but right now he mostly looked traumatized.
Tubes ran from his arms to an IV stand, and he had the television remote in his hands and was playing with it restlessly. “Hi,” I said, giving an awkward wave.
The remote-fiddling paused. He looked at me in what seemed to be horror, eyes taking me in from head to foot. “You’re, um, not the surgeon, are you?”
I blinked. “No! No, not the surgeon.” What kind of staff did they have in this hospital, that he thought a guy wearing ripped jeans and a Van Halen t-shirt was his surgeon?
“I’m Lucas. Lucas Gustafsson.” I held out a hand to him, but he didn’t release the remote, and after an awkward few seconds, I dropped my hand. “Um, I don’t know if you remember me…”
He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “Max Dion. And nope. Should I?”
That shouldn’t have surprised me. Even if he hadn’t been suffering significant blood loss, the guy had been laying on the ground after a massive shock when he met me; the dude holding pressure on his leg and telling him to stay awake would have been pretty low on his mental priority list. “I was, uh…” I shoved a hand through my long hair.
“I helped out after your accident?” It came out sounding like a question rather than a statement.
Why was I so nervous? This wasn’t the first time I’d met a past patient.
Even if this one had felt more…intense. Plus, he was pretty damn attractive.
“Helped?” he asked, eyes narrowing on me.
I nodded, and he was silent for a long moment, looking like he was searching for something in my face.
Then he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t remember the actual accident or what happened afterwards.
Doctor Google says it might come back to me, but right now it’s a blank. ”
Disappointment spiked through me, and I tried not to show it.
“That’s not unusual,” I assured him as if I knew more about post-trauma care than I did.
My job was immediate stabilization, not supervising recovery.
Still, he could do with the reassurance, I was sure.
“Anyway, I, uh, I was one of the first people on the scene after the car hit you, and I put pressure on your leg that was bleeding. How does it feel?” I added, glancing down at the bottom of the bed.
His face hardened. He pursed his lips and reached down to flip back the blankets covering his left side.
I tried not to gape at the sight of the blank where his left calf and foot should have been.
Shit, they hadn’t been able to save it. It had looked pretty bad at the scene, only hanging on by some skin and the fabric of his pants, but I had told myself that the trauma center could re-attach it. I had wanted to believe they could.
“I’m so sorry,” I managed. “Are you ok? I mean,” I went on before he could even think about answering, “of course you’re not ok, but I just meant, like…” I waved a hand vaguely. “How’s the rest of you? No head injury?”
“Not that they’ve told me about.” He pulled the blankets back over his leg—or lack thereof—and softened his scowl back into a neutral expression. “I’m fine. Relatively speaking. They say I should be out of here within a week.”
I nodded my understanding. “Good, that’s good.
Will your family take care of you after your discharge?
” It wasn’t my business, but my brain was spinning through what little I knew of the post-amputation recovery process and I knew he’d have very limited movement until he got the hang of moving with a walker or a chair. His first weeks would be brutal.
His scowl returned and he looked down at his hands and muttered something.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t my business to ask,” I said quickly, reading his displeasure with my question a second too late. “I just meant -”
He sliced a hand through the air, cutting off my apology, and met my eyes fiercely. “I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself.”
The evasion was obvious. Should I push? I didn’t like that he was here alone during visiting hours; it didn’t say anything good about his loved ones that they’d left him like this on his first day post surgery.
So I pushed on. “I mean, not literally. You’ve got someone, right? To take care of you, I mean?”
Scowl deepening, he just looked at me for a second and then seemed to reach a decision. He shook his head. “I’m on my own. And I’m fine with that,” he hastened to add. “I’m used to it.”
Ok, I definitely didn’t like that, not a bit, but it wasn’t my place to demand answers, so I just nodded. “Ok. Ok. So, you look like you’ve got a handle on the pain.”
He shrugged with studied carelessness. “Not bad for someone whose leg got cut off this morning. They’ve got me floating pretty good on painkillers, at least.” He offered me an attempt at a jokey grin, but it mostly looked like a grimace.
“So it was just your leg?” I asked, wondering whether he’d had other injuries. “Well I mean, ‘just’...” I air quoted the word self-consciously.
He looked away again. “Mostly. The other one’s apparently busted up pretty badly—they had to put pins in it or something—but I guess I should count myself lucky it’s still attached.”
Ok, so he wouldn’t be extensively using even a walker any time soon, with both legs damaged. I winced in sympathy. “That’s definitely better than the alternative.”
“Amen to that.” We shared a wry smile for a moment before his dropped off his face. “Got a lot of bruises and sore spots everywhere else, but my legs got the worst of it. Because,” he added sarcastically, “it’s not like I need those or anything.”
“Yeah, that sucks.” I stood there in awkward silence for a few seconds, trying to think of what to say that would at least not make things worse, even if it couldn’t make him feel better. “Well,” I finally came up with, “you’ll get a buff upper body from the wheelchair you’ll learn to use.”
“I bet that brings all the boys to the yard,” he replied dryly. “Or at least the ones with a gimp fetish.”
“Hey, don’t shortchange yourself. You’re hot,” I said before I could catch myself, then closed my mouth with a snap and a deep blush. Great, Lucas, hit on the seriously injured guy who was probably just joking about wanting boys in his yard. “Uh, I just meant…”
He raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for me to say what I meant. I felt the redness of my face creeping up into my ears.
I flailed a hand dismissively. “Never mind. Anyway. I just wanted to, you know, check on you. See how you were doing. And I’m happy you’re mostly ok.
Stable, I mean,” I rambled on. “I know you’re not ok-ok and it especially won’t feel like that right now, but you know, no head injuries and your hands still work and…
” I finally ran out of words along with breath and drew to an awkward halt while he stared at me.
“Okay,” he ventured after waiting to see if I’d keep going. “Well, thanks for stopping in. And thank you for your help after the accident. I’m sure I wasn’t a pretty sight, and you didn’t have to stop.”
“I kind of did,” I protested, and he blinked at me.
“Professional ethics. I’m a paramedic,” I explained.
“I couldn’t not help someone in your situation.
And I’m really glad I was there when you needed me.
I, uh...” I couldn’t think of what else to say, but I also kind of didn’t want to leave him.
I rubbed the back of my neck, thinking and coming up blank.
It was time to go before I just lapsed into awkward silence.
“Um, I should let you rest without me bugging you. But hey, look, would you mind if I came back to visit? I’m kind of invested at this point.
I could maybe get your number?” I chuckled nervously.
He looked shocked by the request, but nodded absently through it. “Uh yeah, sure. If you really want to. I’m not very good company, though. I get bitchy at the best of times, let alone when I’m like…” He brandished a hand downward. “Like this.”
“You should meet some of my other patients.” I grinned. “I can take a little bitchiness, trust me.”
He smiled back, face finally relaxing, and reached for his phone on the side table. “Then sure, feel free to come back and entertain me, because the TV channel selection here sucks.”
We traded numbers, and then I couldn’t resist reaching out and brushing my hand against his shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting manner and definitely had nothing to do with my being attracted to him.
“I’ll see you again soon.” And before I could say anything else embarrassing, I turned and made my way out of his room.