Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
What do you call a group of rabbits hopping backwards?
A receding hare line.
—From Bash’s dad joke collection, which is epic and contagious…
I even caught my queen making a dad joke!
Bash
“You need to get some sleep, my queen. I’m going to put Chicane in the bunny mansion.”
Arabella chuckled softly, and Bash was relieved to see her improving. When he’d picked her up at the hospital, her skin had been a sickly grayish white, and clammy. She’d vomited multiple times on the drive home—thankfully he wasn’t driving, so he could care for her in the back seat.
Fortunately, she’d turned the corner. In the last hour, she’d eaten three saltines and a piece of dry toast, and then drank half a glass of ginger ale along with a bit more of the electrolyte drink. Now it was close to ten, and they both were exhausted.
He hurried to the family room, sang a quick lullaby—hey, the bunny loved it—and tucked their prince in for the night. When Bash returned to the room, Arabella had sunk further into the bed, her eyes hooded as she watched him.
“You sure you want to sleep in here?”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he answered honestly. Being with a sick Arabella was still better than any other experience in the world. Well, other than being with a healthy Arabella, of course.
She smiled and nodded. “Chicane good?”
“He’s probably already sound asleep and dreaming of gourmet pellets.”
Her eyes softened. “You’re so sweet with him.”
“Oh, wait! I have something to show you.” He ducked into the walk-in closest, rummaged around, and then emerged, pulling a navy T-shirt over his head. Smoothing it over his chest, he grinned.
“Does your—” Remy paused, and he couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh, roll her eyes, or cry tears of happiness. Maybe all of them. “Does your shirt say ‘Proud Bunny Dad’?”
“Yes, it does,” Sebastian beamed. “Jared got it for me. I love it!”
Remy shook her head fondly. “It’s perfect,” she whispered.
Bash settled into bed, turning on his side to face Arabella, who did the same, groaning softly and placing a hand on her abdomen, likely attempting to lessen the strain on her desolated stomach muscles.
“I never asked you how you ended up with a Holland lop,” Bash wondered aloud. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem like a pet person.”
Arabella chuckled ruefully. “I’m not. Not really.
Chicane belonged to an elderly patient of mine.
I’d done both his knees over the years. He fell and shattered his hip, and I operated on him.
His wife, a lovely woman he was devoted to, was newly in assisted living after being diagnosed with dementia.
” Arabella stared wistfully in the half-distance.
“Ted had been planning to move to that facility, but in a different room, since she was sundowning badly by that point. The only issue was their young bunny, which she’d given him as a gift just before she started going downhill.
Ted was heartsick, so worried about the bunny he called Captain Carrot.
” She rolled her eyes and smiled. “I know. Silly name.
“Anyhow, he’d been looking for a new home because he couldn’t bring Carrot with him.
After Ted fell, a neighbor was pet-sitting, but it was short term.
Ted begged me to adopt Carrot. I didn’t see how a pet would fit with my lifestyle, so I was prepared to turn him down.
That afternoon after my surgeries, I stopped on the unit to see him. But the room was empty.”
Bash reached over and wiped the tear that had trickled down her cheek. He wasn’t even sure she noticed.
“The floor nurse told me he’d had a massive heart attack, the trauma of the fall too much for his body. I knew what I needed to do. I went over to his place, introduced myself to the neighbor, picked up Carrot, and the rest is bunny history.”
He blotted her tears with the hem of his shirt. “I’m sorry, Angel. I know losing that patient had to be so sad for you.”
It was a testament to how sick and lost in memory she was that even the peek at his abs didn’t stir her.
She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “It was. But I don’t know why I’m crying like this.”
“Because you’re sick and exhausted, and you cared about your patient. You’d built a relationship. It’s normal to be sad about that ending.” He ran his fingers through her freshly washed hair, eliciting a small shudder from her.
“You’re a good man, Sebastian Wheatley,” she whispered, eyes shining. “Kind, funny. The whole deal.”
“You forgot ‘scorchingly smoldering’ and ‘out-of-this-world amazing in bed,’” he teased, grinning at her amused snort. “How did the little prince end up with his name?”
Now she huffed an amused laugh. “All due respect to Ted, I was not walking around taking care of a Captain Carrot, but the right name wouldn’t come.
Then, one day, he was running around this serpentine pathway in the larger pen I’d bought him.
He reminded me of a racer passing through a chicane at high speed. And that was that.”
“Your first pet.” Bash smiled, but it fell when he saw the look in her eyes.
“No,” she shook her head sadly, her voice barely a whisper. “Not my first. And that’s another sad story.” She twisted the top sheet.
“Well, let’s leave that for another time, Angel. You’ve been through a lot today. You don’t have to—”
“I married when I was young,” she continued softly, fiddling with the edge of the sheet.
“Still a teenager, though I felt ancient at the time. During that marriage, I’d found a bird with a broken wing outside our house.
I had enough experience with my mom’s broken bones, and I’d already decided to specialize in orthopedics because of it.
So I took it in, got advice on caring for it, and slowly nursed it back to health. Though she never flew again.”
“She?”
“The wild animal vet I consulted told me she was a Carolina Chickadee, and it was difficult to discern male or female without seeing certain behaviors. But she always gave a girl vibe, so I decided she was female.” Remy shrugged, but her eyes were haunted.
“I named her Felicity, after the nineties television character.
“One day, Doug”—her eyes flew to his—“my h-husband, flew into a rage about a message we had on our answering machine. In those days, we still had one of those. I was in undergrad at Hopkins, and a classmate and I were assigned to pair up on a project. Doug heard his message offering to meet up and went ballistic. He trashed the house. Broke every plate in the kitchen. Every single one. He threw me into the wall. Then he,” Arabella paused, covering her mouth with a shaking hand as her eyes slammed closed.
“He grabbed Felicity’s cage and sm-smashed it repeatedly against the wall.
I screamed for him to stop, grabbed his arm, but he threw me off him. ”
“Jesus,” Bash breathed, his stomach in knots, rage boiling through his veins. Arabella was shaking like a leaf. He warred internally over touching her or not—worried touching her would upset her more, but longing to comfort her.
“I crawled over to where he’d left the cage. It was crushed. And Felicity…” She halted, inhaling shuddering breaths until she could compose herself.
Fuck it. I’m holding my queen.
Bash gathered her into his arms, needing to hold her, to soothe her—for himself as much as her.
“I buried her in the backyard. There’s more to the story, but essentially, after that, I moved out.”
“Angel,” he choked out, overcome with a roil of enormous feelings that flooded his body. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”
“I can’t talk about this anymore,” she wept into his chest, her tears soaking his Bunny Dad shirt.
“You don’t need to, my queen. Just rest and sleep. I’ve got you.”
And I’m never letting you go. No one will ever hurt you again.