She turned her head to the side and said, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said. “We’re working on it right now.”
“Please don’t hand me over,” she said again, her voice shaking with fear.
He reached down and gripped her hands and said, “We won’t. You have my word on that.”
She sagged in place. “Thank you,” she said. “I feel safe right now. I just don’t know where to go from here.”
“None of us do at the moment,” he said, “but we’ll figure it out.”
Chapter 11
Pain woke up Shelly first, and yet it was a building pain, almost like a hammer inside her head that kept her awake. She lay here, hot tears running down her cheeks, feeling weak, just wanting to go home and to be done with this. When someone gently stroked her hand and said, “We’re upping the pain medication,” Shelly let herself sink back under with relief.
She wanted to tell them to raise it up so high that she was put out permanently. The pain was that bad. On the other hand, when she woke the second time, maybe the drugs were working better because she wasn’t quite so badly in agony. She surfaced a third time, realizing that the room was dark, and it was either the next day or late that evening. She was completely out of sync with the world around her.
When she shifted in the bed and tried to sit up, immediately the door opened, and a woman walked in.
“What can I do for you?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Actually you have a catheter in.”
She frowned, sagging back onto the bed. She hadn’t even noticed. “I really don’t like those.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but you don’t need to physically go to the bathroom then.”
Shelly sighed gently to avoid any pain. “Well, I thought I needed to,” she said, shaking her head. “Ow,” she said, reaching to hold her head.
“Sorry about that,” the nurse said cheerfully. “If you can go back to sleep one more time,” she said, “when you wake up in the morning, we can take out the catheter. Then you can get up and maybe have a shower.”
“The magic word,” Shelly said and stared at the woman with hope in her eyes. “Am I that much better?”
“It wasn’t too, too bad,” she said, “but you need to give it a chance to heal a bit.”
“Fine,” she murmured, yawning deeply. “Until next time.” And, with that, she sank back into sleep.
When she woke up the next time, it was morning. She saw people moving around the facility through the glass panels separating her room from the others. She took a long slow deep breath, realizing that she didn’t feel too terribly bad, as long as she didn’t move too much.
The door opened almost immediately, and the doctor stepped in. “There’s my patient,” he said, with a bright smile. “How are you doing?”
She looked up at him. “Outside of the headache?” she asked. “I’m fine. I woke up several times in the night from the pain, but I’m feeling much better now.”
“Good,” he said. “Let me check your head.” He did a thorough exam and then continued, “If you feel up to it, and, as long as you have somebody to help you, a shower would make you feel a lot better. Then we can get you back into bed, where you’ll stay for at least the rest of the day. I’ll want to take a look at that head wound again tonight.”
She grinned. As he walked out, she asked, “Does that mean I can get rid of this catheter?”
“Yep, absolutely,” he said. He disappeared, and a nurse came back in and very quickly removed the catheter and helped her to slowly stand up.
“See if you can walk a step or two,” she said. “That’ll determine how much help we’ll need to give you for your shower.”
Shelly got up, slowly walked around the bed, into the bathroom, took one look at her face in the mirror, and winced. “Well, I can walk,” she said, “but I look pretty scary.”
The nurse chuckled. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “That boyfriend of yours has been in here almost constantly. As much as we would let him, at least,” she admitted. “He didn’t think you looked pretty scary at all.”
Shelly smiled at that. “Shane’s just a friend,” she said, “but we’ve always been close.”
“I don’t know about that just a friend part,” she said. “That wasn’t a just a friend look in his eyes.”
“He probably feels guilty.” But it made her heart feel good nonetheless.
“Says you, but I know what I saw,” the nurse replied.
Shelly just chuckled, shrugged, and said, “He’s a good man.”
“I would agree,” she said. “A good-looking one too.”
“He is that. He’s always got women trolling around him all the time.”
“But not you?” the nurse asked, with curiosity.
“No, because we’ve been such good friends, it just wasn’t anything that we particularly wanted to change.”
“Hell, I would have hopped into bed with him in a heartbeat,” she said with a laugh.
Shelly smiled. “But to hop in bed with him meant to lose him, and I didn’t want to do that.”
“You are a stronger woman than I am,” she said with a smile. “So, how are you feeling about a shower at this point?”
“That would be awesome.”
“If you need a hand, I’ll be in here changing your bed.”
With that, Shelly turned on the water and sat on the edge of the bench, until she was strong enough, and then used the rails and pulled herself up and just stood here, letting the hot water slide down her body. She hadn’t realized just how much this last week had preyed on her. It had been a cycle of adrenaline rush and shock, over and over. And yet the only thing she could think of was the fact that Shane had apparently stayed here with her all night. But, if their positions had been reversed, she would have done the same.
She did love him; she always had. They’d never taken their relationship past that because they always had other relationships in their world. She wondered if they had deliberately avoided having something between them, but it was just way too confusing to sort out.
She did like the fact that he was here for her the whole time. And maybe that was the difference. Just the fact that they were older, and they were different, and maybe it was a better time for them to have a different sort of relationship. Anytime she thought about him, it was always with that warm, cozy feeling of somebody very special to her, and that had never changed. He was special. Always had been.
She smiled as she slowly worked some water over the stitches. She hadn’t asked the nurse if she could get them wet, but neither had the nurse said anything about it.
Just then the nurse called out, “You okay?”
“Hard to shampoo,” she said.
“Well, the stitches can get wet,” she said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have let you shower. Do you want a hand?”
With that, Shelly sat on the bench, and the nurse slowly and carefully massaged some shampoo in and around Shelly’s head. Then she used the handheld showerhead and rinsed off her hair. They repeated it once more, the pain actually easing with the warm water.