CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The cougar found them as they passed underneath the limbs of the oak tree that overhung the path. Patrick barely had time to fling himself on top of Heather before the big cat pounced on his back. Even before he covered his wife, he began shifting. He cursed his slowness. He ignored Heather’s stillness. In battle you never wasted time ruminating. This was definitely battle.
He threw his head back as hard as he could while the cat tried to sink her fangs into the back of his neck. She made contact. It hurt like a son of a bitch. He knew his shift was not fully complete, but he had no time left.
He arched his back over Heather’s body to protect her. At the same time, he twisted his torso in an attempt to dislodge the cat. With one part of his brain, he noticed that Heather still hadn’t moved. Then the cat dug her claws in and opened her mouth for another attack. Blood dripped from his fur. It splashed drop by drop onto Heather’s motionless form.
He swung his head from side to side and his big bear skull connected with the cat’s jaw. She slid sideways and snapped. Her teeth ripped at his ear. This time he didn’t feel the pain, he just saw blood flying out in a big arc as he shook the lioness off his back.
For all that she was pregnant, the cougar wasn’t fully grown. For a moment she contemplated renewing the battle. But the fish in the trap caught her attention. She seized one and pelted off through the trees. Patrick moved off Heather. She sprang to her feet unharmed. He lay still, marshaling his energies. He had to get up.
Heather looked around as if she expected the cat to return. Run, he told her with his mind. She grabbed the blanket off the ground and wrapped it snuggly around his head and neck. She twisted it as tightly as she could. The pain got worse.
“I’ll get help.” She took off.
There was something he had to do. But he didn’t know what it was. The world went black. When he returned, it was twilight. Shift on a stick. He was going to bleed out and he mustn’t be found in bear.
Turning back into human was agonizing. There was the usual fierce molding and remaking of his bones and muscles. But the glacial speed that was all he could manage extended the metamorphosis past bearing. Heather was gone. Naturally, she was gone. You could never trust women to stick around.
Someone was pressing hard on his torn ear. Or trying to rip it off completely. He tried to wriggle away from the pressure and the pain, but he didn’t have the strength.
Heather’s voice spoke. “His ear is half torn off,” she told someone. “He has lacerations on his neck and back and legs.” She paused as if the other person was speaking but he couldn’t hear anyone else. “I have bandaged the worst of them. Well, hurry,” she snapped.
His eyes opened. Heather was sitting by his head squatting on her heels. Her knees bracketed his neck and head. One hand flicked a phone off and stuck it in her back pocket. Where the hell had she gotten a phone from? It seemed to be all part of her general deceitfulness. He had to remember you couldn’t trust women. No, he had to remember that the cougar might come back. He tried to speak.
“Heather,” he croaked.
“Lie still. Help is on the way. You don’t want to start bleeding again.” She put the heels of both hands down on his ear and pain shot through his entire body. He tried again.
A hand covered his mouth. “Hush. Lie still.”
* * *
He clawed his way back to consciousness. There was something more important than the pain. He was no longer lying bleeding on the forest path. Dazzling lights illuminated a mint green room crowded with humming machines. A big hand pressed down firmly on his right shoulder. A deep, familiar voice growled, “Lie still.”
He focused his eyes on the face looming over him. “Hey, Zeke.” His voice came out as a thready groan.
“You’re in the Yakima City Hospital.” Zeke took some of the pressure off his shoulder but didn’t move his hand. “You need to keep still because you’ve got so many damned monitors that if you dislodge one this room is going to fill up with nurses and doctors lickety-split.”
“Heather?” he croaked.
“She’s okay.” Zeke was trying for cheerful. But he couldn’t fool Patrick. Zeke was worried. Either Heather had taken off on him – and his dreams had been full of abandonment – or she was hurt too. He remembered passing out. Maybe the cougar had come back for his wife.
There was a brisk rap on the open door followed by a pleasant voice, “Is my patient awake?” A woman he didn’t recognize bent over some machine at the end of his bed. She took a rectangular device out of her hip pocket and told him to open his mouth. By the time the nurse had finished taking his vitals, he could feel himself slipping away again. And he still didn’t know where Heather was or how she was doing. The nurse fiddled with the IV going into his left hand. Blackness swallowed him whole.
He was screaming when he woke up. Zeke’s voice spoke. “You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be okay. Stop thrashing.”
He looked up into Zeke’s brown eyes. Zeke’s big jaw had two days’ worth of stubble.
“Water,” he begged.
Zeke shook his head. “No can do, soldier. You’re on a drip, but they’re thinking they might have to take you back into surgery.”
His mouth felt as if he had been sucking dust in Syria for a month. He believed Zeke. But thirst puckered his mouth.
Zeke plastered something greasy on his blistered lips. “I’ll get the nurse back in here. Only I think we’ll have to wait till the doctor makes his rounds in the morning. Until then you’re fasting, in case they have to give you a general anesthetic.”
Everything hurt. He narrowed the agony to his left ear. He could only hear with the right one. His neck hurt like a son of a bitch. And somebody had tried to take the bones out of his thighs. Zeke reached around his body and pressed something on the mattress. His brother was trying for a reassuring smile. But his unshaven face gave his concern away.
“Heather?” he got out through his parched mouth.
“They’re thinking of sending her home today.”
Who was thinking of sending her home? Why was she still in the hospital? Fragments of his dreams drifted into his mind. Something had gone horribly wrong with her pregnancy. They were keeping it from him. It had to be dire, or Zeke would be sharing.
A brisk, pleasant voice said, “Awake, are we?”
He nodded. Agony shot from his neck to his shoulders.
“Keep still. You don’t want to rip your stitches out. How long has he been awake?” The voice was crisp and emotionless.
Zeke began to report. He used his flat command voice. He finished by asking if Patrick could at least rinse his mouth out. The nurse agreed. She pressed buttons and the bed whirred and hummed and lifted his torso to a 45-degree angle. It was not more comfortable. Zeke held a cup to his hand with a half teaspoon of water in it. “Swish it around and spit it back out,” he ordered.
It wasn’t enough. But it had to do. And it did help. When he spat, his tongue no longer seemed to be coated in lint. He tried his voice. “What’s wrong with Heather?” Had she run out on him? Or was she badly hurt? He thought about his popcorn and his heart sank. He remembered changing into bear and crashing down on Heather. Not good. Not good at all.
“She was covered in blood when she came in,” Zeke said. “By the time everyone realized it was yours, she was having contractions. They whisked her off to a bed. She’s been under observation. She’s a stubborn woman. She won’t let them give her drugs. They put her on bed rest, but she’s fine, I promise you. Go back to sleep.”
The nurse fiddled with the valve of one of the drips. Zeke repeated his command. He slid back into the fog and his nightmares.
There were two of them in the room when he opened his eyes again. They were arguing in deep voices that were almost indistinguishable. “He’s awake.” His father leaned over the bed and grinned. He looked ready to walk into the boardroom of B&B. He was sleek and well groomed. But the wrinkles around his eyes were worried.
“I told you he was okay,” Zeke’s voice was calm. “You can have water today. Those lacerations are finally closing. Your surgeon no longer wants to operate.” He made the head of the bed rise and handed Jeremy Bascom a plastic glass with two fingers of water.
Dad held it to his mouth. His lips were as numb as his tongue. Water trickled out the corners of his mouth and down his chin. Zeke chuckled mirthlessly. “They’ve had you on morphine to keep you from moving. It’s certainly done that. But they turned it off two hours ago. More water?”
Patrick nodded. Fuck. It felt as though his neck was going to separate from his shoulders.
“Don’t move your head,” Zeke ordered. “That cat was trying to break your neck. What isn’t bruised is torn wide open.”
Which explained why it felt as though he had been shot in the back of the neck.
“Heather?”
Zeke refilled the plastic glass and handed it back to Jeremy. “She says you knocked her over and protected her. She doesn’t have a scratch on her. And they’re talking about sending her home.”
Patrick gulped more water. Jeremy wiped his chin. Patrick put a tentative hand up and touched his beard. “How long have I been here?” What he meant was, ‘What the hell is wrong with Heather that she is still here too?’
“This is day three.” Zeke was matter of fact.
Jeremy patted his knee. “I was in Europe. Incommunicado. Didn’t hear about you till this morning. But you’ve got nothing to worry about, son. We can have you in Denver as soon as they say you’re fit to be moved.”
“Calm down, Dad,” Zeke said coolly. “Patrick has had perfectly adequate care here. There’s nothing that anyone can do for him in Denver that hasn’t been done here.”
Jeremy mumbled something that Patrick’s one good ear didn’t quite catch. Zeke’s rumble was equally indistinct. They were arguing about him. As if he was incapable of making his own decisions. He caught only a few words. ‘Miscarriage, duress, gold digger,’ floated in his dazed brain. They were fighting about him and Heather.
“Am I going to lose my ear?” he demanded.
“Nope. Nerves are intact,” Zeke said heartily. “But you going to be a little less than symmetrical. They had to sew parts of it together. You’re going to look like a tomcat that lost a fight. And lived to tell about it.”
“That’s why we should get him to the finest plastic surgeon we can find,” Jeremy insisted.
“That what you want, Patrick?” Zeke asked.
“What I want is to see my wife.”
“And that’s another thing,” grumbled Jeremy.
A woman said politely and firmly, “Take it into the hallway, please. I need to examine my patient.”
This nurse was just as brisk as the other one had been. “You may have broth today,” she said as if it was a huge concession.
Patrick considered. Was he hungry? Thirsty, yes. Anxious, yes. Hungry? Not so much. “I’d like water,” he ground out. Something that would return his tongue to its normal size and consistency.
“I can see you’ve already had some. I don’t want to try to change your gown now, because I’d have to get it over the IV. But you can have more water, and I’ll order you some broth.” She followed this remark with a series of questions about his vision, his bowels, and his bladder. She handed him a jug, made sure he could hold it in place himself, and sent Zeke back into the room.
“Well, that was humiliating,” he said to his brother when Zeke got back from tipping out the urinal.
Zeke was still unshaven. But he grinned. “You’re on the mend. Humiliated is better than dead.”