Sneak Peek of Claimed by the Prince
Nathaniel
“Good morning Mr. Hawthorne. How’s your pain today?” asked the chipper young nurse who’d said the same thing with the same intonation every day since I arrived here. She went about checking my vitals, jotting them in the chart she’d taken from the end of the bed which was both too narrow and too short for me to lie in comfortably.
“It’s a steady five unless I move wrong. Then it’s an eleven.”
She nodded, noting that in the chart as well. “Do you mind if I take a peek at your bandages?”
I moved the thin hospital sheet off my left leg, exposing the thick band of gauze and medical tape encircling my thigh. The blonde nurse, whose light gray scrubs hung on her body as if she’d borrowed someone else’s, carefully peeled away the tape and cotton. I broke out in a sweat as the fibers stuck to the wound, gritting my teeth against rising nausea and daring a peek at the through-and-through gunshot wound which miraculously only hit muscle and minor blood vessels.
A few inches higher and I’d have bled to death on the street. A few to the right and the bullet would have hit my femur—a minimum six-month recovery. I was very lucky.
“This new course of medicine doesn’t seem to be making a dent in the infection. I’ll ask the doctor to change you to a broader antibiotic,” she said as she re-taped the bandage.
I sighed and refocused out the window to the lovely view of the east wing of the hospital.
“I know it’s frustrating, Mr. Hawthorne. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you.”
I was lucky, and yet, so angry, I wanted to yell. I wanted to ask the pretty nurse who was only doing her job if she really understood the devastation of lying in a hospital bed for almost five weeks and not be any closer to going home. I wanted to scream about how this has been one complication, one set back, one awful infection after another. I wanted to throw things and cause a scene and get security called on me. It probably would have done me good—letting it all out might have been cathartic.
But I did none of that. This wasn’t her fault, and I couldn’t bring myself to take it out on her. I stared out the window and sank deeper into the dark well of self-pity.
“I’m also going to see about getting you a different physical therapist. Steve is great, but they assigned you to him because you’re a big guy. I think Pilar might be able to help you process this better. She’s our big gun, Mr. Hawthorne.”
So they were calling in the big guns for me. I probably needed it. My gaze found its way to the ugly east wing of the New York Presbyterian Hospital again—steel and glass and perfectly appropriate for New York, but the building only reminded me how far I was from home.
“I’ll be back in a few hours with more pain meds. If you need anything, just push that button,” she said, scrawling notes in my chart as she left the room.
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to press the loneliness and homesickness from my mind. Memories of that night barged into my awareness uninvited. Diving in front of my boss the instant I heard gunfire, the fear in his new bride’s eyes when my blood splattered across her dress, and the white-hot pain tearing through my leg as the slug shredded its way through my thigh. It had been weeks since the shooting, weeks of one step forward and two back, but those memories were burned into the my mind and played back with crisp photorealism anytime I let my guard down.
The shooter, still unaccounted for, had been an awful shot. That was the only thing that kept me alive. But there were days I wished I had died right there on the pavement. Days when the pain drove me mad. Days when I couldn’t stand the thought of being in this bed a moment longer. Days when my skin crawled, begging to be set free of this sterile, pine-scented prison.
Today was one of those days.
Looking forward to something helped. At first, I looked forward to the day I left this place. But that quickly turned into torture as one busted stitch led to an infection, which led to antibiotics that made me break out in hives and my airways close, which led to a seizure which opened up the leg wound, and all the progress I’d made to that point was gone. Now, I had a new infection which didn’t want to go away, and instead of looking forward to being healthy again, walking on my own two feet, and getting back to work, I looked forward to daytime TV and green jello.
Hell, at this point I didn’t even know if I’d be able to get back to work. My leg had been through so much, Steve, my physical therapist didn’t think I could get it back to a hundred percent. I couldn’t very well be the Crown Prince of Trisea’s first security officer with a ruined leg.
I didn’t like to think about it, but that didn’t keep me from doing so. On the bad days, I’d wonder who I was without that job. I’d wonder if I could ever be whole again if I didn’t have full use of my leg.
Fortunately, today wasn’t one of the really bad days. Today was a numb day. Today, I looked forward to The Price is Right.