Jamie waved his hand from his ribs to his feet. “With the shape I’m in, a nasty staph is the least of my concerns.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d ever had one.” Antibiotic ointment smeared over a new patch of gauze, Samuel placed the dressing and taped it down with surprisingly gentle hands. Under normal circumstances, he didn’t handle this end of patient recovery. A good thing for all involved, considering his bedside manner was the equivalent of a barbed wire hug.
“Did you get a hold of Mom?”
“I did. It took some convincing, but Lillian’s agreed to stay in London.”
“Good.” Jamie felt a slight loosening in his chest. With his mother still out of the country, he had one less person to worry about. “Did you ditch the burner like I told you to?”
“Of course.” First job done; he pulled the sheet over Jamie’s torso before exposing his knee. “Seems like a waste of money to use a cell phone once and then toss it.”
“Since you’re still alive, you might think of it as twenty bucks well spent instead.” Yeah, Samuel had taken a huge personal risk when he’d agreed to help Jamie disappear. Didn’t mean they were buddies now.
Didn’t mean he wanted him dead either.
His father was a gifted surgeon, no doubt about it, He’d saved hundreds of lives. But he did it with a frozen heart and stone-cold calculation. He had no empathy or warmth to spare. Not for his patients. Not for his wife. Not for Jamie.
They were simply checkmarks on Samuel Snow’s path to success. Ornaments to be pulled out and displayed as necessary to further his medical career. Nothing more. He’d expected the same from his son—a life dedicated to medicine—a singular focus on advancing his surgical skills and reputation.
Not the life Jamie had wanted for himself. Not the life he’d wanted with Kosamina either. And yet, he’d married the female version of his father. Talk about some fucked up shit right there.
His elopement had been the final nail in the coffin in terms of their relationship. Forget that Jamie had been head over heels in love with his new wife. Samuel hadn’t approved, and he’d expressed his displeasure loud and often, pushing for an annulment before the ink on the marriage certificate had even dried.
Their arguments had been colossal, witnessed by friends and family, emergency room staff, strangers in hospital waiting rooms. Didn’t matter where they were, they fought, and it hadn’t been long before Ko had started to question whether she’d made the right choice.
At the time, the best course of action had been for Jamie to cut his father out of his life. A reap what you sow situation where the only person hurt was his mother. Even now, despite being ignored and forgotten by a man who wielded indifference like a surgical blade, Lillian still wanted to be surrounded by the loving embrace of a happy family.
She’d have better luck wishing for snow in summer. A reunion between father and son? Never gonna happen. Despite the forced proximity of their current situation, and the subtle changes in his father’s demeanor toward him, Jamie didn’t have any forgiveness in him.
Not for the man who had no time for playing games or doling out hugs. No words of encouragement to give or praise to offer. No room in his heart, or his schedule, for a son who would have doneanythingto earn his father’s love and respect.
Anything but give up the woman he’d married and his hope for a family of his own.
“She’s worried about you,” Samuel said, cutting through the bandage wrapped around Jamie’s knee. “She’d like to talk to you when you’re up for it.”
Lost in thought, it took a second for him to refocus. “Who? Mom?” Using his elbows for leverage, he lifted his body high enough to inspect the damage to his left leg for the first time since being shot.
Swollen to twice its size, his knee was black and blue, and coupled with a double set of angry-looking stitches, movement would be excruciating if next to impossible for the next day or two…maybe three.
“Yes, your mother? Who else would I be referring to?” He lifted Jamie’s leg an inch, and a lightning bolt of pain shot straight to his brain.
“Shit! Stop!” He slammed his head against the pillow, and eyelids squeezed shut tight, his hands balled at his sides, every muscle tensing as the need to vomit overwhelmed.
“I know it hurts, but it’s necessary,” Samuel said with about as much sympathy as a pit viper. “Breathe through your nose. This won’t take long.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jamie grumbled, clenching his teeth. “Any chance you can Speedy Gonzales this shit?”
“Almost done. Try to think about something else. It might distract you from the pain.”
He snorted and shook his head. “You know that’s the worst advice to give to someone who witnessed his ex-wife and her unborn baby die in a mass shooting, right?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He sighed, and finished with the doctoring, he set Jamie’s leg down with care. “I’m going to leave this uncovered for a while. It’ll make things easier the next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time. You need to go.”
“I can’t leave you like this.” He ripped his gloves off, discarding them in the trash.
“Like hell you can’t. Put the morphine where I can reach it. I can do the rest myself.”
