"You're welcome to do that," Will replied. "Truly. Go on with your swashbuckling self, Wes. Just drag your ass out of my guest room and pull on a puffy shirt, and I'll buy you a fucking ship."
"You're supposed to steal the ship," I argued. "I'd expect you to know that." I blinked up at the doctor. He was pretty but there was no missing the wedding band on his left hand. "Have we met? I've heard your accent before."
"Yes, at your sister's wedding. You also know my wife. Erin."
"Oh, yeah. The redhead chick the Italian mafia put under their protection. Because that's totally normal." I tried to get a better look at him but his head wouldn't stay still. Or stop multiplying. "When did you guys get married? I wasn't invited. I don't think."
A slight smile lifted his lips as he stabbed a syringe into a vial, slowly filling the barrel. "The night before your sister's wedding."
"She doesn't make house calls with you?" I asked.
"No, not when she's in the Philippines."
"Damn," I murmured. "I like her. You, I'm not too sure about."
"I like her too. This might burn a bit," he said as he tapped the syringe. "But it will hit you before you can count to ten."
"Imma make it to thirty," I replied, winking up at the doctor while he rubbed an alcohol swab on my bicep. "Just watch."
He grinned as the syringe pierced my skin. "Only if you count fast."
I heard the numbers rolling off my tongue—one, two, three,cuatro,fünf,kuusi,siedem—but it was the warm sound of my brother's laughter, and "He's some kind of pain in the ass, isn't he?" I remembered as the edges softened and the room went dark.
* * *
The shadows were back.The voices too.
They swirled and hovered around me, coming in bursts and fading away before I could grab hold of them. And I wanted to hold on. I wanted to come back and I wanted to be here—be anywhere. I didn't know how long it took me to fight my way through. It could've been hours, it could've been weeks. But when I blinked my eyes open and found gray walls, plain and stationary in their moondust glory, I managed a dry laugh. It cracked through me with a bolt of pain that pinged every raw nerve and strained muscle in my body. I felt it in my torso, skull, knees. If it was possible, the beard that'd grown bushy and thick since leaving Russia hurt too.
"You've always snored like a locomotive when you're sick."
I shifted just enough to catch sight of my mother seated in the corner, some variety of sewing in her hands. She didn't look up from her handicrafts.
"What?" I croaked. Goddamn, my mouth was filled with sand. "What did you say?"
"I said you snore like a locomotive when you're sick," she repeated. "It's a quick way of knowing you're still alive but you're going to wake the dead, Wesley." She stabbed her needle through the fabric and dropped it to her lap. Then she leveled her gaze on me. "You've been asleep for almost twenty hours. We need to get you up. After everything you've put me through, you're not throwing a pulmonary embolism on top of it all. And god help me, if you want to be an asshole and do it just to spite me, I will crack your chest open and fish out that embolism myself."
"What?" I blinked at her as her words came to me through a long tunnel. "What?" I asked again.
She stood, paced toward the bed and peeled back the blankets without ceremony. When it came to mothers who'd also served as combat nurses, privacy was an illusion. "You've been in this bed for twenty hours," she said as she inspected the wound on my flank. "Your blood needs to move. If it doesn't, it thickens and gets stuck in places like your lungs."
She poked at a tender spot on my arm and those gray walls turned bright red. "Jesus Christ, Judy," I cried. "Trying to break the bones one more time?"
"It's looking better," she said, ignoring me. "It's going to be sore for a long while."
"Perhaps you could go easy on me," I said, nearly nauseous with pain. "I don't know, maybe don't stab me with your bony little fingers?"
My mother snapped the blankets back up, fisted her hands on her hips. "Wesley," she hissed. "Do you have any idea what you've put us through? You were tortured and shot and your arm—my god, your arm might not heal properly. You lost yourspleento this mission and your—"
"And my cover," I whispered. "I lost my cover, I'm probably being charged with war crimes as we speak, and I'll never work in covert operations again, Mom. You don't need to remind me."
She was silent then because she knew. She knew this was worse than any broken bone, any semi-essential organs. My father had served as a Navy SEAL before moving up the chain of command and running SEAL school down on Coronado Island. Will had served before an injury and burnout got the better of him. My mother knew more about the covert life than anyone and she knew I was well and truly fucked.
She brushed her fingers over my forehead, finally giving me the dose of momming I'd needed. "You'll be fine. You'll land on your feet, Wesley. You always do."
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to see a path forward that didn't involve me and my fruit salad of injuries parked behind a desk in CIA purgatory. Or worse—whatever that was.
"Just because you don't see it now doesn't mean you won't see it," she continued. "Your only concern right now is getting healthy." She glanced over her shoulder, frowning. "And that means getting up. Let me grab your father or Will to help you. You've been too big for me since you were five, you little behemoth."
