"I'm astonished that first infection cleared up so nicely," Nick said. "I expected a secondary infection of some kind. Cellulitis, MRSA, something. There's no reasonable explanation for how well this gunshot wound is healing."
If this was A-plus healing, I didn't want to imagine the average. I required assistance to sit up. The act of speaking zapped my energy. I coughed last night and seriously believed my internal organs were going to burst out of me. I sat down to shower. "Strong immune system."
"That only gets you so far," he murmured as he prodded the wound on my flank.
"Mom's home cooking," I offered.
His brows pitched up. "Chicken soup has never once prevented streptococcal infections following gunshot wounds."
"Then it must be all the thoughts and prayers. They have to be good for something," I said.
He glanced at me with an unimpressed glare. "Hardly. Listen, I'm not ready to sign off on this wound. It looks good but it's not uncommon for infections to crop up late in the game with gunshots. When a bullet passes through human tissue, it creates a passageway but also a vacuum. It sucks in everything it can, filling that passage with foreign matter. Clothing fibers, dust, debris, bacteria, germs on the bullet itself. All of those things are drawn into the affected tissue. That passage will collapse as the force of the bullet moves through the body. That's what we're looking out for right now."
"You're waiting for secret prison dirt to flare up into a killer infection?" I waved at my bruised, broken body. "This isn't enough shit to deal with, might as well throw in some international germs?"
He shrugged. "They take time showing up, especially considering you survived on pure adrenaline for several days."
"What I'm hearing you say is I should eat more chicken soup."
He didn't acknowledge that comment, instead shifting his attention to the incision on my arm. "This needs another week of immobilization. Probably longer."
"That's really going to get in the way of my combat exercises."
"You're not cleared to hold a pencil, Halsted. Combat is gonna wait." He stretched my arm out and back down to my side. "You'll need extensive physical therapy before you can do anything resembling combat."
"You're killing my sex life, doc."
"You're not cleared for sex either," he said, a laugh heavy in his words. "No lifting, no stairs, no bending or twisting, and no sex."
"I don't know how you get your dick sucked but I can do it without lifting, bending, or twisting, and there have only been a few instances involving stairs, so—"
"If those incisions open, you'll need four to six weeks of intensive wound care," Nick replied. "No sex."
"But a lot more chicken soup?"
He studied me for a moment, my arm still held in his hands. "You're not going back to work for five to six months, Wes. If not longer. We won't know the full extent of the damage until the swelling goes down and the bone starts healing. You have a long recovery ahead of you. If you're anything like Will—"
"I'm not," I snapped.
I loved the guy. He was one of the best. All of that was true but it didn't make us the same person and it didn't mean we handled our shit the same ways. Recovering in his house, surrounded by his children and his wife and his dogs and all the things he kept under his immaculate control, reminded me of that fact. And it reminded meI'dfucked up andI'dlost control, and now my partner was dead and my cover was irreversibly blown and my career was most likely over.
"If you are," he started, his words soft, "that's not something you want to hear. You're human and you have to put up with all the fragility that comes along with it, even if you have a history of defying that truth."
I wasn't prepared to revisit the topic of my mortality today. I'd spent enough time flirting with it on that tanker.
Thinking about that awareness chilled me to the core and reminded me how I'd longed to get it right if I made it through. How I'd made promises to myself.
But…was I still betraying myself if I broke a promise I never imagined I'd live to carry out?
4
Wes
The house was quiet.It was strange. In my six weeks of residency at my brother's house, I'd come to learn it was nothing if not routinely loud. This place was filled with dogs, babies, people, my cadre of physical therapists, and old, creaky floors. This newfound calm was unsettling. It set me on edge, sent every worst-case scenario swirling through my mind.
Was it quiet because we were under attack? Had intruders locked everyone in the basement at gunpoint?
Was it quiet because terrorists shot nerve gas into the house? Had I survived because I'd isolated myself in the garage apartment as soon as I could manage the stairs on my own, which had only taken seven mortifyingly long days after my father had shouldered my sorry ass to the bathroom and stayed in there with me to make sure I didn't fall over and die?
