“Great. See you then.”
He hung up and I dropped my head back. Well, now my life was suddenly getting very, very interesting.
Lyric
AT THREE A.M Saturday morning, I awoke in pain. More pain than should be normal. I sat up and forced my legs over the side of my bed, panting from the strain. I knew I’d probably just slept weird and needed to get up so I could get the blood flowing right again, but I just couldn’t.
This was the downside of being the cat lady who lived alone. No one would find me for days if I died. Oh, and my cat would eat my corpse.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to put pressure on my foot, crying out when the pain registered all the way to my hip. Booger meowed and meandered over to me, rubbing his head on my arm, obviously wondering why the hell I was awake at such an ungodly hour.
Or he was tenderizing me in prep for his meal later.
“Meow.”
“Not today, Satan. Not today.”
I took another deep breath and put more pressure on it and even worse pain shot through my body. I didn’t know what to do. Melody was in Phoenix, Harmony was in Portland, and I had no other family. It’s not like I could call Wes. We were about to go on our first date tonight, and I just, I don’t know, didn’t really know him, so I grabbed my phone and chose to make a bad decision. I called Doom. He answered immediately.
“Lyric, you okay?”
“No,” I rasped. “Something’s wrong with my leg.” I took a deep breath. “It really hurts.”
“Okay, baby, don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
He hung up and I sat at the edge of the bed and tried to breathe through the pain, feeling like someone was shoving spikes into my shin. I wanted to adjust my boot, but knew if I tried, I’d probably just fuck things up even more, so I stayed as still as I could and waited. I wish I’d kept a bottle of pain pills next to the bed.
Twenty minutes later, Doom arrived and I used my app to open the garage for him so he could get into the house. It didn’t dawn on me to question how he knew where I lived, probably because I couldn’t really think about anything but the pain. Doom walked in with a man I’d never seen before which kind of freaked me out and I let out a quiet squeak.
“Who the hell are you?” I snapped, trying to pull my covers over my half-dressed body.
“Lyric, this is Doc. He’s our club president, and he’s also a doctor. I asked him to come and check you out.”
“You’re really a doctor?”
“Yes,” he said, turning on the lamp next to my bed, then kneeling beside me. “Get the ceiling light, Doom,” he directed.
“Switch is on the wall,” I said.
Doom turned on the light and Doc gently slid the boot off my foot. “Pretty painful, huh?”
I nodded, biting back tears.
“This is good, Lyric. Your leg’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing, but that means you’re gonna feel all of those nerves as they come back to life.”
“So it’s not going to kill me?”
“No. The boot twisted a bit, so your leg moved inside of it and got pinched. Nothing damaging.” He adjusted the boot and I felt some relief, letting out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Better?”
“Yes, actually. Thank you.”
He gave me a gentle smile. “You should take something a little stronger than Tylenol. Do you need me to write you a script?”
I shook my head. “I still have pain meds.”
“Okay, babe. Take a dose and you should be good.”
I sniffed and bit my lip. “Thank you. I thought I’d done something really bad to it.”
