“On bed?”
“Maybe later.”
“Why?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, impressed by my sister’s lack of eye twitching. We were in the ‘question everything’ phase, which was always a fun little test to every parent’s patience. And me, by extension, I guess.
Ainsley was a curious girl, something we both wanted to keep fanning the flame under no matter how annoying it got sometimes. That was how you got scientists and world leaders unafraid to challenge the status quo.
“Is that a card for me?” I asked, reaching for it.
My stomach twinged just enough to be noticeable with the motion as I slipped it from her fingers. My system was still flooded with painkillers, leaving me with a false sense of reality that the injuries I’d gotten dragged out of the house with weren’t nearly as bad as everyone was making them out to be.
I’d yet to lift my gown and look down at the bandages covering my entire waist down, hiding what was probably a horrible macabre of incision lines and suture marks. If the bruising along my arm from the multiple needles during surgery were anything to go off of, I was going to hate what I saw in the mirror once I got home.
Yet another reminder to not let my body work faster than my brain.
What a horrible way to learn an incredibly valuable life lesson.
“She made it all by herself just for you.” Amelia hiked her toddler higher up on her hip, wincing slightly when tiny fingers latched onto her long, pin-straight brown hair.
“Awww.” I peeled the envelope back, revealing a folded up sheet inside. Once flattened, the hand drawn picture of all three of us was laid out in stick figure form, shaded over by jagged lines that I could only assume represented clothes.
In the background, was a lemon-shaped sun, a smiley face drawn in the middle, and an odd-shaped box with a slant drawn over the top of it, both in the colors of our house.
“Thank you, Ainsley. This is very nice. I’ll keep this here with me.” I tapped the table next to my bed twice. “So I can look at it every day when I wake up.”
“Unca Terry, go home?”
“No. He’s got to stay here for a bit, honey.” Amelia pointed to the drawing. “Did you hear what he said? He’s going to keep your picture so he doesn’t get lonely while he’s here.”
To her credit, Ainsley held on for a good thirty seconds before crumbling into a fit full of sobs. My sister twisted her around to cradle her while swaying on her feet, a hand coming up to gently pat my niece through the sobbing.
It was hard being a kid and not knowing what was going on. The machines all around me with different things displayed on the screen, the nursing staff coming and going every hour checking on my vitals, even I was out of sorts from all of that chaos. Imagining what it was like to see all of this as a child and being told your uncle had to stay in this strange-looking place you’d never seen before would probably have me crying, too.
“She missed you a lot last night. Kept asking when you were going to come read her a bedtime story,” Amelia said.
Ugh, my heart.
Just like my sister, my niece had me wrapped around her finger. Upsetting her was the last thing I wanted to do.
However, the strict tone my surgeon had used was… quite the deterrent from actually going through with trying to get discharged early like I’d been planning on. His intimidating presence still lingered in this room long after he’d gotten up and wandered off. Which was quite impressive, considering I could only see a third of his face.
“Maybe we should facetime later.” It was the least I could think to do if it got Ainsley to settle down at night.
She was routine oriented, needing and craving the structure that came from knowing exactly how the day was going to go, regardless of what went on outside of the safety of our home. Something coming in and bulldozing that to pieces, even in an emergency, would be devastating.
“Don’t stress yourself. You’re the one with a bunch of holes in you. You need to rest and sleep as much as possible. How long have they decided on keeping you here for?”
“At least a week.”
She grimaced. “What happened to the guy who did it?”
“Kicked rocks, apparently. Early this morning.”
She nodded, and then said, “Your captain told me it was pretty bad when she called.”
I nearly failed holding back a wince.
