The door opened and a tall blond woman walked in, her uniform cut in at all the right places, giving me a good view of her shapely ass as she sashayed across the room.
“Morning, I brought you breakfast,” she said, cheery as a motherfucker, “Doctor Collins is signing off on your discharge papers this morning, so you should be out of here in a day or so. Isn’t that great? I bet you can’t wait after being cooped up in this little room for so long…”
She continued to drone on and on like I gave a shit what she said, and I drowned her out, wondering where the fuck Belle was but already knowing that I’d driven her away for good this time.
The chirpy little blond pulled the cart to the side of my bed. “I have your meds and your pudding. I heard you love pudding, so I made sure to bring an extra cup.” She smiled and held out a Styrofoam cup filled with water in one hand and a little cup with my pills in another.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Well, your previous nurse said not to give you a glass. She said that you’re very accident prone,” she said, her smile faltering a little as her gaze caught sight of the broken window. “But she insisted that you get two puddings because they’re your favourite.”
I stared between her and the cup of water, giving a shake of my head.
She’d really just left me in the care of this nurse.
I’d known she was done with me—I’d made sure of it—yet I hadn’t thought I’d actually give a shit. But now that she wasn’t there I was pissed off. Pissed off that she thought she could just drop me. Pissed off that she thought she got any say in any of this. And pissed off that she’d put this bubbly little bitch in charge of looking after me. I’d be gone in a day or two, but there was no way I was letting Belle get out of her duties so easily.
My gaze narrowed in on the nurse’s tag and I realised that she worked in paediatrics.
Belle had gotten a child’s nurse to look after me.
Anger rose inside of me, fury raging through my veins at her fucking audacity. Who the fuck did she think she was dealing with?
“Oh, now now, come on, don’t get yourself all worked up, sweetie,” the nurse said soothingly, like I was a fucking child.
My anger continued to grow and grow until I thought I was going to explode, but when it got to the boiling point, instead of exploding, I laughed. It bubbled out of me like vomit, so loudly and unexpectedly that the prospect stormed into the room with his gun out, and that made me laugh some more.
“Put your gun away, prospect!” I said, my booming laugh growing louder, and he flicked the safety back on and slid it into his jeans.
“Everything okay?” he asked cautiously.
I wanted to feel bad for laughing. I wanted Echo’s voice in my head telling me to shut the fuck up and get back to my misery and self-pity, get back to planning my vengeance, but instead all I heard was silence.
Echo wasn’t in there yelling at me, guilt-tripping me, and making me feel like the piece of shit I was. He was gone, and his silence was deafening. Even the screaming of the horses had disappeared.
I pushed the covers back from my body and slid to the side of the bed before dropping onto my feet. I felt unsteady and weak, my muscles not used to being used, but I was done with wheelchairs. I wanted to be a man again. A big-ass naked man walking across the room, but a man all the same. I wanted to walk and move and be a human being living instead of a corpse in a bed waiting to die. I hobbled over to the opposite wall where the gowns were kept, reaching for one and sliding it over my shoulders.
Joey rushed to my side. “Hey hey, hey, big man, what’s going down?” He put a hand on my waist, but I shrugged him off. “Where you off to, brother?”
“Need to find her,” I grunted.
“Who?”
I scowled. “Belle, asshole.” I was trying to knot the little gown ties to make it go tighter around me, but no matter how hard I tied them my ass was still on show, a cold draft sliding up my back.
“What the fuck is this?” I yelled, getting irritated with it.
“They provide easy access for the doctors,” Nurse fucking Chipper said helpfully.
“So my ass is going to be on show for everyone?”
“I mean, I could try and find you some clothes, but I’d need to check with Doctor Collins that it was okay first,” she said, her eyes bright and cheery like it was all perfectly normal.
“Fuck it,” I snapped, and stormed across the room. I’d tied it loosely, and was ignoring the aches and pains running through my body. I’d be okay once I got used to it. My body just wasn’t used to moving.
When I reached the door, a dizzy spell washed over me and I clung to the wall to stop myself from falling over. The prospect tried to grab me, touching a particularly sensitive spot, and I called out in pain.
“Fuck!”
