Knot a Chance: Doms of The Covenant Book 3

by Samantha A. Cole

  The three men chuckled as they took up positions around the private room, which was curtesy of Ian and Devon. Apparently, the Sawyer brothers made sizable donations to several hospitals in the Tampa/St. Pete area every year, and it came with benefits.

  “The family we rescued from the downed plane . . .” Graves started, “came by the air station to thank us today and brought a reporter and photographer with them. The higher-ups thought it would be good press to put our ugly mugs in the paper and on social media.”

  “What the hell were they thinking?” Stefan teased. “Did the camera break when they zoomed in on you, Peters?”

  There was a round of laughter before Jacoby spoke up. “I have to admit, though, it felt really good to see those kids again.” He unrolled a piece of paper Stefan hadn’t realized the younger man had been carrying. “The little girl, Emma, gave this to me. I think I’m going to have it framed as a reminder of my first successful rescue in SAR.” In different colored crayons, she’d done her best to draw a helicopter, a life raft on water, and a bunch of stick figures, two of which were hanging on a rope.

  Everyone smiled. Their rescues weren’t always successes, but it was nice to have a reminder of the ones that were, since the unsuccessful ones would unfailingly come to mind before all others for the rest of their lives.

  “By the way . . .” Graves set a duffel bag on one of the two chairs in the room. “The nurses in the ER gave me your keys, wallet, and boots. The medics had to cut your jumpsuit off while you were unconscious.” Stefan’s eyebrows shot up. It hadn’t even occurred to him over the past two days to wonder were his stuff was. The master chief continued. “I drove your truck back to the townhouse and left it there. Then, I figured while I was there, I might as well grab you some clothes and stuff. There’s three T-shirts, two pairs of sweatpants, socks, and sneakers in the bag, and a few things from your bathroom I thought you’d want. Also, I found your cell phone in the truck, so that’s in there too, with your keys and a charger. I didn’t think you’d need your wallet for anything, and it was safer to leave in the top drawer of your dresser instead of having it here, but I can get it if you need it.”

  “Thanks, Master Chief. You’re right, I don’t think I need my wallet, but I appreciate you taking care of everything else and bringing me some clothes. My ass is hanging out of this stupid hospital gown.” And he planned on changing into a shirt and sweats as soon as his buddies left. Maybe he’d feel a little better being in his own clothing. He didn’t think he could feel much worse.

  “Could be worse—your dick could be hanging out.” He paused a moment, and then his expression became somber. “Listen, LC, I didn’t get a chance to properly thank you for saving my sorry ass out there. I-I thought I was a goner for a second there.”

  Stefan stared at the man, then let out a soft huff. “That’s it? No case of scotch? No tickets to the Super Bowl? Shit, saving a buddy’s life has gone downhill in the gratitude department lately, hasn’t it?”

  Everyone burst out laughing. They knew Stefan was no more comfortable with the thanks than any one of them would’ve been. They did what they could to save as many lives as possible for one reason only—because they could. The protection of life had been ingrained in all of them from the beginning, and that came first and foremost over everything else, including their own lives.

  When Graves spoke again, despite the levity of the moment, his words were tinged with regret. “Well, I hope saving my ass wasn’t what brought the heart attack on. I mean, you could’ve found out about the blockage in a way that was less severe.”

  Frowning, Stefan glared at him, his tone reproving. “Master Chief, I will never regret saving you. And if I ever hear you blaming yourself for my fucking heart attack, I’m going to beat the ever loving daylights out of you, understood?”

  The corners of the man’s mouth ticked upward. “Aye aye, Sir.”

  “Good. Now, who snuck in a flask of scotch? I know one of you did.”

  11

  Cass glanced up when the door to the cardiac rehab unit opened, and she smiled. Kelvin pushed Stefan’s wheelchair inside and stopped next to her elevated console in the middle of the large room. The orderly handed her a thick chart with all the patient’s info in it. “He’s all yours. Page me when he’s ready to go back to his room.”

  “Thanks, Kelvin.” As the big man left, Cass studied Stefan. The grin he gave her didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’ll be a few minutes until Dewayne is available to get you set up. How’re you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  She tried not to frown at the flat, one-word answer as he looked around the room. Cass’s monitoring station was where she kept an eye on all the patients while their EKGs scrolled across her computer screen. Surrounding her, there were numerous pieces of gym equipment, which included treadmills, stationary bikes, ellipticals, rowers, a cross-country ski machine, and a Stairmaster. There was also a weightlifting area with dumbbells. Everything was used to strengthen one’s heart muscle following any of a variety of cardiac episodes. Several men and women, currently all outpatients, were scattered around the large room, doing their assigned exercises while wearing heart monitors. If Cass noticed any abnormalities in their EKGs, then she would notify one of the two cardiac rehab specialists who were working with the patients. Both Jane Tillman and Dewayne Reich had degrees in exercise physiology and helped nutritionist, Vivian Dickson, plan custom programs for their patients to follow. Most insurance companies paid for anywhere between three months and one year of therapy following a qualifying cardiac event.

  Behind her station were men’s and women’s locker rooms, but since Stefan had come from upstairs, he didn’t have anything that needed to go in there. Cass couldn’t think of anything else to say to him, and he didn’t seem like he was in the mood for any conversation, so she did her job and stared at the monitor. Standing next to a recumbent bike, Dewayne took Mrs. Dobbs’ blood pressure and called out the numbers for Cass to write down in the woman’s chart. “One-eighty over eighty-four, Cass.”

  “Got it.” After making the notation, Cass glanced at Stefan before watching the monitor again. He was frowning, and she didn’t know why. She tried to look at the room from his prospective, and, after a few seconds, she realized what he saw. All the other patients were over sixty-five years old and some were older than eighty. He had to be thinking he didn’t belong with all these elderly people, but he was wrong. He needed the rehab as much as they did. He couldn’t just throw himself back into the intense physical fitness routine he’d been doing before his heart attack. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to start back up slowly, and this room, where he could be monitored, was the best place for him to do that. He wasn’t the youngest person they’d ever had in the hospital’s cardiac rehab program, but he was currently.

  After adjusting the tension on Mrs. Dobbs’ bicycle, the male therapist strode over to Stefan and held out his hand. “Hey, man, I’m Dewayne. Ready to get started?”

  Before the inpatients reported for their first workout session, either Jane or Dewayne visited them to explain the rehab program, and Cass knew the latter had stopped in to see Stefan yesterday afternoon.

  Shaking the man’s hand, while glancing around again, Stefan asked, “Is this really necessary? I mean, I work out practically every day at my station’s gym and pool. I know how to use all this stuff already.”

  Bending down, Dewayne lifted the wheelchair’s footrests out of the way so Stefan could stand. “Like I told you yesterday, for the next few weeks, no exercise without an EKG monitor on. We’ve got to make sure the damage from the heart attack isn’t causing any problems while it heals.”

  Stefan huffed as he stood. “Well, I could’ve at least walked down here on my own.”

  “No can do, man. Not while you’re still an inpatient. Come on over here and let me hook you up to a monitor, so Cass can keep an eye on your EKG, and then we’ll get you on the treadmill. No running today—just a stroll do
wn the beach. Once your stress test is done, we’ll see about getting you up to a jog and then running.”

  As Stefan followed the other man across the room, Cass could’ve sworn he’d mumbled a curse, but she wasn’t sure. Instead, her attention was caught by Mr. Edwards singing along to Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” as it floated down from the overhead speakers, and it brought a smile back to Cass’s face. Usually, they kept a light rock station on the satellite radio, since it appealed to several generations. However, if there were only a few patients in the room, the staff would take requests and change it to another genre if everyone agreed. Sometimes they had swing music on, and everyone got into it, dancing around the room. It was pretty fun to watch, and it got their heart rates up just as much as the aerobic equipment did.

  Within a few minutes, a new EKG started scrolling across Cass’s screen, and there was a pop-up request for her to enter the patient’s name and identification number for heart monitor #8. From behind her, Dewayne asked, “Is Stefan up?”

  “Yes, and he’s in normal sinus rhythm at a rate of sixty,” Cass replied as she used the keyboard to enter his information.

  Name: S-T-E-F-A-N L-U-N-D-Q-U-I-S-T

  Patient ID: 20-549367-901

  After hitting “Accept,” Cass clicked on the record button next to Stefan’s EKG and printed out a ten-second strip for comparison for when they got his heart rate up.

  Dewayne then rattled off Stefan’s vital signs as he took them one by one.

  “Blood pressure is one-forty over sixty-eight.”

  “Respirations, sixteen.”

  “Pulse, sixty-two.”

  “Oh-two sat is ninety-nine percent.” That was the oxygen level in his blood.

  “Temperature, ninety-eight point two.”

  Cass wrote each one down in the proper place on Stefan’s assessment sheet. The last number was a little low, but a lot of people didn’t have the “ideal” temp of 98.6 degrees. Checking his chart, she saw that it was normal for him.

  After he was done taking Stefan’s vitals, Dewayne escorted his patient to a treadmill within Cass’s range of sight, even if her gaze was on the screen in front of her. If for any reason, she wasn’t looking at the EKGs, and an abnormality occurred on one of them, like premature beats or an atypical high or low heart rate, an alarm would alert her to it. Since Cass oversaw the charts, answering the phone, and a few other things, it helped guarantee she wouldn’t miss anything.

  Over the next ten minutes, Cass did her job, but every so often her gaze would flitter toward Stefan. The big, bad Dom wasn’t happy, and it was obvious. While Dewayne had set Stefan’s treadmill at a faster pace than he would for the older patients, it was still only a walk. Stefan looked bored out of his mind and didn’t like it when Jane returned his treadmill to a flat position after he’d elevated the incline without asking first. He was trying to do too much on his first day, which wasn’t uncommon with new patients, but the CRSs and Cass were keeping an eye on him, whether he liked it or not

  Stefan glared at the digital number showing his pace on the treadmill. My fucking grandmother could walk faster than this, and she’s been dead for years. Yeah, he was being a surly bastard, but he was being treated like a ninety-two-year-old. First, his nurse and the big orderly wouldn’t let him walk the hallway and take the elevator two floors down to the rehab unit. Nope, he’d had to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed the whole way. To add to his embarrassment, Cassie had seen him like that. Now, she was watching him walk a whopping 3.0 mph on the treadmill. He’d tried to increase the incline of the machine, to, at least, let him feel like he was actually doing some work, but the female therapist, Jane, had put it back down again.

  What was pissing him off the most, though, was this whopping 3.0 mph, with no freaking incline, was starting to kick his ass. His heart rate was up as if he were running double the current speed, and he was sweating and getting out of breath. Not something that should be happening to him with such little effort. Hell, he could run the Trident Security obstacle course in under six minutes for Christ’s sake, and that was based on the Navy SEALs’ infamous O-course.

  “How’re you doing?” Dewayne asked as he checked the timer on the treadmill.

  “Fine.”

  “Well, I know it feels like you’re walking slower than a snail, but after what your heart just went through a few days ago, it’s really getting a workout today. I see in your chart Dr. Chang ordered the stress test for tomorrow. After we get those results, we’ll come up with a program to get you back to the workouts you’re used to, within reason, of course. No obstacle courses or jumping out of helicopters or whatever else you guys do for fun in the Coast Guard. I can’t say this enough, you can’t push it, man. Let your heart heal. You wouldn’t be running on a broken leg until it healed properly, so think of it that way. All right?”

  Put that way, it kind of made sense, but that didn’t make Stefan any happier about things. “Yeah, I get it. I’ll try to take it easy for now.”

  “Good. Stick your hand out.” When he did, the guy slid a sensor on his finger to get the O2 saturation in his blood. “It dropped a bit—ninety-five—but that’s expected in the beginning.” Dewayne hit a red button on the treadmill, and the belt slowed before coming to a complete stop. “Take a breather, and I’ll check it again in a minute. In the meantime, give me your arm.” A blood pressure cuff was wrapped around Stefan’s upper arm and inflated. A few seconds later, Dewayne announced, “One-sixty-two over eighty. Not bad. Looks like the new blood pressure medication Dr. Chang put you on is working. That’s good. Still have to keep an eye on it though because some meds can work too well and make you hypotensive. Definitely don’t want that happening. If you get dizzy at all, lay down and elevate your legs.”

  Stefan nodded. He remembered all that from when he got his paramedic certification about ten years ago to become a rescue swimmer in SAR. He’d done that for nine years before his promotion about eighteen months ago moved him inside the Sector Command Center where he oversaw the rescues instead of participating in them.

  Dewayne ripped the blood pressure cuff off Stefan’s arm. “What weights were you using for bicep curls?”

  “Thirty for three reps.”

  “Well, we’re going to cut that down to ten today. Yeah, yeah, I know. Sissy stuff. I’ll get you back to fifteen by next week. Baby steps, my man. Baby steps. We’ll get you there.”

  Baby steps, my ass.

  12

  “I’m serious, Elin. I don’t want you flying down here for nothing—you just got back from Italy and probably didn’t even unpack yet. I don’t need a babysitter, and I’m supposed to take it easy for a while, so we’d be sitting in the living room, staring at each other watching TV.” He paced around said living room as he talked to her on his cell phone.

  His sister tsked before saying, “You’re a stubborn mule, little brother, but I’ll leave you alone for a few weeks. But don’t forget, Tara and I are planning to come down for a long weekend next month, so you have until then to stop being so surly.”

  “I’m not surly.” Even as he said the words, he knew she was right, and so did she.

  “Sure you’re not.”

  “I’m not.” He didn’t know why he continued to argue. “Anyway, let’s talk about something else.” He sat in his recliner and stared out the bay window at nothing at all. He’d been home for just over two full days and, yesterday, had managed to convince his folks to go home this morning. Thankfully, they’d managed to find a flight with seats available. He loved his folks, but having them hover over him like he was an invalid had been driving him crazy. Let them go fuss over the newly engaged couple. “So, how’d the proposal go?”

  “It was amazing, Stef. I cried, Tara cried, a bunch of people around us cried. Somehow, I managed not to sound like a babbling idiot and got the words out. Tara was completely taken by surprise. I thought maybe she had an idea I might propose in Italy, but she says she never saw it coming.”

&
nbsp; “Glad to hear it, sis—you and Tara make a great couple. I’m happy for you. So, when’s the wedding?”

  “Don’t know yet. We’re trying to decide if we want to do something small here with our family and a few friends or if we should just elope since Tara’s family will refuse to come. I don’t want that bothering her on the biggest day of our lives.” Stefan had heard all about his future sister-in-law’s parents and other family members disowning her because she’d fallen in love with another women. It still irked him that, in this day and age, people would do that to their own flesh and blood. It hadn’t bothered him or his parents one bit when Elin had announced she was a lesbian during her junior year of college. When she’d brought her first girlfriend home a year later for Thanksgiving, it’d all seemed so natural to seventeen-year-old Stefan. As long as his sister was happy, he didn’t care which gender she preferred.

  “Well, even if you elope, you’ll need witnesses. I’m volunteering to be one. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll be there.”

  “I’m holding you to that, little brother.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes before ending the call. While he loved being in Florida, he missed having his sister around. Despite the five-and-a-half years between them, they’d always been close. When he’d turned twenty-one, Elin had been the one to take him out for his first legal drink to celebrate. She also knew he was a Dom. He honestly didn’t recall how that conversation had started a few years ago, but she hadn’t treated him like a freak or a woman abuser—he was neither. In fact, while she wasn’t in the lifestyle, she had two gay friends who were in a D/s relationship. So, by the time she found out Stefan was a Dom, she’d already known more about the lifestyle than he’d expected her to.