by Lauren Esker
"Yes, I think I remember. You dived into the water after Jack." Casey shook her hand. Her grip was strong and brisk. "And, I'm sorry, but I don't know much of what happened after that. Avery didn't seem worried about you taking on Roger Fallon by yourself."
Avery flashed a quick, bright grin, and Agent Kemp smiled. "No, I suppose he wouldn't be. I'm an orca shifter—a killer whale. Roger never knew what hit him."
"Is he ..." Casey trailed off, not sure what she wanted to ask. Or what she wanted the answer to be.
Eva Kemp and Avery shared a quick look. "He didn't make it back to stand trial," Avery said.
After being attacked by a killer whale, probably not.
"I feel like I should have feelings about that," Casey said at last. "But I don't, really. I suppose I don't know what to feel."
Avery smiled and clasped his hands over the top of his cane. "Congratulations, you're human." The smile slipped away. "And you've been through something very traumatic. We have some therapists, not on our payroll, but shifter therapists who work with shifter clients who've been through experiences like yours."
"Probably not exactly like mine," Casey had to say.
"No," Avery conceded. "Not exactly. Still, we can put you in touch with them."
"And would highly suggested it, even if you feel like you don't need it now," Eva added. She clasped a large hand on Avery's shoulder. "Well, I'm off to get some sleep now, I think, and have a nice relaxing swim with the pod." She nodded to Casey. "Pleasure to meet you properly."
"You too," Casey said.
Eva left, only to be replaced almost instantly by a cheerful older black woman in a tidy white coat. She had a million tiny braids pulled back into a large knot at the nape of her neck, some of them dyed in a rainbow palette of colors.
"Hello, Ms. McClaren. I'm Dr. Lafitte, but you can call me Willa. Let's have a look at you, why don't we?"
"I can go—" Avery began, struggling up out of the chair.
"No, don't," Casey said. "You can stay." She had finally managed to put her finger on the source of her discomfort around Avery; it was, at least partly, that Jack had told her so much about him, while he knew relatively little about her. In an odd way, this felt like evening the score.
Dr. Lafitte pulled the sheet back, and Casey got her first look at her injured leg. It was propped on a pillow; she hadn't even been aware of that. She'd been expecting tidy white bandages, like on TV, but instead it was, to her surprise, completely unbandaged. A purple incision ran down the side of her leg, held in place with a line of butterfly bandages. Everything was swollen and somewhat discolored. Casey stared in a kind of train-wreck fascination.
"Are you in pain?" Dr. Lafitte asked. She applied blue latex-free gloves from a box on the bedside table and then prodded gently at it.
"Not really. It ... itches, I guess." Itch wasn't quite the right word for it. It was more like a crawling sensation under her skin.
"That'll get worse for awhile, I'm afraid. Painkillers will help with it somewhat, but not as much as one might hope."
"I can back her up on that," Avery said, with a faint smile.
"On the bright side, you should be walking around without crutches in just a couple of days, and back to full function of the leg in a week or two. We had to repair a major blood vessel, so you're going to want to take it very easy until you're off the crutches, though. You'll probably want to sleep a lot."
"And eat, I've heard." Her stomach growled, as if to back her up. Casey blushed.
"Yes, you'll be eating like there's no tomorrow. I'll have something sent up to you shortly. Not much variety, unfortunately. Do you have any dietary restrictions?"
Casey shook her head.
Dr. Lafitte pulled the sheet back over her legs. "Getting back to the business at hand, I expect you'll be discharged tomorrow morning, and, as I said, on crutches for a day or two. Let your body be your guide to your recovery. It's even more idiosyncratic for shifters than for non-shifting humans. You might be close to a hundred percent in just a few days, or you might feel like using the crutches for awhile longer.
"And you will have some scars, I'm afraid," she added. "The paradoxical thing about shifter healing is that scarring isn't much less than in humans. Actually, in some people, it's worse. Scarring is a result of the natural healing process, and shifters have an accelerated healing process, which doesn't mean less scar tissue. It just piles up faster."
Casey thought of Jack's scars, and Avery's. "I can live with that." The hunger was becoming more pressing, a fast-growing need. She hoped the food got here soon. To distract herself, she asked, "What hospital am I in, anyway?"
"Ah," Dr. Lafitte said. "Not a hospital, quite. This is a private clinic. It caters to shifters—not exclusively, but they're a significant part of our clientele. We also have a contract with the SCB to treat their agents." She grinned conspiratorially. "An ongoing source of budget stress, from what I hear through confidential sources."
"Our division chief is Dr. Lafitte's wife," Avery explained.
"Oh," Casey said. It was a little intimidating the way all these people knew each other. She'd sometimes been aware the shifter world was close-knit, but had never been exposed to it before. "Do you mind if I ask what kind of shifter you are?"
Dr. Lafitte smiled. "I'm not a shifter at all. Just an ordinary plain-vanilla human."
"Oh!" She wanted to ask more questions, but wasn't sure where to begin. Humans who knew about shifters? Humans and shifters, living together, working together, even marrying each other ...?
She had grown up with the ever-present awareness, hammered into her by her parents and then by Grandma McClaren, that she must always hide her real nature from all but her dearest loved ones. The idea of humans and shifters living together as friends, partners, and spouses fascinated her.
"Well, your leg looks excellent," Dr. Lafitte said, peeling off her gloves. "If you feel up to it, I'd like to get you up now, and show you how to use your crutches."
"Didn't I just have surgery?" Casey protested. "Is that really good for me?"
"Believe it or not, these days we like to have patients out of bed the same day. The more you move around, the better you heal."
Avery cleared his throat and pushed himself up, using the arms of the chair to lever himself out of the seat. "And that's my cue to leave. You'd probably do better without an audience."
"Avery?" Casey said.
He stopped and turned around.
"Can you, uh ... say hi to Jack for me?"
"Sure, but you can do it yourself." He nodded to the crutches that had been leaning against the wall, which Dr. Lafitte was even now retrieving. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind visitors."
Her heart jumped. Jack's absence was a strange kind of loneliness she'd never experienced before—or maybe it was just that she'd never realized how lonely she really was. She kept noticing how naked her wrist felt without the handcuff, as if she should be able to move it and feel the answering pressure at the other end.
Would he be glad to see her, though? She felt shy about it. Their experiences on the island seemed so unreal now. And yet, she craved him, like a thirst she had no way to slake.
Later, she promised herself. It would be a good incentive for teaching herself to use the crutches.
Dr. Lafitte leaned out of the room to find a nursing assistant, and the two of them helped her sit up. She had to wait out a brief head rush, but felt stable enough once she got used to it. Her feet were still sore and tender. The nursing assistant rolled non-slip socks onto them, and then they helped her up and got the crutches adjusted for her.
The food arrived while she was still getting the hang of moving around the room. As soon as she saw the steaming plate, it was all she could do not to attack it immediately.
Seeing the look on her face, Dr. Lafitte helped her sit down on the edge of the bed. "I want you to do a couple of laps around the hall later, but for right now, getting some calories and protein in your system is the best thing you can do
. I'll be back later. Call someone if you feel like you need to get up."
Casey nodded absently, but the food was the only thing she could focus on. God, they hadn't been kidding about appetite. She hardly noticed them leaving the room.
She scarfed down two plates of some sort of meatloaf that she'd probably have found completely unappealing under normal circumstances. Right now it tasted like the best thing she'd ever eaten. She was worried about making herself sick by eating too much, but all it did was make her thirsty.
And she needed to use the bathroom.
She started to reach for the nurse call button, but then hesitated. The crutches were right there by the bed. She was going to have to use them sooner or later anyway.
And I could see Jack ...
She pushed away the bedside tray table—it was on a jointed plastic arm that swung out over the bed—and swung her legs carefully off the edge. The doctor had said she wasn't supposed to get out of bed by herself, but she felt all right: a little dizzy and sleepy, but not too bad.
And she was used to doing things by herself. She had a whole lifetime's experience at it.
Moving with care, she pulled the crutches nearer, and then stood up. Getting them arranged under her arms without help was the hardest part, but once she found her balance, she didn't feel too unstable. She was able to crutch carefully into the bathroom. There were grip bars to assist patients in seating themselves on the toilet. It wasn't too hard. Afterwards, she filled a paper cup with water from the sink and drank until her thirst was no longer so pressing.
She eyed the shower wistfully. Someone had cleaned her up, which she appreciated as long as she didn't think too much about it, but she really needed a proper shower. She was already tiring rapidly, though. And she had somewhere else she wanted to go before she got back in bed.
After checking to make sure her hospital gown wasn't going to fall off and give everyone a show, she crutched out into the hallway. A nursing assistant was just coming out of the room across the hall, wheeling a cart and simultaneously juggling a tray. Casey's first instinct was to hide, but she reminded herself firmly that she wasn't breaking any laws. At most, she might be bending the clinic's policies slightly.
The young woman looked up and saw her. "Do you need help, miss? I just need to get these taken downstairs—"
"I'm supposed to be getting up and walking around," Casey said, and, bending the truth ever so slightly, "They said it was all right. Could you tell me where Jack Ross's room is, please?"
"End of the hall, on your left." The young woman pointed with her chin.
Casey crutched that way. Moving in the hall was simultaneously easier than in the room (because there were fewer things to run into) and harder (because she was moving faster, and worried about tipping over). She wanted to stay close to the wall in case she had to catch herself, but she didn't entirely have control over how far out to the side the crutches swung, and she worried that she'd hit the wall and topple over.
But she got to the indicated door without incident. It was pulled mostly shut, but not entirely. Casey hesitated, staring at it. Elsewhere on the floor, all the soft and busy sounds of a hospital went on: quiet voices, briskly tapping shoes, rattling wheels, clinking and clanking.
Someone was going to come along eventually and discover her here.
She freed a hand from the crutches—her formerly handcuffed hand, with tape tugging lightly where they'd bandaged the cuffs' chafed places. Lightly, she tapped at the door.
There was no answer, but it swung open a little further under the impact of her hand. She could see into the room now. It was like hers, with the same bed and side table and chair, all in more or less the same orientation to each other, but reversed since his room was on the other side of the hallway. The blinds were closed. Sunlight winked around the edges, casting the room into peaceful sun-striped shade that made her think momentarily of leaf shadows on a forest floor.
Jack was a large, still lump in the bed.
Sleeping, Casey thought.
You should leave him to it.
But instead, she crutched carefully into the room, over to the side of the bed.
She hadn't really been able to believe he was okay until seeing him with her own eyes. Now, a tight knot in her chest let go, and she sagged on the crutches.
He'd made it out.
They'd both made it out.
The growing ache in her good leg let her know she needed to get off her feet before she fell over. She'd meant to go back to her room after seeing him, but maybe it would be all right to stay here for a little while.
She leaned her crutches against the side of the chair and carefully lowered herself into it. Then she studied Jack with more attention, taking in each detail of the face that had in so short a time grown beloved to her.
He looked tired and ill. His face was scraped and bruised, with two swollen purple marks on either side of his lower lip—he'd cut his mouth, she recalled, chewing through the rope to cast off the boat.
His arms rested on top of the heavy blanket covering him. Both of them were a patchwork of bandages and open-to-the-air, stitched-up cuts like her own incision. His grizzly tat was half hidden under bandages, and there was an IV in his other arm.
His right wrist was girdled with fading bruises, a twin to her own.
She reached out with her left hand, lightly resting it against his: wrist to wrist, hand to hand.
Strange how used to it she'd grown.
"I'm glad you're okay," she whispered.
Jack stirred in his sleep, turning his face toward her, as if he knew she was there. A light breath whistled out between his parted lips.
Casey wanted with all her heart to lean down and kiss those lips. Like Sleeping Beauty in reverse .... except she was, of course, no princess, and her prince was more like a knight in stained and battered armor.
He'd earned his rest. She didn't want to wake him.
Instead she settled for kissing his forehead, a light brush of her mouth across his skin.
He didn't wake, but he seemed to lean into her touch.
She kissed him again, pressing her lips to the soft skin at the corner of his eye, where a web of fine lines had relaxed into near invisibility. Then she bowed her head and rested her temple against his for a long moment.
She closed her eyes.
Calmness seeped into her, driving out the lingering chill from the island. All her discomforts and hurts, from the ache in her leg to the burn of her shoulder muscles from the unaccustomed use of the crutches, receded until it was nothing but background noise.
There was only this—the light pressure of Jack's skin against hers, the nearness of him, the smell of his skin.
She should go back to her room, but she only wanted to sleep ...
Someone cleared their throat in the doorway.
Casey jolted upright, blinking.
Jack twitched in his sleep and turned his face away, but didn't wake.
"Sorry," Avery said quietly. He came into the room with a great deal more stealth than someone with a limp and a cane should be able to manage. Soundless as a cat, he crossed the room to stand beside her. He was carrying a small duffle, which he dropped beside Jack's bed.
"I didn't mean ..." Casey began, but she interrupted herself with a jaw-cracking yawn.
"C'mon," Avery said. He held out a hand to help her up. "You should probably be lying down."
Navigating the hallway on crutches was more difficult now that she was fighting exhaustion. She was grateful for Avery's presence, shadowing her like a herd dog shepherding its flock.
"I just wanted to make sure he was all right," she tried to explain. "Not that I didn't know he was. You said so. But ... I had to see."
"It's all right," Avery said, steadying her while she put the crutches aside before sitting down on her own bed. "I understand."
But that was only half of it, the half that was easy to explain. It was much harder to justify, even to herself, the way that
she felt her separation from Jack, like a rope stretching and stretching, threatening at every moment to snap ... or to pull her back to him.
"Will you tell him I was there?" she asked, yawning again as she swung her legs up onto the bed, one at a time. "Or, no, don't. Don't tell him. It doesn't matter."
"It matters," Avery told her, pulling the blanket up. She was chilled now and shivering. It seemed that only Jack's room was warm. Or perhaps she could only be warm when she was near him.
"You should go," she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. "Go see Jack."
"I will."
But he stayed until she fell asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Jack woke with a start, Casey's name on his lips. She'd been there—or had it been a dream? It seemed so real. He could smell her, feel her, could almost taste her on his lips. And then he'd fallen into dreams again, dreams in which she was torn from him by Fallon and lost to him forever—and dreams in which he'd made her cry out in a thousand different ways, won a thousand kinds of pleasure from her glorious body, the body he'd seen on the island but had never been able to touch as lovers did ...
"Nope," a dry voice said. "I'm not that small and cute. But I have food."
Jack squinted. The lamp was on beside the bed, and even that dim light seemed a little too bright. Everything ached. He was starving.
"You must be out of it," Avery's blurry shape remarked. "I said the word 'food' and you're still lying there."
"Food," Jack rasped, running his tongue over dry lips. "Food sounds great."
"Ah, yeah, that's the Jack Ross we all know and love." Avery leaned forward. "I also picked up the stuff you wanted from your place, including your spare glasses. You didn't mention it—all I remember is you mumbling something about pants—but I figured you'd want those too."
"Yeah. Thanks." Jack hooked the frames over his ears and blinked at the world. Everything came into focus for the first time in days. He could see again. He'd never really appreciated 20/20 vision to quite this extent before.
"And there are some clothes in here," Avery added, patting a duffle bag by his leg. "Assuming you're still planning on making a break for it, which I'd like to go on record, again, as being against."
