A Hero's Reward

by Morrel, Amy

  “Just what I needed, I thought I was starving, but that's enough to put a damper on my appetite.”

  “Let me get you some breakfast. If you thought you were starving, you probably are. I bet smelling some food will get your appetite back for you.”

  Greg watched with interest as the nurse left the room. He wasn't sure but he thought there was some extra wiggle in that walk, just for his benefit. His suspicions intensified when she came back with breakfast. She was sure to lean over him deeply when placing the tray and he was pretty sure nurses weren't supposed to have that many buttons opened.

  Damn it!, he thought, It's the same old, same old. Flirting and teasing even when they don't intend to do anything about it.

  Greg hadn't had a woman since his divorce. His wife had soured him on the feminine half of the species. She left him because, in her own words: “You're not ambitious enough! You could be so much more!” He never had figured out where she got the idea that he wanted power and influence. She couldn't, or refused to, understand that he liked building things. He was good with his hands and he made enough to support a family of four in comfort, what else did they need? That wasn't enough for her though. When he caught her in an affair with an up and coming politician he thought he'd get custody of the kids hands down. Evidently the politician wasn't without influence though and wanted a ready-made family for the photo opportunities. When he challenged her getting custody he was told that if he wanted to maintain visitation rights he'd better let it drop.

  Who would've thought a woman could be such a bitch just because I didn't want power and influence. The public life that would go with it would just suck.

  Greg realized that now he was going to get a taste of that public life whether he wanted it or not. Meanwhile the nurse was still lingering:

  “Thank you for the food, I'm feeling a bit stiff even with the painkillers, maybe something to eat will help.”

  The nurse gave him a saucy grin before leaving the room. There was definitely a shimmy to her step now and Greg tried to figure out what he had said to encourage her. Reviewing his comment made him feel like an idiot. He never had been one for carefully choosing his words and he realized that he had made an unintentional double entendre that the nurse had caught. Well, at least he was getting out of here this morning so he wouldn't continue to make a fool of himself in front of her.

  Although, he thought to himself, she certainly does have some very nice assets. Wow, maybe I'm finally getting over what Emily did to me. I hadn't noticed anything like that in quite a while.

  A few minutes after breakfast the doctor came in, did some final checks, and told him he could be released at any time.

  “I realize you might not like this, but I suggest the wheelchair to the curb treatment. You can avoid interviews that way if you like.”

  “Thanks doc, but I know that they'll get a story one way or another. I think I'd rather be the one to give it to them than to let them make up whatever they want. I don't much like the idea of not being under my own power either, to tell you the truth. I'll walk out of here, give them a couple of statements, and be on my way.”

  “If you say so Greg, you're certainly in good enough shape for that but make sure you remember to get your prescription filled on the way home, there's a pharmacy downstairs off of the lobby. You certainly shouldn't be driving under the influence of the painkillers I'm prescribing you so you'll want to fill your prescription before you get home. Your clothes are in the closet, once you're dressed just come out to the nurses' station and we'll get your paperwork finished.”

  Greg was very glad his job provided health insurance when he saw what the bill for just an overnight stay would be. He filled out the paperwork and the doctor escorted him to the elevator.

  “There's a horde of reporters down there. I suggest you pick a couple and just speak with them. If you answer their questions loudly enough for all of the rest to hear then you should be good.”

  “Thanks doc, for the advice and for making sure I'm okay. I saw that video last night and can't believe I'm not in worse shape than I am.”

  “You may not be noticing right now Greg but your back is a tapestry in black and blue. You have serious strains and bruising. I'll agree you're lucky to not be worse off but you aren't in as good a shape as you think you are, that's the painkillers talking.”

  “Well, thanks anyhow. Time to brave the lions' den, or at least the press. I'm not sure which would be worse.”

  Greg stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. The ride went smoothly and slowly and finally he heard the 'ding' of the elevator reaching its destination.

  Greg stepped out and started to slowly walk across the lobby. He'd like to hurry but he'd discovered that if he used his normal long stride, twinges of pain started to work their way around the painkillers. A tentative female voice carried across the room:

  “Greg?”

  He turned to look, it was a woman he had never seen before but the microphone in her hand let him know exactly what she was.

  “Yes.” he answered resignedly.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “I'd like to point out that you just did ask some but sure, go ahead. Better yet, wait a minute so the rest of the press can get in on this. I need to get a painkiller prescription filled before my current dose wears off in another hour or two so I only have time to do this once.”

  The reporter looked around, several other crews were starting to move over towards them but some were still oblivious. She put her thumb and forefinger between her lips and whistled a short, sharp note. Heads came up all over the room and the teams that had been moving in sped up to be closest to the latest celebrity.

  Greg took a seat in a chair and waited until everyone was in earshot:

  “Okay folks, I'm guessing most of you want an interview with me. I need to get out of here before my current painkillers wear off so here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take a few questions from the people closest to me here but I'll ask them to talk loud enough so everyone can hear. I'll answer loud enough that everyone can hear me also but then I need to be out of here. I do NOT want my back to feel the way it did last night again so I'll need to get a prescription filled before my current drugs wear off. Oh, and one other thing. I'm going to mention my boss' company, I'll ask that you leave that reference in there if at all possible. He told me I can have some time off to recuperate but if I can get the company name into some interviews my recuperation will be two weeks paid leave, so please leave it in your footage, article, or whatever.”

  Greg sighed, he was feeling exhausted already and hadn't even made it out of the hospital yet.

  “Okay, you first. You actually noticed me coming out so I'll give you the first question.” he pointed at the lady reporter that had noticed him exiting the elevator.

  “Greg, How did you know Margaret Chisolm?”

  “I'm guessing that's the Margaret I saved? I didn't know her last name. Didn't know her first name until last night. She's my neighbor. Very quiet type, she always gave short, clipped answers if you greeted her or asked her a question. I was torn between wondering if she was shy or simply unfriendly when I first met her. The answer to your question is that I knew her to say hello to and knew she was my neighbor. I didn't even know I was going to save her though. I saw her son's hand waving out the window frantically and that was how I got involved.”

  Greg pointed at the reporter that had been the second one over:

  “Greg, What were you thinking when you performed this rescue?'

  “Well, I'd like to say I thought it all through but, as you can see, I didn't.” Greg raised a foot, clad only in one of the hospital's slippers that they had let him keep to get him home. “I honestly didn't think at all. I was watching a movie, heard the explosion and ran out. I noticed a hand waving out the window and remembered that I had been cleaning my gutters the day before and my ladder was next to the garage. The next time I thought about anyth
ing, I was halfway up the ladder and realized I'd forgotten my shoes. So, I wasn't thinking about it at all, I just did it.”

  Greg pointed to a third reporter, this one looked to be a journalist:

  “Greg, the hospital said you had minor injuries and that Margaret would be kept for several days. Can you tell us anything about those?”

  “Sure, my back hurts like the blazes. I'm sure you all saw the video. Here, give me a hand for a second.”

  Greg had the reporter help him up and turned around. He figured if the doctor said his back was a tapestry of black and blue maybe it would be impressive enough to get the reporters off of his back, so to speak. He pulled the back of his shirt up and heard a collective gasp from the crowd. Flashes went off left and right. He pulled his shirt back down and turned around.

  “The doctor said I was lucky I hadn't broken anything but that I was going to be in a world of hurt for a week or two. He wants me to take a week of bed rest and then start moving around again, slowly at first and working back up to normal. Luckily my boss at A.B.Construction is giving me a couple of weeks off to recuperate. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm thinking that has to be it. I need to get a prescription filled and get some painkillers into my system.”

  The reporters parted, somewhat reluctantly, and let him through. Greg walked across the lobby and out a side door leading to another part of the building. The hospital had a pharmacy attached and he was going to fill his prescription there rather than waiting. It was a quicker wait than it would've been elsewhere and he immediately took two of the pills when he left the pharmacy. He headed out the front door to find a cab.

  The warmth of the early fall sun felt glorious on his face but the pain starting up in his back again was enough to sour his pleasure in the sun. He wanted to get home to his own bed and sleep for a week. A taxi pulled up and he gingerly crawled in the back and gave the driver his address.

  * * *

  Chapter 4 – Downtime for Greg

  Greg exited the taxi when it got him home, adding a hefty tip for the driver. The driver finally looked at his passenger, looked across the street, then back at Greg:

  “Hey, you're that guy aren't you? The one I saw on Youtube last night?”

  “Yup, sorry I'd love to chat but I'm one busted up guy right now. I need to go collapse for a week.”

  “No problem man, way to go though. You showed the world that men can still be real men, not these pansies that they call men nowadays. Rest up dude, you earned it.”

  The taxi driver gave Greg a thumbs up while backing out of the driveway. Greg was nearly shuffling as he moved up the walk to the front door. His screen door had closed behind him yesterday but the inside door was standing open. He walked in and saw the television on, showing the menu screen of the movie he had been watching. He shut everything off and put the DVD away. Looking at the stairs he decided there was no way he was taking them and collapsed onto the couch instead of going up to his bed. He was asleep before his head touched the couch cushion.

  The phone woke him several hours later. He had to look around to find it and by the time he did it had stopped ringing. He sat back on the couch carefully, waiting to see if someone had left a voice mail. A minute later the phone beeped at him and informed him that he had a new voice mail. He called his voice mail to retrieve the message:

  “Greg? It's Emily.”

  Why the hell was his ex-wife calling him?

  “I just wanted to call to touch base with you. I thought you might like to get together some time and maybe talk? The evening news had your interview on it, the kids were overjoyed to see their dad, the hero. I'll try calling again later, you're probably knocked out on painkillers or still in the hospital or something. Bye.”

  He recalled that her politician-to-be new husband had lost his race, some sort of scandal knocked him out of it. So now, he guessed, she wanted him back because he had a touch of fame or something? To hell with that, he was done with Emily, if he could see his kids without ever seeing her again he'd be happy.

  Greg looked around his house, he supposed he was lucky she had remarried again right away. He had inherited this house from his parents after his divorce so he would still have had it, but she could have made a massive mess of the rest of his finances. He still paid child support, he loved his children and didn't regret supporting them in the slightest, but at least he was spared alimony due to her new marriage.

  He popped a frozen dinner in the microwave, deciding that he was hungry enough to eat and checked the time. No more pills for another two hours. He wasn't hurting yet but he also didn't want to give that pain a chance to sneak back in unnoticed. He was normally healthy as a horse, he didn't even get the cold or flu most years, so the incapacitating pain he felt without the pills felt foreign and emasculating to him.

  He took his dinner to the TV room and turned it on. As usual there was the normal run of crap on the television: reality shows, cartoons, political shows, etc... Nothing he wanted to watch, hell there wasn't even a re-run of MASH showing. He looked through his videos and chose one to pop in. He spent the evening trying his best to relax. He finally gave up and went to bed early, deciding that extra sleep would probably be a good thing. He was normally a back sleeper but as soon as he got into the bed on his back he decided that he'd be sleeping on his stomach for a few nights.

  The next couple of days followed the same pattern. He kept intentionally missing Emily's phone calls until late on the second day. When he did finally pick up, the conversation did nothing to soothe him except to convince him that he was correct when he decided that he was better off without her.

  “Greg speaking.”

  “Hi Greg, it's Emily”

  “Emily, what did you want?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “What do you want to talk about Emily, get to the point please.”

  “Well I thought we might want to get together to talk, maybe see if we want to get back together?”

  “I think your new husband might have something to say about that.”

  “You silly, I divorced him a year and a half ago, when that horrible drawn-out scandal finally came to a conclusion.”

  “Well Em, I can't say as I have any desire to sit down and talk with a woman who stuck a knife in my back hard enough that you could see the sun through my torso after it came out.”

  “Greg, that's an incredibly rude thing to say.”

  “Must be the painkillers letting me say what I'm really thinking for a change, normally I'm more tactful. I have no desire to have anything to do with you. If you didn't have custody of the children I would be more than happy to never see or hear from you again. Good-bye, Emily!”

  Greg settled onto the couch. Despite the painkillers he hadn't been sleeping well at night so he found himself taking naps at odd points during the day. He stretched and glanced out the window. The leaves had fallen off the trees a few weeks back and now their bare branches looked like fingers stretching towards the sky, waiting for renewal in the spring.

  Yellow strings of police tape were staked out around the debris of Margaret's house. He didn't know when that had occurred but the tape caught his attention by shifting in the breeze. The car from across the street was no longer in the driveway so Margaret must have been released from the hospital. He hoped that she was okay, he still had a problem reconciling the hard face she normally presented to the public with the sooty, sorrowful, angel's face that still haunted his dreams sometimes.

  Greg thought through the conversation he had just had with his ex. Amazingly enough he hadn't been bothered by it at all, it had been more the annoyance level of being interrupted by a telemarketer than by a past love. He decided that it was probably the callous reference to ditching her new husband that clinched it for him. From the timing she gave, she had only remained married to him for about a year, give or take a bit. So it was obvious what she had been after from that relationship. Once his political aspirations were history, so was sh
e. That reference and the fact that she sounded different somehow, spaced out or tipsy or something, made him happy that he seemed to actually be over her.

  For the first time since it happened, he could actually feel one hundred percent certain that their divorce was the right thing to have done. He felt bad for his children though. He made a mental note to ask them how their home life was going the next time he got to visit them.

  Greg drifted off to sleep lying on the couch. When he awoke the first thing he noticed was the weather outside. The pleasant fall day he had been observing as he drifted off had darkened and chilled. The wind had begun to blow hard enough that he could hear it inside the house and dark clouds roiled overhead in the sky. The second thing he noted was that he was ravenous.

  As he prepared a quick dinner he noticed the time and went for his painkillers. He could actually have taken his next dose an hour earlier and his back hadn't been bothering him yet, but he was starting to notice a twinge or two now. He decided that he'd begin to spread them out further apart. He'd only take them as his back started to twinge again. The prescription did say every four to six hours or as needed so he'd go with 'as needed'. Maybe he could get rid of the painkillers more quickly than the doctor had expected. Since he hardly ever got sick he wasn't used to taking medications. The pills he was taking made his thoughts fuzzier than normal, as though each thought had to penetrate a barrier to present itself to him and lost strength and import in doing so.

  He sat down to eat his dinner and popped in yet another movie to watch. At this rate he was going to have to go buy some new DVDs. He was running out of ones he was willing to watch again. Maybe he'd check out that Netflix thing on his computer. He wasn't technologically challenged; he knew how to run his PC and any of the programs he wanted to use. Heck, he prided himself that when he used to own a VCR, it had always shown the correct time. He was more than a little obsessive about knowing how to operate anything he owned. If he couldn't figure it out then he didn't want to own it.