by Urban, Ami
The next thing I remember is smelling smoke. It was thick, acrid and tasted like diesel fuel. My stomach lurched, threatening to show me my breakfast again.
I’m so Goddamn tired of throwing up.
A cough lodged in my throat, causing it to tighten and burn as if I’d taken a particularly harsh bong rip.
Ugh. What the fuck is Brendon smoking?
Must’ve been some nasty shit. I opened my mouth – yes, before my eyes – to tell him whatever he was inhaling was gonna give him cancer, but I choked on a cough. My throat was too scratchy. I needed water.
When I opened my eyes, I could barely see the hospital ceiling through the yellow smoke. It stung my eyes, causing tears to stream down my cheeks. Another cough came from deep in my chest. It was so strong, it required me to spring upright into a sitting position. I doubled over, my stomach heaving.
A giggle sounded from the other side of the room. “He can’t take it.”
Cough. “Fuck.” Cough. “You.”
“Jesus, man. You suck at this,” Brendon said. I couldn’t see him, however, because the smoke was too thick.
I waved a hand in front of my face, trying to clear as much as possible. But that did fuck all. The room was so full of it I couldn’t see the walls. I could barely see my hand six inches in front of my face. Okay, this was getting ridiculous.
“Come on, dude! What the fu—”
Lisa appeared in front of me before I could finish. My heart skipped a beat. I may have yelped a little. Sue me! She came out of the smoke like she was made of it. Or like…the smoke made her.
“Are you alright?” She sounded like Lisa.
I shook my head. It is her, you idiot.
Why the fuck was I hearing Silas’s voice in my head?
“What’s the matter?” Lisa spoke again. I felt her hands on my shoulders. There was concern in her voice and her face.
“I…I, uh…” I coughed again. Ugh. The smoke was coating my lungs the more I breathed it in.
“He just can’t take it, Bunny!” Brendon’s words were followed by another giggle.
“Man, fuck you!” I got that out without a cough at least. I tried to look in the direction his voice had come from, but Lisa’s hands were on either side of my face as she turned me to look at her.
“Ignore him, please.” Something in the husky command of her voice made my blood rush toward my groin.
“O-okay.” My voice was low. And not on purpose.
Lisa gently probed the glands in my neck, her neatly trimmed nails felt nice against my nerve-fried skin. For some reason, my heart began to pound in my chest.
“Where does it hurt?”
Why was she asking it that way? It sounded less like a concerned doctor and more like a… Like a fucking porn star pretending to be a doctor.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
And just like that, I was suddenly aware of her right hand as it traveled down my chest, stopping for a moment on my stomach, before continuing to my dick.
I jumped a bit. “Wha… Um… It… It doesn’t. No. What are you—?”
“Shh.” She put her left index finger to my lips while still working the other one. Extremely well. I was fucking diamond hard in seconds.
“I have to make sure the surgery worked,” she said, her voice still a sexy whisper of itself.
I wanted to say, “Hold the fuck up what surgery?” but all that came out was, “Whuuaamsurgoki—”
She shook her head, urging me to shut it, which I did. Her soft, dark hair fell over her shoulders. As she leaned over me, it tickled my collarbone, sending shockwaves of electricity through me. Smoke billowed around us, no longer a problem for my stinging lungs. And before I could protest further – as if I would – she climbed on top of me. An ember of dull pain warmed my left knee for a brief second. I ignored it as Lisa straddled me, her skirt riding up until we were only separated by the thin silk of her panties. She let out a soft moan of pleasure. At that moment, I didn’t give a fuck if anyone else was in the room. I wanted all her clothes off.
“I have to make sure everything works.” By the time she’d finished her sentence, her shirt buttons were undone, revealing a silky pink slip I’d never seen before. It was hot as fuck. One of the spaghetti straps fell halfway down her shoulder.
I hooked a finger in the neckline of the slip. “Where’d you get this?” My voice came out uneven. I was kind of only focusing on her grinding against me.
“Does it matter?” She leaned forward, grasping my hand and relocating it to her breast.
I shook my head. It was all I could do.
“I didn’t think so.” She leaned forward and kissed me. A familiar flutter in my gut sprung up for a second. It was a feeling I loved getting whenever we made out. Only thing was…there was a weird taste… I couldn’t put my finger on it. But it was so faint, I just discarded the thought in the corner of my mind like old socks.
I was only vaguely aware of her pulling her panties to the side until I felt the pressure of entering her. Upon that moment, we both let out groans of pleasure. Something felt a touch different. Lisa felt…maybe a bit…softer inside? I shook it off. I guess everything was working properly. I allowed myself to close my eyes and enjoy the sensations of her body. The small sounds she made burned through me, lighting all my nerve endings on fire.
I felt an orgasm building up. But something was…off. Normally, there were small muscle contractions I’d grown aware of to signal we were in sync. They weren’t there this time. The pressure around me had loosened considerably. The once soft and firm breast in my hand now felt rough like sandpaper. The dry nipple scraped against my palm. I opened my eyes. Which was a mistake.
Pinkish-gray and foamy saliva dripped onto my throat from the thing on top of me. Its mouth gaped open and shut, letting out intermittent raspy yelps. It didn’t have any teeth, which was its only redeeming factor. Wrinkles sliced through its dry skin, stretching so far at the corners of its mouth it had begun to tear. It had no nose. Just a fucking bloody hole. Its strings of dirty gray hair hung around its diseased face like medusa. Except that shit turned me softer than a cloud in seconds flat.
Dude! Your fucking dick is still inside it!
The palms of my hands grasped the bedsheets as I pushed myself back, away from the thing. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, I fucked a Biter. And kissed it! That taste! I put my fingers to my lips. A sticky substance clung to them. I pulled it away, causing a string of black, gooey saliva to stretch forth. I let out a strangled cry.
I looked down to see my crotch completely covered in black and green fetid flesh, wriggling with maggots, tickling my thighs. I opened my mouth to say something, but a jumble of bullshit fell out. My brain didn’t know what to do with the information in front of me. The biter clawed its way back onto me, smearing the mush covering my junk.
“No!” I finally managed to choke out a single word as I shoved the Biter away from me. It lost its balance at the edge of the hospital bed. It let out one last howl as it toppled off. I watched as it flipped onto its back, looking me right in the eye as it hit the ground, transforming into a splash of dirty water. A single droplet flicked into the air, then fell back with a soft plop.
Only it wasn’t dirty water. It was the bile from my own liver. I’d vomited up everything I’d had in the past few days. It almost seemed like food I’d digested years ago had even made a second appearance.
Before I even had a chance to buzz Mina, Lisa jogged into the room. “Are you alright?” Concern shone behind her eyes.
I groped the empty air for her. Her fingertips slid up my arm. “Y-yeah.”
“What happened, Jack?”
Let’s see… You neglected him for days, withheld sex and let a little ginger shit kick him in the knee. That’s what happened!
I shut my eyes tight. “Scott.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Scott…kicked me in the knee…”
Her expression melted into one of terror. Her hands shot to
her mouth. “On purpose?”
Give this bitch a prize.
I willed his voice away, so I could think. But my brain wasn’t working. Had he kicked me on purpose? Was it an accident? I remembered he was being nice at one point…
I shook my head as I let out a groan, lifting my hand to rub it across my face. “I don’t know… Jesus. I think my dick may never work right again.” My stomach made another lurch forward at the thought of my “dream.”
“I’m sorry?” A crease appeared between Lisa’s eyebrows. Mina and another nurse came into the room to clean my mess. My wife placed a gentle hand on my forehead.
“Bad dream.” I clarified as she nodded.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” She glanced back at my muted heart monitor and frowned. When she turned back to me, she grabbed my wrist and began taking my pulse while watching the wall clock above my bed. When she was satisfied with the reading, she gave my forearm a light caress and set my hand down. “Opiates can cause some severe reactions. Aside from being one of the most addictive substances, it can cause very vivid dream-like states. We call them ‘nods.’ It’s a bit like taking a cat nap on hallucinogens.” She paused. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“You’re saying,” I said, shaking the remainder of the dream from my mind, “that the one medication that takes away my pain is gonna make me dream about fucking a Biter every night?”
Lisa winced, her lips pulling back over her top row of teeth. “The human imagination is a powerful thing.” Using one hand, she smoothed the hair from my forehead all the way back to where my head rested on the pillow. It sent a tiny shockwave through me. “This is not something I normally condone,” she began, “but I suggest that, while using the Oxycontin, you also combine it with cannabis.”
I managed a chuckle which caused another spasm in my gut. “Really now?”
She nodded, seeming to be lost in thought. “Cannabis is a known dream suppressor. You should use it until we can get you into surgery for the knee.”
From the desk of Dr. Lisa Reynolds – April 15
What have I done? I stared at my own hands as if they’d betrayed me. Except I had no one to blame but myself. I’d refused to treat my own husband. The truth was that the pain had somehow tunneled into me, festering into a sort of resentment.
“Yo! You okay, Mama?”
I snapped my gaze up to meet Brendon’s. And for some reason, I wasn’t able to stop the words before they spewed forth. “I was starting to blame Jack.”
Brendon made some sort of face under his surgical mask. I couldn’t tell what it was, but the corners of his eyes had crinkled a bit. “For what?”
“For his pain. I was starting to feel it. I was…escaping to work to deal with it.”
Brendon tossed his surgical equipment onto a tray and put one gloved hand on my arm. A spattering of blood streaked across my scrubs in its place.
“That’s…normal, right?”
“Yes.” And it was. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to hate it.
He looked back down at the patient sedated before us. We’d been performing a carotid endarterectomy for the last few hours. Within those few hours, I did nothing but think about my poor, suffering husband. He’d awoken just thirty minutes after we’d given him the first dose of Oxycontin. In that short time, he’d already experienced a hallucination.
“Yo! Mama!”
I sat straight. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
Brendon looked at me hard for a few seconds. “We’re done. Can you close?”
I nodded, rounding the table. He’d done exquisite work by adhering the blood vessels to the sternocleidomastoid muscle, allowing more room to move around the anterior carotid artery. It was a method I’d never seen before. And I was impressed. I could see the anatomy of the patient’s neck clearly.
“This is superb.” I almost didn’t hear the words come out of my mouth. “I actually don’t want to close.”
Brendon giggled behind me. He’d begun removing his surgical mask, so it hung from one ear. “Come on, Mama Reynolds. You gotta get tired of the compliments at some point.”
I turned my head to the side, my ponytail flopping over one shoulder. “I’ll get tired of complimenting you when I get tired of seeing your amazing work.”
“Do you talk to your hubbs this way?” His voice was close behind me as I started my work. “‘Cause I’d be jealous if I was him.”
“Were,” I corrected. “And yes. I give my husband many compliments.”
Brendon was quiet for a moment. I was vaguely aware of him watching over my shoulder. Whereas others may experience stage fright at such an act, I was used to it.
“You know I’m not talking about his dick, right?”
I tossed him a glare. “Can we please remain professional in the OR, Dr. Rutherford.”
He snickered, then backed away with both gloved hands up. “Aye, aye, Dr. Reynolds.”
Three shrill beeps echoed off the walls of the room. “Can you please look at that for me?” I asked him. After hesitating a moment, he approached me. I could smell a hint of cologne on him.
“What’s a hex?”
“What?”
“It says, ‘Hex here.’”
My ponytail flopped over both shoulders as I shook my head. “She means Rex.”
One of Brendon’s dark eyebrows rose. “That makes no sense.”
“I certainly wouldn’t have hired Nurse Harper had I been in charge early on.”
He was quiet for a second, a wrinkle creasing between his eyes. “She tries her best.”
“She gave her supply closet key to a patient yesterday.”
He was silent.
“We’re lucky that patient didn’t overdose on medication.”
Brendon tilted his head back and jutted his chin out. “I think you’re being a little hard on her.”
Wheeling around, I pointed my finger at him. “When peoples’ lives are at stake, yes. I’ll be hard on her until she performs her duties like a regular nurse.”
A smile lit up his face. “You said duties.”
One hefty sigh later, I turned back to the patient. “Wonderful. I’m the only adult present today.”
He tossed his head back and cackled. Then, he placed a hand on my shoulder. The irony smell of dried blood wafted to meet me. “You are a barrel of laughs, Bunny. A literal barrel.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
His eyes widened. “Did you just…?”
I shook my head again. “I need a vacation.” When I’d finished closing the patient, I turned to put my surgical equipment on the tray. Brendon’s arm shot out, his fingers wrapping around my wrist.
“Maybe you should take one.”
I waved his statement off. “We need to speak to this man’s spouse. Are they here?”
***
“Jaggy!”
I spotted Rex holding onto Harper’s hand in the lobby. She was showing him things that he’d seen a thousand times. But I felt a sort of peace knowing she’d been good enough at her job that her bedside manner wasn’t in question.
My son ran to me, throwing his arms around my legs. “Hi, Sweetie.” I knelt down. He didn’t meet my gaze. “You almost ready to go home?”
“Home,” he repeated.
“Rex.” Using my index finger, I pointed to his nose until his eyes crossed a bit. Then, I pointed at my chest. “How would you feel about momma taking a little time off?”
“I want momma.”
“Yes. I’m here, Sweetie.”
“Momma.”
“Yes, that’s right. Would you like me to spend more time at home with you? We could eat ice cream all day and play with the butterflies.”
His little face lit up with joy. Then, he began clapping his hands while jumping up and down, the rubber on his shoes squeaking against the floor. “Momma! Home! Yes.”
Satisfied with his reaction, I stood. “I suppose I’m taking some time off.”
> Brendon cocked his head at a light-haired woman sitting in the waiting room. “That’s her.”
I nodded to Harper, grasping my son’s hand in my own as we made our way toward the patient’s spouse.
“Okey dokey, good-lookin’!” Brendon clapped his hands together. The woman’s attention snapped to us. She stood, the magazine in her lap falling to the floor, its pages whispering against her shoes.
“Is Damon okay?”
“Not only that, but he’s also about half a pound lighter thanks to Drs. B and L!” He snaked an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a quick side-hug.
The woman’s hands flew to her flushed cheeks. She muttered words to God before throwing her arms around Brendon. The wind puffed out of him in a long whoosh.
“We’ll need to keep him for observation, so expect about one to two more days in recovery.” I absently stroked my son’s hair as his attention span depleted. “He may have a sore throat, so he should eat soft foods until the pain dissipates. If you can, it’d be in his best interests to find a cardiologist and get annual ultrasounds of the artery.”
The woman listened to me with tears sparkling behind her eyes. “I thought for sure he was going to die…”
Plastering on a polite smile, I said, “Not today.”
“Thanks to you both.” She spread her arms. “I can’t tell you how much this means to us.”
“Hey, we’re just doin’ our jobs, good-looking.” Brendon gave her a salute of sorts.
“Well, thank you again. We were very fortunate to find this hospital. And even luckier that a brilliant set of doctors were here.”
Brendon smiled. “We try.”
“Well, the two of you make a great team. And a very handsome couple. Your little boy is adorable.”
Brendon and I glanced at each other. I felt my eyebrows pull together while his shot upward. A lazy smile spread across his face. His eyes twinkled. “Ya hear that, Bunny? We’re a handsome couple.”
Before I could respond, his arm made its way around my waist and he pulled me close. It was uncomfortable. He had little muscle. I could feel his pelvic bones.
“I think I’ll start my vacation now.”
