Jerk It

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “Hey, bud,” I said softly.

  Vlad cooed, not lifting his face.

  “What happened?” I asked after a while, lifting my face to find Mavis staring at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Mavis swallowed hard.

  “You got your heart,” she answered softly.

  I frowned. “I did?”

  I looked around the hospital, only then realizing that my chest hurt like a motherfucker, and I didn’t feel like I was dying any longer.

  That memory of the night, what felt so long ago now, that I knew I was about to die, rolled over me.

  I couldn’t lift my face out of the pillow. My arms felt like lead. And I couldn’t even make out the sound of Mavis’s voice.

  “How?” I rasped.

  I felt like I was left out of the loop.

  “A heart became available,” Mavis choked on the world ‘available,’ causing me to frown. “I got you to the hospital. Dragged you out of my front door actually. You might have some scraping and bruising from that on your back because you’re a big dude, and I had no help at all. Got you to the hospital on the floor of my van that, might I add, I rammed into the stone steps at the front of my place and needs body work. They did the heart transplant. You survived.”

  I frowned at the word ‘survived.’

  Had I?

  “Who?” I wondered.

  My eyes had fallen back closed again, and I couldn’t help but notice how tired I was.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” she whispered.

  My eyes popped open, and without thought, I closed them again as a memory assaulted me.

  “Jasper.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “You…how?” she gasped.

  I closed them again as peace assaulted me. “He’s in a much better place.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I don’t always exercise. But when I do, I’ll do it tomorrow.

  -Text from Mavis to Fran

  MAVIS

  I should’ve been on top of the world.

  At least, one would think that I would be seeing as my husband had just survived a heart transplant when he’d just been on his death bed only two weeks before.

  But, the thing was, he wasn’t doing near as well as I thought he should be at this moment in time.

  Granted, I hadn’t dealt with a ton of heart transplant patients in my career as a nurse, but I had dealt with a lot of surgery patients. The last few years of my life had been nothing but that.

  And I would’ve thought by now that he would have more steam to him.

  He was alive. Yes. He was talking. Yes. But there was something more wrong, and nobody believed me.

  They kept calling me the ‘worry nurse’ when they thought I couldn’t hear.

  But I had heard.

  And I was sitting there, stewing, because I knew without a doubt that Murphy should be able to do more things than he was able to do.

  He was so weak.

  And he had this weird pallor to his skin, and though he was talking, he wasn’t the same.

  His thought patterns were the same, but his mouth couldn’t form the words that he wanted to speak.

  It was incredibly heartbreaking to see, and the staff thought that possibly it was due to his surgery and the pain meds.

  It wasn’t.

  A warm hand caught mine, and I looked up to find Murphy’s eyes open.

  He squeezed my hand and said, “Okay?”

  I was okay. He wasn’t.

  “Fine,” I lied. “How are you feeling?”

  He pressed his hand against his head and said, “My head hurts.”

  My head immediately went into nurse mode seeing as Murphy never had headaches. See, where I got them regularly like clockwork—always at the most inconvenient time—he never got them. That was one symptom that he ended up staying away from.

  I frowned. “Your head?”

  He nodded. “Actually, it’s pounding like a motherfucker.”

  I got up and went to the first nurse I could find, which happened to be one of the ones I liked the most.

  She smiled at me when I arrived.

  The other four nurses in the nurses’ station quieted and looked annoyed.

  “Mrs. Romano,” the one I liked, Cannel, smiled. “How are you?”

  I smiled at Cannel.

  “Actually, I’m fine. But my husband says he has a headache,” I admitted.

  Cannel frowned and stood up, walking with me to Murphy’s room.

  She walked over to him and felt his head, frowning when she felt the heat.

  “You’re running a fever,” she said. “Is it aching like a headache? Can you pinpoint where it hurts?”

  I listened as he described this headache as the ‘worst headache of his life.’

  I looked over at Cannel, who looked at me, and we knew.

  He had a clot in his brain.

  Son of a bitch!

  Cannel calmly left the room.

  I watched as she left, and then I heard the squeak of her Crocs as she all but sprinted toward the nurses’ station.

  Five minutes later, the attending was inside the room, along with two other nurses besides Cannel.

  Once the attending found the same thing we did, we all went outside.

  My heart was pounding a mile a minute as I listened to them discuss the next step, an MRI.

  Twenty-eight minutes later, the doctor was looking at the scans for Murphy’s brain with the neurosurgeon that’d come in.

  “Needs immediate surgery,” the neuro declared.

  “No can do,” the attending said. “Spencer went to the ER with a possible hip fracture just fifteen minutes ago. He’s the only anesthesiologist that’s on staff right now.”

  I felt my stomach clench.

  “What about Newton?” I asked.

  “Caribbean with his wife,” the attending answered immediately.

  “Cryping?” I pushed.

  “In surgery at Regional,” he answered. “They had a motorcycle wreck come in.”

  I closed my eyes. “What about from the other hospital?”

  “That wreck had four other people requiring surgery. They’re at capacity,” he answered.

  I swallowed hard. “Get Spencer on the phone. He can tell me what to do.”

  They all looked at each other, knowing it was just as bad of an idea as I knew it was.

  Yet…there were no other options.

  If we didn’t get the clot out, it would kill him.

  “Let’s do it.”

  • • •

  MURPHY

  I was rolled into the surgical room with an expediency that told me that whatever was wrong with me wasn’t good.

  I mean, honestly, I was aware that a blood clot of any kind wasn’t good. But apparently it being in my brain was bad. Very, very bad.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen,” the neuro guy said. “Let’s get this party started.”

  A growl from the corner of the room had me turning my head to see a very familiar figure dressed in soft baby blue scrubs.

  I’d know that ass anywhere.

  “Mavis?” I rasped.

  They’d given me some drugs to calm me before I’d left the room—even though I’d said that I didn’t need them—but I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real.

  “It’s me,” she confirmed. “I’m going to do your anesthesia.”

  My first thought was, cool! My second? Is that even allowed?

  I voiced my concerns, too.

  My head swam. “Isn’t there some sort of rule that states you can’t work on your husband?”

  She grinned as she came toward me, a shit ton of things on a tray that she was dragging along behind her.

  “Probably,” she admitted. “But we’re not going to think about all the rules that we’re breaking right now. We’re going to worry about that clot in your brain and getting it out before it takes you from me a second time.”

  My lips twitched. “Oh, yeah.�
��

  I found it so sexy when she got all logical and professional with me.

  The next few minutes went a little wonky.

  I remembered Mavis’s cool forehead against my face, then I watched as she started to do a few things with a machine, and some syringes beside her.

  I heard a man on the phone next, and my eyes started to droop.

  I heard what I thought was my blood pressure called out, and then nothing.

  Not until I woke up what felt like two seconds later.

  The first thing I saw was the pretty blue jean eyes that made my heart melt each and every time they opened near me.

  “Blue jean baby,” I sang.

  Mavis laughed, then pressed her lips to mine from her upside-down position beside my head. Like Spider Man did with Lois Lane.

  “Not Lois Lane,” Mavis snickered. “Lois Lane belonged to Superman.”

  “Lois Lane is cuter, though. So I like calling her Lois Lane.” I paused. “She looks like you. Reminds me of you.”

  “Lois Lane has black hair in the comics,” Mavis grinned.

  I paused. “Are you a comic book nerd? Did I marry a nerd?”

  Mavis rubbed her smooth jaw along my scraggly one.

  God, I had no clue what my beard looked like, but I could feel the fuckin’ whiskers between my lips. There was no doubt in my mind that it needed a trim.

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “It was yet another thing that I did to piss my grandmother off. She wanted me to read ‘respectable’ books at the library, while all I wanted to do was read what I wanted. She refused to allow me to get romance novels, so I ended up getting comic books, which might I add, had love interests in them. So I sort of got my fix, while pissing her off, and skirting around the rules.”

  I hummed, feeling my eyes start to get heavy once again.

  Damn, who knew having brain surgery would make you so tired?

  “So who is Spider Man’s real love interest?” I questioned, forcing my eyes to open despite their heaviness.

  At first, due to where she was sitting behind my head, I couldn’t see her. All I could see was a white room that had a lot of people bustling around, likely listening to every single word of our conversation.

  They didn’t interrupt, though, so I chose to continue talking as if they weren’t there at all.

  “Gwen Stacy,” Mavis answered. “Though, in the movies, it was Mary Jane.”

  “Huh,” I said, thinking how weird and stupid it was to stray from an original plotline like that. “Why do movie producers do that? I mean, there’s a reason they’re written the way they are.”

  Mavis snickered. “I have no idea, babe.”

  I opened my eyes that I hadn’t realized I’d closed, and came face to face with Mavis’s smiling face once again. “Where’s Vlad?”

  Had he been there before surgery?

  I couldn’t remember.

  “I left him at the nurses’ station with Cannel,” she answered. “The nice nurse. My sister was supposed to come get him. I’m pretty sure she would’ve found a way to let me know if she couldn’t.”

  I sighed. “I’m gonna owe your sister a big debt for coming through after everything we’ve been asking her to do with our kid.”

  A glowing smile lit Mavis’s face. “Our kid?”

  “I delivered him, didn’t I?” I countered.

  She snickered. “You did. You also saw parts of me stretch that you should’ve never seen stretch.”

  I winked at her. “They all went back nice and tight, in case you’re wondering.”

  There was a snicker from somewhere behind me, and the cutest little blush I’d ever seen started to heat Mavis’s face.

  “Murphy!” she whispered fiercely. “You shouldn’t say things like that!”

  She got up then, and I got a good look at what she was wearing.

  She was still in her scrubs, but she was much less professional looking this time.

  “Did I die and go to heaven?”

  Her eyes went serious for a few seconds. “No. You lived. Thank God.”

  I frowned. “I’m not afraid of dying anymore. That place where we’re all going? It’s beautiful. There’s nothing on this Earth that can tell you just how beautiful. One day, when we’re all gone, me and you are going to that beautiful place, and we’ll live there in utter bliss.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ll take me with you when you go next? You won’t leave me behind?”

  I started to shake my head but found that I couldn’t.

  “My head is plastered to this board and I can’t move it,” I paused. “Is that for a reason?”

  Mavis grinned. “Just to keep you still for a bit while everything settles down. You won’t feel if you’re hurting yourself at this point because you’re still knocked up on the good drugs. When that…”

  “Mavis Pope, a minute?” an authoritative voice said from the other side of where Mavis had slid her chair.

  I tried to lean my head more in that direction, but something kept it from moving more than an inch. Still, that inch was enough to see the very pissed off looking man in the navy blue scrubs.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Mavis Romano,” I corrected him. “Get it right next time.”

  The man’s lips twitched. “Noted.”

  “And you interrupted something. Come back in five minutes. She’ll be ready then,” I ordered.

  I wasn’t sure why his tone pissed me off so much, but I really didn’t’ like the angry look in his eyes he was aiming my wife’s way.

  “Unfortunately, we need to speak now,” the man disagreed.

  “Fortunately, my wife doesn’t even need to work because I’m a goddamn millionaire, soon to be billionaire due to my investments. So you piss her off and make her cry, I’ll offer her more incentive to stay home with our kids than working here for you. Capisce?”

  Again, the doctor’s lips twitched—at least I assumed he was a doctor based on what he was dressed as. That could just be my imagination, though.

  “Capisce,” the doctor agreed.

  I was sure that my words really packed a punch thanks to my head being mobilized to a board, and I was glaring at him from a lying down position with my eyes all but rolled back in my head so I could look at him.

  “And, if you’re nice to her for saving her husband’s life, maybe you’ll think about the rather large donation that is set to come y’all’s way at the end of the month. And also, there’s a lot more where it came from,” I continued, the sting coming out of my words due to the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

  “Go to sleep, baby,” Mavis whispered. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  “Okay.” I paused. “But don’t go far. I don’t like it when you leave me.”

  She placed her hand over my jaw line, cupping it softly before she again placed her lips on mine.

  The movement caused my head to jolt minutely, and a sharp shard of pain pierced my skull for a few seconds before slowly waning away.

  I didn’t tell her that her kisses hurt, though.

  She’d never kiss me again.

  And we couldn’t have that.

  “Love you, Mavis Romano,” I grumbled.

  Then I fell off into sleep and didn’t wake back up for hours.

  CHAPTER 24

  Everything I ate this weekend? We’re going to pretend that didn’t happen.

  -Mavis to Murphy

  MURPHY

  I would like to say that after that day where they cleared the clot from my brain, shit got better.

  But it didn’t.

  Because a little after that day, I contracted an infection that nearly took my life for a third time, and this time, I was asked to have no visitors due to the nature of the infection.

  Meaning, it was a long, hard four weeks after things finally settled down enough for me to be moved out of the ICU, and the hospital altogether.

  Though, Mavis didn’t know that I was out of the hospital just yet.
r />   In fact, neither did my mother.

  I wasn’t sure really how I was going to get this particular thing past them—I mean, it wasn’t like I could drive yet, nor did I have a car here—which led me to sitting on my ass in my room, looking at my phone, wondering whose day I should interrupt.

  Mavis, I knew, had gone to work out for the first time in six weeks. And I didn’t want her to have to stop her workout to come get me—even though I knew that she would. In a heartbeat.

  My mother was finally back at work, and I didn’t want to call her and interrupt her day because I’d finally convinced them to give me some breathing room that day, without knowing that I would need a ride home later in the evening.

  But I was taking the out while I could get it.

  Dr. Battle declared me well enough to recuperate the rest of the time at home, and I was taking it.

  I had a list of prescriptions in my hand, and when to take them. I also had a rather massive bag of prescriptions that I would be required to take for the rest of my life right next to that list.

  I also had an extremely large duffle bag that I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry—I still had at least four weeks before I was allowed to carry anything more than a bag of flour, according to Dr. Battle.

  And I was lost on who to call for help. It wasn’t like Paris, Texas had Uber.

  Which led me to texting Taos of all people.

  Taos answered immediately—we’d become fairly good friends outside of the gym thanks to both being married to Pope sisters—and said he’d ‘get me a ride.’

  I hadn’t expected that ride to come in the form of a man that had practically been haunting my dreams for the last six weeks.

  I blinked as I stared at Madden.

  I swallowed hard and stood up, my heart—his son’s heart—beating away a mile a minute inside of my chest.

  “Madden,” I croaked.

  Madden stared at me, looking a little lost for a second, before offering me a welcoming smile.

  “Hey,” he said, voice raspy. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I thought I might try to come up a few times, but each time I worked up the courage, you weren’t allowed visitors.”

  I pressed my hand against my stolen heart as I said, “I…”