“As a matter of fact, I have,” he said. “She was down in the kitchen a while ago, arguing with the staff and yelling at the nutritionist. The last I heard, she was digging out a pan and a spatula so she could start cooking things herself. If security hasn’t thrown her out, I suspect she’s making your lunch now.”
I laughed, which hurt quite a bit but wasn’t as bad as it had been the day before.
“You’re looking much better,” the doctor said.
“Home yet?” I asked. “And if I don’t get a decent answer this time, I might have to go find your Beemer and turn it into scrap metal.”
“I drive a Lexus,” he said. “And you’re getting close. Either late tomorrow or Saturday morning at the latest, assuming I can trust you to take all the antibiotics I prescribe.”
I bitched and groaned.
“Get over it, cry baby,” he said with a grin. “Would you rather end up back here with an infection? Maybe I’ll just give them to Tria. I bet she has her ways of getting you to comply.”
“She’ll have a lot better luck than you will,” I said, agreeing.
We went back and forth as he checked out some of my more minor injuries. They were the kinds of things I never really went to the hospital for anyway, and he was giving me lectures about infections and shit when someone appeared at the door. I looked up, expecting to see Tria, but it wasn’t her.
Long, caramel-colored hair framed the face of the woman in the doorway, and when I looked into her eyes, I saw my own brilliant green color staring back at me. My body stilled, my breathing increased, and I felt beads of sweat starting to form on the back of my neck as my mother, Julianne Teague herself, walked into my room.
“What…” It was the only word I could get out.
“Douglass told me what happened,” she said quietly. She offered a slight smile. “I stopped in to sign the paperwork, and I had to come and see that you were really okay. He thought maybe you would have told them not to let me in, but they didn’t say anything about it.”
My head felt hot. I was looking right at her, but I couldn’t focus on what I was seeing. Instead, all I saw were flashes from inside my mind, starting from my childhood and working their way through the years. I had to make them stop before they got too far along.
“Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled. I grabbed at the IV in my arm, ripped it out, and started to get out of the bed. Baynor was there at my side, quickly placing his hands on my shoulders and trying to move me back to the bed.
“Whoa!” he said. “None of that now!”
“Liam, you’re still my son!” she said.
“Bullshit!” I yelled. I pushed back on Baynor as I tried to get out of the bed. He held me back, but he wasn’t going to be enough.
“Liam, you gotta calm down,” he said. “I’m not going to let you rip out those stitches. Don’t make me call security!”
“You are not my mother!” I continued to yell. “You don’t get to call me that!”
“I never stopped being your mother!”
“You did!” Everything in my body tightened. I felt like I could quite literally explode with bits of me ending up on the walls and the ceiling. My chest was so tight, I couldn’t breathe right, and I struggled to get air into my lungs. “You gave all that up!”
“I never gave up on you!” she insisted.
“He threw me out, and you let him!”
Dr. Baynor was trying to get a word in, but it just wasn’t working out. I saw him hit the little panic button on the edge of the bed, but I didn’t care.
“I thought you would come back in a few hours!” she cried. “And then when we heard…”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “Don’t say a fucking word!”
“Liam?” Tria’s head appeared in the doorway. She walked in slowly as she glanced from me to my mother. Her eyes widened in understanding as my mother tried to talk to me again.
“I didn’t want you to go!” my mother said.
“You didn’t fucking care what happened to me!” I snarled back at her.
“You were just gone! You were gone, and we couldn’t find you anywhere!”
Tria dropped the tray she had in her hands on a table near the door and rushed over to the bed. I hadn’t realized how much I was shaking until she gripped my arms. There was so much noise in the room and in my ears that it overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t even understand what was happening any more. I just knew I wanted my mother out of there.
“Calm down,” Tria said quietly.
“Get her out of here!” I screamed.
“Liam, I’m going to have to sedate you if you don’t—”
“Get out! Get out!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Teague, but you are going to have to leave. I can’t have Liam this upset. It will affect his recovery, and—”
“I’ll go,” she replied softly, her voice cracking as she spoke. “We weren’t trying to hurt you, Liam. We were only trying to protect you.”
The scream was completely incomprehensible, and I didn’t even realize it was coming from me at first. Tria was suddenly in the bed with me, straddling my thighs and trying to push me backwards.
“Shh…shh…shh…”
Two men in light blue uniforms appeared at the door, and my mother was turning to go. I refused to watch as she walked out with security right behind her. I was pretty much expending all my energy trying to breathe right and not actually wreck the entire hospital room, which was likely going to lead me right back into surgery. I focused on Tria’s hands against my shoulders as if I could pull calming energy from her touch.
Maybe I could. It helped, anyway. My mother being out of the damn room helped more.
Baynor was beside the bed, and his hand gripped my wrist for a moment before he dropped it back down. I reached out and pulled Tria against me, feeling myself calm from her presence and her scent. After several minutes, I could breathe normally again. She backed off slowly, and Baynor helped her off the bed.
“So how long have you been dealing with the PTSD?” Dr. Baynor asked.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I growled back.
“I might be a hospital surgeon now,” he told me, “but I was a medic in Desert Storm, and I know what post traumatic stress looks like, Liam. How long?”
“Fuck off!”
“Liam, you can’t just—”
“Enough!” Tria jumped up and pointed a finger at him. “Just leave him alone, all right? Now is obviously not the right time!”
She turned and shifted her body against the bed, placing herself between me and the doctor. She tightened her arms around me as she lay down by my side and took my face between her hands.
“You have a good thing there,” Dr. Baynor told me as he nodded toward Tria. “If you don’t do something to get over whatever happened to you, you are going to fuck it up. You let me know when you want to talk about it.”
“Fuck you,” I said again, but my words had lost their bite. I leaned heavily against Tria as she wrapped her arms around my head. Dr. Baynor left the room and closed the door behind him. A while later, Tria brought over the rice and stir fry she had made. The vegetables had obviously come out of a can, but it was still a whole lot better than what the hospital had brought me before.
It probably took a couple hours, but I managed to completely push my mother’s impromptu visit out of my mind.
I was never one to acknowledge what was going on in my head, but my mother’s face haunted my dreams the rest of the night.
Chapter 16—Shock the System
“Are you sure you can make it up the stairs?”
“I’m fine,” I muttered, not completely convinced it was true. I wondered how in the hell the landlord got away with not having an elevator in the building. I let Tria support my side as I hobbled up the steps and into the apartment.
Climbing into my own bed felt awesome. More than anything, I was just glad to be home. Tria propped up pillows and made me Swedish bean balls for dinner, w
hich she served to me in bed. I pretended to complain about it, but I loved every second of her fussing over me.
“I could kill Baynor,” I muttered as I stared at her backside while she collected the dishes from the nightstand and smoothed out the blanket on the bed.
“Why’s that?” she asked. “I thought you two got along great.”
“Whatever,” I shrugged. We had, actually, but I wasn’t going to let on about it. “His little ongoing list of shit to do and not do…asshole.”
“Why?” Tria asked. “What did he say?”
I looked at her and then toward the window. I really wanted to go out for a smoke—I hadn’t had one since before I went into the hospital. Glancing back at Tria, I smiled sheepishly.
“He said no sex,” I told her.
“Oh,” she replied as she looked away from me. “Um…for how long?”
“Until after my next checkup,” I told her. “Two weeks.”
Tria sat on the edge of the bed and fiddled with her fingers in her lap.
“It’s because…you know…the thrusting and shit. Might do some damage or whatever. I’m not supposed to move like that.”
“Right,” she said quietly as she continued to play thumb-wars with herself. A minute later she looked up at me quizzically. “What did he say exactly?”
“No intercourse until I clear you at your next visit,” I quoted.
“No intercourse?”
“Right.”
“So…well, what about…you know…other stuff?”
“Other stuff?”
She flicked her tongue over her lips as she reached over to my thigh. She moved her hand slowly upward until her fingers traced the edge of my dick.
“There is something I kind of wanted to try,” she explained softly.
“There is?” Apparently all I could do was blather in short questions. My body was starting to feel warm all over as she moved her fingers up my thigh.
“I would think that as long as you were lying still, it would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
I swallowed hard as my cock took very close notice of just what was being said. I nodded once, and Tria got a sly smile on her face as she pulled back the blanket.
“Stay still,” she commanded.
All I could do was stare as she quickly pulled down my sweats and freed my cock. She wrapped her hand around the base as she knelt down next to my legs and stroked me once. She moistened her lips once more as she started to move closer.
Like some chivalrous knight, I had to say something.
“You…you don’t have to do that, you know.” I forced another lump down my throat, trying to figure out why I had to go and say something that stupid.
“I know,” she said. She looked up at me through her lashes, and I nearly came on her hand. “I want to.”
“Fuck me, Tria…Christ…”
She smiled and tilted her head back down, leaned in, and took the end of my dick in her mouth. My body tensed at the wet warmth of her lips, mouth, and tongue as she took me in, and I let out a long groan. She backed off me entirely, and I could have cried.
“Stay still!” she told me again. “If you move around, I’ll stop.”
“God, no.” I didn’t even care that I sounded like I was begging.
She ran her tongue along the head, and all I could do was moan as she smiled with self-satisfaction. She positioned herself more comfortably, then slowly wrapped her lips around my cock and sucked until half of my length disappeared in her mouth.
“Oh yeah,” I groaned, and she looked up at me through those long lashes, backed off, and kissed the head of my cock while she looked in my eyes.
I felt like a god. An injured god, but a god all the same.
She surrounded me with her lips again and leaned over to take as much of me in her mouth as she could. I felt the head of my dick brush against the back of her throat briefly before she halted, blinked a couple of times, and then tried again. She gagged once or twice but never stopped—she just kept working on it until she seemed to figure out her limit.
It was fucking fine as far as I was concerned.
She was getting maybe two-thirds of my cock in her mouth as she went down deep, and it felt so good I was having trouble not grabbing her head and thrusting into her mouth a few times. I was quite sure she meant what she said though, so I kept myself as still as possible. I didn’t even dare reach up and put my hand on the side of her face.
“You look so good with my cock in your mouth,” I told her. “Fuck, that’s beautiful, baby. Damn!”
With the hospital stay, it had been days since my cock had been near her. The sexual drought combined with the warm wetness of her mouth and her hollowed-out cheeks was more than I could take. It wasn’t long before I was fighting to keep my hips against the mattress.
“Fuck…Tria…baby, I’m gonna come…”
Her gaze met mine briefly, but she didn’t stop. If anything, she sucked harder. I didn’t have a chance to warn her again.
“Oh fuck…oh God, Tria…”
I dug my fists into the sheets next to my legs as I clenched my teeth and released into the back of her throat. Tria backed up almost immediately, swallowed hard, coughed a bit, and then looked up at me with wide eyes.
I couldn’t figure out anything from her expression. It could have meant anything from shock and surprise to disgust, horror, or exuberance. My heart felt like it stopped in my chest while I waited a moment to see if she was going to give me some sort of sign. When she didn’t, I was just about certain it was the last blow job I was ever going to get.
“You okay?” I asked cautiously.
She nodded once, but it wasn’t convincing. I reached out and took her hand in mine and then pulled her up to me. She placed her opposite hand against the mattress for balance as she crawled up the bed and lay down beside me.
“So, uh…” I said, fumbling around trying to figure out what the right words to say at this point might be, “what did you think?”
“I heard it…well…that it tasted pretty gross,” she told me.
“Who told you that?”
“Elissa,” she said. “Nikki, too.”
I figured as much.
“Don’t worry about it, baby,” I said. “I told you before you don’t ever have to do anything you don’t like.”
“What do you mean?” Tria asked.
“Well, if you think it’s gross…” I really had no idea what else to say.
“Oh no!” Tria laughed. “It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be! Not good, but better than I thought.”
My heart started again, and I was fairly sure there was a God.
*****
It was a few weeks before I could get back into a daily routine of working out and preparing to fight again. Dordy had been in a pretty generous mood—either that or he was afraid he might get sued for negligence or something—and let me make a few bucks helping him out at the bar. It wasn’t as much as I had made fighting, but it worked out in the short term.
Tria bugged me to convince Dordy to let it be permanent, but he never would have gone for it. Even if he did, I had no intention of changing careers. She had brought it up a couple of times since the hospital, but I usually shut down the conversation quickly. We were at an impasse, and it wasn’t going to do any good for either of us to harp on it.
I couldn’t wait to get back in the cage. Not having anyone to punch for so long was driving me nuts. It was almost as bad as when Tria and I were sleeping in the same bed together while my cock had been threatening to shrivel up and fall off due to lack of use.
“You’re nearly there,” Yolanda said as I stepped up on the scale.
I had lost several pounds while in the hospital but was back up to one ninety-five again. Yolanda was finally letting me do some abdominal work as well once Dr. Baynor okayed it. After my next appointment, I was pretty sure I would be cleared to fight again. Honestly, I felt great—better than I had in years despite the eight-inch scar do
wn my side. I just needed to get my muscle weight back up.
Deciding to walk home from the gym instead of taking the bus, I grinned to myself as the sunshine peeked out from between buildings. Though my side was a little sore from working out, it didn’t feel any worse than it might have if I had just skipped the gym for a few days. Finishing up my cigarette, I tossed the butt into the street and gave Krazy Katie a wave. She ignored me, so I went inside and headed up the steps with a smile on my face, glad to know I’d be getting back to real work soon and would be able to get caught back up on bills and shit. Maybe I could start saving up a little extra so I could take Tria out again.
I slipped the key into the lock, shoved open the door, and stopped in my tracks.
Tria was on the couch, which was expected. However, she didn’t have her nose in a book or a notepad, and she wasn’t watching television like she did when her studying was done for the day. She didn’t have her typical glass of apple juice on the table, and she wasn’t relaxed against the cushions. She was just sitting there on the edge of the couch with wide, unsure eyes and her bottom lip clamped in her teeth.
“Tria?” I said cautiously. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced up at me quickly. Her eyes held anxiety, fear, and trepidation. She looked away, then back at me, and then seemed to look all around the room for a minute. A shiver ran through her, and she clasped her hands together in her lap. She looked down at them as she finally spoke.
“The health center called me today,” Tria said. “There was a…um…a recall.”
“A recall?”
“For the pills I’ve been taking.”
“Pills?”
“Birth control pills.”
My forehead creased as I tried to figure out what she was saying.
“Recall?” I repeated like a total moron.
“There was a bad batch,” Tria said quietly. “They weren’t effective.”
I shook my head to clear it and tried to put together what she was saying.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “We fuck all the time. If they were ineffective, then you’d be…you’d be…”
I couldn’t say the word. Instead, I watched in silence as Tria slowly reached for an object on the coffee table, and my gaze followed. The object was shaped like a big, fat, plastic pen with an oval dent in the center of it. In the center of the dent, there was a small, pink plus sign.