VisualPerv
Virgin
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2013
- Posts
- 8
Please note, this is the roughest of all rough drafts. I'd like to get a sense of whether anyone would like to see this story continue, and read any comments on how it could be better.
It's a longun, over 11,000 words with only one minor masturbation scene so far for sex. The sex will be somewhere in the great unfinished chapters ahead. I hadn't even planned for the masturbation scene, but apparently Caitlin was horny when she took her shower.. I discovered she has a fetish, too. Those zany characters - ya never know what they're gonna do next sometimes.
I mentioned above that this is long. My goal is a trilogy of novel-length stories since I think the entire storyline breaks down nicely in thirds. Of course, that's a quarter of a million words or more. Geez, do I really have that much to say?!
Anyway, the part that's done so far is backstory and setup and character development for the female protagonist. So without further ado, here is the proposed beginning of my first story, Loveaboard.
Loveaboard
Chapter 1
"What the hell?"
That was the redheads first, and last, thought when the black Mercedes eased out from the divided highway crossover and directly into the path of her speeding yellow Volkswagen. When the vehicles met with a sickening crump!, her airbag deployed, she slammed forward, and her world went black.
-----
"What the hell?"
Jake Jackson watched the Mercedes pull out in front of the yellow VW convertible while he was waiting on a red light a hundred and fifty yards away. He had seen the driver's long red hair blowing in the ragtop's slipstream as she turned north on US 19 [CONFIRM] from the convenience store parking lot and was fantasizing about the girl to whom it belonged.
Jake winced when he heard the Volkswagen slam into the slow-moving Benz, then looked down to turn on his hazards before pulling over into the median to stop and help however he could. He figured he could also provide a statement to the police. It wasn't until he looked back up as the light turned green and saw a flash of gunfire that he swore out loud.
Jake saw a Hispanic man of middle height and medium build walk around the back of the disabled Mercedes and begin blasting away at the Volkswagen. Knowing that the driver of the yellow car was at least stunned from the impact and unable to dodge the incoming gunfire, Jake floored his old F-150 toward the gunman, his only thought to stop any additional harm to the red-haired driver.
The gunman was still firing shots at the Volkswagen at a rate of about one per second as Jake approached. Jake leaned on the horn to the gunman's attention. The gunman whirled toward the new threat and began squeezing off shots toward the truck, firing twice as fast as before.
The first shot punctured the radiator before fragmenting against the cast iron block of the truck's V8 engine, instantly enveloping the truck in a cloud of steam as hot, pressurized coolant gushed from both sides of the radiator.
The second shot punched a hole through the windshield just above the end of the driver's-side wiper blade. The safety glass and the angle of the shot caused the bullet to tumble before it cut through the right edge of the driver's shoulder harness and detonated against Jake's collarbone.
The third shot followed an improbable trajectory through the radiator, across the engine compartment, through the firewall, and into Jake's left shin. Fragments of shin bone and hollow point lead shredded the calf muscle behind it.
The final shot bounced up after spending most of its force against the power steering booster. The deformed slug ripped through the firewall and exploded from the dashboard to smash against Jake's forehead.
Jake was nearly unconscious as his F-150 plowed into the man and his Mercedes, pulverizing the gunman's pelvis and lower abdomen and nearly severing his legs from his torso. Jake slammed forward when his truck pulped the gunman and hammered into the Mercedes. The old nylon of the shoulder strap, already sliced in half by the gunman's second shot, parted with only a painful tug on Jake's wounded collarbone. Jake hit the steering wheel with the sickening crunch of breaking ribs and the thud of his already abused forehead. His hips slid forward, jamming his right knee into the lower dash and wedging his right leg and foot full down on the accelerator. The truck's powerful V8 refused to stall and continued to spin the drive wheel, adding a haze of burnt rubber smoke to the cloud of coolant steam already starting to envelop the accident scene.
-----
"What the HELL?"
The gunman's second shot at the Volkswagen plowed through the driver' door and slammed into the redhead's leg with an explosion of pain, rousing her from her stupor. Tangled in her now-deflated airbag and seatbelt and in tremendous pain in both her legs, she immediately wished she was still unconscious. She had just realized she was unable to move from the driver's seat as she looked out her side window to see a crazy Latino walking toward her car and squeezing off rounds. The mind sometimes does funny things under great stress, and she thought back to the accident that had killed both her parents. An only child of only children, she was all alone in the world since that horrible day when she was only six years old. At that moment, amidst the sounds of gunfire and an accelerating motor and a blaring horn, she decided to take the insurance money for her totaled car and buy a really nice bicycle. Florida was flat. The hell with a car.
About that time, through her pain-induced haze she noticed that the engine noise and the horn were getting louder, and the sound of the gunfire changed. Gazing dully out the window, she saw the gunman turn away from her car and begin firing down the road behind her. She listened as the sounds got louder. 'They must be getting closer,' she thought. She was looking directly at the gunman as a red and white pick up truck popped the gunman's abdomen on the rear passenger fender of his Mercedes. She thought it looked like a fat spider hit with a shoe as her mind viewed the collision and the resulting debris in slow motion. She was not a weak-tummied girl but the spattering of blood, feces, urine, and the gunman's Mexican lunch on her windshield and against the side of her head prompted her stomach to empty itself of the Cobb salad she had eaten shortly before. As the tears began running down her face, she thought that, somehow, crying just wasn't enough.
-----
"What the hell?"
Pasco County Deputy Sheriff Carlos Munoz stepped outside of the convenience store when the gunfire began. He decided he was much happier inside with the clerk where they had been discussing the cute little redhead who had just walked out with a 44 ounce smurf-blue slurpie. He had just laughingly commented that the damned cup was half her size when the gunfire began. He saw what looked like her yellow Beetle ragtop at the base of a cloud of smoke and steam, swore quietly, and slid into his patrol car. He hit the lights and siren as he backed out of his parking space. He pressed the button that would give him a green light at the intersection before he even got the cruiser out of reverse and stomped on the accelerator. He didn't notice the gravel his spinning tires kicked up from the convenience store parking lot and pelted against the store's front window.
Deputy Munoz radioed in his destination as he whipped his cruiser out of the parking lot, fishtailing as the tires grabbed the pavement.
"I'm at about seventeen thousand on US 19. I have gunfire, an accident, a fire, and God knows what the fuck else in the left-hand lane headed northbound. Send backup, vehicle fire suppression, and a couple of wreckers. I guess we'll need a couple of squads, too." The last referred to Life Squads, or ambulances. He paused. "Go ahead and have a double lift air ambulance head this way, too. I have no idea what the fuck I'm gonna find out here, but it looks ugly and Lord knows there ain't no hospitals around the corner around here. I'm here, gotta go. Out!"
-----
"What the hell?"
"So, the County Commissioners will need to decide -"
"Shit, is that gunfire?" the cameraman interrupted again. He looked behind him and saw a yellow VW convertible, its nose buried in the side of a black Mercedes sedan. A man was approaching the Beetle, firing as he walked. The cameraman immediately hopped to the other side of the camera tripod and and whipped the camera around, still filming. He zoomed in and focused on the accident and the gunman while he squeezed off two shots at the Volkswagen, then turned and began firing back down the road. He quickly zoomed back out a bit to see if he could find the gunman's new target.
"Jason!" yelled the woman with the microphone, jumping up and down in frustration. "Would you quit fucking around so we can get this stupid story done? I need to pee!"
"Sound's still on," Jason replied calmly.
"Wonderful! Just fucking wonderful," she muttered in response.
"Besides, get your head out of your ass, Gloria, and look across the street at this shit. I bet we have an exclusive, and this film is gonna make your boss and mine much, much happier than any story about zoning disputes ever could. Go get on the radio and tell them to route the nearest live unit here."
"Holy shit!" the cameraman continued as he watched a pick up slam into the gunman and then the Mercedes, popping the man's abdomen between the two like a blood-fattened tick. "Tell them we've got an unreal exclusive to send them, but they're gonna want to review it before slapping it up on the screen. It gets a bit graphic." He wondered how many drinks it would take that night him to forget seeing the gunman's grisly death.
Jake's truck finally overheated and seized from the combination of heavy acceleration and low coolant as Deputy Munoz's cruiser slid to a stop in the median gravel beneath a dusty bottle palm. He unholstered his Glock and held it at the ready as he slid out of his cruiser. The relative silence of hell was punctuated by the barely-audible hiss of coolant still steaming from the Ford, the quiet cooling ticks of three vastly different engines and exhaust systems, and a mocking bird in the dusty bottle palm above his cruiser. Deputy Munoz slammed his car door on his way out, startling the bird, who then crapped on the windshield and flew away. His ultimate mockery; nature's commentary on the day's events.
-----
The last bark of the police car's siren startled Jake back into consciousness. Looking around, he saw the steam and smoke from his truck, the dead, glassy eyes of the gunman pinned up against the Mercedes, and the sobbing redhead in the Volkswagen. He knew he needed to go check on her, so he pushed himself back off the steering wheel, wincing at the pain in his rib cage and head. 'Prolly some good bruising there,' he thought to himself, shaking his head. When the world didn't stop moving around after he stopped shaking his head, he decided that had been a really bad idea. The adrenalin surge and shock kept him from feeling the pain in his left shin and calf until he had hopped down from his truck and taken about three long steps around the back, heading for the crumpled convertible.
"MotherFUCK that hurt," he yelled, hopping forward twice on his left leg. He looked down and saw the hole in his shin and the mangled calf muscle behind it. 'Yeah, that'll leave a mark,' he thought.
Hopping on his right leg the rest of the way over to the Volkswagen, he slammed into the driver's door and stood there panting, trying to get the pain under enough control to pay attention to the car's driver. The noise and impact startled the driver, who let out a scream of surprise between sobs.
"Hey," he said quietly to the pretty little red-haired driver. "You can calm down now. It's all over. The bad guy's dead, and I'm sure that help is on the way." He pushed some kinky red hair back off of her face and began brushing his hand over her hair, unconsciously using the same motion his mother used to soothe his hurts and fears when he was a small child.
"Fuck I HUUUUUURT!" she wailed. "My left leg's on fire and I can't move EITHER of them! Oh, shit!" She started gasping her breaths in and blowing them out between pursed lips. She reminded Forrest of the women practicing breathing in the pre-natal classes he took with his wife before his first child was born. He frowned at the memory.
Curious why she would have called out pain specifically in her left leg, he stopped brushing her hair and leaned further in over the driver's door, looking down at her lap to see if there were any visible problems with her legs.
"Oh, shit," he echoed quietly when he saw her blood-soaked jeans. He started looking through the convertible for an old shirt or a towel to use as a temporary bandage. Unfortunately, the car was spotless and empty. The only thing he saw was another wave of blood ooze from her thigh. Leaning against the car to help him keep balanced on only his left leg, Forrest immediately stripped off his t-shirt and yelled for the cop to get a damned ambulance for the girl NOW!
While he leveraged off his right foot he used the car door as a fulcrum to jam his shirt against the bloody hole as a crude direct pressure bandage. He stood on tiptoe and almost climbed over the door and into her lap to wedge his elbow under the protruding armrest, then looked into the redhead's pain-filled emerald eyes and quietly said, "Hang in there, darlin'. What's your name?"
She sniffed twice, drew a ragged breath, and whispered, "Caitlin."
"Hey, Caitlin. I'm Jake," he smiled quietly. "What's a pretty girl like you doin' in an accident like this?" Despite her pain and tears, the corny come-on line was so bad she couldn't help but bark out a tear-filled laugh.
Then pain, shock, and blood loss took over and he fainted dead away, his head and upper body slumped over the top of her door, his face ending up in her lap. Caitlin would ordinarily have screamed to have a strange man visit her lap face-first, or any other way, really. Although the circumstances were far from ordinary, the result was the same. Caitlin let out a shriek and continued until she realized he was unconscious and not attacking her
The elbow Jake had wedged against the door panel still jammed his hand and wadded up shirt against her bullet wound, protecting her even in his unconsciousness.
-----
Deputy Munoz was indifferently trying to find a pulse at the throat of the man pinned between the pick up and the Benz. The pistol in the dead man's hand indicated that he was probably the bad guy in this scenario. Munoz had lost friends to crazy bastards who opened fire in traffic and was struggling to maintain some professional objectivity about the man.
"Dispatch, this is Munoz." He unclipped his shirt mike from his shoulder so he could be heard more clearly. "OK, I'm on the scene and have checked it out. There's no fire, so let the smokeaters know about that. It looks like we'll need the Jaws, so make sure they send that. I suspect we need chopper space for two, a crime scene investigation unit, three tow trucks, and some folks to handle traffic control. We need paramedics to stabilize two until the choppers show up. We've got a stiff so have the morgue send a meat wagon. Oh, and get somebody up here to handle the press. I'm sure there's cell phone footage somewhere of this cluster fuck and the questions will be flying fast and heavy until we get this cleaned up."
The girl's sudden scream caused the Deputy to jerk away from his grisly task and dart over to the Volkswagen buried nose-first in the side of the Mercedes. One glance into the car at the blood, the vomit, and the passed-out man and he had his shoulder mike back at his mouth in a heartbeat.
"Dispatch!" he cried into his radio. "I've got a bleeding driver here. Looks like she's lost a bunch of blood already. Another driver passed out from shock and probably blood loss. Where the fuck's that squad? Where's the chopper?"
"Deputy Munoz, be advised that the nearest rescue squad is niner zero seconds out. Repeat, niner zero." Munoz could now hear the siren of the nearest ambulance as it wove its way carefully along the edge of the southbound median, desperately trying to balance the need for speed against the need to avoid spectators too stupid to dodge a five-ton truck. Munoz shook his head as he watched the ambulance slow to a crawl as somehow a number of people failed to understand that the diesel's roar, the yowling turbocharger, the screaming sirens, and the blaring horns indicated that they should think about getting out of the way. He could see the driver screaming in frustration while trying to shepherd the truck through the crowd. The paramedic riding shotgun was at first hanging halfway out the window, yelling and trying to wave people back out of the way. He finally cursed loudly in frustration, crawled back into the truck, opened the door and hopped out, got in front of the truck, and started bodily shoving people to the side to help clear a path.
Once the ambulance got through and the paramedics could get to work, they rolled a gurney over to the car. Directing the Deputy to take over applying pressure to the redhead's gunshot wound, the medics straightened Jacob up in preparation for lifting him onto the gurney. Seeing his shattered left lower leg, one asked if he had been shot while standing at the car.
"Nope," replied the Deputy. "Far as I know, he pulped the shooter, got out of his truck, hopped over here on one leg, got a pressure bandage on this lady's wound, and wedged his arm against the door so that when he passed out the pressure would stay tight."
The paramedic shook his head in amazement. "Holy shit."
-----
"The woman was wedged in under the steering wheel and dashboard. She has a gunshot wound in her left thigh that bled heavily before the other vic applied a pressure bandage. Her-"
"How did he apply pressure if he passed out?" The ER nurse interrupted the air EMT midstream.
"The wound is on the left outside of her thigh. He wadded up his tee shirt and wedged his arm between the door and her wound. When the ground crew got there he was hanging over the door, elbow under the armrest, feet off the ground. Just hanging by his belly with his face in her lap, blood running from both the back and front of his leg, dripping and pooling on the the ground."
"Face in her lap, huh?" The nurse looked over the redhead and flashed a grin at the air ambulance's EMT. "Lucky bastard."
"Musta hurt like hell."
"Yeah. No wonder he passed out."
"Well, that and the blood loss and the head trauma and the shock. We had to dump three units of O-negative into him right away. Anyway, once they cut her out we couldn't get her away from him. Different names, different addresses, she says they've never met before. But she goes ballistic when she can't touch him. We damn near had to tie her down to get them in the chopper. If I were you I'd find a way to let them room together..."
-----
Shifts changed and the ER nurse was gone for the day before the redhead was brought to the ICU after her emergency surgery. The surgeon had dug a bullet out of her femur, stitched the thigh muscles back together, and finished with eight of the most delicate stitches he could, unwilling to blemish her beautiful creamy thigh any more than necessary. Heavily sedated throughout the night, she was left to sleep until morning under the watchful eyes of the monitoring systems and the ICU nurses.
-----
"I'll be back in a few, Rox. I need to go stop the sedative drip in 245, the little redhead. Dr. Sherwood wanted her to come off the sedative at six so she'd be awake when he swung by at about 7:30, an' I'm already late."
-----
The world was full of bright light and hushed noises as Caitlin drifted up from her sedative-induced slumber. Her vision was pink from the light bleeding through her eyelids. The quiet background noise was hushed beeps, muted hissing, and mumbled voices barely audible for the nurse's station nearby. The monitors noticed her rising pulse and heart rate, and the mumbling ceased, replaced by the quiet tread of rubber-soled shoes.
"Good morning, Caitlin. How are you feeling today?" greeted the slender brunette nurse as she entered the room.
Caitlin forced her eyes open and then squinted them mostly shut while they adjusted to the overhead lights. Glancing at the windows, Caitlin noticed it was still dark outside.
"Where am I?" she asked, frowning while she tried to remember. "I remember an accident, some idiot shooting at me -". She gasped and looked down at her blanket-covered left leg.
"Yeah, they dug a bullet out of your femur and stitched you up in emergency surgery last evening. What else do you remember?"
"Well, while that guy was shooting, suddenly this pick up truck smashed him and the shooting stopped. Then this guy hopped over to my car, stripped off his shirt, and jammed his shirt and hand against my leg. There was lots of blood and screaming." She paused. "I think most of the screaming was me," she resumed, embarrassed and looking down. "Anyway, he tried to calm me down and then collapsed over my door and into my lap."
Caitlin tilted her head to the side as she thought, then screamed as the memories clarified and the realization hit her.
"OhmyGod! He saved my life, didn't he?" Her gaze caught on the police officer sitting outside her room. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilated in panic. "Where is he? Why is there a cop outside my door? Am I under arrest?" The questions left no opportunity for answers as they poured out one after another. Finally there was a pause as she sat up and swung her legs toward the right side of the bed.
"One at a time. Yes, he saved your life. Not once but three times, probably." The nurse was on Caitlin's left side, reaching to pull her blanket down to check the wound on her thigh. "First when he killed the nut job who was shooting at you. Second when he put the pressure bandage on your wound - that was quick thinking and most likely kept you from bleeding to death. The third time was when he calmed you down enough to settle down and relax a bit until the crews got there and they could cut you out. Mr. Jackson was quite the hero yesterday."
Caitlin resumed pivoting on her bottom when the nurse was done, sliding her legs over the right edge of the bed and struggling to unplug the blood oxygen sensor taped to her right index finger.
"Whoa, young lady! Where do you think you're going?" The nurse looked at her with concern, sensing that this could quickly get out of control. 'Honestly,' she thought to herself, 'It's too damned early to be dealing with crazy redheads.'
"I need to go to him," she stated flatly as she ripped open the Velcro closure of the automated blood pressure cuff. The nurse scrambled wildly for the call button as Caitlin grabbed the IV stand in her right hand and slid down off her bed.
"Fuck!" she hissed when her weight slammed down on her left leg. "Where is he? What room is he in?" She was getting louder as she went along. Quickly hopping over to the door, she stuck her nose within an inch of the cop's and stared hard at him, her deep green eyes boring into his soft brown ones. The officer glanced briefly at the nurse, shrugged his shoulders, and jerked his thumb over his left shoulder to the next room.
Caitlin raced around the corner as fast as she could limp, still clutching her IV stand. She muttered a string of expletives when the IV lines tangled in the wheels. Still swearing, she raced over to Jake's bed and began to cry when she saw all the bandages.
Sobbing, she hobbled around to the right side of his bed where he was less bandaged, swearing and jerking her tangled IV mess with her. The jammed wheels on the stand jumped and slid across the vinyl floor tiles behind her.
Caitlin hopped up on Jake's bed once she got to the right foot corner. She used the raised rail to help her clamber up to put her head by his. Caitlin wrapped her arms around Jake's neck and howled, bawling out years of loneliness and pain and worry about the stranger in her arms, her savior, her hero.
Three nurses came racing into the room then, the one from Caitlin's room and two others. The two younger nurses ran around to where Caitlin was still crying into Jake's unconscious shoulder, but the older one stopped on the other side of the bed and watched.
"Come on, honey. You need to let go of Mr. Jackson and go-on back to your room." A young blonde nurse who was trying to pry Caitlin's left arm off the top off Jake's chest and her left hand from around the back of his neck.
"Let go of me, you bitch!" Caitlin screamed while the nurse used her upper body strength to pry Caitlin's hand free. "You go find your own man! This one saved my life! He's MINE! Fuck!" The last was when her hand finally slipped free from Jake's neck. At the same time, the nurse who had been in her room before easily pulled Caitlin's left leg back from around Jake's hip.
As the nurses began pulling her away from Jake, Caitlin switched tactics. Ripping herself free from the two rather complacent nurses, she disengaged entirely from Jake and wrapped her arms and legs around the bars of the bed rail.
"Get off! Let go of me!" Caitlin clutched the bed rail with both arms and her slender legs while rocking her body back and forth. The resulting up and down wiggle conspired with the logjam of IV stands and other medical equipment to prevent the two nurses from getting a firm hold on her. By now there were two Deputies looking curiously in the room, the one who had been on duty before and his replacement.
"Leave me alone, damnit! He saved my life. I need to take care of him!"
"Jenny, would you please go get another dose of sedative?" The blonde looked over and spoke to the older nurse.
"No! I'll just come back the next time I wake up. You can't keep me knocked out forever."
"She's right, you know," said the older nurse. "I suspect that your choices are going to be keeping her sedated and restrained for the entire time she's here, or working out something with her. This story is all over the news, all over the southeast. Just how well will we look when the press gets to report night after night that we are keeping her knocked out and tied up? I don't want to explain that news coverage to the Head of Nursing. How 'bout y'all?" She waited.
"No? OK, let's talk to this sweet girl who's been through so much and see what's on her mind. Why don't you two come on over to this side of the bed and we can quit crowding Miss Caitlin for a bit."
The nurse walked to the foot of the bed while the two younger nurses glared at her and moved to the front of the room, away from Jake's bed and Caitlin. The older nurse slid a stacking side chair over to the foot of the bed, twirled it around so the back of the chair faced the bed, and sat down with a sigh. She crossed her arms on the back of the chair and looked down, putting her forehead on her arms. She sighed deeply again.
"OK, darlin'. I can't have you running around the hospital and scaring my nurses to death." The older nurse turned her head and shot a look at the two policemen snickering in through the door. The other two nurses joined in the silent glare, which did nothing to reduce the Deputies' amusement.
"Anyway, lets set a spell and talk about what's on your mind." She waited for Caitlin, then, after a few moments of silence, looked up at Caitlin and spoke again.
"OK, I'll go first. My name's Jenny. I'm the charge nurse for these rooms, which means I'm the head nurse for this area of the Intensive Care Unit, or ICU. Essentially, I'm the boss nurse. These girls," she indicated the two younger nurses standing near the door, "have other duties and other patients to take care of in addition to you and Mr. Jackson here. Let's see if we can figure out what we can do so they have the time available for their other tasks. Now, what's your biggest concern?"
Caitlin took a quivering sniffle, then another while she considered. "You just wanna talk? You're not gonna jump me?"
Jenny smiled and nodded. "Just talk right now. Nobody's gonna jump you." She cast a glance at the two younger nurses.
Caitlin uncoiled herself from the bedrail she had been clutching, stretched, and sat up, knees up, arms around her legs. Jenny would come to recognize this as a defensive position where Caitlin could hide behind her legs.
"I've been alone for the last 16 years, since I was six years old. Both my parents were killed in a car accident. I have no brothers or sisters, and neither did they, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. I've been in so many foster homes I lost count after about thirty. They all just wanted me to wear used Goodwill clothes and eat cheap, crappy food. The doctors think that's why I ended up so damned small, on account of I didn't get enough protein and calcium when I was a teenager. As I got older, I got less willing to put up with the crap. Of course, as the list of foster homes that I got tossed out of grew, the quality of the foster families they could find that would take me got worse.
So anyway, no matter how much I just wanted a family to love, and to love me, I've had nobody for sixteen years. Then yesterday this crazy Mexican pulls out in front of me, and starts shooting at me after I hit him, and then - " Caitlin took a sobbing breath, her pupils suddenly dilated and eyes wild, looking quickly around the room for anything she could perceive as a threat.
"You're safe, darlin'. Nobody can hurt you here," Jenny soothed. The nurses and policemen looked on in rapt attention, not saying a word.
Caitlin took a deep, shaky breath and continued. "And then, here comes a gorgeous man to save me. Not like tossing me a big tip at the bar so I can buy some extra food. I mean, he deliberately made a target of himself so that nut job would shoot at him, not me! Then he risked whatever trouble he would get in to take care of the guy for good, then -" Tears were pouring down her face by this time as she relived the previous day's events. "- He, he came over to my car, his face all smashed up from the wreck. He talked to me and rubbed his hand through my hair to calm me down. Then he saw my leg was bleeding and tore his shirt off without even thinking twice about it. I had peed my pants and puked up my lunch when he killed that guy and do you know what he did?"
Jenny shook her head no, although she did in fact know some of the details of yesterday's activities. She wanted to hear what Caitlin had to say, and how it played to her current thoughts and mental state.
Caitlin closed her eyes to cut off some stimulus and try to deal with her emotions. She continued after drawing another deep, ragged breath.
"He fucking knew he was gonna pass out or die. I didn't know at the time how bad his leg was, but he did. He knew he was gonna pass out or die, but without even taking a deep breath of clean air he jumped up and put his face in my peed in, puky lap so he could wedge his arm and bandage against my leg so I would be OK whatever happened." Caitlin sobbed again. "Then, he smiled up at me and looked me in the eyes and told me I was pretty!" she finished with a wail.
"When he passed out, I went nuts. He had to be hurting like hell, but everything he did was to make me safe or feel better. He was like a Prince Charming or a knight on a white charger in some fucking fairy tale or something. He showed me more love in ten minutes than I've gotten at any time in my life.
"Yesterday's insanity hit me out of nowhere. I'm terrified when I'm not with him. Touching him makes me feel loved. Listening to him makes me feel protected. Smelling him makes me calmer."
Jenny tilted her head and frowned her question at this last one.
"Oh, Lord yes, his smell. After he passed out and before they could cut me out and get us into the air ambulance, I had plenty of opportunity to bury my nose in his hair and stroke his face and hair to try to comfort him, like he did for me. In fact, I really, really need that right now. Hang on a sec..."
Caitlin half scampered, half crawled up Jake's bed and jammed her face into his disheveled hair. As the amazed onlookers watched, they could see her body relax and hear her tears slow, then stop completely, as she sniffed in huge breaths, reveling in his scent. The nurses and police waited quietly.
"I'll be damned," Jenny said when she heard the first faint, tiny snore. "Would you look at that?" After her physical and emotional outburst, less than two minutes of Jake's scent had calmed Caitlin enough to fall asleep draped over his left shoulder, her face firmly planted in his hair, a peaceful smile on her face.
-----
Caitlin befriends Nurse Jenny and learns everything Jake did for her. Caitlin's fantasy world begins to develop
Caitlin woke with a shock when the bed slammed and shook. Pushing herself half up, she looked around in fear and confusion. Jenny was ready for her reaction and put a gentle hand on Caitlin's shoulder from behind. Caitlin's fear expanded into full blown terror before Jenny could get a word out and she shoved the hand off her shoulder. Immediately understanding her mistake, the nurse stepped in front of Caitlin and spoke softly.
"You're alright, darlin'. Everything's OK. That's just the brakes on the bed. We're moving you two to a semiprivate room where you can be together. Just hang on and enjoy the ride." She and Caitlin looked at each other, and Caitlin relaxed and nodded her assent. Looking for something to occupy her nervous young charge, Jenny nodded at the bed's other occupant
"Mr. Jackson looks a little stressed. Why don't you see if you can relax him a bit?"
Caitlin instantly looked down at the frown on Jake's face and gasped. "Oh my gosh, you're right!" She dove back down and began gently running her fingers through Jake's hair, murmuring gentle words of love and reassurance into his ear. Jenny smiled to herself as she watched both her patients relax.
-----
-----
Caitlin demands shaving supplies for her and Jake. She refuses to let e staff help with shaving. Her man, her task. First annoyance at nurses giving Jake sponge baths. Caitlin's fantasy world develops further. Jenny counsels against too much fantasy about a man Caitlin's never met. Caitlin develops a new preferred position where she lays Jake out on the raised bed, then settles in on top of him to watch TV or read or nap. Usually she'll pull us right arm around her to snuggle in.
Nurse Jenny Wilson walked into the ICU room and smiled at the young couple on the bed. Jake was still in a coma, but Caitlin was wide awake, sitting up beside him and disgustedly running her fingers through her hair.
"Yuk!" She said to Jenny. "I feel disgusting. I look disgusting. I've been peed on and puked on and I'm gross! When can I take a shower?"
Jenny contemplated the girl. She was a tiny thing, not quite five feet tall and well shy of a hundred pounds. Bright red hair hanging down past her shoulders. And a body like a supermodel left too long in the dryer. Jenny considered her own overweight, middle-aged body and wondered if Caitlin could ever truly be considered disgusting.
"Actually, you can take one today. Let me get the stuff so I can show you how to wrap your leg bandage for the shower when you get home." Jenny had turned away to head for the supply closet, so she didn't see the shadow that flitted across Caitlin's face at the mention of her going home.
"The doctor wants to keep the wound area and bandages dry for at least the next two weeks, so you'll need to do this any time you want to shower." Jenny took a piece of plastic kitchen wrap and used waterproof medical tape the tape down all four sides making sure the plastic wrap was an inch or more over each side of the bandage.
"After you dry off, wait until you're done moisturizing before you remove the cover. You need to keep lotion off the bandage, too."
"Thank you!" Caitlin chirped to Jenny as she climbed back up to Jake's head.
"Jake, honey, I'm gonna go in the bathroom and take a shower and make myself prettier for you. I'll just be next door for a little bit, then I'll be right back when I smell better and I'm all pretty for you," Caitlin murmured softly in his ear. "They're gonna clean you up, too,while I'm gone." She leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips, then rose back up to speak gently into his ear. "I'll be back in a little while. I love you."
Caitlin then scooted down to the end of the hospital bed and hopped down in the corner between the side rail and the footboard. "Shit!" she cursed when she hit the floor.
Jenny smirked a half smile at the little redhead. "Yeah, you've still gotta take it easy on that leg for a bit. There's towels and washcloths and soap in the bathroom. Please make sure the call cord gets in the shower and use it if you even feel dizzy. We don't want you to fall, and neither do you." She walked over next to Jake and took a sniff.
"Whew! Poor Mr. Jackson's pretty ripe, too. Why don't you take a nice long shower and I'll get a couple of aides in here to give him a sponge bath?" With that, Jenny took her phone out of its holster and headed out the door, asking for some aides to come bathe Mr. Jackson.
Caitlin gingerly walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Stripping while she waited for the water to warm up, she gasped in horror as she realized her predicament. She had no clean clothes to put on after she cleaned up! It hadn't dawned on her that she would be unable to dress after her shower. 'Oh, well,' she thought. 'I'll just have to double-gown it.' It wasn't like she wanted body armor between herself and Jake, anyway.
Jake. Caitlin thought he'd be a good looking man once he lost the bandages from his smashed and broken nose and the nuclear sunset of a bruise on his forehead. She absently soaped up her washcloth and began lathering her body.
"Mmmmmmm, Jake." After soaping her body, she slung the washcloth out by her arm over her left shoulder and ran her fingers gently up and down her neck. The fingers slid slickly through the suds on a layer of soap, tickling her in a way that resonated low in her belly. As her hands moved around to stroke the back of her neck, she imagined it was Jake's fingers caressing her. She closed her eyes and imagined it was his hands rubbing out and back along her collarbone and the tops of her shoulders.
Her breathing got faster as the hands rubbed her chest and the top of her breasts. She ran her hands down the sides of her rib cage, teasing herself by avoiding her aching breasts and her hard, light pink nipples.
"Oh, Jake!" she gasped as her hands flattened out to rub her tight belly. "Do you like my flat tummy? My little innie? Do you think my little belly button's cute, Jake?"
Caitlin's hands moved back to the sides of her torso as she slid them down, feeling her hips flare out to either side. "Do you like my womanly hips, Jake? I know I'm small, Jake, but these should be good for popping out your babies.
"Babies, oh God!" She slid her right hand back to her stomach while moving the left to the bottom of her right breast. She absently rubbed her belly while she began kneading her breast. "Babies. Oh God, Jake. I want you to make my belly big and round with your babies." She rubbed circles on her belly as if she was pregnant. "I want these tits to swell with milk to feed your babies." She began pinching her nipple, stretching her breast out away from her ribs. "Ohhh, I want to feed you, too. When the babies are full, I want you to suck my sweet milk from my breasts. I want to feed you my milk, give you life like I'll give life to our babies."
Her right hand slid down to the red triangle between her legs. She reached around behind her, rinsing the soap from her fingers before running them between her legs. "Oh!" she cried quietly as her finger slid over her clit, already swollen and uncovered. "Yes! Babies. I want you to rub your big, hard cock here between my legs. I want you to fuck me full of your babies, pour your sperm into my womb and grow babies in my belly."
By now Caitlin was frantically frigging her clit with her left forefinger while desperately pumping the first two fingers of her right hand inside. "Babies! Nnngh! Knock me up! Oh! Oh! Oooooh! Shoot your sperm in me and fill me with your babies! Oh!" She stuck her bottom out and nearly doubled over when she came, her body twitching and shaking from the force of her orgasm. She twitched for several more moments as the aftershocks worked their way through her body.
Finally, she stood up straight and took a deep breath, releasing it in a big sigh. 'Wow!' she thought as she began shampooing her hair. 'I don't know where all that came from. Babies! Huh."
When she said the word babies, something twitched deep inside.
-----
Jenny smiled as Caitlin returned from her shower. Her deep green eyes were clear and bright, and there was a faint blush still on her cheeks, forehead, and chest. Based on the sounds she had heard when occasionally checking on Caitlin's well being, she apparently had a nice hot shower in more ways than one. 'Oh, to be young and in love again...' Jenny thought enviously.
"I have a surprise for you," Jenny said when Caitlin entered the room. She smiled at Caitlin's quick grin. She chuckled out loud when Caitlin jumped up and down and clapped her hands like a little girl. "It's on your bed."
Caitlin looked over but saw no obvious gift on Jake's bed, and her puzzled frown caused Jenny to chuckle again. "Not his bed, your bed. You know, the one your insurance company is paying for?" Jenny's smile took the sting out of her words, and Caitlin blushed in embarrassment.
Caitlin noticed that the curtain was drawn around the other bed in the room, and she squealed with joy when she saw several bags lying on the bed. On top was a Get Well Soon card signed by the entire ICU staff. The bags held the fun though.
One bag held two pairs of fuzzy Hello Kitty pajama bottoms, one lavender, the other baby pink. Another bag held a pair of jeans, and another contained a pair of darling mid-heeled pale yellow sandals. Caitlin hoped Jake liked the delicate yellow straps that formed the top of the shoes. She'd never had the money for a pair with ankle straps before, and she especially hoped Jake liked those. Her favorite bag contained five pairs of color-matched tee shirts and bikini panties: neon orange, lemon yellow, bright lime, electric blue, and pale lavender. She squealed again with joy as she ripped off her gowns and slipped into the yellow shirt and panties, and the lavender pajamas. Once dressed in her new clothes, she limped over to Jenny as fast as she could and threw her arms around her.
"Thank you all so much! How did you know the sizes?"
"One of the nurses has a girl about your size, and we went off of what she wears." Jenny lowered her voice and said, "We didn't get you any bras, you know. That's such a personal and intimate piece. It doesn't really look like you need one anyway, and you didn't have one on when you came in."
Caitlin blushed and smiled at the nurse. "That's OK. I usually only wear them to work to try to hide my nips. I get enough come-ons when the girls are covered up." She paused, then said, "I don't think I want to cover up much around Jake, anyway." She blushed again. Jenny just smiled knowingly.
-----
"Can we go down to the gift shop?" Caitlin asked the aide who was walking with her as she limped along on her crutches. "I have something I want to buy there."
"Sure," said the aide, happy for a break from doing circles around the floor. The pair rode down to the ground floor in companionable silence. Caitlin was jumpy and getting worse. She didn't understand why she was getting so worked up, and finally mentioned it.
"I'm really getting jumpy and nervous. I don't understand it. I'm going to the gift shop. I have you with me. The hospital is safe. Why am I such a wreck?"
The aide knew the answer before Caitlin had completed half the question. "That's easy," she said. "This is the farthest you've been from that man of yours since you woke up after surgery. You'll be fine once you get back up to his room." She'd seen the invisible cord between the two get stretched too far before and knew both the symptoms and the cure. In fact, she had seen Caitlin start dancing around in the elevator and wondered when she would finally say something.
"Let's just keep your shopping trip as short as possible and get you back upstairs to your Mr. Jackson. What are you down here to get, anyway?"
"A beard trimmer for one thing. Poor Jake's starting to look a little untidy. I know he was clean-shaven before, but I like him with some scruff on his face. Plus, I don't trust myself to shave him and not nick. I called down here earlier and she has one waiting at the counter for me."
Caitlin and the aide wandered around the gift shop while several previous shoppers completed their transactions. Caitlin was delighted to find a small stuffed bear dressed in a super hero costume for Jake. She was standing at the counter waiting for the clerk to return from the back and was looking at the flowers in the cooler behind the counter.
"You know, it's a shame Jake doesn't have any flowers in his room. I wonder what they have that's long lasting."
The clerk returned while she was speaking and said, "I have just the thing. These mums will bloom for maybe a month or more. Then you can take them home and plant them and they'll bloom for years. Here's a nice cheerful yellow that matches your shirt!"
"Wonderful! I'll take one of those and this bear, and you are holding a beard trimmer for me." After looking it over with the clerk, Caitlin decided it would do the trick. Taking the unfamiliar tool out of its packaging, Caitlin turned a puzzled look to the clerk.
"I want him to have about an eighth-inch inch beard. Do you know how I'd set it up for that?" Catching the clerk's odd look, Caitlin smiled and replied, "He's in a coma and not making many fashion decisions right now."
The clerk blushed and showed Caitlin how to set up the trimmer and rang up her order. Once the transaction was complete, Caitlin and the aide headed back to the elevators. Caitlin was almost running on her crutches, and the aide had to hustle to keep up.
"I had fun shopping," Caitlin said as she punched the up button, "But I've been too far away from Jake for far too long. I need to get back to him now." She grinned over her shoulder at the aide. "And yes, I know pounding on the button like this doesn't make the elevator come any faster. But I feel better for trying."
Once back upstairs, Caitlin blew through the ICU like a little red, yellow, and lavender tornado, her bag of gifts swinging wildly from her left crutch, until she was back in the room she shared with Jake. She lay her bag at the foot of the bed and slung her crutches into the corner, not caring when the underarm pads bounced off the wall and the crutches both fell to the floor. She hopped up on the bed and scampered up until her forehead was up against Jake's temple and her arms were around his neck.
"Oh, Jake honey! I missed you so much. I was only gone a short while, but I missed feeling safe with you. I love you, sugar." Caitlin was curled up to Jake and fast asleep before the aide could bring in the flowers and set them on Jake's bedside table. She started to speak while she picked up the crutches until she heard Caitlin's soft, tiny little snores. She smiled and shook her head as she stood the crutches in the corner where Caitlin could get to them easily but they would otherwise be out of the way. Then she quietly left the room, turning off the overhead lights and closing the door until it was open just a crack.
-----
Caitlin is unhappy about the sponge baths. Jake now gets hard and the nurses jerk him off. It pisses Caitlin off to see other women fondling 'her' man. She gets to do sponge baths in exchange for not making a stink. Despite nurse Jenny's continuing counsel against it, Caitlin gets further into her fantasy. Doubts about Jake's reaction show up for the first time.
-----
Jake existed in a cold, confusing world of darkness, pain, and sound. He could see nothing but blackness. His very being was pain; non-corporeal, he felt no body and thus no specific locus for pain. He WAS pain. The constant hissing and beeping would have reverberated inside his head, had he possessed one.
The only other sensations were a spot of warmth nearby, and the sound of a sobbing voice. "I love you, Jake Jackson. Don't you dare die on me. Please don't go. I love you. I NEED you. Don't go..."
Then the darkness again overpowered all.
-----
Caitlin was awake when the night nurse slipped in to do the midnight vitals check. She disentangled her limbs from Jake and patiently lay back so the nurse could check her first. The nurse smiled at her while she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Caitlin's left bicep and pushed the button to start the test. She popped the thermometer under Caitlin's tongue, retrieving it after the beep.
"Ninety-eight point eight. Just perfect, dear," she murmured quietly as she entered the data into her records tablet. "Mmmmmm. That blood pressure's no good though, and your pulse is high. Go ahead and hold his hand, sweetheart, and we'll try it again after I get Mr. Jackson's numbers."
At this point it was a well documented fact that Caitlin became physically ill when away from Jake, and even a brief break in her physical contact with him started a noticeable decline in both her physical and mental states. The doctors found it unbelievable. The younger nurses found it unbelievably sweet and romantic. The battle axes remained battle axes and resented the disruption to their routine. The hospital administrators who knew of the situation affected blank smiles and quietly feigned ignorance, remembering those unfortunate staff members who had tried to separate the two early on. Caitlin may have looked like a teenage pixie, but much of the staff concluded she was in reality the reincarnation of a pissed off Ghengis Kahn and mostly let her get her way.
After gathering Jake's vitals and entering them into her tablet, the nurse returned to Caitlin's left side and hit the button to retake her blood pressure and pulse.
"One oh one over sixty five, and your pulse is a steady seventy two. The doctors will be happy with those numbers." The nurse winked at Caitlin and whispered, "We'll just pretend those other readings never happened."
"Thank you," Caitlin whispered back.
Caitlin lay there thinking about the accident after the nurse slipped quietly out of the room. She had been so wrapped up in her own pain and terror that she had no idea at the time of the risks Jake had taken or what he had truly done to save her. A news crew had been filming across the street and over and over she watched the footage as Jake rammed and killed the gunman, hopped one legged from his truck to her car with blood exploding from his wounded leg every time he landed, comforted her, then whipped off his shirt and bent over her door to apply the pressure to her wound that the paramedics said kept her from dying from blood loss, and after which he finally collapsed over the top of her car door. The police spokeswoman they started using as a voiceover for the segment spoke of how he apparently bet his life when he leaned on his horn to distract the gunman away from her before sacrificing his vehicle and nearly himself to save a woman he'd never met. Caitlin bawled in pain, and sorrow, and terror that he wouldn't make it every time his injuries were listed: the shattered collar bone, the bullet hole in his shin and the shredded calf behind it that would take multiple reconstructive surgeries to try to save, the shattered ribs and punctured lung, the concussion that had knocked him into a coma for eight days now.
Caitlin scootched her tiny body up so her forehead was up against the side of Jake's, her lips almost touching his right ear. She once again whispered thanks to God for sending her this wonderful man in her moment of need and murmured words of love and reassurance and commitment in Jake's ear.
He stirred in his unconsciousness. She felt his right hand close protectively around her left ankle, and when she felt the weakness in his grip she broke down again and bawled like a baby. She didn't stop until the nurse returned some minutes later and quietly administered a sedative injection through the medication port in Caitlin's IV line.
Caitlin fell asleep wrapped around the curve of Jake's shoulder, her chin on the top of his shoulder and her forehead against his temple. The nurse smiled at her and then walked to the sink. Quietly she dampened a washcloth, then returned to her patients. Still smiling, she washed the tears away from Caitlin's delicate cheeks and wiped her forehead with the cool, damp cloth. She then covered her body with another blanket, adjusting and tucking as if she was a mother with a newborn child.
"Sleep tight, child," she said as she lightly kissed the top of Caitlin's head. "Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day for y'all."
-----
"I don't think so." The firm alto voice coming into the hallway was unamused.
The two cops sitting guard outside the room looked at each other and grinned. They were well acquainted with the diminutive red-haired pixie inside and had overheard some epic battles of will. It was unusual when she lost. The discussion became heated. They smiled again when they heard the aide buzz the nurse's station for reinforcements.
"Ow!" Not the pixie's voice.
A grey haired, heavyset nurse shook her head and smiled wryly as she strode down the hall from the central nurse's station, meeting the aide at the door. "What's the problem, Lashiqua?"
The nurse's aide pointed to her right eye, already darkening and swelling shut. "That rabid little bitch punched me when I tried to put her in a chair to take her to rehab. I don't want to work with her no more."
Jenny sighed. "Didn't they tell you to come get me before you went in to get her?" she asked.
"Well, yeah, but she ain't nothin' but a 93 pound girl. She ain't even five feet tall!"
"No, she's not, but she's a 22 year old woman who lives in mortal terror of being separated from that man in there. She's got no family in the world and he almost got himself killed protecting her from a crazed drug runner who was shooting at her. Mr. Jackson doesn't even know her! You're not gonna make her do anything. You've got to get her to want to do it, especially when it comes to leaving her man in there. Come on!" Jenny waved her hand in a 'follow me' motion and she and the aide entered the room together.
Caitlin was squatting up on the back of a chair, her own back wedged into the corner behind her. The olive green vinyl on the chair clashed loudly with her mint green gown. As she crouched on the chair back she held both hands up, all ten fingers extended like claws, nails at the ready. She had a feral snarl on her face, and she actually hissed when the aide came back into the room. Curious, the policemen poked their heads in further to watch.
Jenny turned to the aide. "Stand here and don't say a word."
The aide started to open her mouth but the old nurse cut her off. "Not a sound!"
Jenny walked over to where the wheelchair sat by the bed. She flipped off the brakes and rolled it out the door into the hallway. The aide flinched but kept quiet at a sharp glance from the nurse
Jenny walked back into the room and over to a visibly relaxing Caitlin. She put both her hands out and spoke in a soothing, but not condescending, voice.
"Come on, darlin'. We need to talk a bit, but first let's get you back over with your man." The aide and the cops all unconsciously held their breath as the nurse approached Caitlin, waiting for her to attack. They let out a collective sigh when Caitlin leaped from the chair and the two women embraced.
"Oh, Nurse Jenny! They tried to take me away from Jake!" Caitlin sobbed into the nurse's shoulder. "I didn't know what to do! I've got no family to take care of me, and nobody's been here to visit him so I figure he's got no family, either. I've got to stay here with him. I've got to make sure he's safe and taken care of. Oh, don't make me leave him!" she wailed, desperately clutching the nurse's shirt and soaking the front with tears.
"Oh you poor little thing. First, let's get you settled down here with him." Jenny helped Caitlin limp over to the bed and sat the redhead where she could reach Jake's hand. Jenny picked up his left hand and held it in Caitlin's field of vision. Caitlin quickly grabbed his larger hand in both of hers and lay back next to Jake, clutching their joined hands to her chest and nuzzling his forearm with her cheek and neck. She took a deep, shuddering breath and everyone could see the tension leave her body as she let out an enormous sigh and relaxed. The terror left her deep green eyes and sanity returned.
Jenny pulled a side chair over in front of Caitlin and sat down on the royal blue padding. The chair creaked under her weight but she had learned long ago to trust the solid aluminum frames. She put one hand on Caitlin's knee and began speaking in a soft voice.
"Caitlin, honey, you've got the right idea to look after your man, what with everything he's done for you, and especially given that he doesn't seem to have a family nearby to help see him through." She paused a moment to let that sink in. "Have you thought what taking care of him's going to take from you when he gets out, and even before he get discharged? He's not going to be able to run around for some time now, and how are you gonna run around for him if you can't run?" She indicated the bandage wrapping the bullet hole on Caitlin's leg.
Caitlin looked stricken at the thought of not being able to care for Jake, and Jenny continued.
"There's nothing wrong with your legs that won't heal, but it will heal faster and better if you help it. Let Lashiqua here take you over for your therapy so you can be up and scampering around again soon. You'll kick yourself if you don't."
After a brief pause, Caitlin shuddered at the thought of being so far from Jake, then gave a nod. "I'll go," she said quietly, sitting up on the bed.
Jenny smiled and nodded to the aide, who stepped out into the hall to get the wheelchair. As the chair was brought over to the bed, Jenny spoke again. "Lashiqua will bring you right back here as soon as you are done with your therapy. Now give Mr. Jackson a kiss and go get to work. That poor man's gonna be gimpy for quite a while and he'll need you back up and around sooner than you know."
Caitlin clambered back up to Jake's head and kissed him gently on the lips, then murmured quietly into his ear. "I love you Jake Jackson. I'll be back as soon as I can. I need to go get strong again for you. You're still my man. Don't you be flirting with any pretty nurses while I'm gone now!"
Nurse Jenny smiled to herself at Caitlin's parting admonition. She pondered whether she knew of any nurse in the entire hospital brave enough, or so suicidally stupid as to be willing to flirt with poor Mr. Jackson. 'What will his life be like when he wakes up?' she wondered as she walked out. She was sure it would be different than before he had met Caitlin.
-----
"Nurse. NURSE! He's waking up!"
Jake was cold, but his right arm, leg, hip, and side were delightfully warm. The darkness was still noisy with the hisses and beeps, but apparently darkness also came with a sweet, sweet alto voice. Very nice. Unfortunately, the darkness also came with a great deal of pain. The pain washed over him in waves, sheets of pain that started in his feet, washed up through his entire being to reflect off the top of his skull, and then sloshed again through his body and then back into his legs. After the nothingness, the pain was something new, something different. Jake lay still, experiencing the sloshing, enjoying the warmth, waiting for the voice.
The warmth shifted. Now his right shoulder was warm, too. He smiled weakly. 'I have a shoulder,' he thought dreamily.
"Welcome back, my love," purred the voice. That sweet, wonderful voice. Jake instantly felt better for hearing it, more energized. Still in boundless pain and without the strength to harm a butterfly, he nonetheless moved to a higher plane of being merely from hearing it.
'My love.' Jake felt sadness at the thought that the voice was not speaking to him. He hadn't had a woman in his life for years, ever since the day she drove off with the baby... He vaguely wondered who the lucky bastard was that the voice was addressing.
"I love you," murmured the voice. "I've been waiting to meet you again. You are my hero, my savior, my love. You saved my life, not once but twice, and I'll never let you go."
Mmmmmmmm, that voice. Jake smiled as he thought he could listen to it all day, every day, for the rest of his life. His still scrambled synapses concluded that the voice tasted like thick, pink, clover honey. As he fell back asleep, Jake wondered what manner of creature could make such a tasty noise.
-----
Dr. John Sherwood entered the room twenty four minutes later. He stopped two steps inside the room, looking at the occupants of the bed, both sleeping peacefully. He then checked the various monitors positioned about the room. The right side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile as he considered the tiny red-haired pixie locked on for dear life to the right arm and leg of the six foot man beside her. Sleeping, her face was finally peaceful after all this time, suffused with a calm joy, her worries cast aside for a while. He glanced at the monitors again, eyes confirming what his ears had been telling him since he walked into the room. One set of beeps coming in stereo from two separate heart monitors on two individual hearts. Even their heartbeats were synchronized at a steady, peaceful 68 beats per minute. Having no urgent business with either of them, he let them sleep. He turned and nodded to the two uniformed policemen guarding the room on his way out. Absently, he wondered if there existed an administrator foolish enough to try to separate the two in the room. He'd seen the pixie in action. He knew who'd win.
-----
The ICU was abuzz the next morning. Their celebrity patient had awakened for a time the night before and they expected a zoo.
It was quiet in the room early the next morning. Nurse Jenny had awakened Caitlin a little before six for the morning vitals. Once the nurse had her numbers, Caitlin ignored the pain in her left thigh and scampered over to the green chair in the corner. Terrified that Jake would reject her upon waking, she curled herself into a ball and timidly peeked over her knees.
"Holy shit!" Dr. Sherwood said to Jenny. "I haven't seen her react to anyone like that. Usually, she's like a pit bull that's been kicked in the face and fed hot peppers. If I didn't know they'd never met before that accident I'd swear he's beaten her."
Jenny just looked at him. "Shes all alone in the world. For all her bluff and bluster, she's terrified that once he really wakes up she'll be all alone again." She paused. "As if any mere man could reject the love in her eyes."
(More on the way...)
It's a longun, over 11,000 words with only one minor masturbation scene so far for sex. The sex will be somewhere in the great unfinished chapters ahead. I hadn't even planned for the masturbation scene, but apparently Caitlin was horny when she took her shower.. I discovered she has a fetish, too. Those zany characters - ya never know what they're gonna do next sometimes.
I mentioned above that this is long. My goal is a trilogy of novel-length stories since I think the entire storyline breaks down nicely in thirds. Of course, that's a quarter of a million words or more. Geez, do I really have that much to say?!
Anyway, the part that's done so far is backstory and setup and character development for the female protagonist. So without further ado, here is the proposed beginning of my first story, Loveaboard.
Loveaboard
Chapter 1
"What the hell?"
That was the redheads first, and last, thought when the black Mercedes eased out from the divided highway crossover and directly into the path of her speeding yellow Volkswagen. When the vehicles met with a sickening crump!, her airbag deployed, she slammed forward, and her world went black.
-----
"What the hell?"
Jake Jackson watched the Mercedes pull out in front of the yellow VW convertible while he was waiting on a red light a hundred and fifty yards away. He had seen the driver's long red hair blowing in the ragtop's slipstream as she turned north on US 19 [CONFIRM] from the convenience store parking lot and was fantasizing about the girl to whom it belonged.
Jake winced when he heard the Volkswagen slam into the slow-moving Benz, then looked down to turn on his hazards before pulling over into the median to stop and help however he could. He figured he could also provide a statement to the police. It wasn't until he looked back up as the light turned green and saw a flash of gunfire that he swore out loud.
Jake saw a Hispanic man of middle height and medium build walk around the back of the disabled Mercedes and begin blasting away at the Volkswagen. Knowing that the driver of the yellow car was at least stunned from the impact and unable to dodge the incoming gunfire, Jake floored his old F-150 toward the gunman, his only thought to stop any additional harm to the red-haired driver.
The gunman was still firing shots at the Volkswagen at a rate of about one per second as Jake approached. Jake leaned on the horn to the gunman's attention. The gunman whirled toward the new threat and began squeezing off shots toward the truck, firing twice as fast as before.
The first shot punctured the radiator before fragmenting against the cast iron block of the truck's V8 engine, instantly enveloping the truck in a cloud of steam as hot, pressurized coolant gushed from both sides of the radiator.
The second shot punched a hole through the windshield just above the end of the driver's-side wiper blade. The safety glass and the angle of the shot caused the bullet to tumble before it cut through the right edge of the driver's shoulder harness and detonated against Jake's collarbone.
The third shot followed an improbable trajectory through the radiator, across the engine compartment, through the firewall, and into Jake's left shin. Fragments of shin bone and hollow point lead shredded the calf muscle behind it.
The final shot bounced up after spending most of its force against the power steering booster. The deformed slug ripped through the firewall and exploded from the dashboard to smash against Jake's forehead.
Jake was nearly unconscious as his F-150 plowed into the man and his Mercedes, pulverizing the gunman's pelvis and lower abdomen and nearly severing his legs from his torso. Jake slammed forward when his truck pulped the gunman and hammered into the Mercedes. The old nylon of the shoulder strap, already sliced in half by the gunman's second shot, parted with only a painful tug on Jake's wounded collarbone. Jake hit the steering wheel with the sickening crunch of breaking ribs and the thud of his already abused forehead. His hips slid forward, jamming his right knee into the lower dash and wedging his right leg and foot full down on the accelerator. The truck's powerful V8 refused to stall and continued to spin the drive wheel, adding a haze of burnt rubber smoke to the cloud of coolant steam already starting to envelop the accident scene.
-----
"What the HELL?"
The gunman's second shot at the Volkswagen plowed through the driver' door and slammed into the redhead's leg with an explosion of pain, rousing her from her stupor. Tangled in her now-deflated airbag and seatbelt and in tremendous pain in both her legs, she immediately wished she was still unconscious. She had just realized she was unable to move from the driver's seat as she looked out her side window to see a crazy Latino walking toward her car and squeezing off rounds. The mind sometimes does funny things under great stress, and she thought back to the accident that had killed both her parents. An only child of only children, she was all alone in the world since that horrible day when she was only six years old. At that moment, amidst the sounds of gunfire and an accelerating motor and a blaring horn, she decided to take the insurance money for her totaled car and buy a really nice bicycle. Florida was flat. The hell with a car.
About that time, through her pain-induced haze she noticed that the engine noise and the horn were getting louder, and the sound of the gunfire changed. Gazing dully out the window, she saw the gunman turn away from her car and begin firing down the road behind her. She listened as the sounds got louder. 'They must be getting closer,' she thought. She was looking directly at the gunman as a red and white pick up truck popped the gunman's abdomen on the rear passenger fender of his Mercedes. She thought it looked like a fat spider hit with a shoe as her mind viewed the collision and the resulting debris in slow motion. She was not a weak-tummied girl but the spattering of blood, feces, urine, and the gunman's Mexican lunch on her windshield and against the side of her head prompted her stomach to empty itself of the Cobb salad she had eaten shortly before. As the tears began running down her face, she thought that, somehow, crying just wasn't enough.
-----
"What the hell?"
Pasco County Deputy Sheriff Carlos Munoz stepped outside of the convenience store when the gunfire began. He decided he was much happier inside with the clerk where they had been discussing the cute little redhead who had just walked out with a 44 ounce smurf-blue slurpie. He had just laughingly commented that the damned cup was half her size when the gunfire began. He saw what looked like her yellow Beetle ragtop at the base of a cloud of smoke and steam, swore quietly, and slid into his patrol car. He hit the lights and siren as he backed out of his parking space. He pressed the button that would give him a green light at the intersection before he even got the cruiser out of reverse and stomped on the accelerator. He didn't notice the gravel his spinning tires kicked up from the convenience store parking lot and pelted against the store's front window.
Deputy Munoz radioed in his destination as he whipped his cruiser out of the parking lot, fishtailing as the tires grabbed the pavement.
"I'm at about seventeen thousand on US 19. I have gunfire, an accident, a fire, and God knows what the fuck else in the left-hand lane headed northbound. Send backup, vehicle fire suppression, and a couple of wreckers. I guess we'll need a couple of squads, too." The last referred to Life Squads, or ambulances. He paused. "Go ahead and have a double lift air ambulance head this way, too. I have no idea what the fuck I'm gonna find out here, but it looks ugly and Lord knows there ain't no hospitals around the corner around here. I'm here, gotta go. Out!"
-----
"What the hell?"
"So, the County Commissioners will need to decide -"
"Shit, is that gunfire?" the cameraman interrupted again. He looked behind him and saw a yellow VW convertible, its nose buried in the side of a black Mercedes sedan. A man was approaching the Beetle, firing as he walked. The cameraman immediately hopped to the other side of the camera tripod and and whipped the camera around, still filming. He zoomed in and focused on the accident and the gunman while he squeezed off two shots at the Volkswagen, then turned and began firing back down the road. He quickly zoomed back out a bit to see if he could find the gunman's new target.
"Jason!" yelled the woman with the microphone, jumping up and down in frustration. "Would you quit fucking around so we can get this stupid story done? I need to pee!"
"Sound's still on," Jason replied calmly.
"Wonderful! Just fucking wonderful," she muttered in response.
"Besides, get your head out of your ass, Gloria, and look across the street at this shit. I bet we have an exclusive, and this film is gonna make your boss and mine much, much happier than any story about zoning disputes ever could. Go get on the radio and tell them to route the nearest live unit here."
"Holy shit!" the cameraman continued as he watched a pick up slam into the gunman and then the Mercedes, popping the man's abdomen between the two like a blood-fattened tick. "Tell them we've got an unreal exclusive to send them, but they're gonna want to review it before slapping it up on the screen. It gets a bit graphic." He wondered how many drinks it would take that night him to forget seeing the gunman's grisly death.
Jake's truck finally overheated and seized from the combination of heavy acceleration and low coolant as Deputy Munoz's cruiser slid to a stop in the median gravel beneath a dusty bottle palm. He unholstered his Glock and held it at the ready as he slid out of his cruiser. The relative silence of hell was punctuated by the barely-audible hiss of coolant still steaming from the Ford, the quiet cooling ticks of three vastly different engines and exhaust systems, and a mocking bird in the dusty bottle palm above his cruiser. Deputy Munoz slammed his car door on his way out, startling the bird, who then crapped on the windshield and flew away. His ultimate mockery; nature's commentary on the day's events.
-----
The last bark of the police car's siren startled Jake back into consciousness. Looking around, he saw the steam and smoke from his truck, the dead, glassy eyes of the gunman pinned up against the Mercedes, and the sobbing redhead in the Volkswagen. He knew he needed to go check on her, so he pushed himself back off the steering wheel, wincing at the pain in his rib cage and head. 'Prolly some good bruising there,' he thought to himself, shaking his head. When the world didn't stop moving around after he stopped shaking his head, he decided that had been a really bad idea. The adrenalin surge and shock kept him from feeling the pain in his left shin and calf until he had hopped down from his truck and taken about three long steps around the back, heading for the crumpled convertible.
"MotherFUCK that hurt," he yelled, hopping forward twice on his left leg. He looked down and saw the hole in his shin and the mangled calf muscle behind it. 'Yeah, that'll leave a mark,' he thought.
Hopping on his right leg the rest of the way over to the Volkswagen, he slammed into the driver's door and stood there panting, trying to get the pain under enough control to pay attention to the car's driver. The noise and impact startled the driver, who let out a scream of surprise between sobs.
"Hey," he said quietly to the pretty little red-haired driver. "You can calm down now. It's all over. The bad guy's dead, and I'm sure that help is on the way." He pushed some kinky red hair back off of her face and began brushing his hand over her hair, unconsciously using the same motion his mother used to soothe his hurts and fears when he was a small child.
"Fuck I HUUUUUURT!" she wailed. "My left leg's on fire and I can't move EITHER of them! Oh, shit!" She started gasping her breaths in and blowing them out between pursed lips. She reminded Forrest of the women practicing breathing in the pre-natal classes he took with his wife before his first child was born. He frowned at the memory.
Curious why she would have called out pain specifically in her left leg, he stopped brushing her hair and leaned further in over the driver's door, looking down at her lap to see if there were any visible problems with her legs.
"Oh, shit," he echoed quietly when he saw her blood-soaked jeans. He started looking through the convertible for an old shirt or a towel to use as a temporary bandage. Unfortunately, the car was spotless and empty. The only thing he saw was another wave of blood ooze from her thigh. Leaning against the car to help him keep balanced on only his left leg, Forrest immediately stripped off his t-shirt and yelled for the cop to get a damned ambulance for the girl NOW!
While he leveraged off his right foot he used the car door as a fulcrum to jam his shirt against the bloody hole as a crude direct pressure bandage. He stood on tiptoe and almost climbed over the door and into her lap to wedge his elbow under the protruding armrest, then looked into the redhead's pain-filled emerald eyes and quietly said, "Hang in there, darlin'. What's your name?"
She sniffed twice, drew a ragged breath, and whispered, "Caitlin."
"Hey, Caitlin. I'm Jake," he smiled quietly. "What's a pretty girl like you doin' in an accident like this?" Despite her pain and tears, the corny come-on line was so bad she couldn't help but bark out a tear-filled laugh.
Then pain, shock, and blood loss took over and he fainted dead away, his head and upper body slumped over the top of her door, his face ending up in her lap. Caitlin would ordinarily have screamed to have a strange man visit her lap face-first, or any other way, really. Although the circumstances were far from ordinary, the result was the same. Caitlin let out a shriek and continued until she realized he was unconscious and not attacking her
The elbow Jake had wedged against the door panel still jammed his hand and wadded up shirt against her bullet wound, protecting her even in his unconsciousness.
-----
Deputy Munoz was indifferently trying to find a pulse at the throat of the man pinned between the pick up and the Benz. The pistol in the dead man's hand indicated that he was probably the bad guy in this scenario. Munoz had lost friends to crazy bastards who opened fire in traffic and was struggling to maintain some professional objectivity about the man.
"Dispatch, this is Munoz." He unclipped his shirt mike from his shoulder so he could be heard more clearly. "OK, I'm on the scene and have checked it out. There's no fire, so let the smokeaters know about that. It looks like we'll need the Jaws, so make sure they send that. I suspect we need chopper space for two, a crime scene investigation unit, three tow trucks, and some folks to handle traffic control. We need paramedics to stabilize two until the choppers show up. We've got a stiff so have the morgue send a meat wagon. Oh, and get somebody up here to handle the press. I'm sure there's cell phone footage somewhere of this cluster fuck and the questions will be flying fast and heavy until we get this cleaned up."
The girl's sudden scream caused the Deputy to jerk away from his grisly task and dart over to the Volkswagen buried nose-first in the side of the Mercedes. One glance into the car at the blood, the vomit, and the passed-out man and he had his shoulder mike back at his mouth in a heartbeat.
"Dispatch!" he cried into his radio. "I've got a bleeding driver here. Looks like she's lost a bunch of blood already. Another driver passed out from shock and probably blood loss. Where the fuck's that squad? Where's the chopper?"
"Deputy Munoz, be advised that the nearest rescue squad is niner zero seconds out. Repeat, niner zero." Munoz could now hear the siren of the nearest ambulance as it wove its way carefully along the edge of the southbound median, desperately trying to balance the need for speed against the need to avoid spectators too stupid to dodge a five-ton truck. Munoz shook his head as he watched the ambulance slow to a crawl as somehow a number of people failed to understand that the diesel's roar, the yowling turbocharger, the screaming sirens, and the blaring horns indicated that they should think about getting out of the way. He could see the driver screaming in frustration while trying to shepherd the truck through the crowd. The paramedic riding shotgun was at first hanging halfway out the window, yelling and trying to wave people back out of the way. He finally cursed loudly in frustration, crawled back into the truck, opened the door and hopped out, got in front of the truck, and started bodily shoving people to the side to help clear a path.
Once the ambulance got through and the paramedics could get to work, they rolled a gurney over to the car. Directing the Deputy to take over applying pressure to the redhead's gunshot wound, the medics straightened Jacob up in preparation for lifting him onto the gurney. Seeing his shattered left lower leg, one asked if he had been shot while standing at the car.
"Nope," replied the Deputy. "Far as I know, he pulped the shooter, got out of his truck, hopped over here on one leg, got a pressure bandage on this lady's wound, and wedged his arm against the door so that when he passed out the pressure would stay tight."
The paramedic shook his head in amazement. "Holy shit."
-----
"The woman was wedged in under the steering wheel and dashboard. She has a gunshot wound in her left thigh that bled heavily before the other vic applied a pressure bandage. Her-"
"How did he apply pressure if he passed out?" The ER nurse interrupted the air EMT midstream.
"The wound is on the left outside of her thigh. He wadded up his tee shirt and wedged his arm between the door and her wound. When the ground crew got there he was hanging over the door, elbow under the armrest, feet off the ground. Just hanging by his belly with his face in her lap, blood running from both the back and front of his leg, dripping and pooling on the the ground."
"Face in her lap, huh?" The nurse looked over the redhead and flashed a grin at the air ambulance's EMT. "Lucky bastard."
"Musta hurt like hell."
"Yeah. No wonder he passed out."
"Well, that and the blood loss and the head trauma and the shock. We had to dump three units of O-negative into him right away. Anyway, once they cut her out we couldn't get her away from him. Different names, different addresses, she says they've never met before. But she goes ballistic when she can't touch him. We damn near had to tie her down to get them in the chopper. If I were you I'd find a way to let them room together..."
-----
Shifts changed and the ER nurse was gone for the day before the redhead was brought to the ICU after her emergency surgery. The surgeon had dug a bullet out of her femur, stitched the thigh muscles back together, and finished with eight of the most delicate stitches he could, unwilling to blemish her beautiful creamy thigh any more than necessary. Heavily sedated throughout the night, she was left to sleep until morning under the watchful eyes of the monitoring systems and the ICU nurses.
-----
"I'll be back in a few, Rox. I need to go stop the sedative drip in 245, the little redhead. Dr. Sherwood wanted her to come off the sedative at six so she'd be awake when he swung by at about 7:30, an' I'm already late."
-----
The world was full of bright light and hushed noises as Caitlin drifted up from her sedative-induced slumber. Her vision was pink from the light bleeding through her eyelids. The quiet background noise was hushed beeps, muted hissing, and mumbled voices barely audible for the nurse's station nearby. The monitors noticed her rising pulse and heart rate, and the mumbling ceased, replaced by the quiet tread of rubber-soled shoes.
"Good morning, Caitlin. How are you feeling today?" greeted the slender brunette nurse as she entered the room.
Caitlin forced her eyes open and then squinted them mostly shut while they adjusted to the overhead lights. Glancing at the windows, Caitlin noticed it was still dark outside.
"Where am I?" she asked, frowning while she tried to remember. "I remember an accident, some idiot shooting at me -". She gasped and looked down at her blanket-covered left leg.
"Yeah, they dug a bullet out of your femur and stitched you up in emergency surgery last evening. What else do you remember?"
"Well, while that guy was shooting, suddenly this pick up truck smashed him and the shooting stopped. Then this guy hopped over to my car, stripped off his shirt, and jammed his shirt and hand against my leg. There was lots of blood and screaming." She paused. "I think most of the screaming was me," she resumed, embarrassed and looking down. "Anyway, he tried to calm me down and then collapsed over my door and into my lap."
Caitlin tilted her head to the side as she thought, then screamed as the memories clarified and the realization hit her.
"OhmyGod! He saved my life, didn't he?" Her gaze caught on the police officer sitting outside her room. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilated in panic. "Where is he? Why is there a cop outside my door? Am I under arrest?" The questions left no opportunity for answers as they poured out one after another. Finally there was a pause as she sat up and swung her legs toward the right side of the bed.
"One at a time. Yes, he saved your life. Not once but three times, probably." The nurse was on Caitlin's left side, reaching to pull her blanket down to check the wound on her thigh. "First when he killed the nut job who was shooting at you. Second when he put the pressure bandage on your wound - that was quick thinking and most likely kept you from bleeding to death. The third time was when he calmed you down enough to settle down and relax a bit until the crews got there and they could cut you out. Mr. Jackson was quite the hero yesterday."
Caitlin resumed pivoting on her bottom when the nurse was done, sliding her legs over the right edge of the bed and struggling to unplug the blood oxygen sensor taped to her right index finger.
"Whoa, young lady! Where do you think you're going?" The nurse looked at her with concern, sensing that this could quickly get out of control. 'Honestly,' she thought to herself, 'It's too damned early to be dealing with crazy redheads.'
"I need to go to him," she stated flatly as she ripped open the Velcro closure of the automated blood pressure cuff. The nurse scrambled wildly for the call button as Caitlin grabbed the IV stand in her right hand and slid down off her bed.
"Fuck!" she hissed when her weight slammed down on her left leg. "Where is he? What room is he in?" She was getting louder as she went along. Quickly hopping over to the door, she stuck her nose within an inch of the cop's and stared hard at him, her deep green eyes boring into his soft brown ones. The officer glanced briefly at the nurse, shrugged his shoulders, and jerked his thumb over his left shoulder to the next room.
Caitlin raced around the corner as fast as she could limp, still clutching her IV stand. She muttered a string of expletives when the IV lines tangled in the wheels. Still swearing, she raced over to Jake's bed and began to cry when she saw all the bandages.
Sobbing, she hobbled around to the right side of his bed where he was less bandaged, swearing and jerking her tangled IV mess with her. The jammed wheels on the stand jumped and slid across the vinyl floor tiles behind her.
Caitlin hopped up on Jake's bed once she got to the right foot corner. She used the raised rail to help her clamber up to put her head by his. Caitlin wrapped her arms around Jake's neck and howled, bawling out years of loneliness and pain and worry about the stranger in her arms, her savior, her hero.
Three nurses came racing into the room then, the one from Caitlin's room and two others. The two younger nurses ran around to where Caitlin was still crying into Jake's unconscious shoulder, but the older one stopped on the other side of the bed and watched.
"Come on, honey. You need to let go of Mr. Jackson and go-on back to your room." A young blonde nurse who was trying to pry Caitlin's left arm off the top off Jake's chest and her left hand from around the back of his neck.
"Let go of me, you bitch!" Caitlin screamed while the nurse used her upper body strength to pry Caitlin's hand free. "You go find your own man! This one saved my life! He's MINE! Fuck!" The last was when her hand finally slipped free from Jake's neck. At the same time, the nurse who had been in her room before easily pulled Caitlin's left leg back from around Jake's hip.
As the nurses began pulling her away from Jake, Caitlin switched tactics. Ripping herself free from the two rather complacent nurses, she disengaged entirely from Jake and wrapped her arms and legs around the bars of the bed rail.
"Get off! Let go of me!" Caitlin clutched the bed rail with both arms and her slender legs while rocking her body back and forth. The resulting up and down wiggle conspired with the logjam of IV stands and other medical equipment to prevent the two nurses from getting a firm hold on her. By now there were two Deputies looking curiously in the room, the one who had been on duty before and his replacement.
"Leave me alone, damnit! He saved my life. I need to take care of him!"
"Jenny, would you please go get another dose of sedative?" The blonde looked over and spoke to the older nurse.
"No! I'll just come back the next time I wake up. You can't keep me knocked out forever."
"She's right, you know," said the older nurse. "I suspect that your choices are going to be keeping her sedated and restrained for the entire time she's here, or working out something with her. This story is all over the news, all over the southeast. Just how well will we look when the press gets to report night after night that we are keeping her knocked out and tied up? I don't want to explain that news coverage to the Head of Nursing. How 'bout y'all?" She waited.
"No? OK, let's talk to this sweet girl who's been through so much and see what's on her mind. Why don't you two come on over to this side of the bed and we can quit crowding Miss Caitlin for a bit."
The nurse walked to the foot of the bed while the two younger nurses glared at her and moved to the front of the room, away from Jake's bed and Caitlin. The older nurse slid a stacking side chair over to the foot of the bed, twirled it around so the back of the chair faced the bed, and sat down with a sigh. She crossed her arms on the back of the chair and looked down, putting her forehead on her arms. She sighed deeply again.
"OK, darlin'. I can't have you running around the hospital and scaring my nurses to death." The older nurse turned her head and shot a look at the two policemen snickering in through the door. The other two nurses joined in the silent glare, which did nothing to reduce the Deputies' amusement.
"Anyway, lets set a spell and talk about what's on your mind." She waited for Caitlin, then, after a few moments of silence, looked up at Caitlin and spoke again.
"OK, I'll go first. My name's Jenny. I'm the charge nurse for these rooms, which means I'm the head nurse for this area of the Intensive Care Unit, or ICU. Essentially, I'm the boss nurse. These girls," she indicated the two younger nurses standing near the door, "have other duties and other patients to take care of in addition to you and Mr. Jackson here. Let's see if we can figure out what we can do so they have the time available for their other tasks. Now, what's your biggest concern?"
Caitlin took a quivering sniffle, then another while she considered. "You just wanna talk? You're not gonna jump me?"
Jenny smiled and nodded. "Just talk right now. Nobody's gonna jump you." She cast a glance at the two younger nurses.
Caitlin uncoiled herself from the bedrail she had been clutching, stretched, and sat up, knees up, arms around her legs. Jenny would come to recognize this as a defensive position where Caitlin could hide behind her legs.
"I've been alone for the last 16 years, since I was six years old. Both my parents were killed in a car accident. I have no brothers or sisters, and neither did they, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. I've been in so many foster homes I lost count after about thirty. They all just wanted me to wear used Goodwill clothes and eat cheap, crappy food. The doctors think that's why I ended up so damned small, on account of I didn't get enough protein and calcium when I was a teenager. As I got older, I got less willing to put up with the crap. Of course, as the list of foster homes that I got tossed out of grew, the quality of the foster families they could find that would take me got worse.
So anyway, no matter how much I just wanted a family to love, and to love me, I've had nobody for sixteen years. Then yesterday this crazy Mexican pulls out in front of me, and starts shooting at me after I hit him, and then - " Caitlin took a sobbing breath, her pupils suddenly dilated and eyes wild, looking quickly around the room for anything she could perceive as a threat.
"You're safe, darlin'. Nobody can hurt you here," Jenny soothed. The nurses and policemen looked on in rapt attention, not saying a word.
Caitlin took a deep, shaky breath and continued. "And then, here comes a gorgeous man to save me. Not like tossing me a big tip at the bar so I can buy some extra food. I mean, he deliberately made a target of himself so that nut job would shoot at him, not me! Then he risked whatever trouble he would get in to take care of the guy for good, then -" Tears were pouring down her face by this time as she relived the previous day's events. "- He, he came over to my car, his face all smashed up from the wreck. He talked to me and rubbed his hand through my hair to calm me down. Then he saw my leg was bleeding and tore his shirt off without even thinking twice about it. I had peed my pants and puked up my lunch when he killed that guy and do you know what he did?"
Jenny shook her head no, although she did in fact know some of the details of yesterday's activities. She wanted to hear what Caitlin had to say, and how it played to her current thoughts and mental state.
Caitlin closed her eyes to cut off some stimulus and try to deal with her emotions. She continued after drawing another deep, ragged breath.
"He fucking knew he was gonna pass out or die. I didn't know at the time how bad his leg was, but he did. He knew he was gonna pass out or die, but without even taking a deep breath of clean air he jumped up and put his face in my peed in, puky lap so he could wedge his arm and bandage against my leg so I would be OK whatever happened." Caitlin sobbed again. "Then, he smiled up at me and looked me in the eyes and told me I was pretty!" she finished with a wail.
"When he passed out, I went nuts. He had to be hurting like hell, but everything he did was to make me safe or feel better. He was like a Prince Charming or a knight on a white charger in some fucking fairy tale or something. He showed me more love in ten minutes than I've gotten at any time in my life.
"Yesterday's insanity hit me out of nowhere. I'm terrified when I'm not with him. Touching him makes me feel loved. Listening to him makes me feel protected. Smelling him makes me calmer."
Jenny tilted her head and frowned her question at this last one.
"Oh, Lord yes, his smell. After he passed out and before they could cut me out and get us into the air ambulance, I had plenty of opportunity to bury my nose in his hair and stroke his face and hair to try to comfort him, like he did for me. In fact, I really, really need that right now. Hang on a sec..."
Caitlin half scampered, half crawled up Jake's bed and jammed her face into his disheveled hair. As the amazed onlookers watched, they could see her body relax and hear her tears slow, then stop completely, as she sniffed in huge breaths, reveling in his scent. The nurses and police waited quietly.
"I'll be damned," Jenny said when she heard the first faint, tiny snore. "Would you look at that?" After her physical and emotional outburst, less than two minutes of Jake's scent had calmed Caitlin enough to fall asleep draped over his left shoulder, her face firmly planted in his hair, a peaceful smile on her face.
-----
Caitlin befriends Nurse Jenny and learns everything Jake did for her. Caitlin's fantasy world begins to develop
Caitlin woke with a shock when the bed slammed and shook. Pushing herself half up, she looked around in fear and confusion. Jenny was ready for her reaction and put a gentle hand on Caitlin's shoulder from behind. Caitlin's fear expanded into full blown terror before Jenny could get a word out and she shoved the hand off her shoulder. Immediately understanding her mistake, the nurse stepped in front of Caitlin and spoke softly.
"You're alright, darlin'. Everything's OK. That's just the brakes on the bed. We're moving you two to a semiprivate room where you can be together. Just hang on and enjoy the ride." She and Caitlin looked at each other, and Caitlin relaxed and nodded her assent. Looking for something to occupy her nervous young charge, Jenny nodded at the bed's other occupant
"Mr. Jackson looks a little stressed. Why don't you see if you can relax him a bit?"
Caitlin instantly looked down at the frown on Jake's face and gasped. "Oh my gosh, you're right!" She dove back down and began gently running her fingers through Jake's hair, murmuring gentle words of love and reassurance into his ear. Jenny smiled to herself as she watched both her patients relax.
-----
-----
Caitlin demands shaving supplies for her and Jake. She refuses to let e staff help with shaving. Her man, her task. First annoyance at nurses giving Jake sponge baths. Caitlin's fantasy world develops further. Jenny counsels against too much fantasy about a man Caitlin's never met. Caitlin develops a new preferred position where she lays Jake out on the raised bed, then settles in on top of him to watch TV or read or nap. Usually she'll pull us right arm around her to snuggle in.
Nurse Jenny Wilson walked into the ICU room and smiled at the young couple on the bed. Jake was still in a coma, but Caitlin was wide awake, sitting up beside him and disgustedly running her fingers through her hair.
"Yuk!" She said to Jenny. "I feel disgusting. I look disgusting. I've been peed on and puked on and I'm gross! When can I take a shower?"
Jenny contemplated the girl. She was a tiny thing, not quite five feet tall and well shy of a hundred pounds. Bright red hair hanging down past her shoulders. And a body like a supermodel left too long in the dryer. Jenny considered her own overweight, middle-aged body and wondered if Caitlin could ever truly be considered disgusting.
"Actually, you can take one today. Let me get the stuff so I can show you how to wrap your leg bandage for the shower when you get home." Jenny had turned away to head for the supply closet, so she didn't see the shadow that flitted across Caitlin's face at the mention of her going home.
"The doctor wants to keep the wound area and bandages dry for at least the next two weeks, so you'll need to do this any time you want to shower." Jenny took a piece of plastic kitchen wrap and used waterproof medical tape the tape down all four sides making sure the plastic wrap was an inch or more over each side of the bandage.
"After you dry off, wait until you're done moisturizing before you remove the cover. You need to keep lotion off the bandage, too."
"Thank you!" Caitlin chirped to Jenny as she climbed back up to Jake's head.
"Jake, honey, I'm gonna go in the bathroom and take a shower and make myself prettier for you. I'll just be next door for a little bit, then I'll be right back when I smell better and I'm all pretty for you," Caitlin murmured softly in his ear. "They're gonna clean you up, too,while I'm gone." She leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips, then rose back up to speak gently into his ear. "I'll be back in a little while. I love you."
Caitlin then scooted down to the end of the hospital bed and hopped down in the corner between the side rail and the footboard. "Shit!" she cursed when she hit the floor.
Jenny smirked a half smile at the little redhead. "Yeah, you've still gotta take it easy on that leg for a bit. There's towels and washcloths and soap in the bathroom. Please make sure the call cord gets in the shower and use it if you even feel dizzy. We don't want you to fall, and neither do you." She walked over next to Jake and took a sniff.
"Whew! Poor Mr. Jackson's pretty ripe, too. Why don't you take a nice long shower and I'll get a couple of aides in here to give him a sponge bath?" With that, Jenny took her phone out of its holster and headed out the door, asking for some aides to come bathe Mr. Jackson.
Caitlin gingerly walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Stripping while she waited for the water to warm up, she gasped in horror as she realized her predicament. She had no clean clothes to put on after she cleaned up! It hadn't dawned on her that she would be unable to dress after her shower. 'Oh, well,' she thought. 'I'll just have to double-gown it.' It wasn't like she wanted body armor between herself and Jake, anyway.
Jake. Caitlin thought he'd be a good looking man once he lost the bandages from his smashed and broken nose and the nuclear sunset of a bruise on his forehead. She absently soaped up her washcloth and began lathering her body.
"Mmmmmmm, Jake." After soaping her body, she slung the washcloth out by her arm over her left shoulder and ran her fingers gently up and down her neck. The fingers slid slickly through the suds on a layer of soap, tickling her in a way that resonated low in her belly. As her hands moved around to stroke the back of her neck, she imagined it was Jake's fingers caressing her. She closed her eyes and imagined it was his hands rubbing out and back along her collarbone and the tops of her shoulders.
Her breathing got faster as the hands rubbed her chest and the top of her breasts. She ran her hands down the sides of her rib cage, teasing herself by avoiding her aching breasts and her hard, light pink nipples.
"Oh, Jake!" she gasped as her hands flattened out to rub her tight belly. "Do you like my flat tummy? My little innie? Do you think my little belly button's cute, Jake?"
Caitlin's hands moved back to the sides of her torso as she slid them down, feeling her hips flare out to either side. "Do you like my womanly hips, Jake? I know I'm small, Jake, but these should be good for popping out your babies.
"Babies, oh God!" She slid her right hand back to her stomach while moving the left to the bottom of her right breast. She absently rubbed her belly while she began kneading her breast. "Babies. Oh God, Jake. I want you to make my belly big and round with your babies." She rubbed circles on her belly as if she was pregnant. "I want these tits to swell with milk to feed your babies." She began pinching her nipple, stretching her breast out away from her ribs. "Ohhh, I want to feed you, too. When the babies are full, I want you to suck my sweet milk from my breasts. I want to feed you my milk, give you life like I'll give life to our babies."
Her right hand slid down to the red triangle between her legs. She reached around behind her, rinsing the soap from her fingers before running them between her legs. "Oh!" she cried quietly as her finger slid over her clit, already swollen and uncovered. "Yes! Babies. I want you to rub your big, hard cock here between my legs. I want you to fuck me full of your babies, pour your sperm into my womb and grow babies in my belly."
By now Caitlin was frantically frigging her clit with her left forefinger while desperately pumping the first two fingers of her right hand inside. "Babies! Nnngh! Knock me up! Oh! Oh! Oooooh! Shoot your sperm in me and fill me with your babies! Oh!" She stuck her bottom out and nearly doubled over when she came, her body twitching and shaking from the force of her orgasm. She twitched for several more moments as the aftershocks worked their way through her body.
Finally, she stood up straight and took a deep breath, releasing it in a big sigh. 'Wow!' she thought as she began shampooing her hair. 'I don't know where all that came from. Babies! Huh."
When she said the word babies, something twitched deep inside.
-----
Jenny smiled as Caitlin returned from her shower. Her deep green eyes were clear and bright, and there was a faint blush still on her cheeks, forehead, and chest. Based on the sounds she had heard when occasionally checking on Caitlin's well being, she apparently had a nice hot shower in more ways than one. 'Oh, to be young and in love again...' Jenny thought enviously.
"I have a surprise for you," Jenny said when Caitlin entered the room. She smiled at Caitlin's quick grin. She chuckled out loud when Caitlin jumped up and down and clapped her hands like a little girl. "It's on your bed."
Caitlin looked over but saw no obvious gift on Jake's bed, and her puzzled frown caused Jenny to chuckle again. "Not his bed, your bed. You know, the one your insurance company is paying for?" Jenny's smile took the sting out of her words, and Caitlin blushed in embarrassment.
Caitlin noticed that the curtain was drawn around the other bed in the room, and she squealed with joy when she saw several bags lying on the bed. On top was a Get Well Soon card signed by the entire ICU staff. The bags held the fun though.
One bag held two pairs of fuzzy Hello Kitty pajama bottoms, one lavender, the other baby pink. Another bag held a pair of jeans, and another contained a pair of darling mid-heeled pale yellow sandals. Caitlin hoped Jake liked the delicate yellow straps that formed the top of the shoes. She'd never had the money for a pair with ankle straps before, and she especially hoped Jake liked those. Her favorite bag contained five pairs of color-matched tee shirts and bikini panties: neon orange, lemon yellow, bright lime, electric blue, and pale lavender. She squealed again with joy as she ripped off her gowns and slipped into the yellow shirt and panties, and the lavender pajamas. Once dressed in her new clothes, she limped over to Jenny as fast as she could and threw her arms around her.
"Thank you all so much! How did you know the sizes?"
"One of the nurses has a girl about your size, and we went off of what she wears." Jenny lowered her voice and said, "We didn't get you any bras, you know. That's such a personal and intimate piece. It doesn't really look like you need one anyway, and you didn't have one on when you came in."
Caitlin blushed and smiled at the nurse. "That's OK. I usually only wear them to work to try to hide my nips. I get enough come-ons when the girls are covered up." She paused, then said, "I don't think I want to cover up much around Jake, anyway." She blushed again. Jenny just smiled knowingly.
-----
"Can we go down to the gift shop?" Caitlin asked the aide who was walking with her as she limped along on her crutches. "I have something I want to buy there."
"Sure," said the aide, happy for a break from doing circles around the floor. The pair rode down to the ground floor in companionable silence. Caitlin was jumpy and getting worse. She didn't understand why she was getting so worked up, and finally mentioned it.
"I'm really getting jumpy and nervous. I don't understand it. I'm going to the gift shop. I have you with me. The hospital is safe. Why am I such a wreck?"
The aide knew the answer before Caitlin had completed half the question. "That's easy," she said. "This is the farthest you've been from that man of yours since you woke up after surgery. You'll be fine once you get back up to his room." She'd seen the invisible cord between the two get stretched too far before and knew both the symptoms and the cure. In fact, she had seen Caitlin start dancing around in the elevator and wondered when she would finally say something.
"Let's just keep your shopping trip as short as possible and get you back upstairs to your Mr. Jackson. What are you down here to get, anyway?"
"A beard trimmer for one thing. Poor Jake's starting to look a little untidy. I know he was clean-shaven before, but I like him with some scruff on his face. Plus, I don't trust myself to shave him and not nick. I called down here earlier and she has one waiting at the counter for me."
Caitlin and the aide wandered around the gift shop while several previous shoppers completed their transactions. Caitlin was delighted to find a small stuffed bear dressed in a super hero costume for Jake. She was standing at the counter waiting for the clerk to return from the back and was looking at the flowers in the cooler behind the counter.
"You know, it's a shame Jake doesn't have any flowers in his room. I wonder what they have that's long lasting."
The clerk returned while she was speaking and said, "I have just the thing. These mums will bloom for maybe a month or more. Then you can take them home and plant them and they'll bloom for years. Here's a nice cheerful yellow that matches your shirt!"
"Wonderful! I'll take one of those and this bear, and you are holding a beard trimmer for me." After looking it over with the clerk, Caitlin decided it would do the trick. Taking the unfamiliar tool out of its packaging, Caitlin turned a puzzled look to the clerk.
"I want him to have about an eighth-inch inch beard. Do you know how I'd set it up for that?" Catching the clerk's odd look, Caitlin smiled and replied, "He's in a coma and not making many fashion decisions right now."
The clerk blushed and showed Caitlin how to set up the trimmer and rang up her order. Once the transaction was complete, Caitlin and the aide headed back to the elevators. Caitlin was almost running on her crutches, and the aide had to hustle to keep up.
"I had fun shopping," Caitlin said as she punched the up button, "But I've been too far away from Jake for far too long. I need to get back to him now." She grinned over her shoulder at the aide. "And yes, I know pounding on the button like this doesn't make the elevator come any faster. But I feel better for trying."
Once back upstairs, Caitlin blew through the ICU like a little red, yellow, and lavender tornado, her bag of gifts swinging wildly from her left crutch, until she was back in the room she shared with Jake. She lay her bag at the foot of the bed and slung her crutches into the corner, not caring when the underarm pads bounced off the wall and the crutches both fell to the floor. She hopped up on the bed and scampered up until her forehead was up against Jake's temple and her arms were around his neck.
"Oh, Jake honey! I missed you so much. I was only gone a short while, but I missed feeling safe with you. I love you, sugar." Caitlin was curled up to Jake and fast asleep before the aide could bring in the flowers and set them on Jake's bedside table. She started to speak while she picked up the crutches until she heard Caitlin's soft, tiny little snores. She smiled and shook her head as she stood the crutches in the corner where Caitlin could get to them easily but they would otherwise be out of the way. Then she quietly left the room, turning off the overhead lights and closing the door until it was open just a crack.
-----
Caitlin is unhappy about the sponge baths. Jake now gets hard and the nurses jerk him off. It pisses Caitlin off to see other women fondling 'her' man. She gets to do sponge baths in exchange for not making a stink. Despite nurse Jenny's continuing counsel against it, Caitlin gets further into her fantasy. Doubts about Jake's reaction show up for the first time.
-----
Jake existed in a cold, confusing world of darkness, pain, and sound. He could see nothing but blackness. His very being was pain; non-corporeal, he felt no body and thus no specific locus for pain. He WAS pain. The constant hissing and beeping would have reverberated inside his head, had he possessed one.
The only other sensations were a spot of warmth nearby, and the sound of a sobbing voice. "I love you, Jake Jackson. Don't you dare die on me. Please don't go. I love you. I NEED you. Don't go..."
Then the darkness again overpowered all.
-----
Caitlin was awake when the night nurse slipped in to do the midnight vitals check. She disentangled her limbs from Jake and patiently lay back so the nurse could check her first. The nurse smiled at her while she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Caitlin's left bicep and pushed the button to start the test. She popped the thermometer under Caitlin's tongue, retrieving it after the beep.
"Ninety-eight point eight. Just perfect, dear," she murmured quietly as she entered the data into her records tablet. "Mmmmmm. That blood pressure's no good though, and your pulse is high. Go ahead and hold his hand, sweetheart, and we'll try it again after I get Mr. Jackson's numbers."
At this point it was a well documented fact that Caitlin became physically ill when away from Jake, and even a brief break in her physical contact with him started a noticeable decline in both her physical and mental states. The doctors found it unbelievable. The younger nurses found it unbelievably sweet and romantic. The battle axes remained battle axes and resented the disruption to their routine. The hospital administrators who knew of the situation affected blank smiles and quietly feigned ignorance, remembering those unfortunate staff members who had tried to separate the two early on. Caitlin may have looked like a teenage pixie, but much of the staff concluded she was in reality the reincarnation of a pissed off Ghengis Kahn and mostly let her get her way.
After gathering Jake's vitals and entering them into her tablet, the nurse returned to Caitlin's left side and hit the button to retake her blood pressure and pulse.
"One oh one over sixty five, and your pulse is a steady seventy two. The doctors will be happy with those numbers." The nurse winked at Caitlin and whispered, "We'll just pretend those other readings never happened."
"Thank you," Caitlin whispered back.
Caitlin lay there thinking about the accident after the nurse slipped quietly out of the room. She had been so wrapped up in her own pain and terror that she had no idea at the time of the risks Jake had taken or what he had truly done to save her. A news crew had been filming across the street and over and over she watched the footage as Jake rammed and killed the gunman, hopped one legged from his truck to her car with blood exploding from his wounded leg every time he landed, comforted her, then whipped off his shirt and bent over her door to apply the pressure to her wound that the paramedics said kept her from dying from blood loss, and after which he finally collapsed over the top of her car door. The police spokeswoman they started using as a voiceover for the segment spoke of how he apparently bet his life when he leaned on his horn to distract the gunman away from her before sacrificing his vehicle and nearly himself to save a woman he'd never met. Caitlin bawled in pain, and sorrow, and terror that he wouldn't make it every time his injuries were listed: the shattered collar bone, the bullet hole in his shin and the shredded calf behind it that would take multiple reconstructive surgeries to try to save, the shattered ribs and punctured lung, the concussion that had knocked him into a coma for eight days now.
Caitlin scootched her tiny body up so her forehead was up against the side of Jake's, her lips almost touching his right ear. She once again whispered thanks to God for sending her this wonderful man in her moment of need and murmured words of love and reassurance and commitment in Jake's ear.
He stirred in his unconsciousness. She felt his right hand close protectively around her left ankle, and when she felt the weakness in his grip she broke down again and bawled like a baby. She didn't stop until the nurse returned some minutes later and quietly administered a sedative injection through the medication port in Caitlin's IV line.
Caitlin fell asleep wrapped around the curve of Jake's shoulder, her chin on the top of his shoulder and her forehead against his temple. The nurse smiled at her and then walked to the sink. Quietly she dampened a washcloth, then returned to her patients. Still smiling, she washed the tears away from Caitlin's delicate cheeks and wiped her forehead with the cool, damp cloth. She then covered her body with another blanket, adjusting and tucking as if she was a mother with a newborn child.
"Sleep tight, child," she said as she lightly kissed the top of Caitlin's head. "Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day for y'all."
-----
"I don't think so." The firm alto voice coming into the hallway was unamused.
The two cops sitting guard outside the room looked at each other and grinned. They were well acquainted with the diminutive red-haired pixie inside and had overheard some epic battles of will. It was unusual when she lost. The discussion became heated. They smiled again when they heard the aide buzz the nurse's station for reinforcements.
"Ow!" Not the pixie's voice.
A grey haired, heavyset nurse shook her head and smiled wryly as she strode down the hall from the central nurse's station, meeting the aide at the door. "What's the problem, Lashiqua?"
The nurse's aide pointed to her right eye, already darkening and swelling shut. "That rabid little bitch punched me when I tried to put her in a chair to take her to rehab. I don't want to work with her no more."
Jenny sighed. "Didn't they tell you to come get me before you went in to get her?" she asked.
"Well, yeah, but she ain't nothin' but a 93 pound girl. She ain't even five feet tall!"
"No, she's not, but she's a 22 year old woman who lives in mortal terror of being separated from that man in there. She's got no family in the world and he almost got himself killed protecting her from a crazed drug runner who was shooting at her. Mr. Jackson doesn't even know her! You're not gonna make her do anything. You've got to get her to want to do it, especially when it comes to leaving her man in there. Come on!" Jenny waved her hand in a 'follow me' motion and she and the aide entered the room together.
Caitlin was squatting up on the back of a chair, her own back wedged into the corner behind her. The olive green vinyl on the chair clashed loudly with her mint green gown. As she crouched on the chair back she held both hands up, all ten fingers extended like claws, nails at the ready. She had a feral snarl on her face, and she actually hissed when the aide came back into the room. Curious, the policemen poked their heads in further to watch.
Jenny turned to the aide. "Stand here and don't say a word."
The aide started to open her mouth but the old nurse cut her off. "Not a sound!"
Jenny walked over to where the wheelchair sat by the bed. She flipped off the brakes and rolled it out the door into the hallway. The aide flinched but kept quiet at a sharp glance from the nurse
Jenny walked back into the room and over to a visibly relaxing Caitlin. She put both her hands out and spoke in a soothing, but not condescending, voice.
"Come on, darlin'. We need to talk a bit, but first let's get you back over with your man." The aide and the cops all unconsciously held their breath as the nurse approached Caitlin, waiting for her to attack. They let out a collective sigh when Caitlin leaped from the chair and the two women embraced.
"Oh, Nurse Jenny! They tried to take me away from Jake!" Caitlin sobbed into the nurse's shoulder. "I didn't know what to do! I've got no family to take care of me, and nobody's been here to visit him so I figure he's got no family, either. I've got to stay here with him. I've got to make sure he's safe and taken care of. Oh, don't make me leave him!" she wailed, desperately clutching the nurse's shirt and soaking the front with tears.
"Oh you poor little thing. First, let's get you settled down here with him." Jenny helped Caitlin limp over to the bed and sat the redhead where she could reach Jake's hand. Jenny picked up his left hand and held it in Caitlin's field of vision. Caitlin quickly grabbed his larger hand in both of hers and lay back next to Jake, clutching their joined hands to her chest and nuzzling his forearm with her cheek and neck. She took a deep, shuddering breath and everyone could see the tension leave her body as she let out an enormous sigh and relaxed. The terror left her deep green eyes and sanity returned.
Jenny pulled a side chair over in front of Caitlin and sat down on the royal blue padding. The chair creaked under her weight but she had learned long ago to trust the solid aluminum frames. She put one hand on Caitlin's knee and began speaking in a soft voice.
"Caitlin, honey, you've got the right idea to look after your man, what with everything he's done for you, and especially given that he doesn't seem to have a family nearby to help see him through." She paused a moment to let that sink in. "Have you thought what taking care of him's going to take from you when he gets out, and even before he get discharged? He's not going to be able to run around for some time now, and how are you gonna run around for him if you can't run?" She indicated the bandage wrapping the bullet hole on Caitlin's leg.
Caitlin looked stricken at the thought of not being able to care for Jake, and Jenny continued.
"There's nothing wrong with your legs that won't heal, but it will heal faster and better if you help it. Let Lashiqua here take you over for your therapy so you can be up and scampering around again soon. You'll kick yourself if you don't."
After a brief pause, Caitlin shuddered at the thought of being so far from Jake, then gave a nod. "I'll go," she said quietly, sitting up on the bed.
Jenny smiled and nodded to the aide, who stepped out into the hall to get the wheelchair. As the chair was brought over to the bed, Jenny spoke again. "Lashiqua will bring you right back here as soon as you are done with your therapy. Now give Mr. Jackson a kiss and go get to work. That poor man's gonna be gimpy for quite a while and he'll need you back up and around sooner than you know."
Caitlin clambered back up to Jake's head and kissed him gently on the lips, then murmured quietly into his ear. "I love you Jake Jackson. I'll be back as soon as I can. I need to go get strong again for you. You're still my man. Don't you be flirting with any pretty nurses while I'm gone now!"
Nurse Jenny smiled to herself at Caitlin's parting admonition. She pondered whether she knew of any nurse in the entire hospital brave enough, or so suicidally stupid as to be willing to flirt with poor Mr. Jackson. 'What will his life be like when he wakes up?' she wondered as she walked out. She was sure it would be different than before he had met Caitlin.
-----
"Nurse. NURSE! He's waking up!"
Jake was cold, but his right arm, leg, hip, and side were delightfully warm. The darkness was still noisy with the hisses and beeps, but apparently darkness also came with a sweet, sweet alto voice. Very nice. Unfortunately, the darkness also came with a great deal of pain. The pain washed over him in waves, sheets of pain that started in his feet, washed up through his entire being to reflect off the top of his skull, and then sloshed again through his body and then back into his legs. After the nothingness, the pain was something new, something different. Jake lay still, experiencing the sloshing, enjoying the warmth, waiting for the voice.
The warmth shifted. Now his right shoulder was warm, too. He smiled weakly. 'I have a shoulder,' he thought dreamily.
"Welcome back, my love," purred the voice. That sweet, wonderful voice. Jake instantly felt better for hearing it, more energized. Still in boundless pain and without the strength to harm a butterfly, he nonetheless moved to a higher plane of being merely from hearing it.
'My love.' Jake felt sadness at the thought that the voice was not speaking to him. He hadn't had a woman in his life for years, ever since the day she drove off with the baby... He vaguely wondered who the lucky bastard was that the voice was addressing.
"I love you," murmured the voice. "I've been waiting to meet you again. You are my hero, my savior, my love. You saved my life, not once but twice, and I'll never let you go."
Mmmmmmmm, that voice. Jake smiled as he thought he could listen to it all day, every day, for the rest of his life. His still scrambled synapses concluded that the voice tasted like thick, pink, clover honey. As he fell back asleep, Jake wondered what manner of creature could make such a tasty noise.
-----
Dr. John Sherwood entered the room twenty four minutes later. He stopped two steps inside the room, looking at the occupants of the bed, both sleeping peacefully. He then checked the various monitors positioned about the room. The right side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile as he considered the tiny red-haired pixie locked on for dear life to the right arm and leg of the six foot man beside her. Sleeping, her face was finally peaceful after all this time, suffused with a calm joy, her worries cast aside for a while. He glanced at the monitors again, eyes confirming what his ears had been telling him since he walked into the room. One set of beeps coming in stereo from two separate heart monitors on two individual hearts. Even their heartbeats were synchronized at a steady, peaceful 68 beats per minute. Having no urgent business with either of them, he let them sleep. He turned and nodded to the two uniformed policemen guarding the room on his way out. Absently, he wondered if there existed an administrator foolish enough to try to separate the two in the room. He'd seen the pixie in action. He knew who'd win.
-----
The ICU was abuzz the next morning. Their celebrity patient had awakened for a time the night before and they expected a zoo.
It was quiet in the room early the next morning. Nurse Jenny had awakened Caitlin a little before six for the morning vitals. Once the nurse had her numbers, Caitlin ignored the pain in her left thigh and scampered over to the green chair in the corner. Terrified that Jake would reject her upon waking, she curled herself into a ball and timidly peeked over her knees.
"Holy shit!" Dr. Sherwood said to Jenny. "I haven't seen her react to anyone like that. Usually, she's like a pit bull that's been kicked in the face and fed hot peppers. If I didn't know they'd never met before that accident I'd swear he's beaten her."
Jenny just looked at him. "Shes all alone in the world. For all her bluff and bluster, she's terrified that once he really wakes up she'll be all alone again." She paused. "As if any mere man could reject the love in her eyes."
(More on the way...)
