Odin (Billionaire Titans Book 2) (8 page)

I
t was so
good to hear Raven’s voice and sass. And good to know that she might have brought something with her to end my nightmare.

“I studied everything I could about this device online. Ideally, in a hospital setting, the patient would be placed in a full-sized ultrasound machine to completely map his brain before attempting to make corrections with this gizmo. But getting one of those in here, or leaving to take Odin to one of them, seems beyond any risks you want to take, correct?” Clara asked whomever was in the room with us.

Atlas answered in the affirmative. “At this juncture, we don’t move him for any reason short of imminent death. I tried to reach one of my other brothers, Achilles, yesterday afternoon, but he’s not answering anything; telephone or email. His personal bodyguard is likewise incommunicado. My father hadn’t heard from Achilles in nearly a week. He was in Toronto last week and the jet he was using is still at the airport there. It’s safe to assume he’s either gone dark or someone has gotten to him. Security is paramount until we make contact with him.”

I heard a murmur of assent in the room. Achilles, my youngest brother, was an outlier in the family. His passion was music, and he ran a fledgling record label which was taking more and more of his time. There was no acrimony between Achilles and the rest of the family; he just wanted his own path. It wasn’t unlike Atlas becoming a SEAL or the rare book collecting and dealing to which I’d been devoting more and more of my time and money. Billionaire playboy bookworm, Odin Titan.

I wondered if maybe Achilles hadn’t just met somebody and decided to hole up for a while, but not being able to reach his bodyguard was troubling.

My third brother, Canaan, was a competitive fencer with Olympic dreams who was taking a sabbatical from Titan Industries to focus on his athletic dream. I’d competed in the London games in Modern Pentathlon, but all I returned home with was a cast on my right wrist and a regrettable tattoo of the Olympic rings that I let an Estonian high jumper talk me into after she and I had too much vodka on the penultimate evening of the games.

I’d been second in the standings after the first three events, looking like a strong candidate for a medal, having dominated the fencing section and finished second in the swim. Show jumping was my weakest event, but I was paired with a strong horse and I’d exceeded expectations there, leaving only the final cross country run/shooting competition. I wasn’t among the handful of best shooters in the competition, but my running would hopefully make up for any errant shooting.

I started the run well, moving to the lead and staying there. My first and second of the four shooting stops went surprisingly well, and I seemed to be heading for an Olympic medal.

Disaster struck during the third section of the run, when my heel was clipped by an opposing runner trying to pass me. I tumbled headlong into the infield, breaking my right wrist while attempting to stop my fall. My shooting wrist.

In the pentathlon, each competitor has up to fifty seconds to his five targets before resuming his run. Hitting the targets quickly means getting back out on the course quickly. Having to sit there for the entire fifty seconds is dying a slow death while other competitors take insurmountable leads.

Holding my injured wrist and waving off medical attention, I made it to the third shooting stop and tried shooting left-handed. Disaster. Right-handed was out of the question, as I couldn’t even hold the pistol.

Frustration and rage boiled over as I watched half a dozen competitors fly out onto the track ahead of me while I could only wait for the seconds to tick by. In the end, I finished eighth, and I was roundly applauded for my courage in finishing the race.

I never understood what was courageous about doing something I’d trained and sacrificed for four years to do. My brother, Atlas, was brave, although he’d brush off such a compliment by saying he “was just doing his job.” That’s how I felt about my Olympic experience, although the famous image of me crossing the finish line while holding my broken wrists tightly to my chest, wincing in pain, became an unforgettable symbol of the London games.

“Piper, you probably shouldn’t be in here for this. There’s nothing in the literature about pregnancy, but I’d hate to take a chance,” Clara said.

Piper and Atlas agreed with Clara, and I heard Piper wish everyone good luck as she headed back up to her room to rest.

“Atlas, if you don’t mind, help me prop your brother up. Just slide a pillow down behind his shoulders so I can get to the base of his skull,” Clara instructed Atlas.

“Will it just take one burst, one session for it to work?” Raven asked.

“Too many variables to say,” Clara replied. “I mean he’s not going to jump up and dance a jig or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we get some movement in his extremities before long. Or, we may not see any change at all. He may not be right for this treatment. And even if he is, I’m no expert and I’m taking a shot in the dark here.”

“I believe in you, Doc.” With Atlas, anything was possible. Defeat wasn’t part of his vocabulary.

“Alright then, here goes,” Clara announced, and a low hum filled the room. I felt nothing at first. Clara and Raven discussed something about the machine; technical jargon regarding calibration or some such. Minutes dragged on and nothing seemed to be happening.

Then, out of nowhere, I felt it. It started as a tickle at the base of my skull, like a feather, just barely there, touching something inside me.

“Holy shit!” Raven’s voice cut through the silence and the buzz of the device. “Look at his hand! His right hand!”

“Hot damn, I told you!” Atlas exclaimed.

I couldn’t quite make sense of what was happening to my hand, but the feather in the back of my skull had become a full-blown shiatsu massage.

“Raven, how long should I keep going? I didn’t expect to find the right spot this quickly.” Clara asked.

“According to what I’ve read, it’s like jump starting a car; once you have it running, you can stop giving it juice. Just give it that spark and you’re off and running,” Raven answered.

Sensation flooded back into my extremities, and I felt my entire right arm lift off the table in a spasm.

“Odin? Can you hear me? Odin?” The voice was Clara’s. If only I could answer her.

The sensations in my cerebellum waned, but something had definitely changed. I was starting to feel things I’d nearly forgotten. It was like the nerve endings all over my body were awakening one by one. I was annoyed that the blanket covering my lower half had somehow become bunched up around my right foot. How did I know that?

Suddenly, a bright light shone in my eyes. The darkness behind my eyelids went white.

It took me a moment to realize that light wasn’t what I was seeing. It was the ceiling. The white ceiling of the room I was laying in. My eyes were open! I couldn’t turn my head yet and my neck wasn’t strong enough to life my head, but my eyes were
open
. The response was immediate.

“His eyes!” Raven screamed. She was on my left side, just barely in my peripheral vision. It was good to see her again.

Atlas moved in front of me. “Welcome back, bud.”

The one I really wanted to see, however, was Clara, who was still behind me.

“What happens next? I mean, when does he get up and walk, that sort of thing?” Atlas asked Clara. I could still only follow what was happening directly in my line of sight, and I wanted to yell to Atlas to move out of the way and let Clara in.

I knew she’d be there in a moment, and I blinked hard and said a quick prayer. I’d grown so fond of Clara; thoughts of her filled my waking hours. Could she really be as beautiful as she was in my mind’s eye? To me, she was an actual angel; which she couldn’t possibly be, but nobody with a heart as beautiful as hers could be anything short of stunning.

I lifted my lids slowly, and I was not disappointed. I would have known it was her even without her voice, but the sweet sound confirmed it confirmed it. “Welcome back, Odin! It’s so good to see your eyes!”

Clara was radiant. Her light brown hair was pulled back and piled on top of her head and she wore no makeup. There was something so fresh, so pure about her. She laughed as she wiped tears of joy from her eyes.

Atlas walked up and wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her off the floor. He set her down and held her face in his hands. “Thank you. I can’t explain how much this means to me. Thank you.”

Clara cried against his chest before turning to me. “Don’t try to move or speak. Your muscles have been asleep. You were shot and you’ve been in a coma. I’m Clara O’Grady, I’m the doctor who’s been taking care of you.”

I knew all that, but she had no way of knowing it.

Atlas left to fetch Piper, and Raven moved in next to Clara, putting her arm around her and giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Nicely done,” she said. “But now you have to deal with a conscious Odin Titan. Good luck.” Raven and Clara laughed, turning toward each other and letting their foreheads touch. Their relief and joy was palpable, and all I wanted from that moment was to hug and thank them both.

Piper and Atlas completed the scene, crowding in at the foot of my bed. Piper gave me a thumbs up and wiped a tear from her cheek. Atlas held her lovingly.

Clara addressed the group. “I’m guessing; and this is all very unpredictable, that he’ll start talking in a few days, but it might be a week or two before he’s up and around again. That’s assuming no permanent nerve damage. I’ll begin his physical therapy tomorrow. The fact that he’s in such good shape works in his favor, but with an injury like this nothing is guaranteed.”

It pleased me to no end that she thought I was in “such good shape.”

Raven surprised no one who knew her by asking for food. For such a slip of a girl, she could put away as much food as Atlas, who was half-mastodon. “Saving the day makes me hungry. What do you have to eat around here, A-man?”

Atlas rolled his eyes and Piper answered. “You might be surprised, but our kitchen is very well-stocked. And Atlas has become quite the chef. He’ll make you something delicious. I could eat, too. Clara, do you want anything?”

“No, thank you, but I want to spend some time with Odin,” Clara replied. If I could have pumped my fist, I would have.

Raven protested the choice of Atlas as chef. “I’m not eating anything cooked by a SEAL. They’re trained to eat
anything
in a survival situation. My palate is a little more refined.”

“You’re going to miss my famous centipede gumbo, Raven,” Atlas said, followed by the sound of Raven faux-vomiting.

T
he sight
of Odin’s eyes stirred in me the feeling I experienced only when I won the daily battle all ER workers wage against the ever-present specter of death. I guess combat medics experience the same kind of thing, but for them it’s always adults. The most satisfying thing in my career was always saving the life of a child. All life is precious, obviously, and my Hippocratic Oath bound me to preserve
all
life, but the reward of rescuing a child from the clutches of oblivion always gave me a special satisfaction.

In many ways, Odin had been as helpless as a child these past few weeks, and it was through my diligence that he stayed fed, avoided infection, and got the exercise he did. I’d never been part of a patients’ long-term care before, so I didn’t know what to expect if and when he woke up, but the feeling was pure elation.

I removed the pillow from behind Odin’s shoulders and let his head fall back gently. His eyes remained open and alert, darting all around the room. They were dark and deep, suiting him perfectly.

Adjusting him so that he faced the chair to his right, I settled in with my feet tucked up under me. “Odin, I want to try something. I don’t believe you can move much of anything yet except your eyelids. If I’m right, blink once for yes and twice for no. Make the blinks long and slow, so I can distinguish them from regular blinks. Understand? Oops, sorry, that was two questions, don’t answer yet. Let’s start over. Do you understand the blinking? One means yes, two means no.”

Odin closed his eyes for several seconds and opened them again.

“Good! Are you in any pain? And I mean beyond the normal aches that would go along with spending several weeks lying in bed.”

Two blinks.

“Can you move anything on your own besides your eyelids?”

Rather than blinking, he lifted the index and middle fingers on his trembling right hand.

“Excellent! You’re probably wondering who I am, where you are, all sorts of stuff like that. Let me fill you in as best I can. You were driving with your brother and Piper. Oh, and Mallory. She’s not here now, I’ll let Atlas fill you in on that.”

I expected to see some sort of reaction in Odin’s eyes when I told him that his girlfriend wasn’t present for his awakening, but he remained completely placid.

“Anyway, a car pulled up next to you on Las Vegas Boulevard just before Sahara Avenue and you were shot. Nobody else in the car was hit. You were rushed to MULV, where I was the emergency room doctor who treated you. One of the bullets fractured your skull and bruised your brain, and you were put into a medically-induced coma while we drained fluid to reduce swelling.

“For safety reasons, Atlas had you moved to your safe house. He hired me to be your personal doctor through this process.

You were also shot twice through your left shoulder and upper chest. You suffered a collapsed lung, but I don’t believe you have any permanent damage there. Or in your brain. Your neural pathways are healing; they were actually jumpstarted by a device your friend Raven brought here just this afternoon. Over the next few days or maybe weeks, you should hopefully regain full use of your arms and legs; your voice.”

I put my hand in his, gently, and instructed him to squeeze as hard as he could. His grip was surprisingly powerful.

“Easy, tiger. You just woke up,” I cautioned. “You’re going to be tempted to try to do everything at once, to push things harder than you have to. I’m here with you to help. Let me do my job, okay?”

He blinked once.

“You still have a feeding tube in and a catheter and various other IVs and things. I’ll start on getting everything out of you as soon as possible. It’s so good to finally ‘meet’ you. You have a long road ahead of you, but I’ll be here the whole time.”

“Can you feel it when I do this?” I asked him, reaching down and pressing on his leg near the knee.” When he confirmed that he could, I put my hand on his foot, which he could also feel.

Just then, Nathaniel, Atlas’s head of security, startled us with his booming voice.

“Odin! Welcome back! Quite a scare you gave us.” He stood at the foot of the bed, a warm smile on his face. “Doc, they have food ready, why don’t you go join them? I’ll hang out with Odin and catch him up on things.”

I
was
hungry, and I knew everyone would have questions, so I joined the group in the dining room, where carne asada awaited. For essentially being in hiding, I’d eaten very well with these Atlases; I made a mental footnote to start availing myself of the small gym in the back of the house.

I ate and chatted with Piper, Raven, ad Atlas, explaining to them Odin’s short and long-term prognoses and how we could communicate with Odin.

All I wanted to do was go back to him. I still couldn’t get his eyes out of my mind.