Offside (47 page)

“
First step
,” I snorted. “Nice.”

“Just an expression,” she said with a smile. “It’s good you had a lot of muscle tone before the accident. It should make your recovery more successful.”

More successful.
Like maybe someday I could make my legs move again without help.

She switched legs and started rolling my ankle around. It was the first time I had really seen my legs since I woke up, and they looked scrawny to me.

I must have fallen asleep before she left because the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by Nicole’s scent.

“Can you get the other side?” I heard her whispered voice near my face. I opened my eyes and saw a nurse first, who had my pillow tucked under one arm while the other one was behind my head. Nicole was on my other side, holding my head up a little as she slid a different pillow beneath me.

“Rumple?”

“Oh, baby,” she said, still whispering. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s okay,” I slurred, still half asleep. “You smell good.”

She giggled and lowered my head onto a soft, cool pillow.

It smelled like her.

“I was going to wash the pillowcase first,” she said, “but I figured you’d like it better this way.”

I smiled and closed my eyes again as my head sank further into my Nicole-scented pillow. I still couldn’t roll over, but this was pretty damn good anyway. Her hand twirled through my hair, and I drifted off to sleep.

Shakespeare said, “The soul of this man is his clothes.” Somehow, I thought maybe Nicole’s soul was in her pillow.

Now I could really rest.

CHAPTER 27

COUNTERATTACK

If anyone else were to tell me recovery takes time and I had to just work hard and be patient, I was going to find the strength to punt that idiot across the fucking room.

Four days after I came out of the coma, I could sit up for an hour before I had to lie down again. I could feed myself about three bites of something before my arms gave out, and I could move my toes if I concentrated really fucking hard. Everyone told me what great progress I was making, but I knew bullshit when I smelled it. I was a fucking invalid, as my father put it, and only Nicole’s regular visits were keeping me from throwing myself out the damn window.

Well, that and not being able to get out of the fucking bed.

In other words, rehab sucked.

“You have to be able to do this if you’re going to be able to get out of here,” Danielle said as I dropped back down on the bed.

I took another deep breath and tried to use my arms to transfer myself from the bed to the wheelchair. My arms had improved, but holding up my own diminished body weight was still just a bit much for me. With a grunt, I strained my muscles as hard as I could and actually managed to drop into the chair. It wasn’t the least bit graceful, and I probably would have tipped the damn thing over if Danielle hadn’t been holding on to it, but I did it.

I glanced over at Nicole in the easy chair in the corner of the room. She had her hands over her mouth—probably to keep from squealing, which drove me fucking nuts when she did it—and her eyes were shining. I knew she was smiling under there.

“Just fucking say it!” I snapped.

“I knew you could do it!” She shrieked and then put her hands over her mouth again.

“Next thing you know, I’ll be able to take a shit by myself,” I grumbled.

“One thing at a time,” Danielle said for the four hundred and seventy millionth time. “It’s not going to happen all at once.”

Nicole came over to the wheelchair and leaned down to kiss me on the forehead.

“You’re doing wonderfully,” she told me.

Whatever.

I sighed and looked up at her, all my pissiness gone along with my energy. Danielle helped me get back into bed—damn that chick was strong—and Nicole sat down on the edge. Danielle filled out her little charts and then left me for the day.

“I’m fucking useless,” I mumbled, and Nicole shushed me.

“You’re my hero,” she told me. She leaned closer, and her lips touched mine softly. “I love you.”

Her hands went into my hair, and her tongue reached into my mouth. I groaned against her, wanting to wrap my arms around her and hold her tight against me, but I just couldn’t. It was easy enough to hate myself for it, but if I was going to be helpless, at least it was Nicole holding me up. Her hands slid down my arms and chest, then down to my stomach. Certain parts of my body were reminded of her touch and begged for more attention.

“At least I know my dick still works,” I said with a grin. I tried to reach up and grope her tits, but my hand only managed to brush against them before it dropped back to the bed.

Nicole gave me a sly smile, grasped my hand, and held it up against one of her breasts as she kissed me again.

Yeah—my dick definitely still worked.

“I’ve got to go babysit,” Nicole said as she broke away and laid my hand back on my stomach. “Jeremy said he was going to come by later, and I think a couple other guys were coming with him.”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, “Paul and Klosav.”

“Clint still hasn’t come by?” Nicole asked quietly.

I shook my head.

“I told Jeremy to tell him not to be such a pussy,” I said. “He’s not listening, I guess.”

“He offered to take me to prom,” Nicole said with a laugh. “To make up for all of it, you know?”

This was not news I liked.

“If he fucking touches you, I will get out of this bed and fuck him up.”

“Hmm…” Nicole tapped her finger against her chin. “Are you trying to give me incentive?”

“Don’t fucking think about it!”

She smiled and shook her head before kissing me again.

“Never,” she promised.

“Damn straight!”

“I’ll see you after school tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Love you.”

I reached out and tried to grab her hand. She placed it in my palm.

“I love you too, Rumple.” I took a big breath and huffed it out. “Sorry I’m such a jackass.”

“I know how hard it is,” she told me. “I can see it. You are doing so much better. I know you don’t think so, but you are. Danielle said you’d be out of the hospital and into the rehab center by the end of the week at the rate you’re going.”

“And how long there before I can even think about leaving? A month? Three? More?”

Her hand smoothed my hair.

“Fucking sucks.”

“I know, baby.”

We kissed a few more times, but I was too tired to beg her to stay any longer, and I didn’t want Sophie to be late to work or something. Nicole walked out, and I was left on my own to think too much.

The main thing I was thinking about was something I had just noticed the previous night.

Usually I dropped right off, too tired or medicated to think about much of anything, but last night had been different. I was tired, but I didn’t drop off right away. I was anxious, like I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what it was.

Then it hit me.

I knew what was missing.

What I was waiting for.

I was waiting for the day to pass by again—detailing the activities and carving them into my brain for safekeeping. I was waiting for my overactive mind to replay my life from the morning to the night in exquisite detail.

But it didn’t happen.

I looked up at the new flowers Nicole had brought into the room—despite my insistence that boys didn’t get fucking flowers—and tried to remember what had been there before. Whatever they were, they had been yellow, and the new ones were kind of orangey-red, but I couldn’t remember exactly how they were different or what kind of flowers they had been.

My mind had no image for me to recall.

Shakespeare coined the phrase: “Make not your thoughts your prison.” Somehow, even though the phrase fit me perfectly right now, not remembering everything was definitely a blessing.

Now maybe my mind could rest, too.

“Hello, Thomas.”

I looked up from my new bed in the rehabilitation clinic and saw a tall, lanky guy with blond hair and a soft, kind of effeminate voice despite the slight southern drawl.

“Hey,” I said. I narrowed my eyes a little.

“I’m Justin,” he said as he pulled up a chair to sit beside me. “I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know we’d be talking a bit while you’re here.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Well, the accident,” he said, “and how you feel about the situation you are in now.”

“Oh fucking hell,” I grumbled as insight struck me. “You’re a shrink?”

He laughed softly.

“Something like that,” he replied.

“I don’t need a fucking shrink.”

“Well, let’s talk a bit, and I’ll make that call, okay?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Thomas, you’ve been through a significant amount of trauma,” Justin said. “You’ve been an extremely active individual with the potential to play soccer professionally. That changed drastically in a very short amount of time. You’re going to have to talk about how it’s affected you.”

“How it’s affected me?” I shouted. I set my sarcasm to annihilate. “
How it’s affected me
? Really? Um, let’s see: I can’t walk; I’ve only been able to get myself to the john since yesterday; I can’t grope my girlfriend, and my Dad thinks I’m a fucking failure! That’s how it’s
affected
me. Good enough?”

He just looked at me for a moment before nodding his head.

“Yes, I do think we’ll be talking a bit more,” he said before he stood up and headed for the door. He called back over his shoulder. “We’ll have sessions for an hour every other day. I’ll have the nurse add it to your schedule.”

Fucking hell.

“One more time,” Danielle coaxed.

I took a big breath and braced my hands against the arms of the wheelchair. Sweat practically poured into my eyes, and my lungs just couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen in them. With a grunt and held breath, I lifted myself up and sideways onto the bed.

“Excellent!”

I dropped back down on my back, feeling anything but excellent, and panted like I had just finished a marathon when all I had really done was move from one spot to the other. My eyes stared blankly at the ceiling of my room as I tried to catch my breath.

“I think you’ve had enough for today,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I growled. “I’m not quite dead yet.”

She ignored my pithiness and said she’d be back in the morning. I waited until my biceps stopped burning and then pushed myself back up against the pillow.

Nicole’s pillow.

Nicole had come to the center yesterday and brought me a new pillowcase—freshly unwashed. Some people probably thought it was nasty, but I loved it. The other one was beginning to just smell like me again.

I had been at the center for four weeks. I could get myself in and out of the wheelchair, to the bathroom and back without assistance, and I could feed myself. I was off the pain meds, except for some Motrin at night sometimes, and didn’t need to be hooked up to anything anymore. It was better in that respect, but Nicole couldn’t visit me every day, and that part sucked. She came when she could, but sometimes two or three days would go by without seeing her.