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“That's the pain relief but s'all right.” Charlie tips his head, gazing down at me like there's nothing else in the world. “I don't want you in pain.”
I smile back at him, feeling safe in his company. I know he won't let anyone hurt me.
“Blaire,” the doctor says my name softly, reaching for my left hand, “I'm going to fit you with a cannula so we don't have to keep poking you with needles.”
Tearing my attention from Charlie, I tug against the doctor's subtle grasp, glaring to warn him off. I don't know him. He's not allowed to touch me.
Or, is he?
“Give it here,” Charlie says, taking the cannula, “I'll do it.”
He'll do it, just like he undressed me from that bloody shirt I was wearing and helped me into the hospital gown I am now wearing. It's an off white color with pallid blue dots, falls to just below my knees. It doesn't cling to my wounds so I feel comfortable in it.
As I look up at Charlie again, he tips his head to the other side and watches me with curious blue eyes. “Baby, hold out your arm and give me your hand.”
I do, staring at his gorgeous face the entire time. He takes a tray of things from the doctor and puts it on the bed by my stomach, pulls up a chair and sits there in front of me. He gently grips my hand and wipes my skin clean of possible germs with an antiseptic wipe. Focused in his pursuit, he wraps a yellow elastic band around my wrist and tightens it so the pale blue veins pop out of my hand. I can feel my blood flow slowing, pressure gathering there.
“This is gonna feel like a sharp scratch.” Charlie glances up from my hand at my eyes, then back down to where he inserts the needle, piercing through my skin.
It doesn't hurt at all. There is a slight scratch that pierces my skin, as he just said there would be, but it's nothing I can't handle. The doctor passes a length of surgical tape and Charlie sticks it across the needle now buried under my skin, and then he hunches down to kiss me there.
“All right?”
I nod against the pillow, satisfied to have him attending to me.
“When are we leaving for Mexico?” I say. It's all he was talking about on the ride over here from Rumo's house, just after I murdered Maksim. I think Charlie was trying to break through my numb barrier, and it worked. While I was curled up on his lap, his brother driving the car, he told me again what Mexico will be like, as he used to tell me when we spent our days talking to each other; how he misses the sun and how much his house will feel like a home once I'm there.
Charlie flashes me his most handsome smile, stroking over my knuckles with the pad of his thumb. “As soon as you've had the operation to fix up the shot wound and clear up the burn on your back, we’ll go to Mexico.”
“Today?”
“Maybe tomorrow morning, baby,” he says softly, reaching out with his other hand to give my chin a gentle, loving squeeze. “You'll still be asleep but by the time you wake up, we'll be home.”
Home...It's so weird to hear him say that.
He winks at me, and a familiar warmth spreads through my chest.
“I'd like that,” I whisper, lifting my lips in another dazed smile. “And James will come with us?”
Charlie told me in the car that James is waiting at his house for us. He blames himself for what's happened to me and can't find the will to see me at the moment, not while I'm in this state. I understand. Though I don't blame him for anything that's ever happened to me, I understand his guilt.
Charlie nods a couple of times. “If he wants to. I've already told him he's welcome to come live with us as I assumed that's what you'd want.”
“Yes. He's my brother,” I remind myself, unexplainably glad that I still have some family left in the world. “I want him to know that while Maksim is gone, he still has me.”
I feel nothing for Maksim at the moment but I reckon that might have something to do with my medicated state. Neither do I care that Charlie and I are talking freely in front of this doctor who is trying to act invisible, writing god knows what on that pad.
“Us,” Charlie corrects, raising his thick eyebrows at me, and I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Anything James wants or needs, we'll sort it together.”
“Oh...” I nod, my emotions for him all but bursting out of me. “Yes. Us.”
I'm oddly vulnerable right now, saying things I wouldn't usually say, but I want it to be like this with Charlie. I want us to be a team. If I need him, I have to know that he's there and vice versa.
“Mr. Decena-” the doctor interrupts our conversation, and Charlie lets go of my hand; turns around in his chair.
“-She’s ready for the next shot of antibiotics.” He lays out two syringes on the tray, gesturing that one is a strong antibiotic and the other is the anesthetic. “Anesthetic last, once her blood pressure reads one-hundred and thirty over ninety on this screen.” He leans over Charlie and turns the monitor toward us, so Charlie can see it properly. “I'll give you both some time alone. When you're ready for me, I'll be waiting outside, as will my medical team.” He gives me a courteous yet pitiful smile, pivots away and leaves through the only door in the room.
As soon as Charlie and I are alone, my vein rushing with cold because Charlie injects the antibiotics, I can't help thinking about when we lived at his house. How at home and safe I felt there. I'll never forget the first time I fought Charlie in aid of the rights to my body. The first time I felt bad for hurting him when I put him down. The times we shared together eating in the kitchen, talking and holding each other.
