Bittersweet Read Online Free PDF Page B

her sights way high indeed.
    “How are you feeling, dumpling?” she said.
    Like an actual dumpling.
    “Great,” Wyatt rasped.
    Her hazel eyes swept the length of him as if he’d told the truth instead. “Pain that bad, huh?”
    No. Pain that good.
    “You ever been shot?” Wyatt said instead. “It’s like a pinch, but explosive.”
    Sandra snorted out a laugh. “I think I like you better as a gunshot victim. At the least, you’re more entertaining.”
    That almost did get a smile from him. Nurse Thomas gave them one of those no nonsense looks best left for school teachers and strict moms. It told him she was some kid’s to love and not above good discipline either. He imagined her pouring juice in the morning and making sure all the homework was done.
    Wyatt bet all the homework got done in her house.   
    “To answer your question, my darling, I have not had the displeasure of being shot,” his nurse said. She reached into her cart, grabbed a thermometer, and stuffed it in his mouth. Shush the gesture said. When the beep came and his temperature met her approval, she moved on to taking his blood pressure. “And I thank God you escaped with your life.”
    ‘God.’ Did he thank God? Should he thank God? Wyatt just didn’t know.
    “Let me get you something for your pain,” his nurse said.
    Minutes later, morphine flooded his veins, milking free a sigh of relief. Wyatt had no idea he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them, Nurse Thomas and the pain were gone.   
     “Give me my notebook,” he said to Sandra.
    “So you can write Edy again? No!”
    Wyatt’s temper spiked, then flattened. He resisted the urge to inhale deep, knowing the bandages around his chest would restrain him. When the tickle of a cough came on, he cursed that too, knowing it would feel like thunder rammed through. He counted backwards, willing it away as his eyes began to water. Sandra sat up and immediately poured him a cup of water.
    Wyatt coughed up what felt like a small child. He looked down, always expecting blood. There was none. He sighed in relief and took the water from Sandra.
    “Give me the notebook,” he said again.
    He followed her gaze to the wastebasket, where paper had been stuffed already. A mountain of letters to Edy sat there, angrily abandoned, unfinished.
    “Wyatt,” Sandra said delicately. “She chose someone else, okay? It happens. Please accept it.”
    He wanted her to shut up, go away, disappear. He hated the careful way she spoke to him or how she made plain what was obvious.
    “I never said she didn’t,” Wyatt said. “Now can I have my notebook?”
    Since he’d recovered well enough to manage it, he’d taken to writing, hesitantly at first, maniacally on occasion, and well into the night when the mood struck and pain rode high on near-blinding magnificence. He wrote even then. Especially then. Not necessarily to or about her, but only when his thoughts swung round that way.
    Sometimes he wrote to Hassan.
    Those went in the trash, too.
    Why had Hassan tried to save him? Why had he stripped down and plugged up hemorrhaging holes in Wyatt’s body with the shirt from his back? Yeah, it was humane and anyone would say they’d do the same, but faced with it—faced with the opportunity to let someone they hate go—how easy, hard, possible would it have been to … do nothing? He didn’t know, but the question haunted him; the answer eluded him.
    Hassan had tried to save his life. Who knows? Maybe he did save his life. And what had Wyatt found the air to say, with Hassan bent over him as his life ebbed away?
    “Tell Edy I love her.”   
    Then he drifted away.

Eight
    Oh man.
    Hassan shifted. The bed groaned and creaked under the sway of his weight. Weak winter sun bathed one side of his face, lying about a warmth that didn’t exist outdoors. He had an arm around Edy’s middle. He looked down just as she snuggled into him. He opened his eyes. Really opened his eyes.
    The bedroom door