squeeze.
“Hey! We can’t do that here, mister.”
“Okay, but as soon as we get to my parent’s house
right?”
I laughed. “Yeah right. That’s just what I want to
do when your mother is sitting in the next room.”
“Then let’s just do it here real quick.”
“Stop it! You’re recovering from a gunshot and major
surgery. I doubt that having sex is in your treatment plan.”
“If there’s no sex with you in it, I want no part of
that treatment,” he said with a grin.
“Horn-dog,” I told him.
I didn’t hear the nurse come in but Dax saw her and
said, loudly, “No, you’re the horn-dog. I just had surgery. I don’t think I’m
supposed to have sex.”
“Dax!” I said. I could feel my face turning red. I
looked at the nurse and said, “He’s the one who suggested it, not me.”
She was an older lady. She laughed and said, “I
believe you, honey. He’s been ornery like that since he woke up from surgery.”
She had his discharge paperwork and as he signed it
she read off all the follow-up and aftercare instructions. No strenuous activities were one of them. When she said it, he
looked up at me and wrinkled his forehead.
When all the paperwork was signed, she gave us his
copies of everything and put him in a wheelchair that he argued with her about
and rolled him to the elevator and all the way out to my car. She had to be at
least sixty and the whole way out, my boyfriend was shamelessly flirting with
her. It was good to see him back in true form.
We stopped at the pharmacy to pick up his meds on
the way to his parent’s house. I told him to stay in the car, but of course he
ignored me. When I got up to the door he was right on my back. Besides his meds
we left with three candy bars, a bag of beef jerky, a bag of Cheetos and
another of pork rinds as well as a six-pack of soda and a pack of gum.
“What is all of this junk food for?” I asked him.
“Because I know my mother is going to have me eating
healthy foods. I’m going to hide this stuff in my room where she can’t find it
so I have something to subsist on.”
“Good luck with that. I’d be willing to bet she
comes in there every day while you’re convalescing and cleans the room. She’ll
find it.”
“You forget that I lived with her for eighteen years
in that very same room. I have my secret spots that she has yet to find.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“That’s what my father said Brock called me.” The
comment made the tone of the conversation turn serious. Neither of us cared to
talk about it at that moment so we just rode silently the rest of the way to
his parent’s house.
Gail, and surprisingly enough, Bull were waiting for
us when we got there. Dax had stuffed the junk food as well as an entire six
pack of soda in my purse. It was heavy and the strap was killing my arm. I told
him we should have hid it in the Personal
Belongings bag the hospital had sent home but he insisted she would take it
and wash the clothes right away.
As soon as Gail said, “Hello,” she said, “Give me
that bag and I’ll put those straight in the washer.” Dax gave me a smug look. I
hated when he was right.
He sat down with his dad in the living room and I
excused myself so that I could sit down the heavy purse. I had to smile when I
saw his room. Gail had set it up with a little table at the side of his bed and
she had folded the bed down halfway. He was such a mama’s boy.
I went back out and sat next to him on the couch.
Gail had made cinnamon rolls and brought them out with coffee and juice. It was
weird, but as long as I’d known Dax, this was the first truly normal family moment I’d ever been involved
in with him and his parents. I guess it takes a shooting to bring some families
together.
CHAPTER
SIX
DAX
Olivia hung out with us until early afternoon and
then she had to leave to go with her uncle to pick up some supplies. I waited
until she was gone to have the conversation with my parents about the