sloppy kiss on her cheek, turning to run down the hall before she could smack me. The laughter I heard from her tired soul as I ran down the hallway made my heart smile. I was thankful I had a woman like her in my life.
Before I hit the elevator, I had one last stop to make.
“Hey, Tamara.” She looked up, smiling at me. I swear she was too cute to be a nurse; she should have been an elementary school teacher.
I pulled out my wallet handing her my black American Express card. “Tamara, here’s my credit card. Can you please have a bouquet of flowers and the biggest teddy bears the gift shop has delivered to every parent that has a newborn on this floor?”
She looked at me like I just confessed to her I was an alien and wanted to have her babies.
I placed my card in front of her on her desk. “Please Tamara.” I gave her my winning smile, licking my lips then giving her a wink.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Brat, just like your mother. Of course I’ll do it.” She snatched up my credit card and dialed the gift shop.
I gave her another wink. “Thanks, have my mom sign for them.” I said laughing as I walked away.
Chapter Nine
Livie
It wasn’t until Ocean planted my feet on the floor that I felt the immediate impact of the damage I had done to my body.
My left arm was useless. I couldn’t even think of moving a muscle or a finger without a dizzy spell clouding my mind. My arm felt like dead weight attached to my body.
My right leg, the one with the huge bandage that hugged my thigh all the way around didn’t feel any better. Though nothing was like the pain I felt in my arm, attempting to put weight on my leg felt like sticking it into a scorching fire and then asking for the heat to be turned up some more.
“Easy Liv, Are you sure you don’t want me to call my Aunt?” He was holding me upright with my good arm draped behind his head along his broad shoulders.
I dug my nails into his shoulders just for the extra comfort. His lips were only inches away from mine and all I could do was stare at them, fighting to remember how they felt on my skin and everywhere else he loved to put them.
“Liv.”
“Huh?”
His intense frown brought me back to my painful reality.
“What? I didn’t hear you.” I said a bit too defensively without really meaning to.
“I was asking you if you were sure you don’t want me to call for Aunt Layla. I know you’re in pain Liv, your lips are trembling and your eyes go cross eyed with each step you try and take.”
I looked down at my feet that were covered in pink knee- high compression socks and then up to where the bathroom was. Sure…to a normal person who didn’t butcher their leg open it was a walk in the park but for me, it felt like walking down the hallway to hell’s gates. I’m sure I’d end up there eventually if the devil himself didn’t already own my soul after what I did.
I pulled my lips in biting on them and taking a deep breath in. “I can do this Ocean, just help me get into the bathroom. How did you do this when I was asleep anyway?” I asked, really wanting to know how exactly it was he bathed and kept me clean.
“I used my hands Liv, that’s all you need to know. Come on before Law, the bouncing idiot, comes back all happy and shit.”
I wanted to ask him why he said that, why he was so mad, and why he wasn’t happy. He wanted me to wake up and here I was but he wasn’t happy. He said he was waiting for me to come back but then I remembered him saying something about leaving too.
I looked down at the floor and nodded. “Okay, I’m ready.”
I let Ocean carry me into the small half space of a bathroom without a word or making eye contact. I stayed silent until his hand inched towards the butterfly IV’s decorating my swollen, black and blue forearms.
“Wait. Shouldn’t you call a nurse to have these removed?”
The look of complete annoyance danced smoothly over his forehead. “No. I’ll do it. Me and no one else. Just
Learning to Kill: Stories