Otto goes home after a couple of days.
They keep me hostage for four days longer.
By my last day, I’m ready to break out. I hate being on this side of things. I feel like I’m keeping warm a bed that would be better suited for someone else. Anyone else. I have patients who need me. I want to see Otto running around. I want to shower in my own bathroom and sleep in my own bed.
Luckily, on my final day, they loosen the reins a little. I’m allowed to shower. Get out of the hospital gown and into my own clothes. At this point, I’m almost completely unplugged, save the heart monitor on my finger and the IV drip in my arm which dispenses morphine if I need it. I’ve ignored the line as much as possible, but the first couple of days, the pain was blinding. And then, when the pain got better, something worse seeped in—an ugly, black depression.
Not about the surgery. Something else. Being in bed like this, helpless…it brought up too many bad memories. Memories of watching my mother fade away. Memories of when I’d decided enough was enough. Memories of my father plucking his own IVs out and growling in that deep voice of his, “Screw it, if I’m dying, I’m doing it in my own damn home.”
I’ll admit it—when the thoughts got loud, I hit the morphine a few times just to knock myself out.
Boredom will kill you. Silence. It’s the top reason retirees kick the bucket, and I know if I don’t leave here soon, I’ll lose my mind.
My cry for help is met by a familiar face. The door opens and Kenzi steps inside.
“Happy discharge day,” she says.
“Happy, happy.”
Then she locks the door behind her. And pulls the curtain around us.
I knit my eyebrows. She answers the question in my expression with “Just checking to make sure you’re fit for discharge.”
A smile twinges at the edge of my mouth. “Are you a nurse now?”
“I am today.” She climbs into bed with me and cups my face in her hand, drawing her thumb across my cheek. I’ve been clinically pawed at by nurses and doctors, but I haven’t been intimately touched in over a week, and the warmth of her palm makes my heart pick up speed. “Hmm…bright eyes,” she diagnoses. She runs her hand down my chest and rests it there. “Strong heartbeat.” Her fingers trip downward, until they hug my growing bulge, and she smiles. “Ah…seems that all your organs are in working order.”
She kneads me through my jeans, and my lonely need quickly swells. I expel a hiss. “What are you doing?”
Those green eyes meet mine. “Something I’ve wanted to do for over ten years.” She takes off her shirt and lets it drop to the bed. Her breasts hang free—beautiful drops of creamy soft skin across her chest. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Not for a second,” I say, and I can hear the catch in my own voice.
She kisses me, and our tongues collide.
Something unlocks inside me. A deep, bottomless well of need, and I pull her into my lap and ravish her with my tongue. She sighs into my mouth and unzips my pants, tugging my cock out. I’m unbearably hard for her, and she slips me between her legs, grinding on it first so I feel the slippery heat of her folds. She’s slick, and then I’m slick with her, and she slides me inside of her, gasping loudly as I fill her.
“Oh fuck,” she whispers, her head bowing against me as she lowers herself onto me, slowly, until I’m completely sheathed in her.
“Fuck,” I agree, because she’s so tight, so hot, and she feels better than I could’ve possibly imagined.
There’s an annoying bleeping in my ear, and I’m so swept up in Kenzi that it takes me a second to realize I’m the annoying thing beeping. My heart rate, that is, rocketing upward on the monitor. I growl and, frustrated, use my teeth to tear the tape around my fingertip, snapping the monitor off.
Now the monitor screams. I fumble—one arm trying to hold Kenzi in my lap, the other arm wrestling with the monitor. I punch in a couple of buttons to shut it up, but I’m too forceful with it, and the whole thing upends, clattering to the ground.
Kenzi’s hand flies to her mouth, and she breaks into laughter.
“Fuck it,” I say. “They can add it to my hospital bill.”
“How long do we have before someone comes to make sure you’re not dead?”
“I’d give us five minutes.”
“Hmm, what can we get up to in five minutes…?”
“Let’s find out.”
I swallow her in my arms and kiss her so roughly, I’m sure both our lips will be bruised later.
This hospital bed has left me feeling like a ghost of myself, but with every soft moan that falls from Kenzi’s lips, I feel myself come alive more and more. The current state of my body can’t keep up with the force of my desire, though, and as I hook an arm around her to thrust upward, I’m awakened from my lust-stupor by a sharp bolt of hot pain in my side.
I grimace and growl through it. Immediately, Kenzi stills, and her eyes go wide with worry. She lifts my shirt, gingerly touches the space around my stitches, and says, “Shit, sorry—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, but even I can hear the strain in my voice. “Just…maybe we go slow.”
“I can go slow,” she says, pushing away the dark strands of hair that have fallen in front of her face.
For a second, the two of us catch our breath. Recalibrating.
And then…something shifts in the energy between us.
I’m buried inside of her, and she’s completely naked on top of me. But when we kiss again…it feels shy. Her lips brush against mine hesitantly, curious, and I apply pressure back, consenting, wanting.
We feel like two people kissing for the first time.
I share her breath. She shares mine. We savor each other in a way we haven’t before. I worship her—touching the smooth curve of her thigh. The fullness of her hips. The warmth of her breasts. And, finally, cradling her face, fingers dipping into the thickness of her hair.
There is not an inch of this woman that I don’t cherish. I have a hard time forming the words, but I tell her so in lingering touches. The brush of my thumb behind her ear. I drop my head against hers and close my eyes so I can listen to the hitch in her breath. I focus on the softness of her skin and each slow undulation of her body. She balances herself on top of me, and her fingers dig into my thighs every time she lowers herself back down again.
We’re in sync now. Flowing. I keep one hand in her hair, encouraging her pace, and my other hand I move to her mouth. She parts her lips for me, and I slip two digits in, wetting them on her tongue, and she sucks gently before I draw them back. I drop my hand between her legs and find that small bundle of nerves that makes her gasp.
The pain in my side has mostly gone away—it’s just a low, dull throb now—and fuck it, because this moment is too goddamn good and I want to savor every second. I rub her in just the way she likes, and I can feel her thighs start to tremble and her body grow tight around me.
I close my mouth over hers in the exact moment we crest together. It’s almost blinding—the pure pleasure of it—and I moan and she whimpers and we sink into each other, unable to get close enough. She ruts her hips against me, shivering as she comes down from her high, and I hold her tightly and feel our bodies pant, breathing out of rhythm.
There’s a light knock on the door. “Dr. Donovan?” a nurse tries. “Everything okay?”
Quickly, Kenzi covers her mouth, quaking with laughter.
“Everything’s fine!” I call out. “Just a machine malfunction. Thank you! Come back later!”
I wait until I hear the click of her shoes vanish down the hall before I release my hold on Kenzi. She laughs into my shoulder now.
“Fuck,” she says, the both of us still hazy. “That was…uh…”
“If you say better than the first time, I’m going to push you off this hospital bed.”
Her laughter escalates, her breath hot on my shoulder. This time, I join in, laughter escaping me.
I feel lighter than I have in years.
