Carlos Jimenez, unless Devon badly missed his guess, was probably only a few years older than him. The man just sat there staring at him and Devon was damned if he felt up to making small-talk at the moment. He tried twice to lift his arm to depress the call button he knew had to be somewhere on the rail. He needed someone to tell him what was going on, and a nurse, any medical personnel in fact was a better bet than Adrien’s step-father. Even if he wasn’t going by the slightly sour look on the guy’s face right now, Devon had gotten a strong sense of disapproval from the man the very first time they laid eyes on one another.
Carlos regarded Devon’s attempts to find and use his call light steadily. He did not speak. Devon tried to quirk an eyebrow at the other man sarcastically, but his face felt rubbery. In fact, his whole body felt slow to respond, and just wrong. After a few moments of mutual staring, Carlos gritted his teeth. A faint flush of red color rose in his cheeks. He growled out a handful of words.
Oh, ho. Now they got to the meat of the matter. Dios mio, the utter gall of some people never ceased to amaze Devon. Finally finding both the right button to put the head of his bed up and enough coordination to depress said button long enough to reach a fairly upright angle. Devon gave up on the hunt for the button to call a nurse for the time being.
“Mr. Jimenez, I know that you are not talking to me about age gaps in relationships. That would be just… hypocritical, now wouldn’t it? Why are you here anyway? No, never mind. Why am I here?”
Mr. Jimenez actually growled at him. Devon would have laughed, but something in the tightly pinched corners of the man’s mouth sparked his memory. Adrien had looked like that yesterday—or maybe it was this morning? The last time Devon saw Adrien—they… they argued… about being safe. And now Devon was in the hospital.
“Where is Adrien? What am I doing here? Why are you here with me—Aye Dios—did something happen to Adrien?”
Devon fumbled until he lowered the rail on the side of his bed, swinging his legs over the side and sitting fully up. He slid his butt to the edge of the bed, and tried to press his feet firmly enough against the cool linoleum of the floor to make up for the sluggish response of his muscles. Grasping the upper part of the side-rail in preparation for standing, Devon rocked back to push himself up into a standing position. A hand pressed down on his shoulder.
“Don’t try to get up… besides the fact that I don’t think you can stand properly yet, Adrien’s still in Recovery and his mother’s up there waiting for him. It’s—I admit I am angry. This should never have happened to Adrien.”
Mr. Jimenez paused for a moment. Devon looked up into his face, his gut clenching at the pain he saw reflected there. Carlos raised his eyes from where he clasped Devon’s shoulder. When he met the slightly older man’s gaze, Devon gasped. Carlos Jimenez spoke in a fierce, low voice, his eyes wet and hot as he finished speaking.
“At first we thought he’d been intentionally
stabbed, but he told the doctor he fell at your apartment. To find out he was hurt because of that pendejo loco… that man you allowed into your home. I cannot help but blame you.”
Devon gaped at Mr. Jimenez. He sucked air into lungs suddenly compressed by the weight of sorrow. Shaking his head, he tried to make sense of the jagged pieces of knowledge tossed at him.
“But what was Adrien doing at my apartment? I— we had a fight, and I was supposed to meet him later. Um, at Andy’s place, I think. Are you sure he was at my place?”
Carlos Jimenez kept that same steady regard on him, watching out of narrowed eyes nearly the exact shade of dark brown as Devon’s. A pang of regret shook Devon, squeezing his lungs tighter than before, and a sheen of moisture obscured Adrien’s father for a moment. Devon closed his eyes and concentrated on drawing air in and out of his newly inadequate lungs. After a moment he managed to force his breathing back into a rhythm close to normal. Blinking his eyes open, he met Carlos’ eyes. A wistful feeling curled once through his chest. Devon pushed the sensation aside, ruthlessly pushing it back until he succeeded in thrusting it to the far corners of his mind. He firmed his jaw and squared his shoulders.
Carlos watched him the whole while. When his gaze softened, and he wiped a hand over his face, Devon wondered exactly what he’d let show on his face. He stepped back, releasing Devon’s shoulder as he did so. For a split second, just before he lifted his hand, Devon flashed to a memory of the last time his Abuelo had rested his hand in the same place. The very next day, Devon had come out to his family, and his grandfather had never laid a hand on his shoulder again. The muscles in Carlos’ jaw flexed visibly, and his voice shook slightly as he spoke.
“Yes, he was at your place. When the police got there, the only one conscious was the cabron named Ronald Dieterman. He confessed to drugging you and Michael, and to causing the accident where Adrien was injured.”
Devon’s mind floundered in a morass of muddied images. His hands balled into fists on his thighs. “Why can’t I remember anything that happened after I dropped Michael off at the mall?”
Carlos gave him another long slow look, lifting and dropping one shoulder as he eased himself down into the bedside chair. “Probably a side effect of the drug Dieterman gave you. Don’t look so surprised by my knowing your stalker’s name. Adrien told us who he was.”
Devon stared at Carlos Jimenez in utter stupefaction as his mind circled around and around one fact. His voice wavered, cracking as he forced the words out asking for confirmation.
Mr. Jimenez nodded. An icy calm washed over Devon, starting at his feet splashing up until his skin was encased in a bitterly cold lack of sensation. He pushed himself clumsily to his feet. His knees buckled as soon as he was fully upright. Adrien’s step-father lurched forward out of the cracked plastic bedside chair he sat in only seconds before, just managing to catch Devon and ease him down to the floor. He gave a little half laugh that utterly lacked mirth.
Devon met Mr. Jimenez’ eyes squarely, fighting to push down a solid desire to deck the older man. He couldn’t fault him for putting Adrien’s needs first.
The door to Devon’s room began to open, and a nurse in white scrub pants and a bright blue top bustled into the room. “And how are you… what in the world is Mr. Soto doing on the floor?”
She rushed over fussing and clucking like a worried hen with a dozen newly hatched chicks. Under her direction, Mr. Jimenez finished lowering Devon to the floor where she did a quick head to toe assessment of him. Devon bit down hard on both his irritation at having his bare ass freezing on the floor and his more urgent desire to push her aside so he could take off in search of Adrien. His best bet for speedy information on Adrien rested in staying as much in Carlos Jimenez’ good graces as he could manage, no matter how that might gall. After a few moments, the nurse allowed that he might be able to stand up with some assistance. Devon got up with Carlos’ help.
Turning to the nurse, Devon smiled as he quickly scanned her nametag. “My apologies, Janice… I’m simply anxious to see my boyfriend. I hadn’t quite realized how shaky I was. Do you suppose you could find a wheelchair for us to use? I promise to be good and wait for one if you’ll promise to let me use one to take a trip up to the ICU.”
Janice eyed him wearily. “I don’t think that would do you any good, Mr. Soto, as Mrs. Jimenez has already made arrangements for her son to be transferred down here as soon as he is released from post-op recovery. They just called to say he would be coming down in a few minutes, and I wanted to let you know.” She pushed a long strand of blond hair off her forehead as she spoke, tucking it behind one ear. Smiling just enough to offset the pale mauve shadows under her eyes, she continued.
“I don’t know who Mrs. Jimenez knows to be able to shuffle things around the way she did. Normally a fresh post-op patient wouldn’t be sent to this floor, but I guess the powers that be felt it would be easier to send him here rather than shuffle you off to his room after we’d already gotten you settled. So your best bet for seeing him as soon as possible is to just sit tight in your bed.”
Devon decided that sitting down on the bed and allowing Nurse Janice to help him get situated again sounded pretty damn good. He still wasn’t exactly clear on all the details of what had gone down, but if someone was bringing Adrien to him now, he could hunker down where he was and wait. Carlos settled back into his cracked plastic chair, relief easing years from his face. Devon nodded to the nurse.
The first thing Adrien noticed as he swam up out of the sickly anesthetic sea he’d been swimming in was that his mother was singing his favorite lullaby from childhood softly to him in Spanish. The second thing he noticed was that Devon was nowhere to be seen. His throat hurt like he’d been giving head to the rock-man from the Fantastic Four, and someone had poured liquid fire all down the right side of his torso. Or, you know, maybe the big rock dude had gotten over excited by the wonders of Adrien’s headgiving.
Lynn Jimenez stopped singing. She reached over and patted Adrien’s hand. “No, mijo, you did not do any naughty things with the Rock Man from your cartoon. I tell you again, you had a breathing tube in your throat. This is why swallowing is painful. Your side hurts because of the undoubtedly beautiful blown glass sculpture you fell on, and the scalpels of the surgeons who repaired you.”
Adrien blinked repeatedly. His eyes were sticky. Pulling again at the tethers around his wrists, he rasped at his mother. “Somebody tied my hands down.”
She smiled at him. “ Si, mijo. You have all sorts of things you could pull out, and the good doctors and nurses have worked very hard to put these things into you. When you can remember that you have asked these questions before, I imagine I can get them to release your hands.”
Well, that made sense. “Thirsty.”
Lynn Jimenez’s full lips curved up at the corners. “I can give you some ice chips, and if you keep those down your pretty nurse and I agreed you could graduate to ginger ale.”
She scooped up a spoonful of ice, and Adrien opened his mouth as eagerly as any baby bird ever did. His mother slid the ice off the spoon into his mouth and for a moment all Adrien could feel was the rapture of coolness on his hot dry tongue. The tissues of his mouth soaked up every bit of moisture from the scant bit of water produced.
“More, please?”
The rich sound of his mother’s gentle laughter soaked into the parched places in his soul.
“Of course, mijo.”
She fed him several more spoonfuls and then made him wait for fifteen minutes before she would allow him to have the ginger ale he could hear taunting him with a fizzing promise of blissful wet deliciousness. Someone farther down the ward started making awful retching sounds. Adrien wrinkled his nose at his mom.
“We need a mute button for that.”
His mother laughed again, and some of the tightness around her eyes eased. She wrinkled her nose back at him before she answered.
“I see you are really fully out of the anesthesia aren’t you, mijo? If you feel up to comments like these, I think it is time for the nurse to check you again. Hold on a moment.”
She stood, her sleek black hair falling in a silken curtain down to her mid-back. A jolt of fear shot through Adrien as she stepped out of his line of sight. Even the gardenia scent of her lotion faded under the pungent smells of antiseptic, sorrow and fear. He hadn’t realized the familiar scent of her lotion was even there until it faded. Adrien bit down on his bottom lip. He wouldn’t cry out for his mother like a little boy. He wouldn’t. He—
“Here, mijo, I have found your pretty nurse.”
His mother was back at the foot of the bed, with a tall, blond male nurse. The man smiled faintly at Adrien. His cheeks were noticeably red, and Adrien could only imagine what outrageous things his wicked minded mother had been saying to the poor man. Only fools and his blinded by love step-father believed for even a second that his mother was as innocent and harmless as she looked for more than twenty seconds of being acquainted with her.
Adrien rolled his eyes at her before turning to the man. “Please excuse my mother. She likes to tease me.”
The nurse grinned at him. “Don’t feel bad. My mom would have already started taking measurements for your tux.”
Adrien laughed for exactly one and a half seconds. Then he spent the next sixty cringing and panting through the pain in his side. The nurse stepped forward, scooped up a pillow from the adjacent empty bed, and braced it against Adrien’s side.
“Sorry about that. My name’s John. If you need to cough or think you might laugh, the best way to keep it from hurting is to apply a little careful pressure… just be careful not to press on this tube, okay?”
As he spoke, John released Adrien’s hands from the restraints holding them. His hands were warm and soft and utterly unlike Devon’s. Adrien remembered all over again that he had no idea where Devon was.
Adrien, nodded at John, murmuring. “Thank you.” Turning his head to lock eyes with his mother, he asked the only questions that mattered to him. “Where are Devon and Michael? Are they okay?”
The tightness around his mother’s eyes came back a little. She squared her shoulders, lifting her chin as she spoke. “Devon and Michael are here. They are being treated for the drugs that man gave them. I talked to the director of nursing, and had them put on the same floor along with Andy.”
Adrien reached out to take his mother’s hand. “What happened to Andy? I don’t remember him being in the apartment with me.”
His mother shrugged one shoulder, the corner of her expressive mouth tipping up. “Ay-ay-ay. He was hysterical. We had to sedate him.”
Adrien bit his lip again. Yeah, that made sense. Crap-doodly. “Please tell me none of the others got hurt?”
Patting his hand, his mother clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. “No, no one else gave me grey hairs tonight. Really, Adrien, you all show up when I’m on shift in the ER? Aye, Dios, I thought my heart would stop when they called me back from my break to tell me that three of my boys were being treated.”
A lopsided smile crept across Adrien’s face. His madre always thought of them all as her boys. He turned his hand under hers, gripping it and pulling it up to his face to place a kiss on the back.
“I love you mom.”
Lynn Jimenez pressed her full lips together, and stamped her little foot. “Then show me by ceasing all these accidents, mijo! You are not indestructible. And neither is my heart.”
A lone tear began a slow descent along her caramel cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her free hand. Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on his hand. “Do not scare me so, Adrien.”
Easing her hand free, she pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before turning to his nurse. “Thanks for taking him down to the med-surg floor, John. I have to get back to the ER until they can get a replacement in for me. I know you’ll take good care of him and make sure he gets a decent nurse down there, or if he doesn’t, let me know.”
She kissed Adrien’s cheek once more, and then strode away. The scent of her gardenia lotion and body spray lingered this time.