Page 67 of All I Have Left

EVIE

A fter forty-two days in the hospital, Grayson is being released. It’s a Monday, not that it matters. For some reason, that saying it’s the Mondayest Monday ever rings in my head.

Probably because Grayson is in a horrible mood.

“Are you excited?” Leigha beams at Grayson, who is currently struggling to tie his shoes.

Yesterday he could.

Today, as with every day, he struggles with simple tasks.

Balance is a huge issue for him, as is hearing.

Currently, he can’t hear out of his left ear, but they tell us with a surgery, they can fix that.

He’s had three surgeries since he’s been here.

The first one to fix the initial bleed. The second one when they found a new spot bleeding, a third to put back the piece of his skull they took out.

The worst for me was watching him be extubated and having the chest tube removed.

But this, watching him struggle to do simple tasks after he’s been through so much, feels worse. Things he used to do, he can’t.

Naturally, given his salty attitude today, and every day, he doesn’t answer Leigha.

I nudge his shoulder with my hand, urging him to reply to her. She smiles at me, winking. She loves teasing him. I think he’s her favorite patient so far.

With a heavy sigh, he rests his head in his hands, his elbows planted firmly on his knees. He lifts eyes to Leigha. “Ecstatic,” he mumbles, fumbling with his shoelaces again.

“I can help with that.” I kneel next to the stool his foot is propped up on, wanting to help him. He has to use a stool to tie his shoes because he can’t bend over. If he does, blinding headaches.

He takes my hands in his and gently pushes them away. “I can do it.”

He’s not harsh in his words, but it still tears at me that he refuses my help.

I back away and let him. Leigha wraps her arm around my shoulder. “Remember what I said. He’s not going to be himself for a while. He’s still got a long road ahead of him.”

And he does. Physical therapy, medications, surgeries, you name it and it’s in his future for the next year.

I can’t imagine how daunting that feels to him knowing his life, and mine, are irrevocably altered from here on out.

They were the day Shane entered my life.

No, the day Grayson left. That’s when it changed.

For the next four hours, we go through the discharge process. It’s overwhelming for me, and I’m sure Grayson. Speech therapy comes in, hearing, orthopedics, physical therapy, neuro exams. Hell, he even has a cardiologist do an exam.

Through all that, he remains frustrated and agitated in his responses and gentle with me. Constantly aware of my presence in the room, both his doctor and his nurse notice the change in his personality is far more dramatic when I leave the room.

I’ll admit, this gives me a certain amount of hope.

Before we leave, Dr. Nehls gives Grayson the sex talk.

He’s yet to even kiss me, other than on my forehead, or do anything aside from hold my hand.

So I wonder if it’s even on his mind. There’s been a couple instances where he’s stared a little longer than usual and I helped him take a shower twice now and he obviously could still get erections so that’s looking up. Literally.

But all that comes to a halt when Dr. Nehls says, “Three months.”

“Three months?” he asks, a blank expression on his face as he fumbles with the cane they gave him to help his balance. He glances at me and then Dr. Nehls. “Seriously?”

Dr. Nehls holds up his hand, smirking at me. “Just relax. There’s a reason for it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Grayson sighs.

“The three months start from the time of the initial surgery.” I look to Grayson at the pause in Dr. Nehls words, but his face remains a constant state of pissed off.

“But sex increases intracranial pressure and can cause a reduction in cerebral perfusions. Even just a drop in cerebral perfusions pressure could lead to stroke or seizures. Because you had numerous dural contusions, this is not something we want to risk.”

Rolling his eyes, Grayson shifts his position in the chair, his eyes meeting mine. I can tell he wants to say something, but he doesn’t.

“When you guys do engage in sexual activity again, after your three-month neuro exam, which is only six weeks away, it’s important to be careful of any positions that involve straining, heavy lifting or pressure on your abdomen.”

“So pretty much she’s not allowed to touch me,” he grunts, fury flashing in his eyes as he knocks over the cane beside him. “Awesome. Can’t work, can’t drive, can’t have sex… might as well be dead.”

This isn’t the first time Grayson has said the words might as well be dead. His reactions are warranted. All this feels overwhelming for him. The list of things he can’t do far outweighs the ones he can.

As we’re leaving the hospital and set to head back to Pinckard, Frankie calls me. Four times. I return her call when we’re in the parking lot while Grayson’s being wheeled out in a chair, which annoys him further. “I can fucking walk,” he tells Leigha. “I just can’t have sex.”

She leans in, her chin on his shoulder. “For forty-two days I’ve been right by your side through all this, putting up with all your crap, at least let me wheel ya out, dude. I feel like I’m dropping my kid off at college.”

He mumbles something else at her, which causes her to laugh, and I’m bummed I missed what he said.

He, however, doesn’t laugh. I haven’t heard him laugh yet.

We’ve gotten about two smiles from him since he woke up.

Today certainly didn’t seem like it would be one of them.

They tell me this is normal. People with traumatic brain injuries suffer, from what they say, with lack of apathy.

And believe me when I say, he lacks fucking apathy lately.

“Hey, Frankie.” I push my hair from my face as I carry Grayson’s bag over my shoulder. “We’re getting ready to leave.”

She sighs. “Okay. We’ll be here. Gramps and Grams are here. They want to see him.”

“He said they’re fine, but don’t invite anymore people over,” I whisper into the phone. “He’s not in the best of moods. They gave him the ‘you should refrain from sex’ talk.”

Frankie laughs. “They warned him about cerebral perfusions, didn’t they?”

“Yep.”

“Poor guy.”

We’re at the car and Grayson’s staring at a bird in the parking lot blankly. As I hang up with Frankie, Leigha helps him stand and then hugs him. He surprisingly returns the hug and thanks her. I’m kinda bummed she got the first hug.

We say our goodbyes and we’re left alone outside. It’s a warm August night, the sun has set, the humidity licking my skin when I’m loading Grayson’s bag into the back of my car.

Suddenly, I feel two hands on my waist, turning me, and I’m pressed up against the side of the car.

Grayson’s breath hits my face, and then slowly, as if he’s unsure, his hands slide up the side of my body to my face.

“You’re just as beautiful as I remember.

” His resonating voice is a whisper, the orange glow from the streetlight illuminating the side of his face.

As he searches my face, he cups my cheeks in his hands and then leans in.

His eyes, wild with lust, hold mine. From one breath to the next, his mouth crashes to mine, for the first time in forty-two days.

At first, I don’t know how to register the kiss but my desire for him, for this, surges through me and I find myself melting into him.

I think I gasp, shocked, my lips parting over his.

A low moan comes from the back of his throat when my tongue entwines with his.

There, in a parking lot, we share a slow kiss that reaches every part of my body.

Drowning in the sensation of him, it’s hard to hold back but I know I need to.

His tongue slips past mine, and the hunger in his kiss is so tangible that I lose myself in him.

Grayson is the first to pull back, his mouth breaking from mine, our breaths panting together as one.

He holds the nape of my neck, sighing, and I revel in the fact that he’s touching me again.

“I’ve been dying to do that for weeks,” his husky voice pants, and then he brushes his lips so gently it sends chills up my spine.

“I know what you mean,” I whisper, my words trembling, ready to hump his leg right here in the parking lot.

Moving his hand from my cheek, he traces a finger down my jawline, and then my collarbone. A warm, soothing ache seeps into my chest and spreads through my entire body. Stepping back, Grayson suggestively smirks and pushes away from me, and gets into the car.

Shit, I think I’m sweating. I sigh softly.

I might not have got the first hug, but goddamn, I got the first kiss, and the first dirty smirk.

That’s enough for me. I stand there for a moment, breathing in deeply, comforted by the sensations he evokes in me, and that we still have that, even if the kiss had been momentary .

In the car, I look over at him and though he’s tense, as if he’s not sure what happens now, he’s still my everything. He makes me feel so alive and whole, and desired. An emotion I thought I’d lost in the bed of his truck that night.

The drive is relatively quiet. We stop by the pharmacy, get supper to go, and he eats his first hamburger, which he practically inhales, and I enjoy a milkshake for the first time in months.

An hour outside Pinckard after a forty-five-minute nap, he touches his hand to my thigh once and says, “You haven’t been eating much, have you?”

“No, I suppose not.”

He nods, his eyes on the road, his hand leaving my thigh.

And then comes the question I thought maybe I wouldn’t hear from him. “Where is he?”

Fear jolts my chest. “Who?”

His head lolls to the side, away from me. “You know who,” he says, his words holding a certain edge I hadn’t expected.

I nod, my bottom lip between my teeth. In the darkness, I can’t see his facial expression, and I think maybe that’s why he chose now to ask. Up until now, Grayson hasn’t asked about how he ended up in the hospital, though he was told by me, and the police, that Shane hit him in the head with a bat.

He didn’t ask for details, and I didn’t give them.

“He’s in jail,” I tell him.

I notice his body tense at my words, his silence deafening. He doesn’t respond. I can see the muscles in his jaw clenching as he shakes his head, an internal conflict festering and I think I have an idea why.

I had hopes that today would be the day our happy ever after started. As I watch him sleep, I’m beginning to understand that sometimes those happy-ever-after endings don’t exist. At least it feels that way. They take a lot of freaking work to make happen.