Page 9 of Locke

“I’m coming there. Don’t move.” He whispered, for some reason, he thought that if he said it aloud, he’d be in more pain. Though how that would come to be, he’d no idea. Dusty told her that he was hurt. “Don’t move. I’m on my way there now.”

While he didn’t have any idea how he was going to manage a stick shift, he let himself feel sorry for himself as he waited for help. Dusty didn’t feel like this when he was helping with the renovations. Thinking that he was ten years older than he’d been back then, he sat as still as he could, not even blinking the unshed tears that blurred his vision.

She kept talking to him, he knew to calm him down enough that she could get him help. She told him that she would contact the others, too. He didn’t object to that, hoping it would be one of his brothers who arrived first so he’d not be caught crying like a little baby in front of Alex.

He was never so glad to see someone than he was when Alex showed up. Crying because he really was sick with the pain, he asked her if she could help him stand up so that he could get into the car. Instead, she told him that he would get pain medication sooner if she called an ambulance to come to help him. Dusty told her that he’d love that as he cried a bit more.

When the ambulance arrived, he could have kissed each and every one of the men that had come with it. But he was really trying to hold his emotions intact until they asked him if he could stand up. He didn’t dare nod but said that he could. He couldn’t.

Throwing up everything that he had on his stomach, he passed out again. He wasn’t out for long, but it was long enough for his brothers to show up to help. There was no way that he’d be able to make it if he had to move again. The medics were taking his blood pressure when Alex came to hold his other hand.

“You’re going to be all right. I have faith in that.” He thanked her. “I don’t know what you did to yourself, but don’t you dare do that again. I mean it.”

He laughed, which made him cry out in pain just as one of the medics told him that he was going to give him something for the pain. It hit him hard, and he nearly fell out of the chair, feeling that good when he was startled out of his lack of pain by one of the medics pulling him right out of the chair.

More dizzy than he was sick this time, he was glad that when he woke up, he was in the ambulance and strapped in. Alex was still with him holding his hand and he couldn’t have been more happy that it was her instead of his brothers. She wouldn’t punch him around, telling him to get over himself.

When they took him out of the back of the ambulance, they rushed him to have an x-ray of his shoulders. Christ, it was a roller coaster ride the way he kept getting something for the pain and then passing out again. As soon as he was finished, them taking the pictures with him still on the gurney, he was never so happy that they had contributed a great deal of money for this hospital to keep it up to date. As he was being taken to a room, he was surprised that there were a lot of people, none of them family, waiting for him.

They were talking around him, which he didn’t mind so much as he was feeling the pain again while they cut off his shirt. It was the first time he’d really looked at his shoulder and could see a bruise just starting to form. They sat him up to hear his heart, and he heard Alex tell him that his back was nothing but a giant bruise. Having her take a picture with his phone’s camera, Dusty had to close his eyes and count in order for him to breathe through the horrific mess his back was when she’d shown him.

Dozing in and out, finally not being moved after they switched him to the emergency room bed, he saw that all of his brothers had joined him, and he was glad to see them. It was Locke who explained to him what the doctor had said when he came to see him.

“You have dislocated your shoulder. That’s an easy fix, he said, but it would be painful. There is also the fact that you have four broken ribs as well as a contusion on the back of your head. What the hell were you doing that you didn’t notice any of this?” He told Locke that he’d been in like a Zen mood getting the dining room fixed up. “I should hope that the next time you decide to move mountains, what the doctor said it looked like you’d done that you call one of us.”

Dusty had an IV in his arm now, and they told him that he could press the button for pain medication. But he was to limit it the best he could because he was going to have to have surgery on his back as one of the ribs needed to be realigned back in place.

Sometimes, he hated the fact that when he asked for a report on something, Locke didn’t waste words but told him straight up what was going on. So long as he didn’t move, not even to inhale deeply, he wasn’t hurting that much. Alex told him to not let the pain get too much. It would hurt him more.

“I love you, Alex. You have no idea how nice it is to have a woman’s hand to hang onto while hurting.” He looked at Locke. “If you don’t marry her and soon, I’m going to. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to all of us.”

Locke smiled and got down on one knee with a small box in his hand. Alex told him to get up and that this was no time for him to be a romantic idiot. In answer to her scolding, he told her that his family was all there and it was perfect timing as far as he was concerned.

Then he opened the box, and Dusty knew which ring he’d chosen from Martha’s collection. The sapphire was so beautiful that the only thing that he could safely compare it to was the look on Alex’s face when Locke asked her to marry him.

“Are you sure? Because if I answer you, I’m not going to wait around for you to figure out that I’m not right for you. Not to mention, you having any kind of affairs while I’m with you. It’s us, forever, or I’m not going to give you an answer.” He told her that he loved her and would for the rest of his days. And was too afraid of her to step out on her. “All right. I’ll marry you. I love you as well. But the first time you step out, it’ll be the last time you do. Understand me?”

“Yes. And you can count on me never hurting you. Physically, mentally, or verbally. I might say something that I would regret but I would never cause you pain if I can help it.” She looked at Locke’s brothers and asked them what they felt about her being Locke’s wife. Instead of answering her, they kissed her on her cheeks and told her that, like Dusty, they loved her as well. “No wedding but the courthouse or a big one with all the bells and whistles.”

Locke held her to him, and again, Dusty was jealous of the love that was all around the two of them. He thought, telling himself it was the drugs that if they were to bottle that feeling into a perfume, there wouldn’t be any use for divorce attorneys any longer.

He was taken to surgery just as the pain was becoming nearly unbearable again. But as soon as he was in the operating room, all bright lights and steel, he was given something that knocked him completely out. He did startle awake once when they moved him to the operating table, but almost as soon as he felt the pain, it was gone. He was a goner, too.

Dusty woke to find himself lying on his stomach with his face in a sort of massage table apparatus. He didn’t like being on his stomach. He didn’t even like sleeping that way. When he saw shoes, white ones that he’d seen the staff here wear, he asked if everything had gone as planned.

“I don’t know, Mr. Erikson. They did say that it was going to be painful going for a while. The doctor will come to see you. I’m going to call him now to tell him that you’re awake.” Dusty asked about his family. “Well, now that’s one I can answer. You’re still in recovery, but since you’re going to be with us for a while until you’re healed, they’re up in your room waiting for word on how you’re doing. I’ll call them in a few minutes for them.”

“Thank you.” He felt the same ball that he’d had in his hand when he’d been given drugs to himself and asked her if that was what it was. She told him it was, and then she told him the same thing that Alex had, don’t let the pain get out of control, or he’d take longer healing. Giving himself a bit more for the pain, he closed his eyes.

He didn’t know how long he was going to be in the hospital but really worked up enough energy to reason why he’d rather be home. At least here, he didn’t have to worry about tripping again, and he was sure that whatever he had waiting for him to return at his home would still be there when he returned. But this time, he’d ask for help before nearly killing himself with falling again.

Chapter 5

Locke decided that the next time he went to see his brother, he was going to kick his ass. The cabinet that he’d told him that he’d carried into the house weighed a ton. While he knew that it hadn’t had any of the linens in it nor the copious amounts of silverware, it was still heavy. He and his brothers were there to finish up the house before Dusty got home.

“Do you have any idea how I go about looking someone up for criminal records? I have to interview three people for the cook here, and I want to do a background check to see if they’re all right to have around all this wealth.” He asked her if she was getting cooks for all the houses. “We have one, correct? I mean, Ms. Bee is staying with us. Right?”

Locke showed her how to look them up on the computer that had been put in the kitchen after telling her he had no idea if she was staying or not. It hadn’t come up in their talking to her. But he did have a request of his own that he thought she could help him with.

---