Page 65 of Heart of the High King
Drystan smiled. “Yeah, I already asked. I’m going to get some fallen knight and sentinel volunteers if I can to help out the hospital staff but yeah, we can keep Mortis awake.”
“Happy,” Mortis rumbled through Rafferty’s head.
Within hours, Rafferty and Mortis were carefully loaded onto a special plane equipped to handle patients, and he did his best to sleep during the long flight while his poor wolf had to be tranquilized again since no one knew how he’d handle the trip. His gurney was in a brand-new room, and grinning nurses hooked him up to the machinery that monitored his every heartbeat. A striking woman in bright red scrubs strode in and shook Rafferty’s hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dermot. My name is Dr. Palesa Suricata. I’ve looked at your records while we waited for your flight, and we should probably have a talk.”
“Thank you for letting me transfer here, Dr. Suricata. I’d like you to be honest with me and tell me everything that’s wrong with me besides the things I can see. I know my hips are a mess, that I need a new rod in my left shin and a new right ankle, but that’s all.”
As the nurses left to care for other patients, the meerkat shifter dragged a chair to Rafferty’s bedside and once she was sitting, set the thick binder that he assumed were his records on her lap. Her expression when their eyes met was solemn. “I believe strongly in being honest with my patients. I know that Dr. Odocoileus believed you weren’t mentally stable enough to handle everything, but I disagree. You’ve spent over five months in a hospital and deserve to know why.”
“Thank you, I agree.”
“You arrived at the hospital in dire shape after being transferred through what we think is two human centers. The staff at Nashville realized immediately how ill you were and called in every druid they could to heal you.”
“I’m intolerant or something, right?”
“Yes, and they blasted you with tons of magic. It caused massive swelling that went on for days. There were many surgeries to salvage the tissue that was still living. The damage was catastrophic. Dermot, you lost most of your colon, half of your liver, which is slowly re-growing, one of your kidneys, gallbladder, spleen, appendix, and part of your stomach, as well as two lobes of your right lung. It’s incredible you survived, especially given the state of malnutrition, dehydration, and the too numerous to count wounds—many of which were infected—that you presented with.”
“They told me that there was damage; I didn’t know it was so extensive,” Rafferty said, his head spinning with the news. Wondering helplessly what other shocks were in store for him, Rafferty had never imagined it was so bad.
“I’ve looked at your labs since then, and the news is not good, Dermot. You aren’t healing because your aging process has sped up with each week that’s passed. We can only assume that’s as a result of you losing your dragon. It’s impossible to say for sure since you’re the only known surviving shifter without their beast. I know you want to walk, and I’m going to be honest—that’s not likely, but I refuse to accept the impossible. So since we can’t get you to heal, let’s have some heavy-duty braces made that will maybe allow you to get around with a walker. At the very least, we can get you in a wheelchair and out of this bed. I can get physical therapy in here tomorrow. The minute you can transfer yourself into the chair, we can remove the catheter so you can take care of that by yourself, okay?”
Rafferty nodded dumbly. “They talked about an ankle replacement.”
“I’m going to be more interested in getting those wounds on your hip to close. I have a human consultant of my own. I’ve already called him—let’s see what we can do with medicines to promote healing. And right now, I’d be worried that just like the other surgeries it wouldn’t take, okay?”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I still have to be on the special diet?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to be off it. We’re restricting things because we want to give you the best possible quality of life. Now, I’m going to get orthopedics in here to work on those braces and since I’m willing to do that for you, will you allow me to do some additional tests?”
Rafferty’s smile was wry. “There aren’t enough results in there for you?”
“There was extensive testing done when you first arrived at the hospital, but once your many abdominal surgeries were completed, the scans were stopped. Dr. Odocoileus didn’t find further studies medically necessary. I prefer an aggressive approach, and I want to know what’s going on everywhere. I’d also like to give you a better idea of how much time you have left, okay? Right now, it’s difficult to say, though I want you to be prepared that it might be shorter than we both think.”
To Rafferty’s surprise, tears threatened, and he was in no shape to hold them in. The day he’d made it out of the cave, he truly hadn’t escaped anything. There was no return, and he was barely aware that he’d nodded.
Standing, she patted his hand. “I know this is a lot, and I’m sorry. I’ll be back later to update you and answer any questions you have.”
“Thanks,” he managed, and she left him to his sorrow. For ten months, he’d held on to the hope that all he had to do was get through the next day and it was one step closer to being with Aleksander again. The truth was, he likely wasn’t going to see him because he might not even get out of a hospital. In the end, he’d fought and gathered strength he didn’t know he had, and his father and brother were still going to get their wish. His only revenge would be that they personally wouldn’t get to light his damn pyre.
Emotions pelted Rafferty, and heartbreak mixed with fury as he considered his future. Rafferty held on to the rage and dried the tears from his badly scarred face with his palms. This wasn’t how he’d planned, and while the doctors had their tests and their prognosis, no one had believed it was possible to survive losing their beast, but he had. So what if he was missing some organs? And so what if he had scars? Rafferty wasn’t dead, and all he had to do was stay focused on getting the hell out of his bed. Pushing aside the dire predictions, Rafferty vowed that he would not lose his resolve yet.
Perhaps the tests Dr. Suricata did would show that he was doing better, or perhaps her human doctor friend would be able to give better insight to help him. From the start, Rafferty hadn’t fully trusted the deer who’d fought with him and forced him to keep Mortis tranquilized for five damn months. For five additional ones, Rafferty had put up with his asshole family finding new and inventive ways to hurt him. There had to be more courage to find, and if Aleksander found out that he was so easily willing to throw in the towel, surely he’d think less of him.
Rafferty wrapped his arms over his chest. Those kinds of thoughts no longer helped him. Once believing Aleksander would not be left with a mate so mangled and that Rafferty would be healed, it turned out to be a fantasy. The mirror Rafferty had demanded in Nashville had done him no favors, and there wasn’t much of him that wasn’t covered with scars—not to mention the gray curls mixed in with black or the wrinkles that were accumulating as the weeks drifted by. But none of that compared to the damage inside him, so he needed to deal with the stark reality of his situation.
His soul was matched by Fate to Aleksander’s, and Rafferty believed strongly in not only her but that she’d gotten it exactly right for them. However, in this life, they would not be together again. Aleksander had no choice but to wait for him to be rebirthed, and Rafferty hoped that version number two of him wasn’t stupid enough to spend centuries being fed lies by sadistic men who masqueraded as family. As the tears slid from his eyes yet again while he continued to hug himself, Rafferty hoped Aleksander would remember him in some corner of his mind. More importantly, he asked Fate to bring him back swiftly, so he and Aleksander could rush headlong into a love that fueled them both.
