Page 152 of Begin Again, Part 2

While Eden planned her grand proposal and made plans for their future across town, Liam arose from his limbo and struggled to open his eyes. For a terrifying second or two, he thought he was dead or blind. He panicked, his heart racing out of control when he moved his head side to side, and he still couldn't see jack shit.

"Calm down," he told himself. "This is all a bad dream. Just a bad dream. You're not blind."

"What if you are?" A niggling voice whispered from somewhere inside his head. The thought was enough to make him want to weep.

"No!" he groaned, bringing his hands to his eyes. He'd pry his eyelids open if he had to.

But the fire burning his side warned him not to try anything stupid. He pressed his head on the pillow and stayed still, forcing himself to calm his tits as he took a long deep breath. He held it in and released it slowly while counting to five. A technique Linda had taught him back when he was still agitated over not being able to fuck anyone. Faced with the possibility of being blind or dead, Liam realised his problems were truly nice life problems back then.

He repeated Linda's mantra a few times until he was sure he was ready to open his eyes without losing his shit if it turned out he was indeed blind.

His breath shaky, his heart fluttering like a hummingbird flapping its wings, and his fingers digging into the itchy bedsheets covering the shitty mattress, Liam slowly tried to open his eyes again.

This time, a short, rough chuckle shot through his parched lips when he saw a sliver of light floating above, and relief burst through him, instantly activating all his numbed body parts like a shot of adrenaline when he made out the rectangular shape of the fluorescent light.

Slowly, the blurry shapes in the room came into sharp focus, and everything hit him all at once. The harsh chemical smell of disinfectant pervading his nose, the staccato beeping and wheezing of the monitors tied to his mangled body through a persistent connection of wires and tubes, and the fire razing his side.

If he could feel the pain and see the machines, he wasn't dead or blind like he'd thought.

And he wept with happiness and gratitude.

He wasn't grateful for the pain. But he sure was glad to be alive, and he'd see his Princess and son and their little warrior. He hoped Eden was indeed pregnant, and her announcement wasn't a dream made up by his fragmented brain when his body had begun to shut down from shock.

"Princess?" he croaked as he tried to sit up. But the searing ache in his abdomen sent him wailing like a baby back on the pillows. The monitor beside him complained and sent life-saving signals to the nurses puzzling at the nurses' station as his pulse and blood pressure shot through the roof.

Within seconds, the room was humming with doctors and nurses. Everything after that was a blur of faces and stethoscopes, of catheter bags being removed and IV drips being replaced, of unexpected announcements and disappointing news.

There were too many things happening all at once, and none of them mattered. Too many faces Liam didn't recognise, and not a single one he wanted to see.

He wanted to see his parents and sisters. But most of all, he wanted to see Eden and their son.

"I need a minute!" he growled at some point when he thought he'd go mad from yet another nugget of information the nurses and doctors thought he needed right this instant.

He didn't need anyone to tell him the bullet had grazed his kidney and missed his vital organs, and he'd be out of commission for two weeks at least. He was well aware of this. The totality of the pain pervading his entire body, from his toes to his temples, left him with little doubt he was physically fucked. For the moment at least.

He just wanted to see a familiar face. He'd even take his bratty sisters' at the rate things were going. But he'd try for Eden's first.

"I need to see Eden McBride and my son. Call her right now! She should be on my emergency contacts list."

"We've notified your family, Mr Anderson. But we need to take you into the examination room to run some tests. Your body took a serious beating, and we need to make sure everything is healing as it should," said the doctor who'd identified himself as Dr Knight, a Physician Anesthesiologist—whatever that meant— on his medical team.

"I don't care about all your tests." Liam gnashed his teeth as he slumped back on the bed. The sheer effort of speaking was too much for him. "I just want to see Eden and my son."

A pretty red-haired nurse, with tits that could make a man forget all his pain, politely asked him to calm down. They still had more tests to run, and he'd better behave himself because the doctor knew what was best for him.

Liam took one look at the tag team and knew they were banging each other despite the shiny ring on the doctor's left hand telling the whole world he was off-limits.

The way Ginger smiled at the doctor and found silly excuses to touch him every three seconds was a big giveaway. She should learn a thing or two about discretion from her bedmate. Dr Knight remained the picture of professionalism despite the buxom distraction at his side.

After a few minutes of their tense back and forth, it became clear this wasn't a battle Liam would win. He wasn't in one of his boardrooms. In this room, Dr Knight was the boss, and he'd better start toeing the line if he wanted to go home as soon as tonight.

"Okay," he relented and allowed the nurses to take him in for the dreaded tests and post-op examination.

Liam didn't know how long the poking and prodding lasted, along with his humiliation. And he must have passed out at some point because when he opened his eyes again, his parents were at his bedside.

Lois immediately burst into tears when their eyes locked. She reached over and embraced him, her tears slithering down his neck.

"Mom, I'm okay," Liam told her as he tried to push her away gently. She didn't weigh more than a feather, but after Aleksei's bullet had ripped through his flesh and his ruthless kicks and punches had left him black and blue, even the lightest of weights was too much for his battered body.

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