Page 33 of Best Frenemies

“Yeah,bro.” I nod. “I mean, we are at the hospital. Surely someone can help you with your crappy vision.”

Nurse Llama snickers from her spot at the foot of my bed, and she and Mack exchange some short conversation that I couldn’t care less about. I close my eyes instead and think about how good it feels to take a little nappy nap.

“Okay, Katy. I got your foot all cleaned up and put a numbing cream on it. Dr. Johnson will be in shortly to put a few stitches in.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

She smiles. Mack laughs.

And like a secret spy agent lady, I entertain myself by flipping Mack off behind my hand…again.

Suck on that, Mack Attack.

Mack

Katy stows her hands once more, having just attempted to hide her flipping of the bird behind a hand she put in the wrong place once again, and laughs her head off for the fifteenth time.

She’s been the instigator of a riot, shouted complimentary things about my ass cheeks no fewer than a dozen times, and actually thrown down with a man who completed eleven years of schooling after high school alone just to have to deal with her morphine-drunk ass.

And for some insane reason, I’ve loved every minute of it.

I’ll take the double-morphine-dose-needing, doctor-kicking, gluteus-maximus-loving version of Katy over the Mack-hating one any day.

“You’re good at this, Doc. I can’t feel a thing,” Katy states, her eyes closed and a giant smile on her face.

Dr. Johnson isn’t in the room anymore. He finished up with her sutures about ten minutes ago and already headed to his next patient’s room.

Clearly, that second dose of morphine has her flying high into the sedative sky now.

“Dr. Johnson is all finished, Katy,” Donna tries to explain to her for the tenth time. “You’re all fixed up, and it won’t be too much longer before you’re discharged.”

“Damn, that was quick,” Katy says. “Super fucking quick.”

I bite my lip to fight my laughter. See, the thing about Katy Dayton is that she never curses. But as it turns out, Katy Dayton on morphine cursesa lot. If you asked anyone here at Destin Regional Medical Center, they’d tell you that fuck is her favorite word.

“Are you going to be with her for the next twenty-four hours?” Donna asks, and I nod.

“Yes. We’re staying in the same condo all week.”

“We weren’t supposed to be!” Katy blurts out and starts cackling. “But we’re stuck together like glue. I even saw his ass cheeks yesterday. His fucking ass cheeks, Domma Llama! Can you believe it?”

Obviously, Donna believes it. Partially, if not wholly, because this is the forty-seventh time she’s hearing about it.

All I can do is shake my head on a laugh and look back at Donna again. “I assume she’s not fit for solitude until the pain medication wears off completely.”

“I am, too, fit for schlongs and ’tude!”

“You’re fit for something, girl,” Donna mutters good-naturedly. “Fit to be tied.”

Katy’s laugh is nearly identical to the hyenas inThe Lion King.

Donna’s smile is amused as she types a few notes into the computer near Katy’s bedside, locks the screen, pushes the computer cart into the corner of the room, and heads for the door before looking back at me. “Just sit tight, and I’ll get her discharged out of here in the next twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you,” I murmur with a tip of my chin and a grateful smile.

“Thank you, Domma!” Katy shouts at the top of her lungs. “You’re a fucking goddess!”

I can hear all of the other nurses’ laughter from the hallway.

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