"It's okay, you'll be able to talk soon," she told him and patted his arm. "They took the tube out after surgery, so that's why your throat hurts."
Surgery?
What kind of surgery had they done, he wondered. Then it hit him that he'd been paralyzed earlier, so he tried to wiggle his toes and nothing happened. Next, Ethan tried to move his legs, they were like fifty pound weights, useless. Frustration knotted up inside of him and he felt like he was going to explode like that house had done.
Focusing his energy, he croaked, "Booker?"
"Who is that?" she said adjusting buttons on a monitor, before turning back to him.
"Partner," he croaked and moved his hand up to
massage his throat.
"There were two other firemen that were brought in by ambulance. I don't think their injuries were life threatening," she told him kindly.
"Kid and father?" Ethan forced out in a hoarse whisper.
"Both were treated and released," she informed.
Relief swamped Ethan, at least something was working out right.
Tim had made it and wasn't seriously injured. He could support his kids, go home to his family.
And his efforts to save the child had been worth it...mostly.
"Your mom wanted to know when you woke up, are you up to seeing her?" she asked him
cheerfully.
"No, not right now," Ethan ground out through his teeth as pain shot up his back to between his shoulders.
He had to get his head right before he talked to anyone. Hell, he didn't know if his head would ever be right again.
How did one come to grips with being paralyzed? Ethan was a medical professional, he knew that's what was going on here.
"Surgery...was it successful?" he asked pinning the nurse with his eyes. Ethan knew it was a stupid question, because his legs weren't working, but he needed to hear it.
Her smile faded and her brows pinched, then she told him, "The doctor will be in to talk to you in a few minutes."
Ethan had a lot of close calls lately and had managed to escape them just fine. It looked like his luck had just run out. He didn't need to talk to the doctor, the pity in the pretty nurse's eyes told him all he needed to know.
***
"Mama!" Ethan yelled from the bedroom. He needed to go piss, and he needed help getting out of the damned bed.
It had been t
wo months since the doctor had told him he might never walk again, and since then the four walls of this bedroom, his childhood room in his mother's house, had become his life.
Ethan had lost his job, his apartment, his
life.
His mother, father, the doctor, they were all after him to go to therapy.
For what? More frustration?
At his last appointment, Ethan had
pinned the doctor down about his prognosis, and had been told even with therapy, any improvement would probably be a long time coming, if he ever saw any improvement at all. Two vertebrate were fractured, one displaced and compressing his spinal cord. They had done surgery to shore things up in there, but there were no guarantees he'd ever be able to walk again.
What the hell did it matter if he was vertical again
anyway?
He wouldn't ever be able to do the things he had before. Rock climbing, hang gliding, firefighting, all of those things would be off limits to him
forever. Being able to stand did not mean that he would ever be useful again, or have any kind of quality of life.
So Ethan wasn't going anywhere, there wasn't anything to be gained.
When he first got out of the hospital, Ethan's firehouse buddies and friends had come by to try and see him, Sarah the pretty kindergarten teacher he'd been dating for four months before the accident had too, but Ethan didn't want anyone seeing him like he was, so they quit trying.
He was fucking pathetic
, mentally and physically. He couldn't even go take a piss by himself. His dick probably didn't even work. He had no idea, because he was too damned scared to masturbate and find out. Below the waist he felt nothing, except an occasional tingle or shooting pain, both of which were probably just phantom sensations.
On top of that, the head injury he had sustained had his mind wandering off when he was trying to form sentences. The doctor said that would go away, he just had what amounted to being punch drunk from the concussion, but dealing with it now was frustrating. Combined, all of that made for one pathetic situation, one pathetic man, or half a man.
Ethan was thirty years old and his life was over.
Maybe he'd just get them to give him a damned catheter then he wouldn't have to get up at all. "Mama!" he yelled again and tried to sit up, but his muscles were so weak, he plopped back down on the pillow.
The damned pain medication they'd given him made him dizzy and uncoordinated. He couldn't do without it though, when he tried he felt like someone was stabbing him in the back.
His mother appeared in the doorway and
like they were all the time lately, her eyes were sad and frustration lined her face. "What do you need, Ethan?" she asked trying to mask her disappointment from him.
Those lines in her face told him this situation was affecting her as much as it was him, and guilt tried to take hold inside of him, but he shoved it back then told her,
"I need to go to the bathroom."
"Then get out of the bed, get into that wheelchair and go," she told him shortly.
"My back hurts mother, and I'm weak. I just need help getting up."
"You're weak because you won't get out of that damned bed and go to therapy."
"Therapy is gonna do what? Make me be able to be a
mobile
paraplegic? You heard the damned doctor, he said it probably wouldn't do anything."
"And laying in that bed wasting your life is going to do something?" she
countered with a hand on her hip.
"Just help me get
the hell out of this bed,
please
," he grated then tried to sit up and gasped as pain shot down his legs then disappeared.
He didn't want to hear any
more of his mom's logic, it was too logical. All Ethan wanted to do was wallow in the funk he'd been in for two months, embrace it as his new reality. He didn't need her telling him he was a pathetic loser. Ethan knew.
"I'm not helping you do a da
rned thing if you're gonna cuss at me, except wash your mouth out with soap!"
"I'm sorry mama," he said
and closed his eyes then huffed out a breath fighting off the burning behind his closed eye lids. "I'm feeling sorry for myself, and taking it out on you. Thank you for helping me," he told her.
He heard her walk across the room, then felt her hand on his shoulder, "Ethan honey, you've got to try.
The doctor didn't say therapy wouldn't help, he said you'll get as much out of therapy as you put into it, but ultimately your body will determine where you wind up."
Looking up into her worry-filled blue eyes, he begged,
"Please, just leave it alone, mama, I don't want to do it."
If he
tried and failed, Ethan knew he wasn't going to be able to survive it. Staying in the place he was now and accepting things was best for him. She just didn't understand.
"Come on, let's get you up." His mother was petite and he knew lugging him around and
lifting him wasn't good for her back, but what choice did he have?
"Maybe we should look into getting a nurse
," Ethan suggested.
The insurance he had would pay for it, he was sure. They were going to pay for the therapy he wasn't taking.
He'd also have his disability payments, as soon as he worked up the motivation to get that set up. Totally disabled and basically bedridden at thirty years old was not something he ever imagined being, or wanted to admit to. Swallowing that final bitter pill was something he hadn't worked up to yet.
Ethan was an athlete,
cocky and overconfident at times. He'd taken his physical ability and his mortality for granted all his life. He sought out risks that would turn most people's stomach, because he lived for those adrenaline rushes. He had saved quite a few lives, but he had ruined his own in the process.
For thinking he was invincible, he was paying the ultimate price, which wasn't death, it was living like he was dead until he quit
breathing.
Even if his legs did start working again,
he would never be able to work as a fireman, or a Spec Ops Paramedic again. His work with the Texas Task Force 1 Search and Rescue Team both in the state and in response to national emergencies was over. Hell, he couldn't even be a regular paramedic with all the bending and lifting that was required.
All the skills he'd worked so hard to
learn and perfect, advanced life support techniques for swift water and flood rescue, cliff rescue, confined space rescue were as useless to him now as his legs.
His mother pulled his upper body
toward the edge of the bed, and Ethan gritted his teeth against the pain that shot through his back, then used his hand to shove his dead legs off the edge of the bed, while she helped him turn.
When he managed to sit,
Ethan looked up at the doorway and his sister Terri was standing there, right in front of her husband, Joel. Both wore disgusted expressions and Terri's hands were on her hips.
"What the hell, Ethan?" she asked and shook her head. "Mama said you were being a slug, but I didn't believe it."
"A slug?" Ethan repeated then laughed sharply, before shooting his mother a look. "What am I supposed to be doing, mom, running laps round the house?"
Terri walked across the room to the bed and stopped to say angrily,
"What you're supposed to be doing, brother, is getting out of that bed and getting your life back. You didn't die, Ethan, stop acting like you did!"
Emotion shot up to his throat and he cleared it.
"I wish I had died, sis...this
is
my life," he told her darkly and waved his hand toward the walls of the bedroom.
"Stop!" she
shouted then threw her arms around his neck. Guilt poured through him when he felt Terri's tears on his shoulder. "Don't you
ever
say that again, Ethan Cassidy."
His
eyes drifted over to the doorway and met those of Joel Rhodes. His brother-in-law had remained silent thus far, but Ethan could see that he was upset, because his wife was upset.
Dammit
, Ethan just wished everyone would leave him the hell alone. He felt closed in enough as it was without those who cared about him adding to that feeling. "I need some space, Terri," he mumbled into her hair and pushed her away.
Terri scrubbed at her eyes with her fists
, before telling him angrily, "Well that's too darned bad, Ethan, because you're not gonna get it. I'm not letting you lay here in this bed and waste away."
"Well, unless you have a magic wand, I don't have much choice," he replied gravely.
"My magic wand is powered by your determination and will to live, Ethan. You are coming back to the ranch with me and
we
are going to get you back on your feet," she told him forcefully.
"Getting back on my feet isn't going to get my life back, Terri.
I still won't be able to work or do the things I used to do. That part of my life is over, and this is how things are now. Dead legs, dead head," he told her with a short bark of derisive laughter as he tapped the side of his skull.
"You won't be mountain climbing or swimming with sharks, you shouldn't have been doing that to begin with, I've told you that for years
, but you will be able to walk and do things. Who the hell says you can't work again? Your damn brain still functions."
"Not
very well. I feel like I've got cotton stuffed in my head."
"You've never been a quitter
, Ethan. You have fought for everything you've ever put your mind to, now I want you to fight for this," she told him firmly.
"I'll
never be able to be a firefighter again or be on the task force, and a medic who can't lift a patient is useless."
"Not a medic who has help
. Ethan, I'm pregnant and I won't be able to keep up with that job at the ranch for much longer. I want you to take over, but you've got to get your head out of your ass and get better. Things happen for a reason, and I think the reason this happened to you is so you can help me, and at the same time help yourself."
Panic shot through him as a spark of something too damned close to hope tried to take root in his brain. He got a grip on it and firmly locked it back where it belonged
, but embraced a brief moment of happiness at the newest development.
He was going to be an uncle, Terri a mother.