Wild and Free (The Wilder Brothers)

“I think you could’ve done without the ‘about’ part,” I said.

“Here, let me help you with those eyes.”

A warm washcloth came down around my face as the crust was slowly wiped away. My eyes fluttered open and the sharp lighting of the room made me squint. Every muscle contracted as I went to sneeze, and the searing pain that rushed through my body made me nauseous.

“On a scale of one to ten—”

“Eleven,” I said. “The pain’s an eleven.”

“I see this isn’t your first rodeo then. You know, your brother was in here a few weeks ago with a cut in his hand.”

“Comes with our profession,” I said.

“So, while I get you some stronger pain medication, you want to tell me what happened?”

I looked over at the nurse for the first time and took her in. She was older, with wisps of gray and white in her hair. There were large bags underneath her eyes, which told me she had worked through the night on her shift. She fiddled with my I.V.s before drawing out a syringe, then she screwed it into the tubing and slowly pushed something in that immediately made me feel warm and relaxed.

“Couldn’t sleep last night, so I went to the site my brothers and I are currently working on,” I said.

“You mean the house you guys are restoring,” the nurse said.

“Yep. All of the windows have to be replaced, and I knew storms were rolling in over this weekend. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone: work myself until I was tired and get the windows put in before the rain kicked up.”

“Well, you almost killed yourself. They found little slivers of glass in your wound. If those had gotten into your bloodstream, it would’ve been a bad day for all of us.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t called my family yet if you know who I am,” I said.

“Everyone around here knows the Wilder family. You guys are local legends. Some of the richest people in Charleston hire you guys to restore houses to their former glory after purchasing them for their own families.”

“At least we have a decent reputation.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the nurse said with a grin.

I chuckled, but despite the pain medication, I still felt a twinge of discomfort.

“Did you not have a cell phone with you while you were working?” the nurse asked.

“That was the stupid move in all of this,” I said.

“That was the stupid move? Not the

‘working until all hours of the night’ or the ‘going up a ladder by yourself’ or the ‘slipping and falling onto broken glass’ part?”

“In my defense, the glass wasn’t broken before I fell into it.”

“Well, it sure as hell is broken now,” she said, giggling.

I smiled and shook my head as I peeled the hospital blanket up. I was lucky, despite trying to make light of the situation. My injuries could have been much worse. Hell, my injuries could have killed me had that glass window shattered in any other pattern than the one it did. I looked down at my bare stomach and saw a significant amount of gauze. That wasn’t good. And there were twinges of blood permeating through the top of it as well.

“Here, it’s time for me to change that dressing anyway,” the nurse said.

She pulled the blanket from my fingers and began to slowly peel the tape from my skin. And when I took in the sheer amount of stitches, my eyes widened.

“Forty-two stitches on the surface and thirteen dissolvable stitches inside. The piece of glass was jagged, so some punctures were deeper than others.”

Fuck. I wouldn’t work for weeks with this type of injury.

“Do you want me to give your family a call now that you’re awake?” the nurse asked.