Trapped (Caged 2)

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I growled back.

“I might be a hospital surgeon now,” he told me, “but I was a medic in Desert Storm, and I know what post traumatic stress looks like, Liam. How long?”

“Fuck off!”

“Liam, you can’t just—”

“Enough!” Tria jumped up and pointed a finger at him. “Just leave him alone, all right? Now is obviously not the right time!”

She turned and shifted her body against the bed, placing herself between me and the doctor. She tightened her arms around me as she lay down by my side and took my face between her hands.

“You have a good thing there,” Dr. Baynor told me as he nodded toward Tria. “If you don’t do something to get over whatever happened to you, you are going to fuck it up. You let me know when you want to talk about it.”

“Fuck you,” I said again, but my words had lost their bite. I leaned heavily against Tria as she wrapped her arms around my head. Dr. Baynor left the room and closed the door behind him. A while later, Tria brought over the rice and stir fry she had made. The vegetables had obviously come out of a can, but it was still a whole lot better than what the hospital had brought me before.

It probably took a couple hours, but I managed to completely push my mother’s impromptu visit out of my mind.

I was never one to acknowledge what was going on in my head, but my mother’s face haunted my dreams the rest of the night.

Chapter 16—Shock the System

“Are you sure you can make it up the stairs?”

“I’m fine,” I muttered, not completely convinced it was true. I wondered how in the hell the landlord got away with not having an elevator in the building. I let Tria support my side as I hobbled up the steps and into the apartment.

Climbing into my own bed felt awesome. More than anything, I was just glad to be home. Tria propped up pillows and made me Swedish bean balls for dinner, w

hich she served to me in bed. I pretended to complain about it, but I loved every second of her fussing over me.

“I could kill Baynor,” I muttered as I stared at her backside while she collected the dishes from the nightstand and smoothed out the blanket on the bed.

“Why’s that?” she asked. “I thought you two got along great.”

“Whatever,” I shrugged. We had, actually, but I wasn’t going to let on about it. “His little ongoing list of shit to do and not do…asshole.”

“Why?” Tria asked. “What did he say?”

I looked at her and then toward the window. I really wanted to go out for a smoke—I hadn’t had one since before I went into the hospital. Glancing back at Tria, I smiled sheepishly.

“He said no sex,” I told her.

“Oh,” she replied as she looked away from me. “Um…for how long?”

“Until after my next checkup,” I told her. “Two weeks.”

Tria sat on the edge of the bed and fiddled with her fingers in her lap.

“It’s because…you know…the thrusting and shit. Might do some damage or whatever. I’m not supposed to move like that.”

“Right,” she said quietly as she continued to play thumb-wars with herself. A minute later she looked up at me quizzically. “What did he say exactly?”

“No intercourse until I clear you at your next visit,” I quoted.

“No intercourse?”

“Right.”

“So…well, what about…you know…other stuff?”