Fifth a Fury (Goddess Isles 5)

I’m mad.

I’ve officially gone crazy.

If Louise wasn’t here, I could’ve fooled myself into thinking this had all been the strangest dream.

Swallowing hard, I forced away morbid humour and shivery stress, sitting heavily on the bed. “Please tell me he’s going to be okay.”

“Louise, what do you need?” Joe, one of her Geneva team who’d been couch surfing for weeks, bowled through the villa followed by Steph who was young but smart.

“I can help too,” Steph said. “Need an injection of epinephrine?”

Louise didn’t reply, her entire focus on Sully. “Mr. Sinclair, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

The monitor revealed a healthy rhythm but no sign he’d heard her.

My entire body felt like jelly. Quivering, terrified jelly. “Come on, Sully. Please.” I clasped my hands, fighting the urge to touch him while three doctors hovered with urgency.

With her lips thin and mouth bracketed with strain, Louise did what I’d done when I’d woken to Pika’s chaos and made eye contact with Sully. I’d pinched myself to try to snap out of a hallucination I wanted more than anything to be real. She pinched Sully to see if he was still with us or once again unreachable.

She pinched him so hard, she almost punctured the skin of his forearm.

The slightest blip on the heart monitor hinted his system felt that but was either too exhausted from previous conversation or too stubborn to wake.

I stayed silent while Joe passed her a small torch and she peeled open his eyelids, shining the light into Sully’s bright blue pupils. She stared forever. She made all my doubt crest with new pain.

“Diagnosis?” Joe asked, his blond hair in disarray from springing from bed and racing through a moonlit island.

Louise didn’t reply as she palpitated Sully’s joints, ran her hands over the areas of healing bone and ribcage, and checked his temperature with a thermometer in his ear. Finally, she muttered, “He’s stable. He’s reacting to pain and light stimulus. That means his brain is functioning at a higher level, and he’s successfully waking from his non-responsiveness.”

My heart cracked like a delicate piece of china, shattering with hope. “So…even though he’s under again, he’s still with us?”

She nodded, swiping her auburn hair back into a ponytail. “There are stages to waking up. Some patients cycle through these for a while. Sometimes they’re agitated and confused as they relearn motor skills and accept the overwhelming input from their senses. He might need to be restrained if he has difficulty with memory and behaviour. However, if he held a conversation with you, that means there is no speech or intellectual impairment, and he might already be in stage four.”

“Is that good?”

“Stage four is classified for higher level responses. Talking, doing familiar tasks without too much difficulty. However, he might not be aware of his limitations and push himself too fast. He might also suffer personality changes which—”

“He sounded and acted like himself.” I itched with the need to touch him, but I kept my hands braced together between my thighs.

“That’s a good sign. At least his repeated attempts at cardiac failure haven’t caused long term damage.” She smiled and relaxed a little. The other two doctors headed back to the living room, the sounds of coffee being made floated back. “Did he mention how he felt? Any mention of pain or stiffness?”

I smiled. “You’re going to scold me again.”

She crossed her arms. “Go on.”

“I gave him a massage. His joints are seized and muscles unbearably knotted. My eh…my touch gave him an erection.”

“Of course it did.” She rolled her eyes. “And…”

“He complained about discomfort with the catheter.”

“That shouldn’t make a difference. They’re designed to work in a flaccid and erect penis.”

My cheeks threatened to pink, even though I was fully capable of holding a professional conversation with a doctor who’d seen everything and touched everything that I had on Sully’s body. Standing, I asked, “Is it possible to remove it? Now he’s aware of his body again, he’ll be able to do what’s needed on his own.”

“Was he able to move at all?”

“He moved his head a little. And managed a quick twitch of his legs and arms, but that was about it.”

“In that case, the catheter should stay in. He’s lost a lot of strength. It will take time to sit and move, let alone walk to a bathroom.”

I glanced down at Sully and the unbearable urge to touch him rose again. This time, I couldn’t ignore it. Sitting in the same spot where I’d been when he’d demanded I kissed him, I nestled between his waistline and hip and rested my palm against his naked wire and node stickered chest.

The moment I touched him, I felt calmer.

My fingers tingled. Heat gathered in my palm. The flow of our chemical connection returned, and I bit my lip to stop fresh tears. The heart monitor threw in a skip and patter, revealing Sully felt it too.