186|Arose

186|Arose
While Eden planned her grand proposal and made plans for their future across town, Liam arose from his limbo at last and struggled to open his eyes.

For a terrifying second or two, he thought he was dead or blind or both, and he panicked, his heart racing out of control when he moved his head side to side, and he still couldn't see jack shit.

"Calm down," he told himself. "This is all a bad dream. Just a bad dream. You're not blind."

"What if you are?" A niggling voice whispered somewhere inside his head.
The thought was enough to make him want to weep.

"No!" He groaned as he brought his hands to his eyes. He'd pry his eyelids open if he had to.

But the fire burning at his side warned him not to try anything stupid.

He pressed his head firmly on the pillow and stayed still, forcing himself to calm his tits as he took a long deep breath. He held it in and released it slowly while he counted to five— a technique Linda had taught him back when he was still agitated over not being able to fuck anyone.

Facing the possibility of being blind or dead, Liam realised his problems back then were truly nice life problems.

He repeated Linda's mantra a couple of times until he was sure he was ready to open his eyes without losing his shit if it turned out he was indeed blind.

His breath ragged, his heart fluttering like a hummingbird flapping its wings, and his fingers digging into the itchy bedsheets covering the shitty mattress, Liam slowly tried to open his eyes again.

This time, a short, rough chuckle shot through his parched lips when he saw a sliver of light floating above, and relief burst through him, instantly activating all his numbed body parts like a shot of adrenaline when he made out the rectangular shape of the fluorescent light.

Slowly the blurry shapes in the room came into sharp focus, and everything hit him all at once—the harsh chemical smell of disinfectant pervading his nose, the staccato beeping and wheezing of the monitors tied to his mangled body through a persistent connection of wires and tubes, and the fire razing his side.

If he can feel pain, and see the machines, then he's not dead or blind like he'd thought.

And he wept with happiness and gratitude.

He was not grateful for the pain, that's for sure. But he sure was glad to be alive, and he'd see his Princess and son and their little warrior.

He hoped that Eden was indeed pregnant, and her announcement wasn't a dream made up by his fragmented brain when his body had begun to shut down from shock.

"Princess?" He croaked as he tried to sit up. But the searing ache in his abdomen sent him wailing like a baby back on the pillows. The monitor beside him complained and sent life-saving signals to the nurses puzzling at the nurses' station as his pulse and blood pressure shot through the roof.

Within seconds the room was humming with doctors and nurses, and everything after that was a blur of faces and stethoscopes, of catheter bags being removed and IV drips being replaced, of unexpected announcements and disappointing news.

There were too many things happening all at once, and none of them mattered, too many faces he didn't recognise and not a single one he wanted to see.

He wanted to see his parents and his sisters. But most of all, he wanted to see Eden and their son.

"I need a minute!" Liam growled at some point when he thought he'd go mad from yet another nugget of information the nurses and doctors thought he needed right this instant.

He didn't need anyone to tell him the bullet had grazed his kidney and missed his vital organs, and he'd be out of commission for two weeks at the very least. He was well aware of this. The totality of the pain now invading his whole body, from his toes to his temples, left him with little doubt he was physically fucked, for the moment at least.

He just wanted to see a familiar face. He'd even taken his bratty sisters' at the rate things were going.

But he'd try for Eden's first.

"I need to see Eden McBride and my son. Call her right now! She should be on my emergency contacts list."

"We've notified your family, Mr Anderson. But we need to take you into the examination room to run a series of tests. Your body took a hell of a beating, and we need to make sure everything is healing as it should," said the doctor who'd identified himself as Dr Knight, the Physician Anesthesiologist—whatever that meant— on his medical team.

"I don't care about all your tests," Liam growled as he slumped back on the bed. The sheer effort of speaking was too much for him; it left him winded and weak. "I just want to see Eden and my son."

A pretty redhead nurse, with tits that could make a man forget all his pain, politely asked him to calm the fuck down, they still had more tests to conduct, and he'd better behave himself because the doctor knew what was best for him.

Liam took one look at the tag team and knew they were banging each other despite the shiny ring on the doctor's left hand telling the whole world he was off-limits.

The way Red smiled at the doctor and found silly excuses to touch him every three seconds was a big giveaway. She should learn a thing or two about discretion from her bedmate. Dr Knight remained the picture of professionalism despite the petite buxom distraction at his side.

After their tense back and forth, it became very clear to Liam this wasn't a battle he'd win; he was not in one of his boardrooms. In this room, Dr Knight was the boss, and he'd better start toeing the line if he wanted to go home as soon as tonight.

"Okay," he relented at last and allowed the nurses to take him in for the dreaded tests and post-op examination.

Liam didn't know how long the poking and prodding, along with his humiliation, lasted. And he must have passed out at some point because when he opened his eyes again, his parents were at his bedside.

His mom immediately burst into tears when their eyes locked. She reached over and hugged him, her tears slithering down his neck.

"Mom, I'm okay," he told her as he tried to push her away gently. She was petite, and didn't weigh more than a feather, but after Aleksei's bullet had ripped through his flesh and his ruthless kicks and punches had left him black and blue, even the lightest of weights was too much for his battered body.

"Lois, you can let go of him now. He's clearly in pain," Clarke came to his rescue. But he, too, hugged him anyway. He was a little more restrained, though.

"You gave us a hell of a fright, son," his father choked back a sob as he resumed his seat while his mother poured him a glass of water even though Liam hadn't asked for one.

She fussed over him and made him drink the water slowly, and before he'd even taken his third sip, she was already unpacking her colourful Tupperware containers, ready to fatten him up.

"I'm not hungry, Mom," he pushed the bowl away and asked his father to help him sit up.

Clarke was happy to oblige him. He pressed a button on the remote control panel to tilt the bed slightly.

"Better?" His dad asked.

"Yep, thanks," Liam replied as he picked up one of the numerous get-well cards, a cute little thing with an illustration of a fire-breathing dragon on the front, and he smiled as he read Clara's heartfelt message.

Setting the card back on the end table, he asked. "Where's Eden?"

"She's on her way."

Liam smiled, checked his breath and sniffed himself. "I need to freshen up. Eden will be here soon."

"The nurses gave you a bath earlier." Lois protested.

"Okay, can I at least shave and brush my teeth?"

"Yes to brushing your teeth, and no to shaving." Lois shook her head and pressed her lips together. "Eden's been here for five days, Liam. She's seen you at your absolute worst."

"There goes my fuckability factor!" He groaned and fell back on the pillows. "Why would you guys let her see me this way."

"Liam!" His mother hissed. "Watch the language, dear!"

But his father laughed good-naturedly as he handed him his toothbrush and an empty cup to squirt out the foam. "Good to see you haven't lost your sense of humour."

"Where's my phone and laptop?" Liam asked after brushing his teeth and returning the items to his father.

"You need to rest," Lois said. "In any case, your phone and laptop, along with your clothes, were taken into evidence. Eden will bring you a new phone when she comes later."

"I've rested enough, Mom. I have work to do. Get Clara to bring me a new laptop tonight." Even as he grunted his terse instructions, Liam's speech was slightly slurred, and his eyes droopy. He tried to keep them open and focus on his parents, but soon, their voices turned into a cacophony of drug-induced sounds, and their faces melted into each other, forming a giant blob of nothingness as darkness washed over him once more.