Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [74]
Alone.
Verily, the loneliness was the worst part of the ordeal: For all the people who were free to come and go, in and out of her room, she was utterly separate even when they sat and talked to her or attended to her very basic needs. Confined to this bed, she was on another plane of reality from them, separated by a vast, invisible desert that she could see clearly o’er, but was unable to cross.
And it was strange. All that she had lost became most acute whenever she thought of her human healer—which was so often she could not count the times.
Oh, how she missed that man. Many were the hours she had spent remembering his voice and his face and that last moment between them . . . until her memories became a blanket with which to warm herself during the long, cold stretches of worry and concern.
Unfortunately, however, much like her rational side, that blanket was fraying from overuse, and there was no repairing it.
Her healer was not of her world and ne’er to return—nothing but a brief, vivid dream that had disintegrated into filaments and fragments now that she had awoken.
“Cease,” she said to herself out loud.
With the upper-body strength she was trying to maintain, she turned to the side for the two pillows, fighting against the deadweight of her lower body as she strained to—
Her balance failed in a flash, and sent her careening even in her prone position, her arm knocking the glass of water from the table next to her.
And alas, it was not an object well suited for impact.
As it shattered, Payne closed her mouth, which was the only way she knew to keep her screams in her lungs. Otherwise, they would breach the seal of her lips and ne’er stop.
When she thought she had enough self-control, she looked over the side of the bed at the mess on the floor. Ordinarily, it would be so simple—something spilled and one would clean it up.
Previously, all she would have done was bend over and mop it up.
Now? She had two choices: Lie here and call for help like an invalid. Or prethink and strategize and make an attempt to be independent.
It took her some time to figure out the bracing points for her hands and then judge the distance to the floor. Fortunately, she was unplugged from all the tubing that had been running into her arm, but a catheter remained . . . so mayhap trying to do this herself was a bad idea.
Yet she could not bear the indignity of just lying here. No soldier was she; now she was a child incapable of caring for herself.
It was no longer supportable.
Snapping out squares of “Kleenex,” as people called them, she lowered the railing on the bed, gripped the top of it, and curled herself over onto her side. The torsion caused her legs to flop around like those of a puppet, all motion without grace, but at least she could reach downward to the smooth floor with the white fluff on her palm.
As she stretched whilst trying to maintain a precarious balance on the ledge of the bed, she was tired of being done for, tended to, washed and wrapped like a young newly born unto the world—
Her body went the way of the glass.
Without warning, her grip slipped off the smooth rail, and with her hips so far off the mattress, she fell headfirst toward the floor, the grab of gravity too strong for her to overcome. Throwing out her hands, she caught herself on the wet flooring, but both palms shot from under her and she took the force of impact on the side of the face, breath exploding out of her lungs.
And then there was no movement.
She was trapped, the bed buttressing her useless limbs so that they remained directly over her head and torso, cramming her into the floor.
Dragging air down her throat, she called out, “Help . . . hellllp . . .”
With her face squeezed, her arms starting to go numb, and her lungs burning from suffocation, rage lit up within her until her body trembled—
It started as a squeak. Then the noise turned into movement as her cheek began to skid on the tile, the skin stretching so thin, she felt like it was being