“Anyway, my folks are in Colorado,” Caleb murmured. “But I wouldn’t count on them to help with my recovery.”
“Okay well if you want me to, I’ll help. Like I said I have two weeks off when I get home and then honestly my job is pretty much tied to the hockey schedule. When the team is away I’m podcasting from home, so I have plenty of time.” His heart kicked into a harder, faster beat because he was basically offering to let Caleb move in with him for a while. He wasn’t sure if that was wise, but it felt right, so he was going to go with it.
And he knew he had said the absolute correct thing when Caleb gave him a beaming grin. “That would rock. That wouldsoshred, babe.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. Do you have anybody in Vail who could bring a load of your stuff to Denver, or are we going to have to go do that?” It wasn’t a bad drive even in winter as long as there wasn’t bad weather at either end of Eisenhower Tunnel. He wanted to make sure they needed tomake the trip because it would be pretty uncomfortable for Caleb even in Hawk’s big SUV.
“My buddy Travis is there, and he’s a good guy. He would do it for me.” Caleb moved to kiss his leg. That gave him some pervy thoughts, but he really knew he couldn’t act on them. Caleb would be way too sore for a good long while, and they had food coming. “If you think you could put up with him for a couple days, he’ll want to stay and hang out, maybe play video games or something.”
“I can hack it.” Hawk knew sports people, whether it was snowboarders or hockey players or whatever. He could handle it.
“This means a lot to me, Hawk. I know it seems like we haven’t known each other long enough for this.” Caleb was drawing patterns on his leg from his upper thigh down to his shin.
“Shit, baby, we’ve known each other for eight years, and I’ve thought about you almost every day. It’ll be okay.”
Caleb buried his face against Hawk’s lap. “I’ve thought about you all the damn time, too, so I’m happy to have this.”
Caleb dozed after that until the knock on the door came, telling them room service had arrived.
Hawk went through the motions of setting up the food, getting Caleb his pills and a big bottle of water, and then making sure Caleb was sitting up comfortably with his foot propped up on a pillow. This was probably going to be his life for the next six to eight weeks, and he was there for it. Somehow being able to help Caleb out while he recovered made him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof. He wished he’d had somebody there to help him like that when he’d blown out his knee. His team had made sure he was okay, but there had been no one to snuggle with and tell him it would all okay.
Now all they had to do was get through the gold medal hockey game, and they could go home.
Eighteen
Caleb hated the smell of hospitals.
The antiseptic and bleach and sort of industrial awfulness of it wigged him right out. And any time he had to stay for longer than a trip to the ER, he got no sleep and he was bored out of his mind.
The surgery had gone well. His lisfranc injury, which was a mid-foot shattering of bone, was now wired and screwed and bonded together. He had also gotten some new cartilage put in from a donor, which he was incredibly grateful for. But he wanted to get out of here.
He was tired of them waking him up at three a.m. to take blood tests to make sure he didn’t have elevated white counts and to test his inflammation numbers. He was tired of really safe, yucky food, even though Hawk brought him yummy stuff on occasion. And he was tired of the uncomfortable hospital bed that was threatening to give him a chapped ass, if nothing else. Possibly bed sores.
Okay so that was probably an exaggeration. He was only going to have to stay for another day, which meant three daysin the hospital but, fuck, he was sick of Food Network marathons and reruns ofLaw and Order.
The door opened and he glanced up, hoping to see Hawk, but it was a nurse bustling in to check his vitals. “How are we doing today, Caleb?” She smiled, moving around the side of his bed to reach the monitor that would take his blood pressure.
“Bored. Bo-o-ored.” He grinned at her because it wasn’t her fault, and he liked flirting a little bit. “Are you going to let me go today?”
“Physical therapy still has to come and sign off on your mobility with your knee scooter and your walker and/or crutches and then the doc will be in to talk to you about the recovery process, but I think you’ll probably be discharged this evening.” She unhooked the blood pressure cuff from the side of his bed, where it was hanging through one of the little handle holes, and then put it around his arm.
When he drew breath to say something else, she stuck a guard on the thermometer and then popped it into his mouth.
Caleb rolled his eyes, but he got it. She’d been his day nurse now ever since he’d been there. She had to be tired of his bitching. He knew her name was Darla, that she was in her mid-thirties, that she had two kids, and that she’d been a nurse ever since she’d gotten out of college.
Hell, he knew her kids’ names; he’d seen pictures of them. And he knew how she liked her coffee because Hawk had started bringing her one too. He thought Darla had kind of a heavy-duty crush on Hawk.
Once she pulled the thermometer out, he raised his eyebrows at her. “What time this evening?”
She snorted, shaking her head. “You know better than that, Caleb. We can’t do that in hospitals. Everything takes forever. I would imagine it’ll either be right before shift change or right after, though.”
Ugh, he flopped back against the bed, which was set so he could sit up. “That sucks. Hopefully they get to it before shift change.”
“I hope so too because if they don’t it’ll be eight or nine o’clock before you get out of here.” She entered all the information from his pulse oximeter. “Your blood pressure is good. The temperature is fine. Your oxygen level is great. You’ve got those high-altitude athlete’s lungs. Will Hawk be coming to pick you up?”
“He’s actually supposed to bring me lunch today.” Hawk had been there every day, for most of the day. This morning he’d had some sort of meeting he had to go to, but really he had the better part of two weeks off, and whatever work he was doing was remote. He had a feeling Hawk would just hang out until he was released if that happened today.
“Such a nice man.” She winked at him. “And he is smoking hot. He’s a total snack.”