Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(67)

They told her the third-degree burns were painless, because the nerves had been destroyed. But they didn’t tell that to her body, which felt exactly like it was still on fire. She didn’t even remember what it felt like to be on fire, but it must have felt like this.

They had her on some kind of heavy-duty opiate, and she thought she understood Badger’s trouble a lot more now. Because the only time she didn’t think she’d go completely, out-of-her-head insane was for about two hours after the nurse came in and injected the drug into her IV. But it was weird—it didn’t take the pain away at all. Instead, it made her think about it differently. Her brain went to an alien place, where she didn’t care how much it hurt. She became clinically interested in her own pain.

And it also turned everything swirly and purple, like she was in a Dr. Seuss book. She went far away, to Whoville, and looked down at her ravaged body. That part was pretty cool.

Two hours after a dose, though, she cared again, and Horton took his Whos and went home. The remaining hours until the next dose were a slow slog toward hysteria. Internal hysteria, at least. Her response to pain was to be quiet—she got quieter, not louder, as her pain increased. She always had, even as a small child. The quieter she got, the more reason there was to worry about her. It was as if pain erased her capacity to communicate. She’d broken her ankle on a hike in Jamaica when she was eight, and, walking behind her parents and Aunt Hanna, she’d trudged on for almost half a mile before her silence was noted and they’d turned around and seen her distress.

Her father would have known now. If he’d been here. If he were still her Papa.

But no one here had reason to know it.

Robbed of speech from the moment she’d regained consciousness, and trampled with pain that defied expression, Adrienne was almost entirely silent. When the ventilator was in her, she didn’t have a choice, and when it was finally out, her throat was raw and sore, so she couldn’t have spoken, anyway. Thus it was days before anyone realized that her continuing stillness and stoic silence wasn’t an indication that her pain wasn’t as bad as they expected, or that she was even bearing up well under it. The truth was that the pain was so bad she had lost the ability to speak.

Badger was the first to understand that her tight little nods when they asked if she was feeling okay were vile lies her mind compelled her to tell.

Just having somebody understand gave her some relief. She felt less trapped in her cage of pain and silence.



oOo



Badger was with her all day, every day, though they wouldn’t let him sleep there, and her nights were long because of it. He could hardly touch her, though, and she hated that. It made her feel lonely even when he was with her. He’d rest his hand on her left hip while he sat with her, and he often ran his fingers through her hair and over her face, but it wasn’t enough.

She needed to be held, and it was impossible.



oOo



One morning, or maybe it was afternoon, Adrienne woke to see not Badger but Show sitting next to her.

He came every day, but Shannon and their babies were in the hospital, too, so he only stayed a while before he went to be with them.

Shannon had delivered the twins the day after the fire, while Adrienne had still been unconscious. More than six weeks early and both of them under four pounds, they’d been in the NICU. Shannon had had a caesarean, and she was still in the hospital, too.

When Adrienne stirred and looked around the room for Badger, Show brushed his fingers over her face. “He’s not far, little one. Just gettin’ something to eat.” He pulled his chair up close to the bed. “I want to talk to you. Can we do that, you and me, straight up?”

She nodded.

“See, that’s the thing. You’re not talking. Badge says everybody should leave you alone about it, but I don’t know. Maybe he’s goin’ too easy on you. The docs are getting twitchy about you. You know that, right? You’re paying attention?”

A few times, somebody had looked down her throat and asked if it was hurting too much to talk. She’d only shrugged, in the stilted, one-sided way that she could, and no one had pushed harder about it.

She didn’t even know why she had lost her words. She didn’t even know if she could physically talk, because she could not make herself try. The pain that had first driven her to silent isolation had improved somewhat, but words had not returned.

To answer Show’s question now, she shrugged. She didn’t know anyone had been getting ‘twitchy’

about it.

“Adrienne. They say you’re almost strong enough for surgery to make your leg better. You remember them talking about that?” She did—more surgery in a couple of days. Skin grafts to close the open wounds on her calf, thigh, and arm. More surgery, more pain. One whole side of her body melted and scarred. Scars and pain that they would make fresh, taking skin from her other leg and hip. She remembered that conversation vividly. She nodded.

“No more of that, little one. You need to talk to me. They’re starting to talk about ‘selective muteness’ or some bullshit like that, and psych consults. I know you don’t want that. So show ‘em you’re strong. You gotta come all the way back. I know you can do it—you talk when you’re high on the dope they’re givin’

you. So talk to me now.”