Damaged Goods

1

Owen rolled to his back as fingers of awareness prickled his brain. Seconds later with the involuntary tightening of the muscles of his torso, he was fully awake. He groaned, stomach hollowing out as a spasm squeezed across his chest.

He brought his knees up, heels pressing into the mattress, and when that didn't relieve the aching pressure, he grunted and straightened his legs out again. There was no comfort. No avoiding this. And it was too soon. But there was nothing he could do to stop the throbbing wave of feeling coming.

His fists were balled at his sides, curled in the sheet. He needed to calm down. If he could calm down, it wouldn't be this way. He tipped his head back into the pillow, chin up, mouth open, his breathe coming in snatches. God, it was too soon. He had to hold out. But the swoop of nausea arrived along with the sharp hug of sensation wrapping around his ass, hip to hip, making him want to buck against it. A hiss of heat ignited along his spine, tendrils of fire licking deep and hateful, and a stream of profanity smoked from his lips.

This was going to eat him from the inside out.

He rolled, bringing his knees up and over so he was on his side, trying to make himself smaller, to get away, to find comfort, but the fire was out of control now, electric in its intensity, unrelenting in its intention to break him.

Hands to his face he stifled a sob.

He used to be a man who ruled his body with his brain, who made sense from chaos, thrived on ambiguity and loved taking risk by the scruff of its neck and shaking it until it was shouting Uncle. Now his body set the agenda and he cowered at the uncertainty he couldn't master. Not without help.

This was his life now.

After the accident.

This merciless invasion of pain turning his waking moments into a dance of caution and his sleeping ones into anticipation of another hijack.

Like precision clockwork, every four hours the pain was back, drying out his mouth, making his hands shake. Each assault hitting him harder than the last, weakening his resolve.

He wouldn't sleep again, unless he took a pill. If he didn't sleep, he'd be a zombie during the day. And it was a day where he needed to prove he was ready.

Could he breath through this pain, find the slices of ease in the knife slides of agony until it was time to get up? He was better off wishing it was worse. If it was worse, he'd pass out and never need to know the struggle.

How did his life become a place where worse was better?

But it wasn't worse, it wasn't better, this invasion of pain in his body wasn't a foe he could get familiar with. He squinted at the clock, three minutes since he's last looked. If this was before, he'd be awake in fifty-five minutes. At five-fifteen, he'd be dressed and leading his Cannondale bicycle out from under the garage door. He'd have an hour to ride in Golden Gate Park and still make the office in Palo Alto before eight.

He'd thought about giving the bike to someone who could use it. Just the idea of sitting astride it, leaning forward to take the handlebars made him tense. Before the accident he'd been able to put his body in that arched forward position made to chase speed, and lose it there while his head did other things: solved problems, planned, dreamed. That hour was the prayer portion of his day before the business of living started. Now the business of living was as much a strain on his body as it was on his mental strength.

He'd thought he knew how to handle pain. Having his heart ripped out should've taught him everything he needed to know to master this.

And it wasn't supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be healed. Recovered. Good as new. Taking it easy still and to expect fatigue, but mended, ready to pick up where he'd left off when the truck crashed into Kuch's Tesla and put them both on the critical list.

That was four months ago. A whole season had passed. A summer he'd filled with surgery and therapy, resting and impatience. And a lifetime of arguments with his family. He was not going back to Chicago, and no way was he going to Vegas. He wasn't joining the family business now or ever. He'd crossed the country to put distance between himself, the easy money and the hard addictions of being a Lange. And it was going to stay that way. He might have broken his back but he wasn't breaking that rule. He'd make his own way or not at all, and that hadn't changed since Stanford, meeting Reid and starting Plus.

And nothing Brooke said or did, while she kicked around to care for him would change that. She'd smoothed his way and given him a dozen distractions as only a wayward baby sister who had no reason to earn her own living and no ambition to change that could.

Without Brooke sleeping down the hall, there was no reason to stifle his moans. No one in the house to wake if he stumbled around in the kitchen or ran scalding shower water long enough to create a city-wide shortage. No one to take that information and make it another reason for his family to pressure him to come home.

Knowing he was alone made this more freeing and more desperate. But he'd wanted this, to be back to normal, even as he knew his body wasn't ready for it. For fuck's sake, parts of him still weren't functioning and maybe never would again.

As if living through that first fatal crash in his life wasn't enough to make him wonder if he'd always be alone.

The pill bottle on the bedside table was empty. It'd had a merry rattle to it this time last week. The pain doc said he shouldn't need them anymore. But one more wouldn't matter because if he had the shakes when he fronted the office he wouldn't get past Sarina's eagle eyes or Dev's probing. Reid, he could bluff, unless Zarley had continued to work her voodoo on him, taking his wooden Pinocchio and making him into a real boy.

The sane part of him hoped she had.

There wasn't much left of the sane part of him. Another axe swipe of evil rippled around his hip and under his thigh. He used it to push his legs over the edge of the bed and reef himself upright. He was sweating, his hands shaking. Standing made his head spin. He shuffled to the bathroom holding on to walls and doorways and the edge of the sink. He made the shower water almost too hot to stand, trying to sear the pain out. But five minutes under the spray and his legs were trembling and the decision made.

He got out, toweled his face off, avoided the mirror, he wouldn't like what he saw. He took a fresh prescription of relief from the bathroom cabinet and popped a pill from the blister pack. These things were highly addictive, he'd been warned. A gateway drug to other opiates. But he wasn't addicted. He was the only one of the Lange's who hadn't made booze, drugs or dice his religion.

He just needed a little help on this last stage of his recovery. He took the pill, guzzling water with it. He'd sleep now, a few more hours and be refreshed and ready when he woke. When he was ready, he'd find another way to deal with the pain. Move to the slow release drug and learn to pace himself, waiting the hours required till it was safe to take another dose. He could do it. He wasn't an addict.

He drank a second glass of water and caught sight of his eyes in the mirror, red veined, sunken and heavy lidded. Barely recognizable. Damaged goods

He wasn't addicted, but he was destroyed all the same.