"Greg?" I called out. Why the hell was it so dark outside? The bedroom door was open. CNN was babbling away on the television.
Footsteps, then he was silhouetted in the doorway. The light flicked on and I wasn't ready for it. "God!" I yelped, covering my eyes. "Warn me next time, will ya?"
"Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty." He limped to the bed and sat down.
"Jesus...what time is it?" My entire body felt like it had been steamrolled. Twice.
"Almost seven."
"At night?"
"At night," he echoed, then felt my forehead. "You still have a fever. We need to take care of that. Wait here." Like I was going to be swinging from the ceiling.
Clanging from the kitchen, cabinets being opened and shut. I suddenly felt restless and kicked the covers off. The room was stuffy and stale. I didn't want to be in there anymore. Standing up was a royal nightmare. It felt like a branding iron was being held to my back.
"What the hell are you doing?" Greg glared at me as I staggered to the table. "Jimmy, go back to bed."
"I've been in bed all damn day," I said, as if that was a perfectly acceptable reason for me to be up when I really shouldn't have been, but I had to get out of there for a while.
"Christ..." he muttered under his breath, stalked out the room and reappeared with the prescription bottle, which was smacked down on the table.
Ten minutes later a glass of water, a small bowl of beef-vegetable soup and some ibuprofen joined my prescription. Greg had to get the giant blue pill out since I was too weak to open the damn bottle.
I glanced at the soup, then at him.
"You're eating at least half of that," he said stonily. "I don't care how long it takes."
I choked down the pills, then started on the soup. I wasn't the least bit hungry and ate slowly, but Greg seemed satisfied for the moment. The ibuprofen dulled the pain a little.
"I would have brought that to you. All you had to do was wait."
"I had to get up."
"No, you didn't."
"Okay, I wanted to get up," I sighed, wishing he'd quit trying to talk me to death about it. "Can you wait until I'm done here to punish me?"
"Shingles is punishment enough," he told me. "Cuddy was asking about you."
"What did you tell her?" I asked between slurps of soup.
"Nothing she doesn't already know about shingles. It's a bitch but you'll be fine. She wanted to know what kind of aftershave causes hickeys and whisker burns and why I wore a turtleneck three days in a row."
I dropped the spoon. He picked it up and got me another one, never losing his grin.
"She asked us to keep the hickeys down to a minimum. I told her we'd think about it. In the meantime she hopes you feel better soon."
"Thank you," I remarked dryly. The bowl of soup was endless. I pushed it away. "I can't eat anymore."
It was pushed back. "Five more spoonfuls."
"Three."
"This isn't a negotiation. Five."
After what seemed like an eternity and a half, five more spoonfuls were in my stomach. Two thirds of the soup was gone and Greg was thankfully content with that. "You ate more than I thought you would," he smiled.
"Hooray for me."
"Soon this will all seem like a bad dream."
"God, I hope so." The pain was twisting up my back again. This was the kind of thing Greg had to live with every single day. I don't know he did it and I don't know if I could do it. His Vicodin addiction made a little more sense.
"Let's get you back to bed," he said, getting up, his voice pulling me out of my thoughts.
"I wanna watch some TV. Please." I looked up, giving him my best puppy-dog face. It worked.
He found a pillow and blanket and even sat on the other end of the sofa so I could rest my head on his left leg. For a while he just sat there, then he began to absently play with my hair. Maybe it was on purpose, maybe it wasn't, but that simple little gesture lulled me back to sleep.
