Chapter: Problems after Surgery: 13 of ?

Author: Sam

Series: A Deeper Magic

Last Chapter: Zero finds Jeb's cabin and Adora's grave and recalls training with Wyatt as teens; he is presently injured and confused. Jeb and Toto meet a creepy traveler; Toto is stuck in canine form and not well.

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Awareness brought with it pain and dizziness. The sensation of smooth sheets warred with stiff discomfort in his wrist and near suffocating pressure on his head. A steady tone pulsed with every beat of his heart. Disinfectant and medication burned deep in his sinuses, adding to the sense of overwhelming dread; he hated hospitals.

Opening wary brown eyes, Ambrose groaned softly at the confirmation that not only did he lie in a hospital bed, but that he was, in fact, the patient. If nothing else, the heart leads and hanging IV confirmed his assessment. Heavens how he hated IVs. Then again, he hated hospitals in general.

With a sigh, the royal advisor carefully evaluated his situation, trying to recall the accident that had landed him in such a helpless position. Images flew by, too ephemeral to hold on to: flying over a gorge, nightmarish flying creatures, falling into deep rapids . . . the shifting visions made little sense. He tried harder, focusing as he'd been taught in school: running, talking, bruising hands, and a sense of dragging . . . a steel bed and steady counting.

His eyes opened wide, and Ambrose shot to a sitting position, the increase in the beeping of the heart monitor evidence of his body's emotional reactions. "The medicos tried to take my brain . . ." he mentally verified. "Have they succeeded?"

Ambrose looked around, frowning. The room appeared to be a typical private hospital ward, complete with a stack of clean towels on a night stand and staff call button, a single chair with a robe nearby. "Why give a prisoner a call button?" he wondered. No mirror-like surface stood in easy reach for his self-assessment, so the advisor had to rely on his other senses to confirm his suspicions.

The IV, the heart monitor, and the call button bespoke an invalid. With a sigh, Ambrose lifted his free right hand to the thick bandaging around his head . . . "and that," he thought, "confirms that I am indeed a head case."

Rapid images of an unsmiling large blond man and a very young brunette with unusual blue eyes chased through Ambrose's throbbing brain. "Memories of the queen and her consort in days gone by? But those eyes . . ." A sense of lethargic drifting start to seep across the man and he vaguely acknowledged that the IV must be hooked up to a medication delivery system. "Hmm . . . I invented that," he thought hazily.

Distant sounds came to his detached mind. Running boots, bullets ricocheting, urgent conversations . . . but this time, Ambrose knew them for medicine-addled memories. His ears told him that all was currently quiet . . . no battle in the halls right then. "How long was I unconscious?" Ambrose wondered, trying to pick through a mosaic of confusing images: faces he felt he should know, places he might have been, risks he never dreamed of taking. Nothing made sense.

And his headache reached near blinding accompanied by a throbbing dizziness. "Funny how I can function so well with half a brain. I suppose that's because regularly I use so much more than others . . . it means I can function quite normally with less than anyone else." A grin crossed his face, and he wished he could share the near arrogant joke with someone else.

Then he remembered and the nausea overtook him, sending him bending over the side of his bed to vomit a mix of water, medicine, and bile onto the plain grey marble floor. The queen had been arrested, and he had been forced to give up the plans for every invention he'd ever created. Ambrose, sweaty, pale, and trying to ignore the foul taste in his mouth, mourned that he could not save Queen Lavender, one of his first and dearest friends.

That witch possessing the teenaged princess, Azkadellia, had driven the child to new depths of horror . . . and he, the celebrated most brilliant mind in all the O.Z., had been unable to stop it, to save the girl or her family . . . much as he could not save another family . . .

Shame and grief mixed with the pain, and Ambrose lay back in his sweat-and-sick soaked bed, ignoring his physical discomfort. His mental anguish held far more sway over the cerebrally-inclined man. He closed his eyes and tried to fight the emotions, tried to think of a way out of this mess . . . for himself and the kingdom he loved so well.

The sound of his door unlatching brought Ambrose's eyes slamming open. A woman slipped in, her back to him, carefully easing the door shut. Her light grey outfit had been streaked with dirt and torn partially off one tanned shoulder. The exposed shoulder had a long gash, dried blood congealed over the wound and tracing down her back and onto the simple linen blouse. One wrist had rope burns, bruises, and cuts over it, while from the other dangled a long knotted rope. The woman's long dark brown hair had come partially out of a pile on her head and spilled over her back and clothed shoulder. She wore no shoes or stockings on her tanned feet.

When she turned, surprise coursed through the royal advisor . . . not at her disreputable appearance but at her identity. "Leona?" he whispered, hardly believing his eyes. He had no idea why the queen's cousin would be there rather than the grasslands . . . or why she was dressed in such a way.

Her vivid blue eyes lit with apparent joy and she hurried over to the man in the hospital bed. "Ambrose," she asked, "that is you, Ambrose?"

Ambrose sighed and gave a nod, then groaned softly, his free hand lifting to touch his bandaged head. He lay back into the pillows, trying to catch his breath as the IV whirred to life and administered just enough medicine to ease the pain, but not enough to knock him out.

"When I said I wanted you lying helpless before me, this is not what I had in mind," Leona frowned, her serious sounding words conjuring images of teenagers in a field sketching plants and calling mock insults back and forth.

Surprised that the unusual woman had recalled such a long ago moment, he groaned out, "You'll be the death of me yet, Leona." He opened weary brown eyes at the sound of her bedraggled skirts swishing around her legs.

She had come to his bedside, a wide smile stretching across her tanned face. "Now that's what you always say, Ambrose." She sounded pleased at his reaction.

He merely groaned in response. Leona had always been the most unconventional thinker of his acquaintance.

"Have sex with me," she stated, her tone matter of fact.

Opening eyes wide in shock, unsure if he'd heard her correctly, Ambrose stammered, "wh . . . what?" Unconventional was the least that this woman was.

As if she didn't realize just how surprising her request was, Leona looked down at the floor before her then at his dirtied sheets. "Well, naturally, I'll clean you up first." She glanced over the room and added, "this isn't the most alluring setting, but I can make due."

"What?" he practically screamed. She could not be meaning what he was hearing . . . even Leona had some sense.

"Oh dear," worry flashed in her vivid blue eyes and she lay a hand on his arm, her injured wrist very evident against the white sheet. "Has your surgery damaged your ears, Ambrose, or just your processing?"

Reminding himself to tread carefully with this woman, he gently replied, "uh . . . both, I believe . . . I thought you just propositioned me." Ambrose frowned as he studied her face, looking for signs of what she really thought.

She smiled in response and nodded. "Nope, you're fine. I did proposition you." She sounded pleased.

"Leona Cerulean Gale . . . can you not see I'm a sick man?" The royal advisor pushed himself to a half-sitting position, sounding austere and forbidding.

Leona laughed. "Ambrose Dillian Shiz, you have always been a sick man. But I'm willing to fix that."

Genuine fear shot through the man as his eyes flew to the door, all sense of the absurdity of their conversation leaving. Trembling, Ambrose whispered, "don't . . . Leona, you know you can't tell anyone . . ."

"That I'm fixing you?" She frowned and shook her head, looking puzzled. "I don't see why not. In fact, it's probably better if they did know . . . it's the whole realm I'm . . ."

"No!" he interrupted her wayward thoughts. "My name . . . we haven't figured out who killed father yet . . ." he added, trying to get her to understand the severity of the situation. One could never tell with Leona just what she understood.

The woman sank onto the bed, ignoring the mess he'd made upon waking. Her voice took on a gentle, confused tone. "Killed . . . Ambrose, that was thirty-seven annuals ago." She wrinkled her nose suddenly and stood up, glaring at her even dirtier dress. With a sigh, she removed her hand from his arm and dropped to her knees, no sign of grace in the princess. Beginning to use a towel from the bedside table, she started trying to clean up the mess. Her voice took on a gentle tone. "Do you think he's really still looking for you? He got your brother and sisters, and most people . . ."

Exasperation filled the man and he practically snarled "Yes, Leona, I think that whoever attacked my family knew there was a younger brother and is still looking for me . . . that's why you're supposed to call me Ambrose Harding." He tried to gentle his tone, knowing that nastiness never worked with Leona. She had always been able to ignore it.

Leona wrinkled her nose, looking thoughtful. "I don't think people believe you're a munchkin, Ambrose." She rose to her feet, one steadying hand on the bed rail. Dropping the towel, she grabbed a fresh one from the small supply nearby and dipped it in the water pitcher. She began to clean the mess from his face and arm. "But give me a moment to change the linens and we can get back to fixing you." She said.

His quick mind managed to make the gigantic leap backwards in conversation and Ambrose rolled his eyes, praying for patience. On a sigh, he claimed, "you will certainly be the death . . ." At her smile he frowned severely but something she said fought to the fore. Eyes widening, he said, "wait . . . what do you mean thirty-seven annuals? It's only been twenty-nine since that . . . day."

Leona reached over and gripped his shoulders, sitting him up completely, steadying him. Surprisingly no pain or dizziness struck the man and he allowed her to swing his legs over the side of the bed. The medicine must have been working.

Then she answered his question, sounding chipper. "Nope. You're missing eight annuals, but then who wants to remember the years that evil ruled over our beautiful O.Z.?"

"Eight annuals?" he said, allowing her to stand him up. He leaned on her, shocked and disoriented for a long moment before finally standing on his own. Slowly he realized that he had nothing on: no hospital gown, no drawers, nothing. As she began to strip the soiled linens from the bed, Ambrose blushed and pulled at the sheet, trying to cover his nudity.

"No," she scolded, as if to a child playing in the mud, "that's messy, too." She reached for the robe on the chair and let her wide blue eyes rove over his form as he flushed brightly. "Shame to cover that, but here," she handed him the robe.

Mortified despite her compliment, he slipped the robe on one arm then wrapped it around his body, since his IV got in the way of actual dressing. Using both hands, he held the cloth shut; there was no apparent tie. Finally, feeling more in control, he asked "what are you doing here, Leona?"

Her face set in lines of concentration, she looked at him. She offered a quick smile and said, "changing your linens, Ambrose."

Ambrose would not allow her to confuse him. Instead, he took control of the conversation. "No, why are you here . . . not in the grasslands?"

"Oh, that," she laughed and tossed the dirty bed linens on the floor with the dirty towels. "I've been taken hostage so I can be a sex slave and take over the O.Z. with my new husband." She sounded cheery.

"What?" shock once again coursed through the royal advisor and his eyes flew immediately to the woman's bare left hand before meeting her eyes in confusion.

She shook her head, more hair spilling from her topknot. "Really, you should have that looked at. Maybe I can fix that too." She looked around but didn't seem to find what she sought and continued speaking. "But I don't really like Randu . . . he's . . . well if I have sex with someone else, he'll leave me alone. So who else is available?" She beamed at him, seemingly unbothered by her predicament.

Ambrose rolled his eyes and groaned at her brand of logic. Touching his bandaged head carefully, he muttered, "the death of me."

Leona tilted her head and looked thoughtful, "if I can get you off that IV, it'll be easier." She nodded and tugged him back to the bed. "Come here. Sit."

Despite the whirlwind she created everywhere she went, the advisor obeyed her, sinking to the stripped mattress; he hated IVs. She lifted both hands and placed them over his head. They began to glow a soft white-yellow and warmth began to seep into the man. After only a few minutes, she removed her hands and the glowing stopped. At last, the woman carefully untaped the IV site then removed the needle, ignoring the liquid as it continued to pump out onto the floor. Ambrose knew she hadn't healed him entirely, but the small dose of magic had stopped the headache and dizziness completely.

The sound of boots in the hall came to the pair and Leona lifted a terrified face. She looked around the room, spotting the built-in closet, and pulled open the door. Quickly, she stuffed herself inside between a wheelchair and a respirator machine, shutting the door. The heavy boots continued on by without stopping.

Frowning, knowing Leona was in more danger than her apparently flippant conversation had denoted, Ambrose reached for the door and opened it. "All clear," he said softly, gently. "No sex master . . ."

She grinned at him, relief in her eyes, as she came out. With a soft laugh she said, "well, it's a nicer hiding spot then the computer cabinet three rooms down." Smoothing her trembling hands over her dirty, torn skirt, she added "though I did hear a very interesting conversation between Randu and a nice sounding couple called the Cains. Think we can change rooms? This one smells of hospital." She seemed to flit from one thought to another as easily as a butterfly.

Ambrose, however, did not pay attention to her request. Something flashed across his memory. The tall blond man, again, this time kneeling at a grave. Ambrose shook his head knowing that there was something odd about the image, but he couldn't place the man or the situation. Finally what Leona said sank in and he replied "yes, let's get out of here before the medicos come back." Ambrose grabbed Leona's hand and headed for the door, intent on finding a hiding spot . . . and some clean clothes.

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Continued in Chapter Fourteen: Help from Unexpected Quarters

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The Twelve Clans of the Outer Zone with the Ruling House of Each Clan:

Aquam Clan/ House of Rimi . . . (Ice- Mount Runcible)

Cogitatio Clan/ House of Idae . . . (Milltown)

Corde Clan/ House of Animum . . . (Viewers)

Fortitudo Clan/ House of Greyhatt . . . (Guilds- Munchkins)

Lux Clan/ House of Gale . . . (formerly House of Ozma- Gillikin)

Mortem Clan/ House of Shiz . . . (Alma Mata- Gillikin)

Nature Clan/ House of Terrae . . . (Vinkus- Thousand Year Grasslands)

Papay Clan/ House of Somniabunt

Phlogiston Clan/ House of Pyre . . . (Fire- Desert surrounding O.Z.)

Sapientiam Clan/ House of Quinolui . . . (Quadling- Realm of the Unwanted)

Spiritus Clan/ House of Aeris . . . (Air- Lake Country)

Tenebris Clan/ House of Fugae . . . (Witch's Dark Tower- Gillikin)