All the usual applies…I didn't make up the people below. Janet gets that credit.

Jenny (JenRar) somehow saying, "the usual" doesn't seem to apply for you. Thank you for your work as the beta on this story and for always giving my writing the extra time and attention it needs to be presentable.

Chapter 11 – A Bonding Experience

I jolted awake, going from completely asleep to wide awake in a matter of a heartbeat. Because that fast of a shift made me sit up at the same time, I realized I'd fallen asleep in the easy chair, and the fast movement produced a kink in my neck that hurt. As one hand flew up to press on the cramping muscle, I realized that I was surrounded by nine milimeter bullets and looked at Manny in the hope that he could explain how that had happened.

He was holding the clip that belonged to the gun I'd given him the night before and apparently had been pulling the shells out one at the time and throwing them at me. I felt it was safe to assume that was what had woken me, and because I'd never been accused of being sweet and loving first thing in the morning, even on my best day, I went straight from confused to rhino in the blink of an eye.

"Why in the hell are you hitting me?" I growled.

"Because you wouldn't wake up when I called you, and I needed you awake," Manny replied, obviously not much of a morning person himself, because his voice was beginning to match mine in its tone.

"You couldn't have called me louder? Why did you turn to pelting the sleeping girl, happily dreaming in a chair?" I continued to increase my volume.

"Because it seemed like a better option that firing the gun," he replied, matching my volume or slightly exceeding it with his own.

"Don't make me regret giving you that gun," I threatened him, lifting the hand not rubbing the spasm in my neck and noticing it still held the makeshift gun holster that I'd put together last night.

"What is that?" he asked, looking at the black mass swinging in my hand.

I tossed it at him. "I made you a holster to strap that to your cast like you wanted yesterday. I know it isn't like a real one, but I think it will work."

He picked it up and quickly figured out the intention with the pouch for the gun and the belt to go around his leg. He moved it around his thigh, but the cast on his arm made it difficult to buckle.

I moved closer and tightened the belt for him, pleased to see that it would stay put. "How's that?"

His hand moved around the belt, testing how tight it was, and then he looked up and me and smiled. It wasn't one of those room lighting grins, nor was it a teasing gesture. It was just a simple acknowledgement that he was pleased, and it made me feel at least ten feet tall.

"So, now that you've gotten me awake and up, what was so important that you had to wake me up right then?" I wondered, hoping my question wouldn't ruin his good mood.

"The cell phone you've got was ringing," he told me, pointing to the coffee table where it was sitting. "Whoever it is has been trying to reach you for the last half hour. I figure it must be important, because they've called at least a dozen times."

No sooner had he said that than the phone began to ring once more. I jumped up and got it just in time to hear Cal's voice say, "I'm at your front door. Can I come in?"

I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and hung up without responding or saying goodbye and then turned off the alarm and opened the door. Of course, my little internal victory dance at showing the guys how rude it was to be hung up on was short lived, as the second the door opened, Cal stepped in, looking like a storm cloud, and moved past me with a speed that told me he had a purpose for being here, and it wasn't to play cards.

I barely got the alarm back on before I heard Manny yelp and call out, "What the hell was that for, man?"

"You hit her?" Cal questioned, the words dripping with fury, barely contained.

"Cal, what's going on?" I ran in to interrupt the playground brawl before it got anymore serious.

"I had the feed patched into my cell phone when you didn't answer my calls, and I heard you yell at Manny for hitting you and pelting you. I know you don't want people fighting your fights, but there's no way in hell I'm sitting around and letting this asshole hurt you," Cal explained, the effort of trying to hold onto his temper was apparent.

"God save me from testosterone," I pleaded under my breath.

Both of them questioned, "What?"

I balled up a fist and pounded into Cal's shoulder as hard as I could.

He looked down where I'd smacked him, without reacting at all, and asked, "Why did you do that?"

He might be unaffected, but I was in need of ice on my hand. I had to settle for shaking it instead as I replied, "If you want to come in here to defend my honor, please ask me next time if it needs defending. I promise not to hold you back from a deserved fight, but I can't have you running off half-cocked, either."

Manny spoke next. "She was asleep in the chair, past where I could reach her, and I knew someone had been trying to contact her on the phone, but she slept through it. I took the clip out of the gun and was tossing the shells at her until one of them bounced off her hair and hit her cheek. It spooked her, so she jumped up and asked why I was hitting her. I didn't hurt her. It was just all I could think of doing so she would answer the phone, because I knew you'd hit the roof if you didn't reach her soon."

Can rubbed his tattoo with the palm of his hand before admitting, "Damn, I'm an asshole, aren't I?"

I moved closer to him and threw my arms around his waist. "No, you aren't an asshole. You're just impulsive and need to learn to chill a little if you're going to be some kind of self-proclaimed protector for me."

"I don't chill well," he explained, tightening his arms around me.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Manny rubbing his shoulder as he mumbled, "No shit."

I pulled back just enough to talk but not enough to break free from the hold Cal had on me. He might be like a brother to me, but it still felt good to be in his arms, against his hard, safe chest, so I wasn't in a hurry to escape. "Before you turned into the noble knight charging in here to defend my honor, was there something you needed?"

It took Cal a minute to pull himself together and remember why he'd been calling me in the first place. "Yeah, I have some new files for you and figured you had some finished ones for me. Then I got some intel I thought I should pass along."

"What kind of intel?" I was on edge. The guys didn't tend to include me in the information they discovered unless it was vital to protecting me.

"Well, it seems your escape from St. Elizabeth's has been noticed," Cal said, glancing over at Manny.

"Kind of hard to miss a guy getting blown up one day and disappearing hours later," Manny replied, as though he hadn't heard anything alarming.

"True," Cal agreed. "The first one to get the memo were the feds who came to take you into federal custody. They were told about your wife signing you out, and apparently made a scene that you weren't married. But the hospital had all the necessary paperwork to prove you were as far as they were concerned."

I knew Hector had had a hand in creating the documents, so they would look as real as possible because his skills in forgery were top notch. I had already planned on getting him to make me a new license when the true birth date on mine was no longer something I would be willing to share.

"Then yesterday, this guy—" Cal pulled out a photo and tossed it to Manny "—came to the room where you had been only to discover an eighty-year-old woman had taken your place. He, too, pitched a fit that you were gone, saying that he was your brother and he was there to take you home. Once again, the hospital produced the documents that you'd been signed out by your wife. But that guy didn't believe them, so they pulled the hospital security tapes and gave him a glimpse of his sister-in-law. He made some half-assed story that she traveled for work and he didn't realize she was back in the country, which actually fit with the cover we'd used, so the staff relaxed."

"So is this news something we should be worrying about?" I asked, figuring it certainly couldn't be good that they had a face to go with a made up name.

"No need to worry exactly. Knowing you exist and knowing where you are aren't the same things. But you definitely needed to know. Tank had a check-in with Ranger last night, and he felt that he could have the assignment wrapped up in two more weeks, so we have every reason to think that you will be safe here for the whole time, as long as we stick to the plan of keeping you completely hidden," Cal explained. "We don't even know who this guy is. We assumed he was somehow tied to whoever attempted to take out Manny, but we don't have a way to prove it."

"Can I see that picture?" I asked, thinking it was probably a good idea to know who had been asking about me.

The photo wasn't the greatest quality, but it was still good enough to see the face of a man with darker skin, short hair, in a suit that probably cost more than my current mode of transportation. But there was something about his mouth that I couldn't shake. His bottom lip was significantly larger than the top one. It almost gave the impression that he didn't have a top lip. And then I remembered I'd seen that guy before.

"Excuse me," I mumbled, keeping the picture tight in my hands and escaping to the kitchen where the laptop had been charging last night.

It took me ten minutes to pull up the PDF I'd made of all the information from the search programs I'd run on Mateo Hernandez. Since the newspaper articles tended to have art with them, I began there and quickly scrolled through the pictures until I found what I was looking for.

The guy in the picture from the hospital had attended an event in New York last year with Mateo Hernandez and was identified in the photo as Juan, the cousin of the philanthropic Mateo. While the positive spin on the Hernandez family was slightly nauseating, I figured it was probably important to know who he was, so I started pulling what I could find on Juan.

The programs came back quickly, which was usually bad news, because the faster it ran, the less information it produced.

The fathers of Juan and Mateo were brothers in Colombia. It appeared as though Juan had had a short, but highly decorated career in the military as an explosives expert. He had no family of his own, and there was not enough interest in his life for me to scare up any other information in newspapers or the internet.

I carried the laptop in and set it on Manny's tray before pushing it over and showing him the photo and the picture from the search I'd run on Mateo earlier.

Manny studied them carefully and then said, "Well, it looks like we know who was asking about me. And if I had to guess, I'd say he was more upset about the fact that I lived than he was that I was no longer at the hospital."

"So does this change anything?" I wondered.

"No," Cal stated calmly, having moved to read over Manny's shoulder. "You two are safer here than anywhere else."

As much as I hated being shut in this house, I knew he was right.

"Was there anything other than this?" Manny asked, having skimmed what I'd pulled on Juan already.

"No. Apparently he keeps a pretty low profile," I admitted, sorry that I couldn't do more.

Cal spoke up once more. "Bobby said he's probably not going to make it by today, either, so he wants you to call him if you have any questions, but he said that what he sent yesterday should cover you for a few days."

"Okay," I replied, looking at Manny and seeing that news didn't please him at all.

We chatted for a little while longer, until Cal said he had to go before he was here long enough to be noticed. We did a quick file swap as he left. When I shut the door behind him, I leaned against it for a few minutes and wondered how I would handle being locked in here for two more weeks. I was already feeling stir crazy, and we were barely a third of the way through our time here.

I allowed myself a few minutes to feel sorry for myself and then shook my head to get those kinds of unhelpful thoughts out. If Manny could handle it, basically stuck in a bed or chair, then I could handle being inside but able to move around.

When I walked back into the den, Manny was engaged in a stare off with the laptop. His hand was over his mouth, and his forehead was creased in concentration. I assumed he was looking at the information on Hernandez, so I tried to be quiet as I moved over to the most recent set of instructions Bobby had given for Manny's care.

There was no way to stop the startled jump my body gave when Manny spoke, surprising me that he was up for conversation. "I want you to do this."

I turned around to see him pointing to the computer and moved to stand beside him to see what he had found in the search that I'd missed.

On the screen was a document from WebMD that detailed how to safely remove a catheter.

"I want this damn bag gone," he said, obviously feeling a little stir crazy from being stuck in the bed like I was about being in the house.

"I don't think you want me to do that," I told him, trying to be the voice of reason. "It sounds like it could hurt, and I've never done it before." My eyes were skimming the directions, and phrases like "hold the penis in a downward trajectory" and "tug firmly" made my knees feel weak.

"There's a time to rest and let your body heal itself, and then there's a time to get off your ass and push your body back into shape. I'm well past the stage of lying around, so this has to go. If you don't do it, I'm going to," he threatened.

"I'll do it," I quickly responded. I could see him trying to do it, passing out halfway, and causing some kind of permanent damage to his penis, which would somehow be all my fault. I had enough things weighing on my conscious that I didn't think I could add erectile dysfunction to the list, too.

Manny pulled the sheet back, revealing himself completely to me. Out of habit, I turned away, not wanting to look at his naked body. Well, that might not be entirely honest. I wanted to look, but I had enough 'Burg left in me that I knew it wasn't proper to drink in the sight of him without feeling more like Grandma Mazur than I was comfortable with.

"Let's get this over with," Manny bravely encouraged.

"I have to wash my hands," I stalled, practically running to the bathroom.

(np) I banged a few drawers as though looking for stuff while giving myself a pep talk that I could indeed do this. He was right; there was no reason for it to stay in now that he was capable of moving around. I found some scissors and pulled out the basin I'd used to bath him. Then I grabbed a clean towel, not sure what kind of mess I should expect.

Finally, I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to find the courage to go out there and yank a tube out of the penis of one of my coworkers. I didn't want to do it.

"I can't do this," I admitted quietly to the face in the mirror.

"Yes, you can," came that annoying voice that reminded me of Nagymama. "Child, can't has never been part of your world."

"Well, yanking things out of guys' penises has never been a part of my world, either, and that's what he wants me to do," I confessed, figuring that this was probably the last step prior to commitment for responding to the crazy voices in my head.

"He trusts you," she replied softly. "Trust is more fragile than a body."

"I have to do this," I whispered. "There's no one else here, and it needs to be done." The personal pep talk was working, so I stood up straighter, picked up the gear I'd pulled together, and walked out to Manny.

He half smiled and said, "I figured you were trying to come up with a way to tell me you weren't going to do it."

"I was," I blurted out, internally cursing my honest streak and inability to keep my mouth shut. "But I decided you'd probably try to do it yourself and screw it up, so if you're sure you want an accident-prone person who tends to screw up most things she touches anywhere near your crotch, tugging on stuff, then I'm up for the challenge."

He swallowed and opened his mouth, but no words came out at first. It took another gulp before he found his voice. "You can do it." He paused a moment. "You don't screw stuff up." He sounded more confident once he found something to argue about.

"Are you blind?" I wondered aloud. "How many times have you guys had to drop what you were doing because a skip got the better of me or something I owned or borrowed blew up, instantly combusted, or got torched in part or in whole?"

"Not the same thing as you screwing it up," he attempted to make a point while accepting my help in moving his legs so that he could sit on the edge of the bed.

"We can continue fighting about this later," I told him, needing to concentrate on what I was doing. "But I have a feeling if you weren't trying to talk me into something you wanted that you might be singing a different tune about my bad luck."

"There's a difference between bad luck and being a person who screws things up," he tried to correct me.

His confidence seemed to increase as I got him propped up and draped the towel over his legs. But when I turned back around with the scissors to cut the tubing, he tried to back up. I froze, giving him the chance to change his mind, but he shook his head and laughed a little nervously.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Force of habit."

"I get it," I assured him as I picked up the tube in my left hand and positioned the scissors in my right. "Are you sure about this?"

"Positive." He seemed so confident that I decided to take him at his word. Just before I cut the tube, he moved to touch my hand and stopped me. "This is just between us, right?"

"What?" I wasn't sure if he was worried that I was going to start telling everybody about the size of his equipment or the vulnerable position he was in.

"I've never been awake when this has been done, and I'm guessing it's not exactly going to feel good, so I'm sorry in advance for anything I might say or do and hope that there won't be another surprise visit from Cal to put me in my place for what might come out of my mouth," he explained, putting my mind at ease.

"Relax," I assured him. "I'll keep Cal from overreacting, and there's no way I'll ever mention this again, so whatever you say or do isn't going to get out from me."

He nodded his head when I finished speaking, as though accepting my words, so I decided to move quickly before he got more nervous and did something to make me jumpy, too. I used my foot to position the basin at the edge of the bed on the floor and cut the tubing in a single smooth motion, dropping the piece from my hand into the container I'd slid into place. Then I put the scissors on the rolling tray and looked up at him.

"You'd better grab the edge of the bed," I warned him.

Before he could ask why, I found that storehouse of courage that so often eluded me, took his apparently scared manly part in my left hand, and firmly grabbed the remaining tubing in my right hand. Aiming downward to the basin on the floor, I tugged, surprised when it seemed to move only slowly at first. Once I gave it a steadier pressure, it slipped right out.

I forced myself not to look at Manny's face, unsure if it would reflect relief or pain. I dropped the part that had been inside him down into the basin with the rest of the catheter and then reached over for some alcohol swipes to clean all around the head of his penis. I hadn't read that it was necessary, but I felt the need to be sure he was clean, and this was the best way I knew to do just that.

"Ahh, Steph?" Manny asked, sounding uncertain and causing me to look up at him and pause the cleaning I had been doing and freeze in my current position.

"Are you okay?" I worried, searching for any sign of pain on his face.

"I think yes is the right answer to that question," he replied, looking down at where my hands were.

I followed his gaze and realized the previously shy male body part that had been attempting to hide from the threat of pain I must have represented was apparently enjoying the clean up, because it was quickly moving to give me more to work with. I jerked my hands away, unable to make my eyes move as well, amazed at how happy his body seemed to be to have the foreign object out of it based on the pride it seemed to be exhibiting as it stood alone.

"Are you okay?" he asked, repeating my question to him but not trying to hide the amusement in his voice.

"Yeah, I'm great," I replied, still staring at him.

"Was there something else you needed to do or document?" he prompted, most likely trying to figure out why I was staring at him with my bottom lip between my teeth.

I grew up in a house that was basically full of women. Sure, I had some males around in my Dad and my grandfathers, but for the most part, all my firsthand knowledge of the human anatomy had come from my experience around females. When I married Dickie, I'd attempted to get him to let me explore his body, and while he was a big fan of my face in his crotch, if my mouth wasn't actively engaged, he got self-conscious and refused to let me look at him. Joe would have been more than glad to let me explore, but it seemed that we always skipped from saying hello straight to what Joe referred to as balls-to-the-wall, wild monkey sex. After we were finished, Joe liked to sleep, and I usually felt the same way, so my chances to explore this unknown territory were not available to me.

The fact that this was really my first chance to truly look at this particular piece of plumbing was going to be my excuse for why I wasn't looking away.

"Is there a chance, now that I'm unhooked, you can find me some pants of some sort?" Manny prompted again, still sounding amused about something.

"Nagyapapa probably had something you could wear," I replied, letting him know he'd been heard. When my ears picked up on laughter, the true horror of what I was doing hit me, and I jerked my head up to look him in the eye and see the humor unhidden on his face.

"Oh my God, Manny, I'm so sorry. I had no right to stand there…staring at your…well, at you…I can't believe I just did that." My ramble button had been fully engaged, and if he hadn't laughed, I would have continued on indefinitely.

"No worries. I'm sure that wasn't something you wanted to do, and I'm going to assume you getting a little stuck at the end was because you were relieved to have it over and know that both of us survived it unscathed." Manny was giving me an out, which I gratefully accepted.

"I'm going to get rid of this and search for some pants that might work. Do you need underwear?" I was so anxious to get out of the den, I wasn't thinking about what I was saying.

My question only made him laugh harder. "No, just the pants will be fine."

Lack of sleep and the awkwardness of the situation was my excuse for my mouth reengaging when most people would have turned and exited the room. "What do you guys have against underwear?"

"Unnecessary, redundant layer of clothes as far as I'm concerned, but I can't speak for the rest of the guys," he replied before grinning at me, obviously enjoying my blabbering. "Why? How many of the guys' undergarment requirements are you up to date on?"

Once my brain made the connection that he was curious about how many of the guys I'd seen out of their pants, I turned even redder than I had been and basically ran to the bathroom, carrying the basin with the discarded medical supplies in it. Obviously I was still mortified, because I was able to dispose of the tubing in a medical waste bag from Bobby, sterilize the basin in case I needed to help him with another bath, and clean my hands before I even had a chance to be grossed out by what I'd just done.

Realizing he'd been teasing me made me smile. It might not seem like a big deal to an outsider, but considering that just twenty-four hours ago, he was being more difficult than a woman with PMS and no chocolate, I was thrilled at the turn in our conversation so far today, even if it was at my expense.

Of course, that didn't mean I had to take his teasing without any sort of retribution. I went into my great-grandparents' bedroom and began rummaging through the few clothes that remained. I found a couple of pairs of plaid cotton boxers that I figured could work in a pinch. They were elastic on the top, so he should be able to wear them without much worry about fit, and it would keep him from being naked. Then in the bottom drawer, I found some pajama bottoms that I remembered Nagyapapa wearing. They had a drawstring at the waist, so they might fit Manny, but the selling factor was the bright stripes that made up the material for the pants themselves. It looked like something a clown would discard as being too bright to wear near small children.

If he was going to attempt to make me feel foolish then I was going to return the favor by bringing him clothes that would give him a taste of his own medicine.