His right eyelid peeled open. He swallowed around the golfball-sized lump of morning nausea and licked dry lips with a drier tongue. The pain hadn't lessened with sleep, but he hadn't expected it to. This was rehab, paid leave to help him shake the battle scars and combat fatigue, not a vacation.
That didn't stop the frustration. Not even twenty-four hours in and he was hating this.
Sunlight fell across the floor and bed, slashed to golden ribbons by the blinds. It was too bright. Always was this time of morning.
He rolled his head and checked the clock on the bedside table. Turned out it wasn't morning after all. Red numbers blinked 12:34.
He groped for Jill, but all he could find were cold sheets. That wasn't surprising. She was a night owl by nature, but she didn't like to waste daylight when she had it. Even if she was gone now, she'd come back. He was lucky to have her around at all. They'd just been lucky that the agency owed her some leave too.
He was the early riser. Not today though.
He thumbed the crust off his left eye, but it didn't help. It was swollen shut. Not as bad as it had been yesterday, before they'd cut it, but he was still half-blind. Just a brush of his fingers made the entire right side of his face throb. It didn't help that his arm, from his knuckles up to his elbow, was still strapped up. The padding scratched his skin, made the bruising feel worse.
He sat up in bed, running his good hand through hair that was greasy with sweat. There was a fat lump at the back of his skull, and a dozen small lacerations gummed shut with dried blood. It was like touching a hill scarred by trenches and craters.
But that wasn't the worst of it. He swung his legs out from under the sheets and set his feet down on the floor. There, on his knee, was the brace that stopped him from stressing the joint while it healed. It'd never really recovered from his mission in the Antarctic, when he'd gone looking for Claire.
Not that he'd ever let it stop him.
Only it had stopped him. It all seemed so surreal now. One minute, chasing one of Umbrella's hired guns across rooftops in Rio. The next, tumbling to the street, crashing through awnings, washing lines and a stall selling Coke in the old glass bottles, before hitting concrete.
A dislocated knee. A fractured wrist. Twenty stitches in various cuts on the back of his head. Fifteen more in a cut on his bicep. A concussion. And a face so swollen it twisted his mouth into a frown.
The knee came first. He'd jumped from one rooftop to another, landed on his bum leg, and felt it give out beneath him, folding like a card tower. He'd hit the slates face-first and then slid backwards into freefall.
He'd still been conscious, and hurting, when Jill had reached the ground floor.
They hadn't caught the bastard either.
He massaged the skin through the skeletal frame of plastic and steel. Three bruise-black rectangles, all swollen with blood and pain. Didn't feel like it was getting any better. In fact, it felt like the brace was making things worse.
His foot was throbbing with needles. He couldn't walk right in the damn thing. Couldn't climb stairs, get into the shower or hold a stance. He felt crippled by it. How could it be helping his rehab?
He might be forced to wear the goddamn thing indefinitely.
The downtime was killing him. He'd known men who'd been put out by injuries who never got back in the game.
He pushed himself up and hobbled to the doorway. He limped past the mirror on the closet and caught a glimpse of a bedridden invalid with a python wrapped around a leg fat with swelling. He ignored it.
"Jill!" he called, propping himself up on the threshold of the living room, "Jill, you here?"
No answer. Maybe she'd gone out. She'd told him yesterday the refrigerator was empty.
He needed water. His tongue felt like a strip of sandpaper in his mouth. He thought about going back to bed and waiting for her to get home. But he wasn't a cripple. Injured, maybe. Shelved, for now. Never a cripple.
He staggered into the next room, wincing as a spasm of pain streaked up his left leg like a jolt of electricity. He gasped, clenching teeth, and took another step, ignoring the high-voltage sting that came every time he put his weight down on it.
"Shut up," he snarled at it, "just shut up!"
He'd only made it halfway across the room, to the couch, when he had to stop. It was frustrating, but every step took too much out of him to make it all the way.
When had crossing the living room become an ordeal?
He balled fists as he stood balanced on his right foot, steadying himself against the back of the chair. Part of him wanted to rain blows down on that swollen, black ball at the middle of his leg until it went away. But this wasn't a zombie or one of Umbrella's hitmen. There was nothing to fight. Not physically, anyway. This was his own body, turning on him, betraying him.
He wasn't going to let it win.
He pushed off from the couch and kept hobbling in the direction of the kitchen, trying to focus on his breathing, on clenching and unclenching his hands, on anything but the pain.
This was pathetic. He was barely a match for a zombie like this, let alone a B.O.W, let alone one of the company's soldiers, let alone...
Him? He'd just laugh. Smirk and say 'too easy'. And he'd be right...
Somehow, he willed himself to the kitchen and collapsed across the counter, breathing hard. His leg was quivering with the exertion. Jill was going to give him hell for this when she got back, but it beat sitting on his ass all day.
He made his way to the refrigerator, using the worktop as a crutch, and grabbed a bottle of water from inside. He flicked open the sport cap and sucked in a half dozen quick mouthfuls, each one easing the raw feeling in his throat. He squeezed and sprayed a blast of cold water over his head. He'd need to take a shower, just as soon as the brace and wrist strap could come off.
Whenever that'll be.
He ran a hand over his face, leaning against the front of the refrigerator. He pressed his bruised cheek to the cold metal casing. Felt good, if only for a few moments, to focus on something other than the leg.
But it couldn't last. He still had to get back to the bedroom. Or at least the couch.
He took a deep breath, and then started to make his way back, the bottle clasped in his good hand. It was tough. He had to steel himself for every time his foot met the hardwood floor, knowing he'd feel it from the tips of his toes all the way up to his hip. It was like stepping on knives.
He'd made it to the couch again when his entire leg buckled, calf, knee, thigh and all. A shudder of spasms raced up and hit him in the coccyx. It gave out under his weight and then he was falling. His arm was half-raised by the time he hit, his elbow cracking on the floor and his fingers going numb. The impact jerked the bottle out of his hand and sent it skidding away across the room. His head came an inch from bouncing off the wood.
He cried out, rolling onto his back and hugging his throbbing elbow to his stomach while the fingers trapped by the brace tried to massage feeling back into his leg.
"Son of a bitch," he grunted, through clenched teeth.
The front door opened. He heard grocery bags hitting the floor and then Jill was kneeling beside him, eyes wide. "Chris? What happened? Talk to me."
"Fell. Leg gave out. Landed on my goddamn arm."
"Oh, Chris..."
She put her hands to his shoulders, soft and reassuring. He flinched and she pulled back on reflex.
He sighed. "Sorry."
"It's okay. Let me help you back into bed."
"How...?"
He fell silent. She paused, brow creasing. He could feel himself breathing hard, as he fought to voice what was racing through his head. His eyes were starting to burn, but he held back.
"He's always getting stronger. And I'm ... I feel weaker than I've ever been. How do I beat him, Jill? How do I beat them? I can't even beat this."
Her face fell. For a moment, he thought she was going to start crying. He didn't want that. He never knew what to do when she cried. And if she started then he'd probably start too.
Instead, she pulled his head to her chest. He let himself collapse against her, feeling her fingers curl in his hair.
"It'll be okay," she whispered, "you'll be okay, Chris. It's early yet. You'll see."
He nodded. But somehow, he wasn't so sure.