Rough and Ready (23 page)

He went directly to the desk in front of the elevator. "Can you give me Brunhilda Berdottir's room number?"

The nurse, a skinny, no-nonsense woman whose skin was as white as her uniform, asked, "Dare I hope that you're the lout?"

He laughed. "That would be me."

"Visiting hours aren't till one. Only family members are allowed now." She peered at him over the top of her granny glasses. "Are you family?"

If I say no, they probably won't let me in. He took a deep breath and blew out.

"Her fiance." He kept his fingers crossed behind his back for fear God would hear him lie again and make it come true.

"Room 317."

Torolf walked down the hall, feeling apprehensive at what he would find, feeling worried about Hilda's physical condition, feeling guilty for getting her here in the future. Will she be happy to see me? Or angry? Maybe I should have brought flowers. Damn, I never thought about flowers.

He got to Hilda's private room and walked in softly, closing the door behind him. He didn't want anything they said to be overheard. Hilda was lying flat on the bed, her platinum hair spread out on the pillow, her arms and legs strapped to the bed, an intravenous tube leading into her arm, a sheet covering her up to her waist. Wearing a hospital gown, she looked so white and helpless.

He leaned over her and whispered, "Hilda? Wake up. Hilda?"

Her eyes shot open. "Is that you, Torolf ?"

Oh, shit! She must still be blind. He put his hand over one of hers. "Yeah, it's me. How you doing?"

"How do you think I'm doing?" Her voice was sweet… too sweet.

Uh-oh! "Can you see at all?"

She shook her head. " 'Tis better than it was, though. The black has turned to gray, and I can make out some shapes, such as your big loutish body."

Uh-oh! "You're upset."

"Dost think so?" Still, that sweetness in her voice.

"What can I do for you?"

"Take this thing off my arm. It feels like a needle."

"It is a needle."

"This is how they torture people in your country? Pfff! Take it out."

"That's not a good idea. I should ask the doctor if—"

"Take the bloody thing out, or I will lean over and take it out with my teeth."

"Okaaay. It's probably just for fluids anyway." Carefully, he removed the tape and slipped the needle out.

"Now, take the restraints off of me."

"Oh, no! I'm going to call the doctor and see—"

"They have only restrained me because I was being wild and demented. I am no longer wild… just demented." Her sense of humor was misplaced and suspicious.

"You won't do anything foolish?"

"Would you like to hear my new talent… screaming?"

I must have done something really bad for God to punish me this way. "Hold your horses." He unbuckled the restraints.

"Torolf," she said so softly he barely heard her. "Come closer. I would tell you a secret."

When he leaned forward over the bed, she jackknifed upright, grabbed him around the neck, twisted, using one of the karate moves he'd taught her, rolled them both, so that he lay half on and half off the bed, with her on top of him, beating his chest, saying over and over, "Lout, lout, lout, lout!"

"What the hell's the matter with you? I thought you were blind."

"I am blind, but I'm not a lackwit." She continued to beat at his chest, sometimes missing and hitting his head or his shoulder. "What have you done to me? Why did you take me to your country? How did you take me to your country?"

"What is going on in here?" It was the white-faced shrew nurse he'd met on his way in. "Oooh, I know what you were doing. Have you no shame? This patient is blind, and you cannot wait till she is better to put your hands on her?"

Hilda was grinning down at him.

"Here's a news flash, Nurse Ratched. Hilda is the one pinning me to the bed."

"He made me do it," Hilda said. "See how his hands hold me down."

His hands were loosely grasping her waist. He pinched her butt.

She pinched his belly… down real low. She must have been aiming higher and missed. Or maybe not.

"And you pulled out her IV," the nurse accused him. "Tsk, tsk, tsk! Wait till I report this to Dr. Hendershott. I've always heard you SEALs are crazy, but this pushes the bounds of decency. Having sex with a blind woman in a hospital bed!"

"I was not having sex… or thinking about having sex." But now that you mention it.

"Hah!" Hilda and the nurse said at the same time. Hilda was squinting her eyes at the nurse, and he suspected she was beginning to make out her shape.

"Hilda pulled out the IV herself," he lied. "I was just trying to make her more comfortable in the bed when you came in, and I slipped, and then I rolled so that Hilda wouldn't be hurt."

"That doesn't pass the giggle test, mister."

Torolf lifted Hilda off of him and back onto the bed. Into her ear, he whispered, "Behave yourself, or you'll get me kicked out of here."

"I've got to check her vitals. She needs rest. You can go home now."

"No!" she and Torolf said at the same time.

Shocked, the nurse glared at him, as if he had some nerve refusing to leave.

She

also gave Hilda a disapproving look.

"I do not want him to leave," Hilda said in a whiny voice, accented with sniffles. "I am afraid here in the dark."

Hah! Hilda had killed one of the most vicious beasts in all the Norselands.

The

dark wouldn't frighten her. On the other hand, being blind would.

"Well, I suppose you could stay since you're her fiancé. Just put a lid on your sex drive."

Hilda turned her face on the pillow, facing him. "What is a fee-ant-say?"

He hesitated. "Betrothed."

Hilda's eyes went wide. But she must have realized that he had a good reason for the lie, because she remained silent.

While the nurse wrapped the blood pressure gauge on Hilda's arm and took her temperature, he kept reassuring Hilda that what the nurse was doing was harmless.

When the door clicked shut again, he asked, "Why are you so damned mad?"

"Aside from being upset that you have taken me from my homeland and from The Sanctuary, that you caused me to fall in a mudslide, that you turned me blind, and that you caused me to time-travel?"

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry."

"I need to relieve myself. Where is the privy?"

He stood and helped Hilda stand.

"What… Holy Thor! What kind of garment is this I am wearing?" Her hands examined the back of the hospital gown. "My arse is bare." She held the back section of her gown together while he led her, muttering Norse curses, into the bathroom.

He parted her gown for her and showed her how to sit on the toilet, which she said felt strange for a privy hole. Before he had a chance to leave her for her privacy, he heard the sound of her piss hitting the water. He put his face in his hands. He didn't think he'd ever been in a bathroom when a woman was taking care of her bodily needs. It was an oddly intimate thing for him to witness, but it was too late now. He took some toilet paper off the roll and handed it to her. "What is this?"

"It's for wiping. I'm turning around now. Tell me when you're done."

When she stood, he flushed the toilet.

She jumped at the noise. "Son of a troll! What was that?"

"The toilet flushing. I'll explain all this when you can see."

After he helped her wash her hands and settled her back in the bed, her muttering once again over the indecent hospital gown, she asked, "Did you look at my arse?"

"Who? Me?" Just a little.

"You are smiling. I can hear it in your voice."

"I can't help it, Hildy. You have a pretty ass."

"Nobody has a pretty arse."

"I beg to differ. Want me to tell you what I like about yours?"

"No!" she all but shouted.

He propped his butt on the edge of the bed and watched as she craned her neck this way and that, trying to see the room.

"Are you a little calmer?"

"Nay, I am not calmer. Didst know they prick my arm every time I raise my voice?

Didst know there is something odd about my blood? Didst know they intend to take more of my blood to test? Didst know they want to dice-section my body?"

"Dice-section? What is… omigod!… do you mean dissection?"

"Is that not what I said?"

"Someone said they want to dissect your body? Who? No, you must have heard wrong."

"I may be half-blind, but I am not deaf."

His heart was racing with alarm. She must have misunderstood. Still… "A doctor here said he wanted to dissect you?"

"A dock-whore? The first man here was a dock-whore, but how would I know if the men who came later were dock-whores? All I know is one of them thinks I am an ale-yen who has peculiar blood. He and the other man—"

"What other man?"

"If you would stop interrupting, I would tell you. Two men were in the room near my bed when I awakened the third time… or was it the fourth? They plan to get a van—dost know what a van is?—and take me away in the night to some hidden place where they will dice-sect me."

"Sonofabitch! I was afraid of this. My blood type was different when I first got here, too. We think it was the same with my entire family. Don't ask me to explain why, or how it changed, but gradually our blood types became type B.

Maybe it was the food or the climate or another of those frickin' miracles, like time travel." He pulled out his cell phone.

She must have heard the rustle of his pulling it out because she asked, "What are you doing?"

"Calling Cage."

"Cage is here? Where?"

"Not here. He's in Coronado… the town where we live."

"Then how are you calling him?"

"Never mind. I'll explain later."

"LeBlanc here," Cage answered his cell phone. Torolf could hear music in the background.

"Max here. Where are you?"

"The Wet and Wild. Yeah, I know it's barely noon. Why dontcha come over, chèr.

That CIA babe you were dating last year is here. You know, the backbend goddess.

She asked about you."

Gina, he thought. He'd spent a long, very interesting weekend with her in her D.C. apartment last spring. And, yes, she could do backbends. "Can't make it today. I'm in Hilda's hospital room."

"How is she?"

"Still having vision problems."

"Whatcha gonna do with her?"

"Hell if I know, but that's not why I called. Big trouble here, buddy, and it could affect all of us." Quickly, he explained the situation. "So, you can see why none of you can discuss this trip, except among yourselves. In the meantime, I've got to get Hilda out of here before those bozos come back."

"You takin' her to your apartment?"

"Nah, that's not a good idea. I gave my name and address to the EMT as a contact in case of emergency. The hospital probably has it on file."

"So, you gotta find someplace to hide her for a while?"

"Yeah, any ideas?"

"You could take her down on the bayou. My maw maw would take her in. In fact, she'd get a kick outta hearin' Hilda talk about Vikings and the eleventh century. Prob'ly have her speakin' Southern in no time. Fix her up with some Cajun dude."

A picture of Hilda lounging on some bayou stream with a Cajun dude leaning over her flashed into his mind, with her drawling out, "Frankly, darlin', ah doan give a damn. Y'all kin taste man biscuits any ol' time y'all want." Oddly, he was the Rhett Butler in that mind blip. "Thanks for the offer, but that's too far away."

"How about your dad's place up in Sonoma?"

"No way!" My family would have me married to Hilda before I could blink.

"They

would be in as much trouble as Hilda if those screwballs caught up. I can't risk that danger for them."

"Hey, I know… How about that place you hid out last year after your accident?"

Torolf grinned. "Hog Heaven?"

"That's the place."

Hog Heaven was a biker RV/trailer park in a remote area north of Coronado, and it was within driving distance. Hilda would fit right in with the other crazies there. "Thanks for the suggestion."

"Sure you don't want us guys to come up there and wipe out the alien dodo birds?"

Torolf could just envision the scene. A bunch of drunk Navy SEALs fighting with some skinny scientist types. "No. I'll let you know how it works out. And I'll be there on the grinder next Monday. Don't want to raise any red flags there."

"Max," Cage said just before he hung up.

"What?"

"Doan go gettin' married or nothin'… not unless I'm there ta be yer bes' man."

"Ha, ha, ha!"

After he clicked the phone shut, he looked up to find Hilda standing at the window. "What are those things with wheels out there?"

At first, Torolf couldn't answer. Hilda had forgotten about the hospital gown.

Be still my heart! Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a pretty ass.

"They're cars. It's a parking lot."

She turned.

Damn!

"What did you discuss with Cage?"

"I know a place I can take you where you can recuperate."

"Ray-coop-raid? You would take me to a chicken coop?"

He laughed. "Recuperate means get better."

"Why did you not say that?"

Nag, nag, nag! "Do you want to know where I'll be taking you or not?"

Just then, he heard voices outside the door… a man and Nurse Ratched. It must be the doctor coming to check on Hilda. Quickly, he picked her up in his arms so he could lay her in the bed, but when he picked her up, his bare hand landed on her bare ass. She screeched and tried to squirm out of his hold.

"Be still, Hilda. Someone's coming, and I've got to put you back in—"

The door opened. Slick stood there dressed in one of those green doctor outfits.

He even had an ID tag clipped to his pocket and a stethoscope around his neck.

And Nurse Ratched was smiling as if George Clooney had just arrived from ER.

"Well, well, well," Slick said, taking in Hilda in Torolf's arms and his hand on her ass. "Just what the doctor ordered."

Lady in the red dress, red dress… uh, red suit… oh, my!…