Page 101 of Caged

“Jaden?” I asked, my voice low and gritty. “Where’s Jay?”

“He’s fine. He went home.”

Thank God he was okay. Wait. He went home? When? I swore I heard him talking to me earlier. I leaned back and tried blocking out the noise so I could think.

Holy shit!“Dad?” I asked, sitting up too fast and immediately regretting it.

“Has it been so long you don’t recognize me?” His laugh sounded forced.

“No, sorry, I just. I…”

“It’s okay. Waking up to me is probably a bit of a shock.”

It was, and yet, it wasn’t. We weren’t close, but my father had been there for every major milestone in my life. Of course he rushed to my side when he heard I was shot. The shock was how quickly he’d gotten here.

“I’m glad you’re here.” The words didn’t adequately express what I felt but everything hurt and my mind felt like mush, so forming complex sentences was beyond my ability. When I asked him what day it was, he said Sunday.

I’d lost a full day.

I yawned, just as knock on the door sounded.

A nurse walked in, asking, “How are you feeling?”

How am I feeling?What kind of question was that? I’d been beaten within an inch of my life, starved, drugged, and shot.

I felt like shit.

My face must have given me away because she said, “Your face just answered me, so no point in lying.”

Guilty. I would’ve lied so my father didn’t worry.

“What are you giving me?” I asked as she used a syringe to add something to my IV line.

“Morphine. Your body took a lot of abuse and you’ll heal faster if you aren’t in pain,” she answered.

That made sense. She kicked my father out of the room to change my bandages. My eye lids felt like lead weights, so Iclosed them and drifted back to painless, nightmare-free sleep before she was done.

I woke to the sound of two voices. My father and John Sheppard.

Grateful my mind felt semi-normal and I could think clearly, I pretended to be asleep and listened.

It wasn’t hard for me to imagine the guarded expression on my father’s stoic face as John filled him in.

“Thank you for not holding back,” my father said, his voice strained. It sounded like he clapped John on the shoulder.

“You’re welcome, sir.” It was the first time I’d heard John defer to anyone. But then, John was a marine and my father was a three-star general, so it shouldn’t have been surprising.

“How’s your son?”

“Recovering, thanks for asking.”

“Catelyn asked for him when she woke up last night.” There was a pause, making me wish I could see them. “Is there something between them I should know about?”

“Not that I know of, but you should probably ask Cate,” John said, surprising me by not only using my first name, but the less formal version of it.

“Seems to me you know more than you’re letting on.” He accused John.

“What I suspect and what I know are two very different things, sir.” John laid the sarcasm on thick. “And it’s not mine to share, regardless.”

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