Read Online By Any Other Name by Cherie Noel - Free Book Online Page B

loose. Running up the path to the door, he flung himself at the front door. Beating at the unyielding surface, Andy continued to scream.
    “No, no, I didn’t mean to hurt him, not like that…”
“E” wrapped strong arms around him, picking him up and carrying him away from the door. Andy quieted for a while, until the paramedics arrived along with the police. He heard one say something about a deep puncture wound just as another pair wheeled out a gurney with Michael strapped to it, head shorn down to the scalp on one side, eyes closed, and whole body still as death. Then he started to scream again, and didn’t stop until the second set of medics shot him full of something that made the whole world seem soft and pretty. Before his eyelids got too heavy to hold open, Sam came over to check on him.
“Holy shit, Andy, you’re scaring the crap outta me. Michael’s gonna be okay, and Devon too. Adrien’s the one who has us worried right now, but you know my bro. He’ll be up on his feet, ready for me to immortalize yet another of his pratfalls on “Stupid Shit Adrien Does” again in no time. Right?”
Andy tried to fight through the inexorable pull of the drugs to offer Sam some comfort, but the only word he could form was a rampant denial of the whole situation.
“No, no, no, no…”
****
“What shit in my mouth? No, scratch that. What died in my mouth, thereby releasing all its bodily fluids to create a fetid pool of noxious waste around its slowly decomposing body, and why the fuck did whoever I was with last night let me drink so much?”
Speaking as he fought to open his eyelids against the heavy weight fighting, with equal intensity, to shove them closed again, somehow gave Michael the extra oomph he needed to crack one eye open. The room he was in was at once, completely foreign and all too familiar. He was in a hospital room and damned if he knew how or why. He lay still for a moment to run a quick inventory of his person. There were no suspicious bandages. All his limbs were present and accounted for. Michael decided to sit up and get someone to come give him some answers about where he was, and what he was doing here. As a result of his effort to push up on one elbow in preparation for sitting up, a wicked shaft of white pain lanced through his head.
Groaning and attempting to cradle his head in his hands brought another unpleasant revelation.
“Oh shit, I’m still in the military. Fuck, the whole thing with Andy was just a dream. Damn it.”
A husky chuckle sounded off to his left.
“In fact, Michael, you’ve been out of the military for quite a while now, and your new hairdo has nothing to do with your career choice.”
Rolling gingerly to his side, Michael gaped at the classically beautiful, dark haired woman sitting calmly next to him knitting what appeared to be a baby bootie. It might also have been a hat, or the start of a very lumpy blanket. Michael couldn’t rightly tell. The thick, honey rich tones of her sultry contralto voice were as familiar to him as the vividly blue eyes and gentle smile she turned his way. He blinked, unable to reconcile her appearance with his recollection of living in Syracuse, New York.
“Mama? What in the world are you doing north of the Mason-Dixon Line in the dead of winter?”
Donna Jean Rose gave him a long, level look out of her clear blue eyes.
“David called and told me you’d been taken to the hospital. Where else would I be?”
Michael blinked at her.
“Mama? Would you please fetch David for me? I’d like to ask him a thing or two.”
Nodding in affirmation, his mother stuck her tongue between her teeth as she glared fiercely at the—thing—she was knitting.
“Of course I’ll go get him for you. Just let me finish this here row… if I stop now I’ll forget where I was and have to pull the whole thing to pieces and start again.”
She looked up at that point, with her mouth curving up in a smile.
“Then again, it might be best if I did just