Chapter 11

Brandon woke up late the next morning in a bed that wasn’t his own. His head was pounding like he’d somehow managed to combine three hangovers into one and he was afraid to open his eyes; the light hurt enough coming through his eye lids. He lifted his head gently from the pillow, a thin line of drool connected his lower lip to where his head had been laying. He hadn’t the strength nor the inclination to do anything about it until he heard a familiar voice.

“Are you awake?” It was Eve with a considerable amount of concern in her voice. Somewhere beyond the parts of his brain that had been stomped in by a couple of punk kids, he managed to feel self-conscious, quickly wiping the spit away from his face and trying to blink his eyes open. Through blurred vision, he could make out the sparse accommodations of a room in Roatan Island’s makeshift hospital. It was more of a doctor’s office with a twenty-four hour staff than a hospital, but judging by the way Brandon felt, he was in just the right place.

“How did I get here?” He managed to ask through what felt like a record setting case of dry mouth.

“By the time I got back with help, the police were already there. Someone else must have called them,” Eve began to recount the story from the night prior but Brandon, terrified, was already putting it together… help had already come because they’d been being watched.

“Just police?” Brandon asked, already knowing the answer to his question.

“Paramedics too, I think… and a couple of guys in suits,” Eve’s eyes looked toward the ceiling as she tried to remember.

“White guys?”

“What?”

“The guys in suits, they weren’t local…” Brandon stated more than asked.

“No, I guess they were American or something. I don’t really know, they left while the police were taking my statement.” Eve looked back down at him with concern in her eyes, “I’m so, so sorry Brandon… this is all my fault.” She pulled a chair up alongside his bed and took his hand into hers.

“No it’s not, Eve. They did this, not you.” Brandon tried his best to console her, but the pain in his head was overwhelming.

“Well, you did a good number on them too, I guess. The police said you broke on of their legs, Brandon…”

“And another one’s nose. I’m pretty sure a third needed his mouth wired shut,” a tall man stood in the doorway, his complexion was local, but his perfect English seemed much more American, “they really messed with the wrong guy last night, Mr. Webb.”

“Who are you?” Eve stood and asked, but Brandon already knew. He was law enforcement, probably a detective, here to take Brandon’s statement. He also knew that the law tended not to land too squarely on the side of foreigners in these situations.

“I certainly don’t feel like I won the fight,” Brandon spoke without looking at him.

“Detective Descartes, Ma’am. I’m here to speak to Brandon.” He produced a badge from his pocket and showed it to the room, “Care to tell me what happened last night, Mr. Webb?”

“I got my ass kicked,” Brandon coughed. His head felt like it might explode if he were to do it again.

“By my count, you did a fair share of ass kicking yourself. Do you happen to know the men who attacked you?”

“I know one of them,” Eve chimed in, “his name is Jorge something…”

“I don’t know any of them. One of them was giving Eve a hard time yesterday and I told him to get lost. Seems like he might have taken it personally,” Brandon kidded.

“Well, it doesn’t look like he’ll be picking any more fights for a while. Here’s my card, I don’t see any reason to pester you too much while you’re recovering, seems like a pretty cut and dry self-defense case. Give me a call when you’ve been discharged, we can set a time to speak.” He gave Eve the card, Brandon was still trying his best to keep his eyes closed as much as possible.

“Thank you officer, I will.” Brandon spoke in the direction of his voice. He didn’t hear another goodbye, but after a minute he assumed he and Eve were alone again, “how bad am I?”

“The doctor says you’ve got some broken ribs and a concussion, maybe a broken hand too…” Eve’s voice was somehow still soothing through the fog of his headache. He hadn’t notice his hand hurting until she mentioned it, now it hurt like hell.

“Well, at least I got some shots in too,” he murmured.

“I’ll say… I shoulda stuck around to watch the show,” Eve tried to laugh, but it came out forced. She was clearly very upset. Brandon opened his eyes and lifted his head from the bed the best he could to make sure she heard what he had to say.

“Eve, this isn’t your fault. Remember what I said? People are the same everywhere. Those guys didn’t need an excuse to start trouble,”

“People aren’t the same everywhere Brandon,” Eve leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, “I’ve never met anyone like you.” Her lips felt cool against Brandon’s face. He was sweating, with blankets covered him up to his chest, but too weak to do anything about it. He exhaled through his nose and smiled slightly.

“It was still a pretty good night,” his voice cracked as he spoke.

“It wasn’t exactly how I’d hoped it would end…” Eve brushed her hand gently along the outside of his face. He could feel her fingers rise and fall over the swelling outside his eye.

“It wasn’t what I had planned… but I’ll take it,” Brandon said, coughing once more, this time feeling the pain in his chest as much as his head.

“You’ll take it?” Eve laughed a bit, looking him over.

“I wasn’t sure I’d ever talk to you again,” Brandon opened his eyes and looked at her, “wasn’t sure I’d even see you again after last night.”

“You think getting beat up for me gets you a second date?” Eve smiled warmly.

“Does it?”

“How can I say no to that face?” She joked. Brandon brought his hand up to his face and winced as he touched his fat lip.

“It’s a date. Just gimme a bit to rest up…” Brandon was suddenly very sleepy.

“You got it,” she answered. She waited a moment for a response, but Brandon was asleep.

Brandon opened his eyes again a few hours later. He could see the diminishing light of the fading day through the age browned venetian blinds on his window, but it didn’t matter. Brandon’s headache, though slightly subsided, was still too severe for him to be concerned about much else. His back was sore and without thinking, he adjusted his positioning by twisting at the waist. Pain shot through his ribs and knee, then again through his hand, making him suddenly aware of the ill-fitting plastic and cloth brace that seemed, at least to his comfort, to be binding his right hand too tightly. He fell back into his original position with a grunt.

Exasperated by his body’s determination to remain conscious, it was another ten minutes before Brandon started to consider the weight of his situation. Debilitated for the time being, perhaps, but Brandon had played football his entire life, rugby in college, fought in cages and, perhaps most importantly, had two older brothers growing up: pain was familiar territory for him… arguably the most familiar. During a short lived stint in marriage counseling, Brandon could recall, their counselor accusing him of being a masochist, suggesting that he’d been injured so many times because of some perverse pleasure he experienced through pain. It was a foolish assumption from a man, Brandon was convinced, wasn’t any better at reading into his motivations than his wife had been. Brandon wasn’t especially introspective, but he had never been confused about his motivations; pain was never the goal, pain wasn’t even a part of the plan. Pain, more often than not was simply a side effect of progress. It meant getting stronger, getting better, or in plenty of situations, a good story. It was ever present, but never something to actively avoid. Brandon was hurt, but he knew that was a temporary setback at best. He’d be on his feet that evening, back to himself in a few days, even if it would be a month or two before he was back to one hundred percent.

There were far bigger things to worry about now, not the punks that had worked him over the night before, Brandon was fairly confident that they wouldn’t come back for more trouble, either because they felt confident that they’d gotten their point across or because they didn’t want him to get any more across to them. No, his real concerns revolved around the men Eve had seen when she’d come back with help, the white men in suits… the men who must have been following him. There were no regulations forbidding him from having dinner with a woman, nor were there rules in place forbidding sex, but that’s where the waters got muddy. Relationships were strictly forbidden; they presented too much of a risk toward maintaining one’s cover. Once romantic feelings become involved, things like duty and responsibility slowly become secondary to more pressing ideals like love and family. The men watching Brandon wouldn’t have any reason to suspect that he was in love with Eve, but that provided him with little solace… they clearly felt they had reason to suspect something, or they wouldn’t have been watching him at all.

Brandon needed to find out the official position of his situation. Initially, he’d considered simply reporting it, acting as though he was unaware of their intervention, but decided against it. In the game of intelligence, playing dumb was rarely the best move. Instead, he’d address his contact directly, find out why he was under surveillance if he could, though he knew that without any information to leverage, his requests would most likely be ignored. Worse still, this situation could lead the powers that be to label his cover as compromised, resulting in a termination of his contract and, if he was lucky, a one way ticket back to the United States. He didn’t hear much about former agents and knew no one would miss him if they were to kill him, but shrugged that concern off as movie nonsense. He didn’t know anything that would make him a threat and disposing of his body would be more nuisance than simply cutting him off. Maybe it was time to end his career in pseudo-espionage anyway. If his short time with Eve had taught him anything, it was that there was still some life left in Brandon’s old, and currently very sore, bones. Maybe he should get out while that was still true. That sort of thinking was precisely why relationships were against regulation, Brandon supposed.

Regardless of any of that, his primary focus had to be getting back on his feet, finding his cell phone (he prayed it hadn’t been stolen) and getting into contact with Deep Throat. Anything beyond that was conjecture and when your head hurts as much as his did, there simply wasn’t any room for excess thinking. He needed to approach the issue systematically, starting with getting out of bed. His head began to pound in unison with his heart beat as a preemptive objection to the idea, but Brandon found solace in knowing his head wouldn’t hurt any less if he stayed where he was. Might as well hurt in my own bed, he reasoned as he began to sit up.

The pain in his ribs was verging on debilitating and much to Brandon’s dismay, it took several attempts before he was sitting upright. He swung his legs down off the bed and could feel the looseness in his knee. He hoped that was temporary, as getting knee surgery in Honduras wasn’t very high on his list of things he’d hoped to do during his tenure on the island. He took a deep, preparatory breath and held it in as he put more weight onto his feet. He paused and let the pain subside before taking another deep breath and exhaling with a grunt as he stood. The blood rushed from his head and his vision grew dark for a moment; he kept a hand on the railing of the bed to stabilize himself until it passed, then he began to take stock of the parts of his body that were still working. One good hand, one good leg, both on the same side; one eye was nearly swollen shut, but the other seemed to be working fine and aside from a little stiffness, his back wasn’t in too much trouble. His ribs hurt much more than he expected, it had been a while since he’d broken one and he attributed his inability to simply get past the pain to his advancing age. Teenagers are invincible, even when they’re hurt. He was becoming an old man, and feeling very much the opposite of invincible.

After a minute, he realized he could walk with relative ease, as long as he focused on foot placement and didn’t twist his knee. His hand, which he was beginning to agree must be broken, was useless except for his index, middle and ring fingers sticking out of the brace. He’d still be able to type, however slowly. This beating, like so many before it, would soon become nothing more than a nuisance, he predicted with spirits as high as a man in his condition could have. It was time to check out of this hospital, get his phone and get to work. He’d have time to heal later… and he was ready to do exactly that, until the door opened.

“You’re up!” Eve announced with a bit of cheer as she popped through the door. She wrapped her arms around him with more force than Brandon would have liked and the joy of feeling her close to him was drowned by the sharpness of the pain in his ribs. He winced and stepped back a bit, losing his balance and falling back into the seated position on the bed, Eve pulled back with a frightened look on her face, “oh my god! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

“No, it’s fine, I’m just still a little rough around the edges. Really.” Brandon consoled her.

“Such a tough guy,” Eve smiled that smile again. He didn’t know what they had given him for pain killers, but there weren’t half as effective as that smile.

“You look beautiful,” Brandon’s mouth said almost without his brain’s permission. Eve paused, seemingly taken aback by the change of subject.

“You look like shit,” she put her hand on his shoulder and made a subtle pout, as though she was breaking bad news to him.

Brandon laughed, “Well, I feel like shit so at least I’m consistent.”

“How about dinner on me? Will that help you feel better?” Eve’s lips were thin, not the plump, luscious Photoshopped type one might see on the cover of Cosmopolitan, but something about them not only caught Brandon’s attention, they captivated it. Brandon paused for a second, recollecting the kiss they’d shared at the bar the night before.

“I would love to; I’ve just got something I need to take care of first.” Eve seemed surprised, almost let down by his response, but even amid the mental clouds of concussion and infatuation, Brandon knew now wasn’t the time to ignore his responsibilities. “Do you know where they put my personal effects?”

“Yeah, they’re in a plastic bag at the nurse’s station I think…” Eve’s words were distracted by a clear concern for what she thought Brandon was headed to do, “listen, Brandon… if you’re planning to go after those guys, I don’t think…”

“No… no nothing like that, I promise,” Brandon interrupted, “I just have something I need to take care of for work, we’ve got a big ship coming in next week and I promised Tony I’d have some paperwork for him,” Brandon remembered he’d made that promise just in time to make it a solid alibi.

“Okay, Brandon… I’m sorry I didn’t mean to,” she paused, Brandon assumed she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for. Adding a brutal beating to the already overwhelming confusion of feelings and uncertainty certainly wasn’t helping either of them keep their heads on straight. Almost didn’t keep mine on at all, Brandon thought.

“Listen, I know things are…” Brandon found himself just as unable to finish his sentences.

“Things are what, Brandon?” Eve stepped closer to him and looked up into his eyes. She placed her right hand lightly on his arm.

“Perfect,” Brandon spoke through barely parted lips and leaned in to kiss her. She stepped into him, pressing her body against his and holding it there by wrapping her arms around his battered body. It hurt terribly, so bad that Brandon nearly pulled away but he stopped. It was worth the pain. After a long second, they parted once again.

“Why don’t I just come to your place and bring dinner?” It may have been the concussion, but Brandon could swear her eyes were twinkling.

“That sounds wonderful,” he answered, his lips tingling, his synapses muddied with pain and arousal.

“Where do you live, anyway?” Shit. It was too late and he couldn’t care enough about regulations to stop this… or at least that’s what he told himself as he wrote his address on her hand with a pen from the counter. She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

“I’ll see you at eight?”

“It’s a date,” and with that, Brandon was alone in the hospital room once again. He waited a minute, letting Eve make her way out of the building to avoid awkwardly bumping into her at the nurse’s station; he also needed the time to compose himself. The kiss hurt.