The Crow sat on the balcony again. Beady black eyes watching me. Black feathers sleek and shiny. He looked healthy, alive, capable. I hated him. He peered in at me expectantly. Our evening date dragging out. I knew why he was here, what he really wanted, but while my eyelids blinked, he'd leave the gems of my eyes alone.

Bree had warned me that's what the ravens loved most in the world. Eyes. The window to the soul. They'd peck them out to help your soul escape, then escort you to the afterworld. That's what my best friend called heaven and hell, the afterworld. She said it was all the same. The fall of angels was a man made fiction.

The glass door was open, the air conditioning in our end of the hospital was off again. The heat had been sweltering this summer and the hospital, to ensure they didn't lose power from surgery or the high dependency units, shut the air down in the low dependency units. Like the geriatric and rehabilitation Ward I'd been stuck in for weeks now.

I used my free hand to remove the lid off the pathetic excuse for food they kept trying to feed me and tossed a piece of the meat out onto the balcony. The Crow considered the offering, considered me again. "Go on. I'm bed ridden. I can't hurt you," I grumbled. The Crow jumped down, collected the meat and flew off.

With a sigh, I used the fork to push the rest of what constituted for food around the plate and put the lid back on it. No wonder I'd never been short of work in this place. I'd die too if I ate this slop for a week. I stretched to reach my phone on the side table and pressed in Bree's number.

Her profile picture jumped up on the screen waiting for me to press call. Her raven locks framing her narrow face, dark glass eyes shining out, a small smile upon her thin lips. She had Spanish ancestory but came from the west coast of Ireland. It confused everyone when they started talking to her, and guys really liked to talk to her.

"I'm about to scrub in," Bree answered. No polite greeting. I'm busy, your annoying, be grateful I took the call at all. I'd called her out on it once. She told me I should be grateful. She only answered people she liked, and she only answered when working for those that were important to her.

"I'm going to order pizza if you want to come by after for left overs," I replied. Bree liked quick facts. No pussy footing around. Tell her what you want, when you want it, leave out the politeness. It was wasted on her. The devil had a better bedside manner than Bree.

"If you order Pizza I will break your fingers so you can't use your phone again," she threatened. "You're lying around in bed all day. You need to eat healthy."

"Well, I'm not going to get that here. Steal me a wheel chair and I'll roll across the road to the cafe and get a salad."

"How are you going to push the chair with one arm?"

"I'll take the line out."

"Breaking those fingers one by one," Bree warned. I smirked. She was so serious.

"It's not helping anyway. I'm hurting no matter how much of this poison they pump into me. I think the line is blocked."

"Bullshit! I put that line in. My lines never block. When was the last time you pressed the button?" Bree queried. I looked at the button folded over the top of the machine where I'd put it. I didn't want the morphine. I'd turned the infuser off the moment the nurse left the room so my head could stay clear and I could feel the effects.

"I can't believe you, Poss," Bree scolded. "You turned it off again didn't you. You need to rest to heal. You can't rest properly when you are in agony."

I heard foot falls in the hall. "Argh, someone's coming. Do you want pizza or not?"

"I'll send you something," Bree grumbled. She hung up. I put my phone aside as the door opened to my room.

"Okay, Levi, this is Lidia, but everyone calls her Poss," Stephanie, one of the young nurses introduced. Her pupils were dilated, her cheeks blushing as she moved her eyes from me back to the door. She was attracted to whoever was at the door. Stephanie rarely ever came to my room. I scared her because I called her out on being a bitch openly. Apparently, her interest in this man was enough to bypass that fear.

A man entered the room. Mid to late thirties, good looking in that he wasn't ugly, but wasn't a model sort of way. He just appealed to the eye, the same way standing on the edge of a tall building and pretending you could fly was awesome, but you didn't want to step off accidentally. That's what Levi reminded me of. Stepping off.

His flawless skin was latte making me wonder about his ancestry. His eyes devil green. That's what my mum would have called them as she crossed herself and prayed to Mary, Jesus, and Joseph on meeting him. Mary first, always. Because women should always come first. I never got her cheeky smile till I was older, much too late to tell her I finally got the joke.

He wore chinos and a polo shirt that had physiotherapist embroidered in it. I swore under my breath. Hell just damn well came through the door on two legs. "Did you eat?" Stephanie asked lifting the lid. Her brows perked seeing the meat gone. "Well, that's a start."

She looked at Levi. "This is your physiotherapist. He drew the short straw," she informed. I cocked a brow. "No, really. The physio's drew straws to see who had to take you, Poss."

"Shut the fuck up and get out," I glowered. "Try not to find yourself lost on my floor."

Stephanie's back straightened, her face draining of colour, but the girl had balls. "You have to recover first, Lidia, or it may not be your floor ever again." I glared at her words. She backed down at the look in my eyes and rushed for the door, my food tray in her hands. "Good luck, honey," she muttered as she left.

Levi watched it all surprised. He took a breath and came to the end of the bed, putting my file on it. "Evening," he greeted in one of those international accents. It told you he didn't come from here and had probably travelled so much, he didn't remember where he came from. His eyes studied every aspect of me. The way I looked, the way I sat, the way I watched him watch me. "I didn't draw straws," he broke the silence. "I volunteered to be your hospital assigned physio."

"So, you're insane?"

"That's the consensus," he agreed. He took a deep breath, eyes lighting up, becoming glassy, pupils narrowing. I watched curious. He suddenly looked high. He enjoyed the moment then realised I was still watching him. He frowned, considered me and went to the morphine pump. "Did she do this?" He queried.

"I did."

"Why? You're in agony without it."

"I hate pharmaceutical pain relief. I would prefer to keep a clear head and avoid an addiction," I advised.

"You're going to need something. You won't last a minute in physio with the pain you're in. That means a much longer recovery, Lidia," Levi explained. He sounded excited by the prospect, but advising against it.

"I have a better idea," I suggested. "I'll pay you five thousand dollars to get me out of here and take me home. If you get the discharge papers I'll sign them and be out of everyone's misery."

Levi didn't look happy about that idea. He went back to my file. "How'd you score the private room?"

"I scare people. They had me in a ward for a week. I told one of the women she was going to die overnight, told the nurses too. They said she was fine. She was dead by morning rounds. A few days later they brought in a relatively healthy girl. She'd just had her tibia reconstructed after a compound fracture. I called her death too. The patients didn't want me around once she started fitting, neither did the staff."

Levi didn't look scared, just curious. "Intriguing. Am I going to die tonight?"

I gifted him a ghost of a smile, studying his eyes. "Not tonight." Levi smirked and flipped through to the body chart in my file, highlighter crossing all over it along with pen marks.

"Okay, lets see what we are working with. Have you been walking?"

"They told me I have to stay in bed until my vertebrae are stable."

"That's not what I asked," Levi assessed my eyes. I didn't answer. He stepped back and located the bed pan. He looked at how dry it was. Then he opened the ensuite door and peered in. He came back to my file. "Is it painful? Difficult to walk to the toilet?"

"Yes," I tilted my head. He took another deep breath but unlike the other which left him high, this one expanded his chest.

"You've been showering too. With help or unaided?"

"Unaided."

"Can you stand for it?"

"No, I need to sit down as soon as I get in there," I admitted. "I'm breathless and hurting too much to do much more than sit under the water, doing enough to wash me clean."

"Okay, lets have a look," he dropped the side bar. "Go of a walk for me."

"Thank god," I sigh in relief. "I'm busting." I use my arms to help move my legs from the bed, cringing at the pain searing my body. It wasn't new. The pain was constant in my back and pelvis, the movement just took the embers and brought the inferno back to life.

Levi breathed in again, but this time, his lungs didn't seem to expand. His eyes went glassy as he watched me. The man was high as a kite. He was probably a pot head, or, he was planning on pinching my morphine drip. Too bad for him it was still attached to me. I clung to the stand and wheeled it into the bathroom with me. Thank god I was able to wear my pyjama shorts and singlet now so I wasn't flashing him my cheeks as I walked away from him.

I sat on the toilet and hesitated. The first three days after the accident, I'd been peeing blood. Do you know what that feels like coming out? Razor blades. Now that was pure agony. I'd screamed throughout the first wee. It was hard for me to scream. I'd only done it three times. Twice when they rolled me to change me from board to bed, and they'd rolled me onto my dislocated pelvis.

They didn't know it was disloacated from my spine for a few more days, they were more concerned with my crushed spine and where the seatbelt cut through my pelvis from the force of the impact. There went any potential of having children. That didn't devastate me though. No, that was the news of my spine and my career, eight years of university and training, out the window.

"Lidia," Levi knocked on the door. "Are you alright in there?"

The pain had faded and the grief of losing my hard earned job had taken its place. I swiped at the tears that had fallen and met my own eyes in the mirror. Peppermint eyes, bright from the tears, red rimmed from pain and lack of sleep. Pale skin, sickly pale. I hadn't spent much time in the sun since my residency before I took up specialisation. Still, I'd looked alive, now, I looked like a reanimated version of one of my patients.

"I'm fine," I called. I forced myself to stand. Pain blooming like a bonfire inside me. I whimpered and caught myself on the support bar. The door opened and Levi stepped in. He stepped forward and pulled my shorts back up for me, taking a deep breath while he was bent over in front of me. This one into his lungs.

My eyes went wide as he stood up to face me. "Did you just sniff my puss?"

Levi smirked and supported me back to the bed. "Just making sure you're clean."

"Oh my god," I moaned. "You're perverted!"

"Says the woman who likes pain."

"No one likes pain," I growled.

"You do," he smiled. "I could smell how turned on you were, and for once, that wasn't me. It didn't happen till you were up on your feet in absolute agony."

"No one can smell that someone is turned on," I argued. "You're making shit up."

Levi helped me sit back down. "Two things about me you should know. I never make shit up, and I never joke about sex and pain. Now, I can't touch your spine till it's determined to be stable, so let's look at these legs, and that arm."

I was shocked. He was so straight forward like Bree. So focused and unfiltered. "Can you start with my neck? The whiplash kills."

*****

The video has nothing to do with the story, I just love the movie and found some of the lines in it corresponds with the ideas for this book. 😉