Page 53 of Booked for Kidnapping

“I’m hanging up on you now, Mom. Love you.” Bradley pressed the disconnect icon on his phone’s screen. Then, with zero care of his father’s comfort or privacy, he went to the bathroom and stuck his head inside. “She’s hungry and needs to use the bathroom, so your tub time is over.”

“I guessed that from what I could hear of the conversation,” his father replied, and I realized the tub no longer rumbled. Mr. Hampton emerged a moment later wearing his pajamas. “We’ll order in.” Snatching a leather folder off the desk, he offered it to me. “Get whatever you want and pretend your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach.”

I took the menu and took longer in the bathroom than necessary, indulging in a lava-hot shower, as I wanted my next adventure in the tub to involve a naked Bradley and more books. When I emerged, father and son shared a bed and browsed through a second folder. “Where’d you get another menu?”

“From me,” my doctor said from the door, and she waved at me.

I yelped, about entered orbit, and bolted into the bathroom before comprehending the woman was actually my doctor. I bowed my head, sighed, and left the bathroom. “That was not one of my better moments.”

“It really wasn’t, but if I had a man as handsome as yours, I’d stare at him a lot, too. You get a pass. How are you feeling?”

“Hungry enough I’m thinking about ordering a pizza, a steak, and a salad, and the salad is composed of ice cream with various toppings.”

“Do you mean a sundae?” Dr. Mansfield asked with a grin.

“It sounds so much healthier if I call it a salad.”

“With how thin you are, you definitely deserve that salad. Bradley, I want you to make sure she eats five times a day. They can be smaller meals, but her calorie count should be no less than two thousand for her current height and weight. Give her a day or two, then increase by a hundred or two calories and some exercise. I’ll send a general plan to your phone. I also called in some prescriptions through a local doctor for some vitamins. If you need painkillers, let me know, but Yvon doesn’t think you’ll need any. The work on your foot is solid, and while you still need to heal, it’s all rebuilding muscle, walking around on it, and accepting your foot is going to be one big ball of pain when the weather changes. Keep a cane handy, because when the barometer shifts on you, you’re going to know it, it’s going to hurt, and you’ll want to limit how much weight you put on it until you’re used to it.”

“That’s a pretty damned good prognosis,” I said, staring at my foot, which seemed happy to bear my weight and didn’t even blip on my pain radar. “I can’t tell if it actually hurts or if I’ve become used to it hurting so much I’m not noticing it.”

“It shouldn’t be hurting you hardly at all right now. Yvon thinks you’ll have some soreness when you walk for a while, but the work that was done was good, the new bone has healed well, and they did a good job on the pins and rods. We’ll need to take you to a hospital eventually for a full scan to record everything that’s been done so we can make sure we treat your foot appropriately in the future, but these assholes did what I couldn’t.”

“I mean, maybe you could have done it if you were willing to knock my ass out for months at a time and lock me up?” I eyed my foot. “I don’t think I would have accepted that as an option, to be honest.”

“This is true. This wasn’t a conventional treatment, and frankly, it skirts being cruel and unusual punishment. Well, if you were awake for any parts of the procedure.”

Bradley stared at his father until the older man sighed. “With your permission, I can check.”

The Hampton family’s magic never failed to fascinate me, and I strode to the bed, sat down, and lifted my foot. “Trauma-induced amnesia is a thing with me.”

“It really is,” Bradley’s father muttered, shaking his head and placing his hand on my foot over where I had a new collection of scars to go with the pins and rods. A moment later, he winced. “I’ll just go ahead and confirm that now, Dr. Mansfield. The illusionist blocked her view of who had her, and she was only semi-coherent during the procedures, but she wasn’t fully sedated. Or it wore off during the procedure. I can’t tell which. But the pain imprint is pretty strong, and from what I can tell, she had a full medical team working on her. They all were masked and obscured, so at most, she witnessed some blurred shapes.”

“Can you tell me about her foot’s state at the start of the procedure?”

“Somewhat. They removed a lot of bone due to a severe infection; honestly, I’d probably do my best to forget this, too. They removed a chunk of bone and muscle from here.” He tapped a part of my foot near the new scar. Frowning, he put my foot back down on the floor and grabbed my left foot, poking and prodding at the top. “Yeah. They cut open her other foot, removed bone samples, and did the work that way. One operation. They removed the infection in stage one, disposing of all the infected bone, and then they took bone samples, mended the bone they’d pillaged from, and manipulated the sample to put it in her right foot. The pins and rods are meant to be permanent, as far as I can tell. They poked at her right foot in the areas where there are non-natural implants from prior operations but didn’t remove anything. Perhaps evaluating if they could replace those bones?”

“That’s a possibility. Feet are complicated, and in some cases, pins and rods and metal parts are better in the long term for the patient. That’s one handy ability, Mr. Hampton,” my doctor complimented. “Excellent. How much infection was there?”

“Enough they removed a huge amount of her foot getting rid of it, then they used the bone mender to restore what was taken by pillaging from her left. They restored everything at one time.” Bradley’s father scowled. “I remember this from my classes, but this was an amputation-level infection. They tore out that much.”

“Don’t be so cranky. It’s a solid medical procedure, and it’s done with some patients if the right doctor is available. Usually, it’s done with hands for musicians, artists, and those who simply cannot manage their normal lifestyle without a certain finger or their entire hand. It’s also prohibitively expensive, so most have it done through a medical school program. They would be charged at cost for the operation, which is still expensive, but it’s critical for teaching new bone menders how to handle this sort of procedure.”

“How many bone menders can do work on this level?” I asked.

Dr. Mansfield frowned, pulled her phone out of her pocket, and made a call. “Yvon? Mind coming over? Our patient is awake, and Mr. Hampton used his talent to give us a better idea of the procedure. We’d like to pick your brains.” After a pause, she laughed. “Not literally. You’re useless to us if we were to remove your gray matter from your skull.”

“They tortured her,” Bradley’s father grumbled.

“And she can’t remember it, so I would do your best to not worry about it. You can’t change it, and while she paid a hefty price in the form of pain, they did what we otherwise couldn’t because of that pain. It takes a particularly ruthless doctor to be willing to subject someone to that. I couldn’t do it.”

Somehow, that comforted me. “I probably would have let you, though. As long as I wasn’t isolated. I’ve learned I hate isolation.”

Unlike his father, Bradley relaxed, and he smiled at me. “I don’t like they hurt you, but I’ve always admired your determination.”

Someone knocked at the door, and a moment later, one of my original doctors, who’d fought rather hard to preserve my foot, strolled in through the door. I pointed at him. “You’re not the asshole!”

Crap. I clapped my hands over my mouth, heaved a sigh, and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”