by Jadyn Chase
Destiny touched me. It woke me from my long dream, my self-imposed isolation. I denied my heart, my body, my whole life. I denied myself love and connection. I denied myself the softness of another body, another heart. I told myself Anna was enough, that I could live the rest of my life loving her and keeping her soft and safe. Now I found she wasn’t enough.
She fell asleep. We talked for an hour. Then it all caught up with her. Maya was right about that. There I went again, thinking about Maya. Would it never end? Would I ever be able to put her out of my mind again?
After Anna drifted off, I stayed awake for a few hours just gazing at her beautiful face. My world revolved around her. A pang of guilt stabbed me in the heart that I could even consider someone else. Not even the most perfect woman in the world should be able to drag my attention away from her.
Maya wasn’t the most perfect woman in the world. For one thing, she belonged to another class of society. She wouldn’t want to get mixed up with a punk like me. Besides, I didn’t want to get mixed up with her. She didn’t have the first clue what my world was all about. Why would I want to involve myself with someone like that?
I needed one of my own kind. If I was going to open up that can of worms, Anna needed one of our own kind. She needed someone she could look up to and model herself after.
Why couldn’t that be Maya? I always wanted Anna to live a normal life. She would never have that if she modeled herself after someone like us. She would stay poor and lost and outcast for life the way all the rest of Los Diablos did. I couldn’t bear that.
How could I bridge the two sides of my own hopes for her? If she went to college and became a doctor, if she moved out of the barrio and got friends and a husband from that world, she would never come back. She would become outcast to us. She would shun us because we weren’t good enough for her anymore.
We weren’t good enough for her. I wasn’t good enough for her. That was the plain truth. The realization broke my heart, but I had to accept it for her sake. If giving her the life of her dreams meant losing her forever, I would make that sacrifice. I would make it gladly.
I rested my head against the chair and closed my eyes. The minute I blocked out the outside world, Maya appeared in front of me radiating peace and comfort. She touched my hand and said again the words she spoke in the cafeteria. It’s going to be all right. Those words became a mantra in my brain. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right.
She was right about Anna coming out of her coma. Those words echoed to the farthest corners of my life. It’s going to be all right. She was talking about Anna, but she was also talking about me. Whatever was going on with me, it was going to be all right. She said so and I believed her.
I believed every word she said. That was the really weird part. I spent a few minutes with her, and right now I would believe her if she told me the world was flat and the sky was pink. She spoke to me with the voice of Destiny.
4
Maya
I walked into Anna’s room and stopped. Two dozen bodies, all decked out in gang regalia, packed the room so I couldn’t get inside. They pressed close to get near the bed. In the mix, I spotted a couple of women also wearing black leather with patches.
I recognized that patch now it was the Los Diablos. I shuddered. The Devils. How could any woman get tangled up with these creatures?
Just then, I noticed one of the women swing a toddler around her torso to sit it on her opposite hip. The little one stared at me with enormous pitch-black eyes. It was a little boy, and he wore a red bandana tried around his shaggy hair just like all the men in the room.
My blood ran cold. A small girl clung to the mother’s leg for shelter in a forest of huge bodies. In front of my eyes, one man jostled another and almost stepped on the girl’s foot. He turned around and steadied her with one burly hand on her shoulder.
The girl didn’t shrink away in revulsion. She smiled up at the man and went back to holding onto her mother, but the incident imprinted on my mind. How could any rational person raise their children in this environment?
Roman told me his wife was killed in a drive-by shooting. That meant all these women and children suffered the deadly consequences of their partners’ activities. Hell, maybe the women participated and then went home to kiss their children goodnight with blood-spattered lips.
Maybe they grew up in gang families and didn’t know any better. No other explanation made sense. Why else would people live like that?
All at once, raucous laughter exploded out of the crowd. I didn’t hear the joke, but the volume alone made me cringe. The men slapped each other on the back. Just then, one of them swung down, snatched the girl off the ground, and swept her up. The man tossed her onto his shoulders and settled her straddling his neck.
I hovered in the door a few seconds longer. I was supposed to do my morning checks on Anna’s vitals, but I wasn’t getting anywhere near the bed with all these people in the way. I didn’t really like the idea of drawing all their attention to me to tell them to get out, either. I couldn’t make enemies of them.
I made up my mind to slip out unnoticed and come back later when the whole group spun around to stare at me. I stiffened for the worst, but they only laughed and started filing out of the room on their own.
They fired jokes back and forth, and the little girl had to duck to get through the doorway on the shoulders of her giant companion. Almost all of them exited without paying any attention to me until I spotted Roman behind the throng.
The three men from last night clustered around him all talking in his ears. He answered one after another while they migrated toward the door. At last, the other three broke away. One of them with a thick mustache clapped Roman on the back and called, “We’ll teach ‘em a lesson about who rules this town.”
“You bet.” Roman squeezed his shoulder and pointed to the group as they drifted past me into the corridor. “Don’t forget what I said. We’ll need all our men ready to take on the Longtails.”
When the last three vanished and the other voices visitors died away, Roman faced me. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” I hurried past him to Anna’s bed. “I just need to take Anna’s vitals for her chart.”
I got to work. The girl lay back on her pillows. She smiled up at me, but anyone could see she was tired. “Could I have some more of that orange juice, Maya?”
“Sure, sweetie.” I picked up the cup from the bedside table and glanced into it. It was empty. “I’ll just finish taking your vitals, and then I’ll go get you some.”
“Thanks.” Now that I looked at her, I noticed her lips looked pale, and her cheeks took on an ashen pallor. “Do you feel all right, sweetheart?”
Roman strode over to the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“She looks pale.” I laid my hand on Anna’s forehead. “She’s cool and sweaty.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s a sign of shock.” I grabbed the call button and pressed it.
Roman frowned at me. “What’s the matter? Are you saying something’s wrong with her? You said she was going to be all right.”
“I’m not saying anything’s wrong with her. She might just be exhausted from having so many visitors all at once. I don’t really know.”
Roman’s fists tightened on the bed railing. He leaned closer and raised his voice to a sonic boom. “You said she was going to be all right.”
At that moment, the Nurse Practitioner on duty and a fleet of other nurses rushed into the room. They surrounded Anna’s bed all talking at once. Arms and legs flew, and orders fired back and forth.
I thanked Heaven for their presence. I didn’t like the look in Roman’s face or the bite in his voice. What if Anna wasn’t all right? He might blame me. Then what would he do? I had to remind myself he was a dangerous criminal. He wasn’t your garden variety concerned father. He was the leader of a known biker gang.
One of the nurses bumped into him trying to get a
round that side of the bed. “Do you mind stepping out of the room, Sir? We need to work to make sure your daughter is all right.”
He didn’t move. The nurse in question shot a meaningful glance at the Nurse Practitioner. I saw the whole situation deteriorating before my eyes. If he didn’t leave, they would call Security to remove him. I could just imagine how he would respond to that.
My heart went out to him. He might be a biker, but he was just a human being reacting the way any other human being would. I stepped in and laid hold of his shoulders. “Come on, Roman. Let’s get out of here and let these people do their jobs.”
He resisted me turning him away from the bed. “You said she was going to be all right. What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured in his ear. “Maybe nothing, she might just be tired. Come on. We can’t help her in here.”
He softened under my hands, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off the bed. Anna gazed up at him. A cloud of fear darkened her features. “Don’t leave me, Papa!”
He hesitated and stopped. “I’ll never leave you, sweetie. Never.”
“It’s all right,” I told Anna. “We’ll be right outside the door. As soon as they say, we’ll come straight back. No one is leaving you.”
I pushed Roman toward the door, and this time, I felt my words sink home. He let me propel him into the corridor. The door shut behind us.
For some reason, touching him didn’t strike me as dangerous or inappropriate now. I ran my hand up and down the bare skin on his arm to comfort him. “It’s all right. Just let the nurses do their job. I’ll go in there in a few minutes and see what’s going on.”
He passed his hand across his eyes. “I just don’t think I can deal with all this shit. If anything happens to her, I swear I don’t know what I’ll do.” He looked smaller when he said that. “
“Her condition isn’t dangerous,” I reminded him. “She had a seizure. There’s no reason to think she had….”
I stopped myself in time before I let it slip out. He didn’t need to hear right now what the worst case scenario might be. He already feared the worst and I could see it taking a toll on him.
His head shot up when I didn’t finish. “What? What is it? What is there no reason to think she had? Say it. I need to hear it.”
I open my mouth, still unsure if I should tell him. Anna could have had a brain aneurysm. She could be bleeding in her brain. She could have gotten a blood clot in her heart and be having a heart attack. I didn’t think I could bring myself to tell him that, not even when he asked me to.
Just then, another alarm went off at the nurse’s station. Five more staff rushed to the room. An orderly pushed the crash cart. It slammed into the door frame in his hurry to get inside.
“What’s going on? What’s the matter with her now?” Roman charged the door.
Against my better judgment, I darted in front of him to stop him. “Wait, Roman. Stay out here. I’ll go in and see what’s happening. Okay?”
His haunted eyes flicked to my face, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “If anything happens to her, you be the one to tell me. Give me your word you’ll be the one to tell me. I couldn’t stand to hear it from anyone else. Promise me.”
I stared into those mesmerizing eyes of his. I could barely get my voice to work. “I promise.”
He blew out his breath through pursed lips. That was my cue. I raced away and plunged into the room full of people. Machines beeped and alarms sounded all over the place. At first, I couldn’t make head or tail of the situation over all the voices shouting at once.
Two nurses moved apart and gave me an opening. I slipped between them to Anna’s bedside and gazed down at her face locked in a mask of horror and stomach-turning madness. The whites of her eyes showed where her black irises should have been, and a smear of green sputum slathered across her cheek.
Her arms and legs jerked stiff and terrible against the sheets, and a powerful stench of rot filled the room. She thrashed so hard her arm hit the rail until one of the orderlies dove in to restrain her.
While I watched, the bubbling spit popping between her gritted teeth swelled and stopped. “She’s stopped breathing!” someone yelled.
“Intubate her!” the Nurse Practitioner bellowed.
Four people attacked Anna at once, but they couldn’t pry her locked jaws apart no matter how hard they tried. Someone shoved me away from the bed. Just once, I looked over my shoulder toward the window. Roman stared through it at the mayhem circling his daughter’s bed.
“She’s breathing again!” someone cried.
I turned back. Anna sprawled still and lifeless on the bed, but her chest rose and fell with steady, even breaths. My spine sagged in relief. All the monitors returned to normal and the nurses relaxed. Everyone stared at Anna for a minute until we satisfied ourselves that she was out of the woods.
I forced myself to walk out of the room, but I couldn’t still my racing heart. Sweat beaded on my brow. My mind understood that Anna might be all right, but I didn’t want to slacken my vigilance in case something happened to her.
Roman rushed up to me. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
I tried to get my voice working, but my knees turned to water. I never experienced such a shock from almost losing a patient.
Roman grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. “What’s going on?” he thundered. “Is she all right? What happened in there? Tell me!”
I held up my hands to protect myself. “Let go of me!”
I didn’t realize I screamed it so loud until the echo struck my ears. Roman stopped instantly. He dropped his hands and moved back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…..”
“She’s all right,” I croaked. “She had another seizure, but they recorded the whole thing on the ECG. They’ll have a record of her brain activity, which means they’ll be able to prescribe the right medication to make sure she doesn’t get them anymore.”
His arms flopped to his sides and he blinked at me in a stupor. “Oh.”
I brushed my hair off my forehead. I needed air. I needed to sit down. I searched the corridor until I saw a few chairs sitting against the wall. I lowered myself into one and propped my elbows on my knees.
“She stopped breathing for about thirty seconds,” I went on. “It will be really important that you keep an eye on her until they can be certain they have the right medication. Sometimes when an epileptic starts taking a new medication, it doesn’t work one hundred percent of the time. If she has a seizure, you need to turn her on her side right away. If she stops breathing, you need to get her to the hospital immediately.”
He stood a few feet away from me with all the life drained out of his powerful limbs. He stared at me like a zombie. “You said she was going to be all right. I believed you.”
My head swung up. When I saw him so stunned and shocked, I couldn’t stop myself from going to him. I placed one hand on his shoulder. “She will be. This is something that will probably be with her for life. It’s just something you have to manage, but it won’t stop her from living a full and fulfilling life. I promise you that.”
In a fraction of a second, he snapped alert. His tough, stony exterior rose around him to barricade me away. “She won’t live a full and fulfilling life if she’s dead.”
That made me madder than anything. I let my hand drop and narrow my eyes at him. “Anna is in a lot more danger from you and your activities than she is from this. Your wife died because of you and your business, not because of any seizure. You better remember that.”
I wheeled away. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this guy right now. He was bad news. I knew that when I first laid eyes on him. I never should have let myself get close to him. In a few days, he would take his daughter back to whatever Hell they were both living in. She would probably get hooked up with another biker maniac and get herself shot just like her mother.
I marched away down the corridor. Guys like him made me so steaming mad I could punch s
omebody, but I only made it a few steps before he leaped forward. He grabbed my wrist to stop me and his voice rumbled into my bones. “Maya, wait!”
I shouldn’t have stopped. I knew that, but I did it anyway. If he thought he could talk me out of walking away, he was wrong.
I confronted him with my hackles raised. “What do you want? Nothing’s stopping you from going and visiting your daughter now. Go on in there and leave me alone.”
“Maya…..” he began. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I’m not used to…. this sort of thing.”
I raised my eyebrows. “This sort of thing? What do you mean?”
He shrugged and shifted from one foot to the other. “I mean…. would you consider…. what if we…. I mean, would you like to go out sometime?”
“Go out? With you?”
He lowered his voice to a murmur. “I’m sorry I said that. I’m sorry I shook you like that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Obviously,” I fired back.
“Give a guy a break,” he chided. “This isn’t easy for me.”
I hesitated for a second. It wasn’t easy for him and it wasn’t easy for me. I looked down at the hand holding onto my wrist. When I did, I came face to face with the dragon tattoo on his arm.
The serpent glared at me out of a sea of ink. It lashed its tail and bared its glistening fangs in a deadly grimace of murder and mayhem. I couldn’t get distracted by Roman’s nice words or his loving fatherly behavior toward Anna.
If I dealt with Roman at all, in any capacity whatever, I was dealing with that dragon. I had to remember that at all costs.
I raised my eyes to his face. “I really don’t think us going out would be a good idea.”
“Why not?” he asked.
I glanced down at the tattoo again. It told me all I needed to know about him. “I heard you tell that man you were fighting the Longtails.”
A shadow of doubt flickered across his face. “So what?”
“The Longtails are a Chinese gang from the other side of town,” I replied. “I saw a documentary on them. They’re dragons—real dragons. Long means dragon in Chinese. The reporter even had footage of them shifting into people and back to dragons. He documented it on film and broadcast it all over the world.”