“What is the patient’s name, Miss?”
“My brother’s name is Eduardo Rodriguez.” While she looked his name up in the database, I kept on rambling nervously. “He’s just a kid, you know? A stupid-ass kid, but a kid nonetheless. Sometimes I want to choke him to death, but—,”
“Daphne?”
I looked up from the front desk, turning around to find the woman’s voice, almost melodic and sweet as sugar that had called out my name. She had on a pair of navy scrubs and a white doctor’s coat. Her brown hair was pulled back into a low bun but some tendrils fell forward and framed a beautiful cherubic face. And from the slight crinkle in the corner of her eyes, I instantly felt a sense of calm come over me so overwhelming, that I started to get a little emotional.
“Oh no, please don’t cry,” she said, coming straight for me and pulling me into a hug. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. But, if you need to cry it out, go right ahead and cry it out. It’s good for the soul sometimes and like I always tell my patients, sometimes life just gets the better of you, you know?”
“Thank you,” I said while choking back my tears as much as possible.
But then it hit me, all of it and how I ended up here in an emergency room in the middle of the night. In between my crying, I managed to talk a little bit to try and find out who this person was and how they knew me.
“Who are you?”
She chuckled, as I made no qualms about wiping my face on her white coat. Pulling back to get a good look at her again, she answered. “I’m Avery Allen. Max told me you were coming here and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Max? How do you…wait a second. Did you just say your last name was Allen?”
She nodded. “I’m his sister-in-law. He called me as soon as you were on your way to make sure you and your brother would be in good hands.”
“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t he tell me before I left that you worked here?”
“I don’t technically work here. I’m covering for a friend’s shift tonight who was under the weather.” Avery smiled and then started to pat down her pockets looking for something. When she found it, she dug inside and pulled out a few tissues to hand them to me. “Here you go.”
After taking a few calming breaths, I blew my nose so loudly that it would have made Louis Armstrong proud. With the heels of my hands, I wiped my eyes and then my cheeks clear of the tears that had fallen. Honestly, it was only a matter of time before I lost my shit at some point today, tonight, whenever time this was at this point. After the night I had shared with Max, which already had my head and my heart in a duel for what, I wasn’t sure. One part of me felt something for Max that I hadn’t felt in such a long time that it was beyond terrifying. But the other part of me…was just plain terrified of where it was headed with him.
“I still don’t understand why Max never mentioned you would be here before I left.”
Her smile turned a little conspiratorial and in that moment, I knew that I would be fast friends with Avery. She made me feel so comfortable and so safe, that I almost forgot why I was here to begin with.
Leaning in, she whispered, “You didn’t hear this from me, but he didn’t want you to think he was pulling strings on your behalf. He told me you might take it the wrong way.”
“Avery, you are pulling strings on her behalf and you know how much I hate that.” This came from the Amy Winehouse impersonator behind the front desk. I had completely forgotten about her. To me, she said, “Ms. Rodriguez, I assume you won’t be needing me anymore, correct?”
“I, well…I don’t…”
“Doris,” Avery cut in, “I’ll take it from here. Thank you so much for all your hard work.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she responded with a smirk.
Avery pulled me into her side, wrapping an arm around my shoulders like she was a mama bear and I was her little cub. Normally, I wasn’t one to be mothered since I was usually the one doing the mothering. But there was something about this woman that put me right at ease and made it impossible not to let her take care of you. She started to lead me towards the patients, where hopefully, I would finally get to see Eddie.
“Don’t mind Doris. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
She went on to explain how she was a nurse practitioner and her friend from her residency days, Maddie, who was also a nurse practitioner and usually the one on duty here tonight, had fallen ill with a bad case of strep throat. That’s how she coincidentally ended up working the overnight shift all the way here in my neck of the woods.
“Please tell me that Eddie is okay? How much trouble is he in?” I asked her, growing frantic the closer we got to my brother.
“He’s fine. Totally fine.” Avery stopped us from walking any further and turned to face me, the look of utter calm coming over her features. Over her shoulder though, I could see a police presence concentrated around one in particular patient station on the other side of the emergency room. She noticed me noticing what was going on, but kept on explaining my brother’s condition and treatment. “He has a minor concussion and some cuts and bruises, but that’s it. He’s very lucky that it wasn’t a lot worse.”
“That’s such a relief to hear, you have no idea. When I got the call, I thought…well, you don’t want to know what I thought,” I said. I had to choke back some emotion that started to bubble up in my throat with the mere mention of what I initially thought had happened. Don’t think I would be forgetting that phone call and my reaction any time soon.
She reached out and soothingly patted me on my upper arm. “I understand. Say no more. How about I take you in to see him right now?”
Letting Avery lead me, she made sure to fill me on how my brother was terrified of having to call me in the middle of the night. “Yeah, well, he should be terrified. He knows better than to hang out with that, that...punk who got them into this mess in the first place.”
“Trust me, I don’t think your brother is going to be hanging out with that person any more after tonight.”
“I really hope you’re right about that, Avery. Not sure if I can much more of this bulls—, sorry, I meant to say crap. Dammit, I don’t mean to curse, honestly. It’s just I’m so worked up, you know?”
Avery chuckled. “I totally understand, Daphne. No need to apologize. I’ve heard much worse. From Max, no less.”
We abruptly stopped in front of a curtain that was semi-open. Avery turned to me and smiled that smile of hers again that made me feel safe and at ease with the situation. In that brief moment, I made a mental note to send her some flowers or a card or something to convey how grateful I was that she stepped in to ensure my little brother was taken care of. It spoke volumes of the kind of person she was. Not to mention thanking Max for making sure I was taken care of.
“Eddie, it’s Avery again. Are you decent?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” Eddie answered.
Avery then pulled the curtain completely open to reveal my brother, lying in his bed, partly propped up with a few pillows behind his head. He was wearing a hospital gown and had a bandage around his head that made him look like a forgotten experiment from a mad scientist’s laboratory. But what struck me the most was how much Eddie reminded me right then of how young he truly was. I mean, yeah, he was about to graduate high school, God willing that this whole disaster hadn’t messed that up. But, he was still just a kid. And that realization hit me like a ton of bricks. It made me emotional all over again as I crossed the threshold to stand by his bed. Meanwhile, Avery had begun checking his vitals and asking him some random questions like what day it was, how old he was, and finally, what his name was. He answered them correctly with no hesitation, thank God.
“How are you feeling?”
“My head still hurts a little,” he answered. “And my arm’s sore, but that’s pretty much it.”
“All right, good,” she told him. “Your vitals all look normal, so that means a few more hours in here and you’ll be free to leave now that you
r sister is here.”
With that, Eddie turned his attention to me. It took him all of one point five seconds to breakdown and start crying. Naturally, I got choked up too and started tearing up again.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Eddie.” Leaning forward, I gingerly hugged him, trying extra hard not to jostle him around too much. “If something worse would have happened to you, I swear, I don’t know what I would do.”
“I’m sorry, Daph, I didn’t know. I swear it.”
“Shh, it’s okay.”
“It is?”
Pulling back, I wiped my eyes a little as Eddie was doing the same. “Well, no, technically it’s not okay what you did. But I get that you didn’t know and didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But, we can talk about that later, okay? Right now, I just want you to get out of here. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow or the next day.”
“Okay,” he said. “Did you call abuela yet? Does she know?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to have to let her know soon.” I glanced at the standard issue clock on the wall, grimacing when I noticed how we were that much closer to four o’clock in the morning. “Now that I’ve seen you for myself, I feel a little better about calling her this late.”
“How much do you want to tell me, ‘I told you so’?”
Sighing as I rubbed the back of my neck, I tried my hardest to fight off the smile, but he was right. I wanted to say that to him. Badly. But, it wasn’t worth it at this point.
Eddie had his whole life ahead of him and he would still need someone to help guide him. That person was me; I had to make sure he was on the right path. So why should I rub it in when he made a mistake? I hoped he knew he messed up, learned his lesson, and moved on with this life.
A commotion broke out somewhere in the emergency room so loud and so sudden, that it scared the shit out of my brother and me. It happened so fast that we were all caught off guard. Then I remembered the police presence that I had noticed when I first got here and breathed a sigh of relief, thinking if anyone was causing trouble, the cops would handle it.
“What’s going on?” Eddie asked, trying to sit up.
“Stay still,” I told him. Looking to Avery, I asked, “Do you need to go and check that out?”
She had already poked her head around the edge of the curtain that gave us a bit of privacy in the emergency room from the other patients. Popping back inside, she finished typing in the rest of whatever updates she was doing to Eddie’s chart, the corners of her mouth upturned to her serene smile. In what I had to guess, was her usual look. It made me instantly relax…again.
“Seems your little friend, Joey, is causing a bit of trouble for the residents. I’m going to head over there right now and see if they need any help.” Avery moved so smoothly, looking serene as she gathered up her things. “But I’ll be back soon to check on you again and ask you a whole new set of stupid questions, okay?”
Eddie chuckled. “Okay. Please tell Joey to cut the—,” he looked to me and then shrugged his shoulders. “Cut the shit before he gets himself into more trouble.”
“You got it,” Avery told him before ducking out completely.
As soon as she was gone, Eddie went on to tell me what I already knew about this disastrous night with Joey. Apparently Joey had texted him telling him he had just bought a new car and if he wanted to go on a ride with him. He agreed. And it wasn’t until Joey had started speeding and swerving in and out of traffic that Eddie felt like something wasn’t right. Sure enough, the police started following them and a chase ensued. Joey panicked and started driving really erratically then and confessed to him how the car was actually stolen. Next thing Eddie knew, Joey had lost control of the car on an attempt to make a sharp right turn, skidded out and started spinning until they hit another car head on…luckily, not going too fast. But fast enough to cause some damage.
“Man, if I don’t ever get in a car any time soon, I’d be totally okay with that,” he said. Outside of our little private area, the commotion with Joey grew louder and more frantic. “I bet Joey’s just figuring out how much trouble he’s in.”
“Yeah, well, he’d probably be a lot better off if he let them do their thing instead of being a jerk about it.”
As I pulled my cellphone out of the sweatpants pocket to text Max an update, the commotion got so loud it was actually frightening and then, yelling started. As clear as day, I could make out that the yelling was coming from Joey. Something about how he wanted to get out there right then and there. We also heard a man’s commanding voice tell him to calm down and to take it easy. Then, like a stampede of cattle, some patients in their gowns and hospital staff were walking very fast away from the commotion and towards the front desk. It was difficult to make out what was being said then or what was even happening. So, being the nosey person I was, I went to find out for myself.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” I told Eddie and started for the edge of the curtain. I ran right into a police office before I could take another step. “Oh, I’m so sorry, excuse me.”
“That’s okay, ma’am. If you would please get back to where you were while we sort this situation out.”
“Sure, of course.”
And as I turned on my heel, I heard Joey yell, “Fuck you!”
This was followed by a blood-curdling scream from a woman that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. Some glass shattered and then one gunshot rung out into the silence followed by two quick gunshots. The cop that I had run into had pulled me to the ground and covered my body instantly. The only thing I could make out was my own heartbeat ringing in my ears like a bass drum. It was beating so loudly that it blocked out everything else happening around me. After a few more seconds of being crouched on the ground, the police officer slowly moved up off of me and offered me his hand to stand up. In slow motion, I managed to look up and see that Eddie was okay; he was freaking out and yelling, but about what, I didn’t know. My adrenaline had kicked in and up to a whole other level and it was still drowning out any other sounds around me.
It was a little like being in a tunnel. As I went through that tunnel, slowly reaching the end of it, the sights and sounds started to come back to me. And that’s when I remembered…Avery.
“No, no, no!” I yelled and ran like a woman possessed.
I made it as close as possible to where the turmoil had been coming from. When I got there, my mid-section was yanked back by a freakishly strong arm that I didn’t know who it belonged to. I only knew that it was keeping me from making sure Avery was okay.
“Please! Let me see!” I shouted. “Avery? Are you okay? Avery?”
Nobody answered me.
Nobody needed to.
Because a beat later, the curtain was pulled back just enough to reveal Avery’s lifeless, bloodied body lying in a rumpled heap on the floor next to Joey’s. As if it was some twisted and cruel joke, the curtain was moved just as fast to hide what I had seen.
But it was too late.
There was no way I could ever forget or erase that visual from my mind. It had already imprinted itself onto my brain. The look of fear frozen on Avery’s face would be playing in my nightmares for years to come. Time came to a screeching halt. Someone picked me up and carried me away from it all.
A scream broke out and rose above the commotion.
It was me. I was the one screaming. The whole time I was being carried away somewhere, I screamed and screamed not even recognizing my own voice.
And I couldn’t stop…Avery was gone.
It was close to five o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t heard back from Daphne or Avery in over hour. Life had a way of reminding you just how small the world really was sometimes. Just like it had earlier tonight when Daphne was scrambling to get to her brother. It had dawned on me then that Avery was working the overnight shift at the same hospital. Without Daphne knowing, because something told me she wouldn’t have appreciated me butting in and pulling some strings on her behal
f, I texted Avery to let her know to be on the lookout for Daphne. She had texted back pretty fast letting me know it was no problem. But it had been over an hour since I had heard anything from either one of them. The radio silence was making me fucking mental and there was only so much space in my apartment for me to pace. Deciding it was better for me to get the hell out of my place, I put on my sneakers and went for a run.
For a late spring night or morning, there was more than a slight chill in the air. It was downright fucking freezing. My teeth were practically clattering together like a goddamn cartoon in time to my steps along the pavement. And as I ran through the streets of the city that never sleeps, my thoughts kept going back to Daphne. That was a fucking first for me. It was definitely more that physical with her…I knew it and she knew it. Or at least I hoped she knew it. Damn, what if she didn’t know it?
Fuck, Max, maybe you ought to tell her so she would know it, you idiot, I thought to myself.
“I will,” I said out loud to myself. “I’m gonna tell her today, dammit!”
“Good for you, buddy,” was the response from some random stranger who was also getting in their pre-dawn run.
I was just about to say thank you to the stranger when my cellphone started to buzz in my pocket. Since I knew it was Daphne, I stopped running and just swiped my phone to answer.
“Get your ass to Jack’s house right now!” Trevor yelled into my ear.
“Huh?” I pulled the phone away to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Nope, it wasn’t Daphne at all. It was really Trevor and he was calling me way too early for it to be a fucking joke. “What the hell is going on?”
“Max, I can’t explain too much right now because we don’t really know much. Just please get your ass over to Jack’s right now.”
I could hear him talking to who I thought was Veronica in the background, but it was too muffled for me to make it out clearly. It was something along the lines of their being a family emergency and telling the driver to hurry the fuck up. I started a dead sprint towards the nearest street corner that I knew had to have some cabs to hail one down.
The Better Man (Allen Brothers Series Book 2) Page 21