Getting the details of this horrific MMA injury might be the opportunity of a lifetime.
And, sure enough, Lyssa had called it. As the taxi driver rolled around to the parking lot out back, she spotted the flashing lights of an ambulance, waiting by the doors. Paramedics were wheeling somebody out in a gurney, with their neck in a brace.
From across the parking lot, she couldn’t be sure it was Silas Batras – but it was unlikely to be anybody else.
“Follow that ambulance,” Lyssa demanded, reaching into her purse for a twenty. As she passed the money through the little Perspex window, she promised the driver: “There’s more where that came from, if you skip the lights and ignore the speed limit.”
And, with his eyes flashing greedily, the cab driver nodded.
A moment later, they were following the ambulance out into the highway.
Chapter Fifteen
Silas
Silas had never been more terrified in his life.
As he lay pinned in that hospital gurney, all he could do was stare up at the ceiling and wonder how bad it was.
And it must be pretty bad. The expression on the paramedic’s faces had told him that much.
The ride in the ambulance had been horrific, as he was jostled back and forth on that gurney. The EMT staff looked him over, and kept asking him the same questions:
“Can you feel your legs?”
“Can you feel this?”
And he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel his legs.
And now, curtained-up in the emergency room, he still couldn’t.
The nurses had come and gone. The x-ray room was being set up for him. But nobody had given him a straight answer.
How bad was it?
And the follow on question – the one he was almost too terrified to ask:
Was it… Was it permanent?
Was he paralyzed?
Mixed martial arts wasn’t a safe sport, but horrific injuries were mercifully rare. Then again, rarity often went hand-in-hand with inevitability. Just two years ago a 23-year-old fighter had been paralyzed from the neck down after a rear naked choke went horribly wrong.
The same could have just happened to him.
Silas squeezed shut his eyes and sobbed.
He’d come to America to seek fame as an MMA fighter. He didn’t want that fame to come as a result of a horrific, headline-worthy injury.
If he couldn’t fight again, he didn’t think he’d want to go on living.
And if he couldn’t even walk again?
Fat, hot tears rolled silently down the big man’s cheeks.
Chapter Sixteen
Lyssa
There are worse places in the world than an emergency room late-night on a Saturday – but not many.
As Lyssa Meadows came staggering into the lobby of the emergency room, she was immediately hustled aside by nurses and patients, wheeling one patient this way, and another in a different direction.
A bleeding teenager. A belligerent drunk. A 50-year-old woman having a suspected heart attack.
As a journalist, Lyssa knew that she was standing in a maelstrom of heartbreaking stories right at that moment.
But none of these injured or sick strangers were who she was here to see.
Marching through the crowd, she approached the desk and opened her mouth, ready to speak:
“Silas Batras. Which cubicle is he in?”
Only it wasn’t Lyssa who spoke those words.
As the reporter approached the nurses’ station, she was brushed aside by a couple hustling past her.
It was the woman who demanded to know where Silas was – and she was a woman Lyssa instantly recognized.
Nicola Hedberg.
“Where is he?” Nicola repeated again, as the nurse checked the computer. “We’re listed as his emergency contacts.”
Lyssa stood there, invisible. With her arm wrapped tightly around that of her husband, Nicola and Jared Hedberg stood impatiently as the nurse checked the records.
“He’s in cubicle R,” she eventually replied. “You’ll need to sign in…”
But Nicola and Jared were already marching away.
The two of them actually marched right into Lyssa’s direction, and the reporter stood there like a deer in the headlights as the burly Long Island businessman and his high-maintenance wife tried to brush her aside.
Nicola paused, as she recognized her.
“You,” she spat, eying Lyssa up and down suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”
“I-I’m just reporting on the…” Lyssa started to stammer.
“You mind your own business, you vulture,” Nicola spat, shouldering Lyssa aside. “Your boyfriend,” she threw that in cattily, as a nod to discovering Lyssa in Silas’ dressing room earlier, “isn’t a news story.”
And then Nicola and Jared swept past her, leaving Lyssa staring blankly in their wake.
A moment later they were gone, ducking behind a curtain into one of the cubicles. Lyssa stood there, heart pounding at the confrontation.
“Excuse me?”
The question made her jump.
Wheeling around, Lyssa found a small, Asian nurse looking up at her impatiently.
“Who are you here to see, Miss?” She demanded. “We’re very busy. We’re limiting visits to immediate family only.”
Lyssa narrowed her eyes.
“I’m here to see Silas Batras,” the reporter barked confidently, the corner of her lips curling as she concocted a plan. Taking a hint from Nicola’s sly little comment, Lyssa announced: “I’m his girlfriend.”
Chapter Sixteen
Silas
Mercifully, Silas soon found himself wheeled from the chaos of the ER to a quiet little room of his own.
That’s where he was lying when Nicola and Jared Hedberg joined him.
“Silas, baby,” Nicola clip-clopped over to the bedside on her stilettos, and stroked Silas’ clammy head. “Are you okay, honey?”
Silas lay there, looking up at the brash, blond wife. For a second there, he could almost see genuine concern in those icy blue eyes of hers.
“What’s the score?” There was no such emotion coming from Jared Hedberg. The towering businessman loomed menacingly over Silas’ bedside. “Did he bust your back?”
Mercifully, a doctor rapped on the door and swept in, uninvited. It broke the tension, as the three of them turned and looked up at him expectantly.
“Good evening,” the doctor checked his notes. “How are we all doing tonight?”
“I dunno, doc,” Jared sneered. “You tell me. My boy looks pretty busted up.”
The doctor looked at his notes.
“We’ve taken Mr. Batras for an x-ray. It looks like he suffered a spinal compression – at this stage, we’re not quite sure of the extent of the damage.”
“A-am I… Am I paralysed?” Silas murmured from the bed.
The doctor looked back and forth, between his patient and the rich-looking couple standing over him.
“It’s too early to tell how bad the damage is,” he explained. “It’s possible it’s just a shock to the spinal cord…” Then he gulped dryly. “But it’s also possible there’s more permanent injury.”
As soon as Silas heard that, he squeezed shut his eyes and swallowed down a sob.
Permanent.
Possibly the most horrific word in the English language. And English wasn’t even Silas’ first language.
“Fuck.” It was Jared, shaking his head. “That’s a tough break.” He turned to Silas, and looked down pityingly at the laid-out fighter. “I had a bad feeling about tonight’s fight… But I never thought it would come to this.”
But then he sniffed, and straightened up.
“Keep us updated, doc,” he snapped at the doctor, and wrenched Nicola’s arm as he tried to lead her to the door. “C’mon, honey. We have dinner reservations at nine.”
Silas’ eyes opened wide as he heard that.
“Excuse me? Sir?” The doctor
blocked Jared’s path. “Before you go, there’s the matter of billing to discuss. Is this gentleman covered by your insurance?”
Jared snorted.
“Insurance? Don’t be ridiculous.” He turned and looked at Silas, lying there pathetically on the bed. “Look, he’s from Europe. I’m sure those socialists have some kind of system figured out to pay for this.” And then he headed to the door.
Nicola slithered her hand out of Jared’s grip.
“Wait, I’ll catch up,” she promised, as Jared stood impatiently in the doorway. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” And as the doctor and her husband left, Nicola clip-clopped over to Silas’ bedside.
She looked down at him pityingly.
“Oh, you poor baby,” Nicola stroked Silas’ cheek, her blue eyes glistening with tears. “What have we done to you?”
And as Silas looked up at her, for a moment the fear, and anxiety, and terror in the pit of his stomach faded just a little.
“Don’t worry about Jared,” she promised, looking down at him anxiously. “I’ll talk him around. There’s nothing that would make me just give up and abandon you, I promise.”
And then there was a knock at the door.
A nurse poked her head through, and said: “Mr. Batras? There’s a young woman to see you. Your girlfriend, she says.”
And, just like that, Nicola pulled her hand away from Silas’ cheek.
The icy sheen returned to her crisp, blue eyes.
“Well,” she sniffed, stepping back from Silas’ bedside, “Maybe I was wrong about that.”
She stepped away from his bedside, and sniffed: “I’ve got to go. You heard what Jared said. We have dinner reservations.”
And then she was clip-clopping to the door, like she was walking out of nothing more consequential than a nail appointment.
Nicola paused in the doorway.
“Good luck, Silas,” she called, before letting the door click shut behind her.
Chapter Seventeen
Lyssa
Lyssa stood in the corridor of the hospital, as Nicola Heberg swept out Silas’ room, and almost barreled straight into her.
Towering over the reporter in her Manolo Blahnik stilettos, Nicola looked down at Lyssa like she was a piece of dog shit she’d just stepped in.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Nicola sneered.
Sniffing haughtily, she added: “So, you’re Silas’ girlfriend, now?” She rolled her eyes. “That explains what you were doing in his dressing room.”
Her face curled into a sneer. “And there I was, thinking you actually wanted to interview him.”
Lyssa stood there, stunned by this stranger’s hostility.
Nicola sniffed. And then, looking back and forth down the hospital corridor – to make sure nobody was watching – she did the only thing that could have made that scathing comment worse.
While Lyssa stood there, stunned, Nicola reached an elegantly-manicured finger under the hem of her dress, and stroked between her legs.
Lyssa’s eyes widened, as Nicola pulled her hand back out from under her dress, and reached over. She smeared something hot and wet across Lyssa’s cheek.
“Well, if you’re his girlfriend,” Nicola sneered, as she wiped her finger clean, “you’d probably like to know that Silas blew that into me five minutes before the fight.”
She sniffed bitchily.
“I might be the last piece of ass your broken boyfriend ever has.”
And with that, Nicola brushed past Lyssa and clip-clopped off down the corridor.
Lyssa stood there, stunned.
And then, feeling it grow cold her on her cheek, she lifted her hand and wiped away what Nicola had smeared across her face.
There was no mistaking what it was. The gamey scent of semen assailed her nostrils.
After spending the last few weeks sharing a bed with two virile young men – often at the same time – Lyssa was intimately familiar with it.
“Ewww,” Lyssa reached into her handbag for a wipe. “That’s fucking gross.”
She wiped herself clean, and threw the wipe into the garbage. Then she turned, and looked at the direction Nicola had strode off in – wondering what would provoke that bitchy beauty into something so petty, and gross.
But Nicola Hedberg was long gone.
So after taking a long, restorative breath, Lyssa tried to put the encounter out of her mind, and turned instead to the door to Silas’ hospital room.
She opened it nervously, not sure what she’d discover inside.
Chapter Eighteen
Silas
Silas groaned as he heard the door to his hospital room open.
What was it now? Another nurse, checking his vitals? Or more questions about his health insurance, or how he intended to pay for what had happened to him.
He hated the American healthcare system. At least back home in Spain, the only focus of a hospital was in making sick people well again. Here in America, it was all about trying to turn a profit.
He was disgusted by it.
But it wasn’t a nurse opening the door. Instead, in walked Lyssa Meadows – that journalist he’d spoken to before the fight.
“W-what the fuck are you doing here?”
Lyssa stepped in with her hands clasped in front of her – very different to the sassy little firecracker he’d met in his dressing room earlier.
She looked nervous – reverent, even. Like if she moved too fast, or spoke to loudly, it could somehow make Silas’ injury worse.
“M-Mr. Batras?” Lyssa asked, as she crept into the room. “Silas?”
Silas squeezed shut his eyes, and growled: “I asked you a question. What the fuck do you want?” Hot tears rolled down his cheek. “If you’re here to ask me stupid fucking questions for your newspaper, I swear I’ll call security and have you thrown out of here.”
And then he paused, and his eyes flicked open.
As best he could, he turned his head to look at her, and demanded: “Wait. Was it you who told that nurse you were my girlfriend?”
He remembered Nicola turning his back on him, and walking out – enraged at the possibility that her lover might be involved with another woman.
For a cheating wife, Nicola had a jealous streak a mile wide.
“Sapristi,” Silas breathed, as the penny dropped. “You lied to the front desk. You told them you were my girlfriend, just to let you in here.”
“Look, Mr. Batras…” Lyssa stammered – but it was too late.
“What kind of monster are you?” Silas growled. “Didn’t you see what happened? They say I might never walk again.” He squeezed shut his eyes, and turned his face away. “And you just lied your way in here, just because what happens makes for a great story.”
“No, no,” Lyssa raised her hands. “It’s not like that…”
But the truth? It was like that. Exactly like that.
“Look, I just… I just wanted to see you,” Lyssa stammered. “To make sure you’re okay.”
She blinked, and looked around the stark hotel room.
“Don’t you have anybody here for you? Family? Friends?”
Silas snorted.
The closest he had to either were Jared and Nicola – and they were probably sitting down to their dinner reservations right about now.
“Just get the fuck out of here,” Silas growled. “I want to be alone.”
“I looks like you are alone,” Lyssa replied. “Do you want me to call somebody for you? Your family, or something?”
Silas laughed bitterly.
“I think Spain’s a little bit far away for my family to drop everything and bring me some grapes.”
“Isn’t there anybody closer? A girlfriend, or something?”
Painfully, Silas turned his head, and finally made eye-contact with Lyssa.
“You know the sad thing?” The Spaniard laughed dryly. “You lying and pretending to be my girlfriend just to get in here? That’s actually the closest thing I have to a girlfriend.”
Lyssa gulped as she saw the sadness in Silas’ big, tear-filled eyes.
Just then, there was another knock at the door.
Once again, without asking, a nurse walked in.
“Excuse me? You said you were Mr. Batras’ girlfriend?”
Lyssa’s cheeks burned red.
“Well, I…”
The nurse ignored her.
“Could you fill in this paperwork? We need contact details and the couple who came in with Mr. Batras…”
The nurse squirmed a bit as she admitted it:
“…well, they just walked out, without signing anything.”
Saying that, the nurse handed Lyssa a clipboard and a pen.
“W-what am I signing?” Lyssa demanded.
“We need to know who to call if Mr. Batras needs anything. Do you guys live together, or…?”
Lyssa’s cheeks burned even redder.
The nurses’ beeper started chirping. She looked up pleadingly at Lyssa, and asked: “Please, Miss…”
And at a loss for what else to do, Lyssa nodded, and scribbled her name and number at the bottom of the form.
“Thank you,” the nurse smiled as she collected the clipboard. “They’ll give you a list of things we need you to bring in. Personal items, toiletries.”
Lyssa blinked: “Seriously?”
“Well, Mr. Batras is going to be in here for a few days at least, while we run tests. And then we’re not sure where they might move him.” The nurse reached over and squeezed Lyssa’s arm. “I know it’s a very stressful time for you both, but Mr. Batras needs you to be strong for him.”
And then she was gone, checking her pager as she walked out.
Lyssa stood there in the darkened room, blinking.
“Ha!” Silas groaned, turning his head away from her.
“What are you laughing at?” Lyssa demanded.
“You,” he replied dryly. “You pretended to be my girlfriend to sneak in here, but now the joke’s on you.” Blinking tears from his eyes, the paralyzed fighter scoffed: “It’s on the paperwork now, novio. According to the hospital, you’re officially my girlfriend now.”
Broken: An Alpha Bad Boy MMA Romance Page 3