Half My Blood

by Lauren Gilley

  “Shit. Where? How bad?”

  “Bad. He…I gotta go.”

  They both whirled at the sound of a bike roaring up into the driveway. Mercy was already moving toward the door when someone started pounding on it.

  It was Tango, breathless, his blue eyes saucer-wide in a blanched face. “Did you hear?”

  “Mom just called.” Ava needed shoes. Where the fuck were her shoes? “I’m on my way.”

  “Come on, I’ll take you.”

  She located her boots and stepped into them without socks.

  “Go with Tango,” Mercy said, and she could tell he was being calm for her sake. “I’ll get Remy’s stuff together and head that way. I’ll see you there in a bit.”

  “Okay.” She pressed a fast kiss to his lips and snatched her helmet off its peg by the door. “Let’s go.”

  Her hands were shaking wildly as she crammed her helmet down on her head, following Tango down the front sidewalk. She fumbled with the buckle, tripped over a crack in the concrete.

  Tango swung a leg over his Harley, started it with a growl, and reached for her, pulling her snugly against his back on the bitch seat, ensuring her arms were wrapped tight around him, hands linked against his stomach before he took off.

  She’d forgotten her sunglasses and closed her eyes tight against the sting of the wind, dropping her forehead onto Tango’s shoulder, nose pressed against the sun-warmed leather of his cut. The cow hide had a way of retaining scents, and the usual clubhouse smells tunneled up her nostrils: smoke, beer, brake dust, motor oil…and something else. A cologne she didn’t recognize, embedded deep into the skin.

  Tango’s stomach trembled under her palms, and she’d ridden behind these guys enough times to know vibration – versus the leaping of muscles. He was quivering, shaking all over.

  He was as much Aidan’s sibling as she was.

  This was what it had been like for Aidan, she figured. That afternoon in New Orleans, when the club van had pulled up and found the carnage, when Mercy had been pinned beneath his bike and she’d been clutching an empty gun, three dead at her feet – this was the crippling shock and panic her brother had felt then. But Aidan had pushed through it; he’d leapt to action.

  Just as she was going to.

  Tango pulled his bike up in a loading zone and they abandoned it in a mad rush, heedless of the cop yelling that they couldn’t park there. The automatic doors slid wide, chilled, hospital-smelling air enveloping them as they bolted inside. Mild, sweet-natured Tango shoved people aside as they went through the ER toward the desk.

  “Aidan Teague,” Ava said with a gasp as her hands slapped down on the counter. “Bike crash. He came in–” deep inhale, struggling for breath – “about fifteen minutes–”

  “Are you the sister?” the nurse asked.

  She nodded.

  “Follow me.”

  It stretched into one of those permanent moments, the ones that lodged like grit in her mind to be bathed into a pearl, remembered forever after in flawless detail. The long hurried walk down the hall, Tango panting behind her, the nurse’s Crocs squeaking on the tile ahead of her. Half-closed drapes and glimpses of people behind them, wrapped in bandages, clutching at wounds, softly crying into tissues. Smell of antiseptic and blood. Murmur of voices and electric chatter of life-sustaining equipment.

  They were led not to Aidan, but to an empty bed. The nurse pushed the curtain wide and said, “Hop up on the bed and someone will be in in a minute to draw.”

  Ava nodded, complying in a rush, as if that might somehow bring the tech along faster with the needle and the empty pint bag. She turned her hand palm-up on her thigh and then curled it into a fist, watching the blue-green vein in the crook of her elbow jump and darken.

  Come on, come on…

  She’d seen terrible bike crashes. She didn’t have to imagine what her brother looked like now.

  She lifted her head, question on her lips…and saw that Tango was in much worse shape than she was. He was white to his hairline, and his lips pressed together and then smoothed as if he were trying to force himself to be calm; twitching. He clutched at the plastic foot of the bed with both hands, knuckles white and knobby, the dominoes on the backs of his fingers stark by contrast. The veins stood out in his thin arms.

  Ava swallowed the lump in her throat. Tried to. “How’d it happen?”

  He shook his head. “A car clipped him from behind. He…” He drew in a shattered breath, eyes glossy with moisture. “He went under it.”

  “Jesus,” she whispered, heart lurching against her ribs.

  “Dublin’s gonna pick up the bike. What’s left of it.” He lifted one hand and wiped it across his eyes, face scrunching up. “Jesus,” he echoed her whisper. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  Ava leaned over and grabbed at his hand where it rested on the bed, covering his rigid fingers with her own. “He’ll be okay. Aidan’s too ornery to go out like this.”

  But the words had a hollow ring, and neither of them were going to acknowledge it.

  He bowed his head over hers, struggling to regain his composure with deep, shuddering breaths that stirred the hair on the top of her head.

  The clacking of plastic wheels announced the arrival of a tech with a cart and Tango stepped back, turning away from her, wiping at his face some more.

  “Okay,” the tech – brawny young guy who might have looked comical in his green scrubs if the situation hadn’t been so grave – snapped on gloves. “This is for” – consult of the screen on the cart – “Aidan Teague?”

  “Yes, I’m his sister.” Ava reached out her arm for the compression band he would tie to it. “Take as much as you need; I’m his blood type.”

  “Eat your cookie.” Thinking about the fact that Ava was about to pass out kept him from thinking quite so much about his best friend laid open on the operating table like a broken toy. The way she was listing hard against him, frowning at the chocolate chip bakery cookie a nurse had brought her along with a cup of juice, was something he could fix. He had no medical powers, could only wait helpless like the rest of them, but he could do something about Ava’s impending swoon.

  She took a reluctant bite and chewed like it was cardboard. It smelled delicious, and that made Tango want to barf.

  Or maybe that was just the terror cycling through him.

  Ava had only been able to donate a pint. Glassy-eyed, weaving so badly he’d had to hold her around the waist afterward as they walked, she’d insisted they take more.

  “She’s nursing a baby,” Tango had told the tech, half-worried her insistence would persuade the guy.

  But the man in the green scrubs had shaken his head. “We can’t take any more than this. She’s too little.”

  “And drink your juice,” he added. He didn’t care if her mom was in the chair across from them, he was going to make sure she didn’t pass out. He could do that. He could help in that way.

  They were in a small family waiting room on the surgical floor. Maggie looked numb, the way she stared at the fire escape route taped above their heads, but her eyes were the giveaway, the gateways to the frenzy of her heart inside her composed outer shell.

  Ghost couldn’t sit still; he paced, hands on his hips, glancing darkly toward the doors every so often, bristling at every sound from the hallway. What if it was bad news the doctor brought? Tango wondered – would he finally see the man lose it? A real, honest to God breakdown?

  Carter was slouched in the chair on the other side of Ava, and he’d run his hands through his hair so many times it stood out at quirky angles from his head.

  They waited. And they waited.

  Mercy appeared in the entrance, coming in from the hall, Remy’s carrier in one hand. At a different time, Tango would have laughed to see the fiercest-looking man he knew holding a baby in a white plastic seat, but now he only nodded in greeting.

  “Any word?” he asked.

  “Nah.” Ghost shook his head and patted the guy on the should
er.

  “He’ll be in surgery for a while,” Maggie said, and Mercy leaned down so she could kiss his cheek. Then he held the baby up in his carrier so she could greet her grandson.

  Carter stood and slid down a seat, giving Mercy room to sit down next to his old lady.

  Tango was sorry to lose the warmth of her shoulder as she shifted over stiffly like a metronome so she could lean against her husband. He wanted to be touching someone right now. He wanted someone’s weight against him, to counterbalance the awful weight of guilt.

  “You’re supposed to eat that, you know,” Mercy said.

  Ava made a face and took another laborious bite of cookie.

  He murmured something to her in French, some little endearment meant only for her.

  Tango let his head fall back until it touched the wall. His chest ached, and his head throbbed. He hadn’t been at the shop when the call came in. He’d arrived at Dartmoor to find the place in a panic. Carter had only been half through his explanation of what was happening before Tango was on his bike. Blood loss meant blood transfusion. Blood meant Ava, the only relative who shared his type. Half-sister to the rescue, and he would have mown anyone down who dared to slow their progress.

  I should have been there, he thought over and over. I should have been with him when it happened. Maybe, if they’d been riding together, he could have seen the car; could have put his bike between, could have suggested they stop for smokes and delayed the fortuitous meeting on the street of biker and Mustang.

  He hadn’t been riding alongside his best friend because he’d taken another of those goddamn long lunches. A lunch that, unlike the three-way romp with Jazz and the psycho, was completely inexcusable, under any circumstances. A lunch that involved expensive brandy, real Cuban cigars, butter-soft leather furniture and the unwelcome lullaby effect of that polite English voice he had known so well before – and now knew again, in this new capacity. The capacity that made him a traitor to the club for fraternizing with a potential enemy. Whatever Shaman was to the Lean Dogs, he wasn’t a friend. But Tango tried to convince himself that wandering down memory lane with his old friend Ian had nothing to do with the Dogs, or Shaman, or anything.

  Then why was he keeping it secret?

  And why did he want to drag a razor across his wrist right now?

  The sound of the doors opening jerked him upright. The doctor who entered the waiting room had tiny spots of blood peppering the sleeves of his surgical gown.

  “Just wanted to give you an update.”

  Tango could feel the strain in the room, the painful waiting of all of them.

  “Doctor Miller has stopped all the bleeding, and Aidan has stabilized. We’re going to begin repairs now.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said, speaking for all of them.

  Tango slumped back against the wall, and inside, the guilt raged.

  Maggie didn’t want coffee. She wanted three fingers of whiskey with two ice cubes, in the fat-bottomed tumbler from the upper right shelf of the cabinet above the microwave at home. But she said, “Thanks,” and took the steaming foam cup from the hair-net-wearing employee on the other side of the hospital cafeteria counter.

  The word cafeteria conjured the scent of bleach and the squeak of kids’ sneakers; the sterile white cinderblock and linoleum confines of a middle school, greasy steaming food slopped onto plastic trays. But this was more of a bistro, the rich color palette and café tables detracting from the buffet line and the hair nets. It smelled a hell of a lot better than a school cafeteria too: garlic, basil, turmeric, frying onions and peppers.

  She took her cup over to the condiment station and added sugar and cream; her hand shook and she dropped the plastic cream cup twice. She stirred it and blew the steam off the top, though she had no intention of drinking it. This was how she coped; the preservation of normalcy in the face of disaster was the best thing she’d taken away from her mother, and she used it in moments like these. Moments when the stepson who was more like a brother to her was dying on an operating table…

  Ghost was waiting for her when she turned around, arms folded across his chest, brows drawn as he surveyed the cafeteria like he was on guard duty.

  He jerked a little when she laid her hand on his arm.

  “You should get something,” she said. “Some coffee or–”

  “I’m good.”

  She sighed. “Well no, actually, you’re not, baby.” She sifted her fingertips through the dark hair on his arm. “You’re shaking.”

  He shook his head in denial, but said nothing.

  She leaned in close to him, the steam from her cup slithering up between them. “Of all the things he’s quit,” she whispered, “he likes being alive too much to quit life. He’s going to be fine, Kenny.”

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple working.

  It wasn’t just terror running in tremors beneath his skin. She could feel the guilt there, too. Guilt because he was a cold father, without tenderness and grace when it came to his children, and as much as he hated that about himself, he couldn’t seem to change it. And this was the nightmare – his firstborn dying and never knowing there was love there.

  “It’s time,” she said, patting his forearm, tone that of gentle reprimand. “When he’s out of here, and he’s better, it’s time you start teaching him to be a man. You both need that.”

  His eyes looked black and harsh when they slid to her face. “No one had to teach me.”

  “He’s not you,” she countered. “And that’s okay.”

  He put both arms around her and held her tight against his chest.

  Mercy wanted to hate hospitals. Most days, he did. He never seemed to be within the walls of one for a happy reason. Someone had wrecked, someone had been attacked, someone was old and sick, someone needed surgery.

  But there had been that one time.

  “You’re not gonna go in there, are you?” Aidan had asked, nose wrinkled in a boyish display of disgust.

  Mercy hadn’t bothered to answer him. There may have been boundaries and rules between mature, collected adults who’d married one another based on some sequence of compatibility tests. But his fillette was having his baby – wild horses, and all that.

  He’d seen women on TV melting like candles under the onslaught of pain, strain, and heat. Ava’s skin was flushed and damp, but there was no melting. Loose strands of dark hair clung to the back of her neck, to her temples. She breathed through her teeth and the look on her face was the fiercest determination he’d ever witnessed.

  “He’s a big one,” Dr. Wyatt said. “This is going to hurt, Ava, but I need you to push hard.” He looked at Mercy, up at her head. “Dad, you want to give her something to brace against?”

  He looped his arm around her knee and leaned low into her; he could feel her breath against his face, smell her sweat, and fear, and purpose. In French he told her how strong she was, and that she could do this, not to worry.

  A nurse gave her a bracing hand for her other foot, and then it was all up to her. He couldn’t do this for her, though he wanted to take the burden.

  But of course she didn’t need that burden lifted. She had this.

  Being pressed against her as she brought their son into the world was the most terrifying and magnificent moment of his life. And then there was Remy, all slimy and skinny and screaming.

  “Good strong lungs,” Dr. Wyatt had said with a smile, and put the baby up on Ava’s stomach, let her see and touch him a moment before the cord was cut.

  She’d burst into gut-wrenching sobs, fingertips skimming across his mucus-covered skull. “He’s here,” she’d whispered. “He’s here, he’s here, he’s really here.”

  His little eyes were moving now, as he lay in his carrier, fingers curling in the air, gaze taking in the waiting room with astonishing alertness. Mercy had expected babies to just sit like lumps and not engage. He hadn’t expected this intense absorption, the way Remy’s eyes came to their faces when they spoke, the wa
y he noticed every sound and movement.

  Ava was leaning into his shoulder, letting him hold more of his weight than she should have.

  “Did you eat your cookie?” he asked, turning his head so her hair pressed up under his nose.

  “Working on it.” It was a big cookie, one of those nice ones from the bakery in the cafeteria, and she’d nibbled about half of it away.

  “Juice?”

  She tipped her empty cup toward him so he could see the last clinging drops of orange juice at the bottom.

  Mercy let his lips linger against the shiny smoothness of her hair, an almost-kiss. “I’m kinda glad, you know?”

  She made an inquisitive sound around another bite of cookie.

  “Now I won’t be the only gimp in the family.”

  She elbowed him hard, and he smiled. She wasn’t feeling that weak.

  Ghost and Maggie returned from their trip downstairs, Maggie with a coffee cup, both of them with shadows in their eyes. Ghost’s jaw was clenched so tight, it would crack if he sneezed.

  “Anyone been by?” Maggie asked, a hopeful note threaded through her voice.

  “No,” Tango and Carter said together, miserable.

  She sighed –

  And then the double doors that led into the sinister interior of the hospital opened and the doctor was back.

  Mercy felt Ava go rigid against his side.

  Tango sat upright, looking electrified.

  The doctor surveyed them…and smiled.

  Thirteen

  Half-Measures

  Aidan had only pretended to be sick once in his life; and that was only because he’d been able to pull it off once. After that, Mags got wise (wiser), and he was never able to fake it after that. That one day, she’d been too late for work to do more than press her hand to his head, find the skin hot and dry from his efforts with the hair dryer, then throw meds and an I love you his way before rushing out the door. He’d spent the entire day in front of the TV, raiding the fridge, stuffing himself with ice cream and pizza pockets until he was sick. It had been bliss – nothing to do but sit and vegetate.