The paramedics see the wreckage when they get closer and jump into action. One ambulance pulls next to the other vehicle in the accident and work on stabilizing the other driver. He’s awake and has been sitting in the ditch, clutching his head and watching me completely lose my shit.
Never once does he get up and check if his carelessness has killed Chris.
His lack of concern could be from shock. Who the fuck cares at this point? It still pisses me off and if I wasn’t busy worrying about my best friend’s life I would punch him in the face.
As the paramedics take over, time freezes.
My weak legs give out and I sit in the grass on the side of the road opposite the idiot that caused this whole thing. Tears stream down my cheeks uncontrollably as I watch a fire truck pull up. The firemen quickly get to work and pry the door off the side of Chris’s car.
The paramedics strap him to a gurney and I watch on in horror as I realize the blood was coming from his mouth. They wipe his face with gauze, trying to figure out what the damage is as they wheel him away from the wreckage.
What the fuck does that mean? Did he have internal bleeding? My insides chill as horrific possibilities race through my mind. He must be alive or they wouldn’t be racing to get him in the back of the ambulance, but no one is telling me shit.
I leap to my feet and rush behind the paramedics, grabbing Chris’s limp hand from the gurney just before they push him into the back of the ambulance. Our connection is broken as he’s pulled away from me.
I jump into the back of the ambulance uninvited and grab his hand again, desperate to be close to him. Neither of the paramedics argue with me or demand I get out. They’re too focused on Chris and the blood. Checking his vitals and stabilizing him.
They call out their findings to the driver as he hauls ass through traffic. It’s the longest ride of my life and the hospital is only a couple miles away. Time seems to be moving in slow motion with every torturous second his eyes stay closed.
The wait is killing me. I just need him to be okay. Please dear God let him be okay.
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠
I lose my sense of time as I sit in a plastic seat in the waiting room, anxiously waiting to hear how he’s doing. If he’s still breathing. Eventually Max and Lacey rush through the emergency room doors in a panic. They’re at my side within seconds, firing off questions one after the next.
I managed to text Lacey-I don’t have Max’s number- to let her know they both needed to get to the hospital immediately. My shaking fingers couldn’t type much more than that. I was a fucking mess.
So here they both were, looking to me for answers that I didn’t have.
“Is he okay? Where is he?” Max demands for the second time, his voice rising with each word.
Lacey is crying, her mascara smudged beneath her eyes. It’s obvious she tried to pull herself together before coming inside but after seeing me she fell apart all over again. The dried blood on my hands and jeans probably wasn’t helping give them any peace of mind. I noticed Max taking in the sight of it, his eyes widening.
“I don’t know!” I choke out. “They took him to the back and no one’s told me anything!”
Max storms right to the reception desks. “I need an update on my brother. Now. He was brought in after a car accident.”
His tone is demanding and assertive but the receptionist appears unfazed. How the fuck can everyone be so calm when it felt like the world was caving in on itself.
Working in the ER, this woman had probably seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore. Not even Max Davis on the verge of a meltdown. He would have to wait just as patiently, and fearfully, as everyone else in this lobby.
“His name?” She asks calmly, as if she’s taking a drink order instead of looking up life or death information.
“Christopher Davis.”
She slowly pecks on the keyboard and clucks her tongue. “He was taken to the operating room. There are no updates yet.”
“Oh god.” I choke out, holding onto Lacey’s arm to keep from collapsing. “The operating room?”
“How long has he been in there?” Max demands.
She clicks her mouse before answering. “Looks like it’s been about thirty minutes.”
“I can’t fucking handle this.” I cry out. “I just need to know he’s okay.”
I really don’t want to make a spectacle of myself in the middle of the hospital lobby. But I can’t force down the panic and pain of not knowing, of not being able to reach out and touch him.
“I know, sweetie. I know.” Lacey pulls me into a tight hug, trying to hold back her own emotions but they were hanging on by a thread. She rubs my back and I can feel the tension radiating from her which just made my own nerves worse.
Max paces back and forth in front of the waiting room chairs, tugging at his hair. Looking around this waiting room, I just see death. How many people have sat in these very seats and been given the most crushing news a person could get. That the person they loved was gone forever.
“I can’t lose him. I just can’t.” I carry on. “I never even told him how I feel about him, Lace!”
That stops Max’s incessant pacing back and forth in front of us. He freezes in place and turns his attention to me. I shrink under his gaze, wiping erratically beneath my puffy eyes and curling into myself. Chris wasn’t here to shield me from his brother’s judgments. I suddenly felt two feet tall.
Something seems to break in him, cracking his hardened expression and leaving something else behind entirely. His judgments and revulsion when he stares at me are gone and all that’s left is…
Sympathy. Or maybe that’s pity but either way I’ll take it. It opens the floodgates and a new set of tears wells in my eyes, blurring my vision and stinging my tear ducts.
And then he wraps both me and Lacey in a hug and shocks the shit out of me. He sighs deeply, trying to force down his own emotional overload to comfort the two of us. It doesn’t fool me, he’s still falling apart, but I appreciate the gesture more than I could ever express.
Right now I need all the comfort I can get.
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠
“Are you the family of Christopher Davis?” A doctor in blue scrubs asks.
We all snap our gazes up to him, anxious to hear any news he might be bringing. There’s a girl several feet from us in the lobby that perks up when she hears his name too. She stares at the doctor expectantly right along with us, as if she’s part of our group.
It’s strange. Maybe she’s just tired of seeing the three of us crying and causing a scene and she’s anxious to see the outcome. Same reason people watch cheap soap operas.
She looks familiar though. I swear I’ve seen her somewhere before but I can’t place where that might have been. My mind is too frazzled for me to focus and I turn my attention back to the doctor.
“Yes. Yes, that’s my brother.” Max says, jumping to his feet.
“Is he okay?” I ask in an octave so high I can’t even recognize it as belonging to me.
“He’s recovering from surgery. A piece of glass pierced his abdomen. We’ve stitched him up and removed the broken glass from the wound. He bit his tongue pretty good but it’ll heal on its own. He has a concussion and needs to stay overnight for observation just to be on the safe side.”
“But he’s going to be okay?” Lacey asks, her shoulders already sagging in relief before the doctor even confirms. Just hearing that he’s alive is a relief to me after seeing him knocked out and covered in blood.
“Can I see him?”
“Only immediate family can see him at this time.”
I open my mouth to beg for mercy, beg to be made an exception just this once, but Max interrupts me before I can get started.
“She’s family. She’s his fiancée and I’m his brother. Can we see him? Please?”
The lie flows from him effortlessly and the doctor doesn’t even bat an eye. There’s no sign that he notices my surprise at
Max’s description of me or my lack of ring.
“Yes sir. Right this way.”
Max turns to Lacey and whispers a few hushed words. She agrees to wait for us in the lobby and shoos us off to follow the doctor. The mystery girl stares at the exchange but I’m too laser-focused on seeing Chris to read any further into it.
We follow the doctor through the maze of hospital hallways until finally he points to a plain door at the very end of the hall. I push it open without knocking, desperate to see Chris.
He’s lying in the bed, head wrapped thickly in white bandages. The blanket covers his chest so I can’t see any obvious injuries from the neck down.
His complexion is a few shades paler than his usual tone. The skin on his arms and face is peppered in tiny cuts from the shattered glass and I can make out the hint of bruising peeking out from the bandages around his head.
He’s still unconscious. Or maybe he’s just sleeping off the anesthetics. Either way he isn’t awake to talk or assure us he’s okay. Anxiety pools in my gut all over again even though I know the doctor said he was stable and would make a full recovery.
He only needed to stay overnight for observations. Tomorrow he will be released and able to come back home with me.
I just want to see his hazel eyes and hear his deep voice saying…well…anything. Anything at all. He can make fun of me or make a stupid joke. He could ask me to sneak him some Rocky Road when Max leaves.
I would take anything at this point.
I just yearned for him to wake up and speak so I could make sure he was really okay. Despite the doctor’s assurance, I needed to see for myself.
Max drags one of the tacky hospital chairs next to the bed and gestures for me to sit down. I give him a grateful smile and sit at Chris’s bedside, immediately reaching for his hand. I lace our fingers and grip tight, trying not to squeeze too hard in case he hurt his hand too. After what he just went through his whole body was liable to be sore.
Max sits in the second chair, keeping his distance from the two of us and refusing to look at his brother. He stays by the window and pulls out his phone, fingers flying over the keyboard. He’s probably sending a text to Lacey to let her know we found Chris and that we’re waiting for him to wake up.
She’s just as worried as the two of us and being stuck out in the lobby without any updates would be hard. I was grateful to Max for saying whatever was necessary to get me back here. The old Max would have brushed past me and left me wondering what the fuck was going on. His inclusion of me in this whole crisis was a sign of maturity and growth.
He seemed to be respecting me as an important person in Chris’s life. That was leaps and bounds past where we were just yesterday.
The suspense of waiting behind with Lacey while Max came back here to be with Chris by himself would have driven me batshit crazy. I needed to be at his side, the first face he sees when he wakes up. I needed it like the air in my lungs.
I need him to know how much I care about him. How worried I was about him when I couldn’t reach him, desperately calling out his name at the scene of the accident. How much he means to me. How destroyed I would have been if I lost him today.
I rub his hand and pray for him to open his eyes soon so I can tell him.
☠ Chapter Thirteen ☠
Chris
The first thing I register when I come to is an annoying fucking beeping. The next is the pain. It’s excruciating and radiates from my head, pulsing to every inch of my body. The intensity lessens the further it travels from my head.
Then I remember the accident. Images of what happened come rushing back, my mind struggling to recall the sequence of events. I was in a car accident on the way to the bank. I must be in an ambulance or a hospital. Or lying in a ditch waiting for someone to find me. I couldn’t tell and had lost all sense of time.
No, I was in the hospital. The smell of antiseptics and saline grew stronger the longer I was conscious. Plus the beeping continued to chime close to my head, irritating the pounding pain I was already in.
Where was Nat? She was with me when we left work. Was she in the car?
No. She had already gotten out. My memories are fuzzy and don’t piece together smoothly but I was definitely alone when this happened. If she had been with me the moment I opened my eyes my instincts would have taken over and I would have searched for her, not stopping until I knew she was okay.
It had just been me in the car.
Thinking too hard hurt my head and I started wondering if I had cracked it open. The last thing I remember was the moment it banged against the steering wheel and then it was lights out.
“Natalie.” I croak.
My throat is too dry to push out any more words. I hear rustling and a small hand squeezing mine in a death grip.
I force my eyes open and moan involuntarily at the blinding lights. They send a new wave of pounding throughout my head. My lids feel heavy and it takes every bit of strength inside of me to keep them open, even if it’s just a squint.
I move to sit up but collapse back on my pillow out of weakness.
It hurts to move. Hurts to breath. Hurts to open my eyes but I open them again anyways and refuse to close them once I lay eyes on her.
Natalie.
She’s hovering over me with anxious, tear filled eyes and I can’t look away. For a minute there back in the car I thought I was going to die. Her eyes are my lifeline now. My reminder that I’m very much alive. Closing my eyes would mean not looking at her and that just isn’t something I’m willing to do.
“Chris. Oh my god.” She reaches out as if she’s going to touch my face but thinks better of it at the last moment and pulls back.
My face must look pretty fucked up if she’s worried about hurting me from a simple touch. Did I break my face? I wasn’t sure if that was possible but it sure would explain some of this pain. I groan and attempt to shift myself up on the bed for the second time, propelled by my need to see her better.
“Nat.” I croak again, my throat raw.
“Shhh. Just lay back down.” She murmurs softly.
Water is running nearby and suddenly my brother steps into my line of vision. “Here, bro. Drink this.”
It takes me several tries to grab the cup from his hand. My depth perception is way off, vision doubled and blurred. I down the glass of water in seconds and try to fight the grogginess.
“God, Chris.” My brother chokes out, fighting to clear the emotion from his voice but I could still hear it. I had scared the shit out of him. “You’re always such a pain in my fucking ass.”
I laugh but it hurts my stomach and quickly turns into a choke of pain. There’s tears shimmering in Max’s eyes and he tries to hide that too. This has really shaken him despite his attempts at bravado and humor. I cut him a break and hold back any sarcastic remarks I usually have ready to fire back at a moment’s notice.
This wasn’t the time for that.
I reach for him and pull him down to me in a brotherly hug. We stay that way for a few long seconds, holding onto each other as we pull ourselves together. Almost dying really puts shit into perspective.
As if by a magnetic force field, my eyes find Natalie’s again as she stands off to the side, giving us a moment. This time she’s looking back at me with a sad smile, her eyes watery and red.
Max stands to his full heights and scrubs a hand down his face to wipe away any trace of what was there before.
I can tell they’ve doped me up pretty good since I’ve been here. Despite having pain, it’s nothing compared to what it could be. The IV in my arm scratches and I force myself not to rip it out to stop the flow of meds.
“My fucking head.” I complain, knowing it’s going to hurt a hell of a lot more when I put a stop to the drugs they’re pumping me with. But really, I can’t handle it. I would rather suffer through the pain than deal with a relapse waiting to happen.
Natalie shoots to her feet. “You need more pain meds. I’ll go get the nurse
.”
“No!” I reach out to grab her hand again and wince at the sharp stab in my stomach at the sudden movement. More drugs are the last thing I want or need in my life. “No. I don’t want more. I’m fine.”
She doesn’t look convinced but sits back down. Her worried eyes drift to Max and they exchange a heavy glance. Before I can comment a nurse walks into the room and heads straight for me.
“Oh, good. You’re awake. I’ve been waiting hours to see if your eyes are as gorgeous as your brothers.” She gives me a flirty smile. “How you feeling?”
Natalie huffs in irritation and Max shifts uncomfortably, shoving his hands in his pockets.
This girl is what nurse fantasies are made of. Form fitted scrubs. Hourglass figure. Openly checking me out as I’m helplessly hooked up to heart monitors and IVs. If I wanted her, I knew I had it in the bag.
The crazy thing is I’m not the slightest bit interested.
In fact, my first thought was how unprofessional she was acting, peering at me that way when I was injured and needing medical attention.
What the fuck had happened to me? Had my dick just shriveled up and evaporated into thin air from lack of use? It wasn’t long ago that I would’ve been eating this shit up. But now I was complaining about the attention I was getting from a sexy nurse and just wishing she would hurry up and leave.
“Not good. My head is fucking killing me.”
“I can get you some more morphine. You’re due for another dose.”
Morphine?
Shit. That’s why I felt so bad and so so good all at the same time. She changes the bag of fluid attached to my IV and readjusts the heart monitor on my finger, letting her touch linger way longer than necessary. I fight the urge to pull back for no reason other than the fact that she needs to get my vitals before she can leave.
“No.”
Sensing the reason for my refusal my brother chimes in. “What about something else? Non-narcotic.”
“No.”
“Fine.” He sighs in frustration, looking pained to see me so out of sorts. He stares at me quietly from the corner of the room as the nurse pokes and prods, checking my blood pressure with a cuff.
Flying High (Davis Brothers Book 2) Page 8