Shock Advised (Kilgore Fire #1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  And she was that.

  As I turned the corner and entered the hospital room that, according to Mia’s text earlier, Colt had been moved to following some complications with one of his medications, I once again caught my breath.

  I’d done the same when I saw her the first time as well.

  She’d walked into the training room at the station, and all eyes, even Fatbaby’s, had been on her.

  Fatbaby had trained himself to not notice the opposite sex, seeing as if he did, his wife liked to make him feel terrible for doing so.

  She was that captivating.

  Medium length blonde hair that came down to the tops of her breasts. Perfectly perky breasts that would probably fit my hand well

  Pale, milky white skin that just begged me to run my work-roughened palm over it.

  Beautiful honey-colored eyes that had a rim of green around the pupil.

  Bow tie, full lips.

  And curves oh yes, those were my favorite.

  I loved curves.

  Especially on her.

  I lifted my hand to knock on the door frame, and Mia’s face lit up like the Fourth of July as soon as she heard it.

  “You made it!” She exclaimed excitedly.

  The little boy’s eyes moved, following his mother’s movement across the room.

  Not once did he pick his head up, though.

  I’d never seen a child lay so still before.

  My niece and nephew were hellions. I don’t think I’d ever seen them as still as this little boy was, which made me realize that something was really wrong with him.

  Logically I’d known that.

  But knowing it and ‘seeing’ it were two different things.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked, giving in to the urge and rubbing my hand up and down the outside of her arm.

  She stopped the movement, but didn’t remove her hand from the top of mine, making me realize that she wasn’t bothered with the touch. She just wanted to hold my hand

  “He’s been better. They had to put a feeding tube in today because he’s lost about two pounds. He’s not holding down any of his food or bottle. They have him on some antiemetic’s, or nausea meds, as well as some fluids for dehydration,” she frowned.

  My heart hurt at how much this young child was suffering.

  Babies didn’t deserve to suffer.

  At this young age, he was unjaded by life, still good and pure. So what, exactly, had he done to deserve it?

  “I brought him something,” I said, holding out the tiny bear.

  Mia took it with a smile that stole my breath away.

  “He loves bears,” she said, turning around and walking back towards the hospital bed that Colt was laying in.

  “Colton,” Mia said softly to the little boy. “Look what Mr. Taima brought you!”

  Colt attempted to lift his hand to reach for the toy that his mother held out for him, but he just couldn’t lift it high enough.

  His chubby little hand only rose about an inch off the bed before his exhausted limb couldn’t handle the effort anymore and dropped back to the bed with a small thump.

  “Oh,” she said, moving until she could place the toy in his hands. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy will give it to you.”

  “He loves firefighters,” Mia said. “My dad was an active duty firefighter when he was killed in an automobile accident,” she said, looking down at the firefighter bear I’d picked up on a whim while I was picking up some new uniform bottoms earlier. “My mom has tons of firefighter memorabilia that she lets him play with. Hats. Old hoses. You name it, she still has it. And Colt just loves it.”

  I smiled.

  “A future firefighter in the making,” I murmured.

  Mia turned her smile up at me, but the little boy on the bed held his hand out to capture her attention.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” She asked him.

  The little boy was devastatingly cute.

  He had brown curls that were scattered around his face. Porcelain white skin. Bright blue eyes. And just two teeth on his bottom gums.

  Seriously, he was really freakin’ cute, and I didn’t much like any kids except for my own brother’s.

  He picked his hand up and brought it somewhere close to his face, then repeated the process.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  Was he signing?

  “We’ve been watching Baby Signing Times, educational videos over the past month or so. He’s got quite a few words now that we’ve had nothing to do but relax,” she explained.

  “What’d he say?” I asked.

  Mia grimaced.

  “Daddy.”

  Understanding dawned.

  “Oh,” I said walking toward his bed. “No, little man. I’m not your daddy, but any man in his right mind would claim you since you’re so stinkin’ cute.”

  His eyes smiled as he opened his hand, and I placed my index finger into his grip.

  He squeezed tight, and I smiled before taking a seat next to his bed.

  “Did the doctor give an exact time that he’d meet us here?” I asked.

  Mia shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “He just said that he wanted to discuss the possible donors. Which I want to thank you for, by the way. You’ve done amazing things in the last couple of days. I don’t know how you got so many people to come forward and get tested. I feel humbled.”

  I shrugged.

  “Sometimes it’s helpful to be a firefighter. We’ve got a lot of guys standing at our backs, and I have lots of friends,” I said.

  I’d gotten over a thousand people to get tested, including my friends at the local PD. My fellow firefighters. And even my brother and his friends.

  People had come from as far as Benton, Louisiana, a little town about an hour away, home to a well-known motorcycle club.

  In fact, the entire club, The Dixie Wardens MC, had also been tested.

  “Do you think he found a match?” I asked.

  Mia smiled hopefully. “I want to think so.”

  Suddenly, I did, too.

  The little boy that was holding my hand was sweet, and he’d fallen asleep in the two minutes it’d taken me to ask his mother about the bone marrow transplant.

  He had this adorable snore going on that was making my brain start to contemplate the joys of parenthood…a thought I tried to cut off before it got too far, but found that I just couldn’t.

  “So who,” a man that sounded like the doctor I’d spoken with on the phone, said, “Is Jackopa Stoker?”

  I blinked.

  “That’s my brother,” I answered.

  The doctor, Dr. Griffiths according to his nametag, smiled widely.

  “Well, I have a near perfect match when I compare Colt’s labs to Jackopa’s.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “You’re shitting me,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No. Not at all. Yours was very similar, as we discovered, but your brother’s is near perfect.”

  Elation started to pour through me at the thought that this kid might have a fighting chance.

  “So what now?” I asked since Mia seemed busy trying to gain her composure once again.

  She wasn’t doing too good of a job at it, either.

  “Now we get them both more deeply tested to make sure they’re truly a match. Then we start making plans to get the transplant done, that is if Jackopa is still amendable to donating,” Dr. Griffiths said.

  I grinned.

  “Oh, he’ll be amendable.”

  I guaran-fucking-teed it.

  ***

  Three hours later, I had Catori, my five-year-old niece, in my lap as I watched her parents fight.

  “You what?” Winter yelled.

  “I swear to God, Winter, I didn’t fuckin’ mean to do it!” Jack growled, throwing his hands up in the air.

  “You can’t just go and do this shit without freakin’ telling me! I’m your wife, I deserve to know if you’re going to go do
something life-changing like this,” Winter spat.

  I grinned.

  “I would hardly call a tattoo life-changing, Winter. I would probably call it more of a…,” he hesitated, looking over at his daughter that was in my lap.

  “Call it more of a what?” Winter asked, not realizing that her daughter was listening avidly.

  “A sexual enhancement,” he said, looking over at his child once again.

  Winter burst out laughing.

  “Honey, you could wear a damn sack over your head, and I’d still fuck you,” Winter teased.

  “What is fuck?” Catori asked.

  Jack shot Winter a dirty look.

  She shrugged unabashedly.

  “So, what did you come over here to talk about?” Winter asked, plopping down onto the couch right next to me.

  She growled and leaned towards me, pulling a naked Barbie doll out from under her ass and tossing it to the already-cluttered-with-cars-and-Barbie-shoes coffee table.

  “You get a call from the doctor yet?” I asked.

  “No. Why?” My brother questioned.

  I shifted Catori until she was on the couch next to me and wrapped my free arm around Winter.

  Winter leaned into my shoulder and laid her head against my chest.

  My brother ignored that, instead pulling out his phone from his pocket and scanning it.

  “Yeah, I got a call from a number I don’t know. Why?” He pushed.

  Instead of listening to the voicemail he knew I would explain, he waited to hear it from me.

  “You’re a match for that little boy,” I said.

  He blinked, then his face became contemplative.

  “That’s good. What’s the time frame here?” He asked.

  No backing out for my brother.

  He was always the hero.

  He had to be when it came to me.

  I was the bad boy. The one who couldn’t take care of himself. Jack, however, cared for me when nobody, not even I, could.

  And, unfortunately, I’d been too caught up in my own crap to save. I had to want to be saved, and I hadn’t been ready to do that until after Adam had died.

  My mind, however, shied away from thinking about Adam.

  The man I was supposed to protect but didn’t.

  My firefighter partner.

  My brother’s best friend.

  The man I’d watched blow apart into tiny fleshy pieces…

  “Tai!” Winter said. “What are you thinking about? Your heart is racing.”

  I shook my head, hoping the shaking would physically force those wayward thoughts from my brain.

  “Nothing. The doc told me that on Monday you’ll go in for the testing to confirm that you are the perfect match.” I said. Once that’s all done, he said we’d move on to scheduling the donation and transplantation procedures,”

  “You do realize, right, that you’re going to have to take it easy for at least a week. You’ll probably have some pain for that first week or so, and you might be tired, too. You can forget going to the gym for a while, too, buddy. It’ll be a month and a half at least before your body replaces that marrow. While you’re recovering from that, I’ll have my eyes on you,” Winter said, pulling her knees to her chest while leaning her head in my direction in a silent request for me to scratch it.

  I did.

  Winter and I had a weird relationship.

  I’d begun to be a lot more open with my feelings for Winter.

  I’d thought I’d lost her once, and I wasn’t going to waste life’s precious moments anymore.

  If she liked it when I played with her hair – and I wasn’t special here, she liked it when her husband and son played with her hair, too – then I’d do it.

  Why?

  Because a little over six years ago, I’d thought she was dead.

  For all intents and purposes, she had been.

  She’d lost her memory and then was assumed dead when a body had been found that they thought was her.

  Without going into all of the reasons why that whole situation was beyond fucked up, I’d learned two things.

  One, I needed to get my head out of my ass and step up to the plate of life.

  And two, I owed it to my family to start living my life the way I should have been doing from the very start.

  “It won’t be that bad, baby. I’ll be good to go in week, tops,” Jack said.

  I grinned.

  “That’s not quite what the doctor said,” I offered.

  He sneered at me.

  “Nobody asked you, baby brother,” he snapped. “So, you never told me about the woman. She had to be hot to illicit this sort of a reaction from you.”

  I flipped him off, and Catori repeated the gesture, causing Winter to snort.

  “Seriously,” Jack said. “Y’all need to stop. The bus driver sent a note home with her today telling me that she was cursing out the kids in the back seats.”

  I laughed.

  “Catori, are you saying bad names?” Winter asked, ignoring me.

  “No, mommy. I’m not,” Catori lied.

  “Alright,” Winter said, believing her. “What does everyone want for dinner?”

  I shook my head and stood up, dislodging Winter and Catori at the same time.

  “I can’t. I have to be on shift tomorrow morning, and I’ve been up a solid forty-eight hours trying to drum up donors,” I said. “Which, as it turns out I didn’t need to do since you’ve magically produced the correct perfectness without me having to go further than a couple feet.”

  “That’s because I am perfect,” Jack said, standing now as well.

  “Whatever,” Winter snorted. “Go check on that other kid of yours.”

  “That other kid?” I asked.

  Winter shrugged.

  “I’m mad at him,” she said.

  I raised a brow at her.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Mommy doesn’t like it when Adam calls her ‘mom’ instead of ‘mommy’, so she’s mad at him,” Catori explained in that way that only a five-year-old could.

  “What’s wrong with him calling you mom?” I asked.

  Winter glared.

  “You don’t have kids. You wouldn’t understand,” she challenged.

  I held up my hands in a placating gesture.

  “Okay. You have my permission to bring this up in fifteen years,” I teased.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said, coming into the room with Adam on his hip. “She likes to bring up things that happened ten years ago. Shit I can’t even remember happening, and she doesn’t need permission.”

  Winter punched him in the stomach, causing him to laugh.

  “Shut up!” She yelled.

  Jack grinned unrepentantly.

  With that, I left.

  I had to be at work early in the morning, and the Kilgore Fire Department had a little boy to go see.

  Chapter 3

  I see firefighters.

  -Coffee Cup

  Mia

  “So, tell me about this man that you met,” my mother said, turning her smile on me.

  I grinned.

  I’d only known Taima – Tai – for less than a week, and I was seriously falling head over heels in love with him.

  It was crazy and way too soon.

  It would probably end up in heartbreak for me because it was obvious that he was a heartbreaker.

  In the short time he’d been at the hospital visiting Colton yesterday, he’d been hit on by no less than ten nurses.

  Nine of whom weren’t even on Colton’s rotation.

  On the positive side of that, though, Colton had gotten some really great care. Not once did his ice melt, and I swear, I had more than enough pillows and blankets to last me for weeks.

  “He’s really great,” I said.

  I wasn’t able to put into words exactly what Tai meant to me.

  He’d somehow managed to pull together around a thousand possible donors for me in less than a week.
/>   His efforts paid off big time, because he found Colton a donor. That alone garnered him hero status in my book.

  He was making it possible for my baby to get a second chance.

  And for that alone…I’d do absolutely anything for him.

  When I approached him, he didn’t hesitate to offer his help – even if it was in a different form than what I had been asking for – and that spoke volumes to the kind of person that Tai was. Besides, no one could argue with the fact that his suggestion got results

  Rough and gruff on the outside, and a ball of marshmallow fluff on the inside.

  “You look like you’re in love with him,” my mother said.

  I smiled dreamily.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s love…yet. But it’s something,” I admitted. “I could fall for him easily…very easily.”

  Colt woke then, crying, and I hurriedly moved to his bed and cradled him up to my chest.

  He’d lost a lot of weight, but at least today he was taking food from me, unlike the day before.

  “Hey, baby,” I whispered to him.

  His blue eyes were brighter today, more full of life than they had been.

  He pulled his spread hand, thumb forward, to his forehead and tapped it, causing me to smile.

  “Oh, Mr. Tai said he’d come visit you if he had a chance, but I’m not sure when that’ll be, baby,” I whispered.

  He’d been doing that a lot since Tai had left yesterday to go speak to his brother, and I found that I didn’t mind the idea of Tai being Colton’s daddy.

  Although, pretty much anyone would be better than his biological father.

  “What’s he saying?” My mom asked, getting up to mix Colton a bottle.

  I don’t know what I’d do without my mother. It was like she was my right hand.

  She handed the bottle to me before I answered her.

  “Yesterday when Tai came to visit, he gave Colton the firefighter bear,” I pointed at the little stuffed animal Colt had yet to put down. “And Colt called him ‘daddy.’”

  My mom smiled.

  “Anyone’s better than the piece of shit that is his father,” my mother said parroting my thoughts.

  I snorted and sat down, taking the bottle that my mother offered me.

  Colt grabbed at the bottle, tried to hold it, and failed.