I followed whomever the hell had been trying to talk me down and when my entourage, but the doctor stopped. “I’m sorry, we can only have two people in to see him at a time.”
“Where is his girlfriend? He went outside to escort her into the studio. Is she with him?”
“No, I’m sorry there wasn’t a woman with him. There was a man named Ray who refused to leave him unguarded.”
“Ray is our security guy.” As we continued walking, I gave John a look. “Can you keep someone in the waiting area? I’d bet my left nut that Kendra is on a flight here as we speak.”
John grinned. “Sure thing. I’ll be here waiting.”
“John, you can’t do that,” I told him, wondering what Jade – his wife – would think if he didn’t come back to her right away. She was in New York while they tried to work things out.
He shrugged a shoulder up in response and then tipped his chin toward the doctor who was waiting. “Go check on your boy and text me if you need me to stay longer or come back with anything.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Anything for family, you know that.”
And I did know that. John and I had one another’s backs from the beginning. We were tossed together as roommates, and possibly bandmates, from the moment I landed in Los Angeles and we’d been like brothers ever since. Jade had been there then too, it was the years in between that had been up and down for them.
“We’ll collect your security man as we go by the waiting area to get to your son’s new room.”
I followed blindly behind the man, not really seeing anything along the way until Ray came into view. “Gabe!” He called out my name, a frantic, emotional plea in his voice. “I tried to get to him in time,” he told me.
“What the hell happened, Ray? Why is my son in the hospital?”
“His girl was getting out the car, and some asshole came blazing by,” Ray started to tell me.
I turned to the doctor who just told me there wasn’t a girlfriend here. “You said-”
“There was no girl brought in with him,” the doctor reconfirmed.
I turned back to Ray whose dim eyes met mine. Shit. Please, God, no. Ray shook his head. “He tried to get to her but couldn’t make it. He was clipped pretty good by the car, but she…” He visibly shook as the memory ran back through his mind. “She took the brunt of the impact from a car that never slowed down.”
“What the fuck?” Anger coursed through my veins. “Did they catch the son of a bitch?”
“Dave and Mike took off after the car. Haven’t heard back from them yet,” Ray confirmed. If Dave and Mike took off after the vehicle, then whoever had been driving would be brought to swift justice. They would not play around and the only thing that might save the person was if the police got to them first.
What was I supposed to do with that information though? I wondered if Chevy knew about his girl. Did he see it happen? Would he remember? Jesus, what a clusterfuck. “As soon as his mom gets here, I want her brought to him. No questions. If for some reason his siblings came too, they will be allowed back to see him as well. I don’t care what the hospital’s rules on visitors are. He’ll have a private room, with security, and family will be welcome.”
I could have sworn the doctor rolled his eyes as I swung my celebrity status around like I could skirt their rules by sheer dint of will. “What about the girl’s parents? Have they been told yet?”
“I think they’re on their way here with Miss Kendrick,” Ray told me as we stopped outside of a door.
“This is it.” We stood outside of a door, but the doctor stopped me from going inside immediately. It’s important that you know, things look worse than they are. Your son has quite the recovery period because his leg will need surgery and then he’ll have a healing process including some serious physical therapy.”
“Will he walk again?”
“As long as he remains positive and puts in the work, you shouldn’t even know he was ever in an accident beyond a bit of scarring.”
I nodded my head and then pushed the door open without knocking. What greeted me there took my breath away. “Oh Chevy!” His name caught in my throat, an awful, choked sound. He was black and blue in spots. His left arm and hand were mottled with bruises, as was his jaw. His foot was up in some sort of traction device. I didn’t know and when I was able to process a bit more, I’d get someone to explain that a bit more. I knew he hurt his leg, but I still wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong with it.
My son tilted his head slightly to the side and opened his eyes to see me standing there by his bedside. A tortured look twisted his face. “She’s gone,” he moaned.
I just nodded because what else could I do? I’d just been told that it might very well be the case. “It’s my fault,” he managed to get out through the grief that was ripping him to pieces.
“It was not your fault. You tried to save her and ended up here, like this.”
“No,” he moaned. “She wouldn’t even have been here if I hadn’t bullied her into coming. I wanted Opal to see what my life was going to be like as a musician. I needed her to know what she was signing on for.”
I pulled a chair over beside his bed. “Chev, that’s not your fault. I know you wanted her here, wanted to gauge whether it would work out between you two or not, but son, some asshole who never stopped and sped through a damn New York City street was to blame. Not you. Never you.”
“Did they get him?”
“Our guys took off after him immediately. I’m still waiting to hear if they managed to keep on their tail or not. It was more important to me to come see you first before demanding more updates.”
“Is Mom on her way?”
“You know she is,” I told him.
“Good.” That was the last thing he said to me before he passed out, and I wondered if this would be the moment when I truly lost my son. Maybe he would hate me now, give up music, and go back home to his family. “What if he blames me and never wants to see me again?” I murmured to myself as I hung my head and thought about giving prayer a try. I couldn’t lose my boy. Not now.
“His pain meds kicked in,” a woman’s voice called out from the doorway.
“What?” I asked as I turned to see a woman standing there in blue and white scrubs that looked like clouds. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a tidy, yet fancy-looking braid of some sort.
“His pain meds kicked in. That’s why he just went out like that. I don’t think it has anything to do with him thinking anything was your fault.” If eyes could hold hugs, hers surely did. The warmth, and depth of understanding she held for someone who was a complete stranger to her, meant a lot.
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I told her.
She chuckled slightly. “Even if you don’t believe me,” she teased lightheartedly as she added on her last remark.
“What can I say? This is my boy and he just wanted to know if his momma was coming.”
That really made her chuckle. “Kids will always want their moms first when they’re hurt. It’s a thing. Don’t take it personally.” She turned to leave after adding my son’s vitals to her tablet. “And that isn’t just lip service. It’s the truth. I’m Melanie, by the way. I’ll be the nurse checking on your son this shift.”
“Any idea how long he’ll be locked up in here?”
“You act as though this is a jail sentence,” she teased.
“For a kid like him, with a hand damaged that way, and the ability to walk taken away for a little bit, it will seem like it. Especially if Opal…” I couldn’t bring myself to talk about her being dead.
“Opal?” The nurse questioned. She took a quick look around and then made to close the door to my son’s room a little tighter. “Your boy is the one who saved the girl that was hit?”
“She’s his girlfriend,” I acknowledged.
“Opal is not gone. She’s in for a long road to recovery, and unlike your son, I don’t think her prognosis includes walking ever again,
but she’s here now. They originally took her somewhere else, but trauma was full there, so she was rerouted.”
“Seems she should have been first priority to come here,” I told her.
“Actually, the better place for the both of them would have been if they had gone across town, they have the best orthopedic surgeon money can buy over there.”
“Can you get me his information? Do you know if he’s allowed to practice here as well?”
“I’ll get you all the information you need, but I believe he is allowed to consult here for special circumstances.”
“Good. Can you get him here, tell him money isn’t an object and that I am footing the bill for both my son and his girlfriend?”
“I’ll get the information for you, and you can make the calls. That is out of the realm of things I can do, and if you don’t mind, maybe don’t mention that I told you about Opal. Just guess that she’ll need help too.” She winked at me, left a card she had been writing on in the palm of my hand, and then left the room.
I don’t know how long I sat there by my son’s side before the door to his room opened again. That time, it was not the beautiful nurse coming to check on him.
“Oh my God! Chevy!” Kendra whispered as her hands flew to cover the sharp gasp she made. I was fairly certain that my son had woken up a little while ago, but that he had been feigning sleep ever since. I wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t want to see or speak to me, or if he just couldn’t handle talking to anyone.
Hearing his mother’s voice didn’t change anything, so we carried on as if the meds still had him knocked out. “Is he? What happened? Jesus, my heart has been in my chest the whole way here. What is going on with him?”
“Calm down for a minute and I’ll fill you in.” I waited for the rest of their family to trickle in and pulled them a little to the side. I didn’t want Chevy to miss out though, since I knew he was listening in. The kid really was a shit actor.
I filled them in on his prognosis and when I told them that I hired the best orthopedic surgeon to care for both Chevy and Opal, that was when my son finally found his voice again and opened his eyes. “Opal’s not gone?” It was a question. He didn’t think he’d heard me correctly.
I moved back to his bedside and smiled down at him. “She’s not gone, man. Opal’s in bad shape, but she’s still here with us. I need you to fight like hell to get better though, because she’ll need you once everything is said and done.”
“She’s really not dead?” He asked again.
“I promise you, she’s alive and fighting.”
A weight seemed to lift from my son’s shoulders. I realized it was the oppressive weight of grief that had been pinning him down into that dark abyss that he didn’t want to wake from.
“Don’t worry, Chevy, we’re going to get you home and taken care of,” Kendra informed our son while sliding over to the other side of his bed.
“No. Dad has a doctor on the way here to take care of me.”
I felt like I was stabbed in the chest with a fucking machete. It was the first time my son had called me dad. Until that moment, he’d been calling me Gabe, like everyone else in my life. I dared a glance at Hex, who had moved in to stand by his woman, and he actually offered up a small smile and nod. He understood what that had meant. I wasn’t sure how he understood since he had been there for his girl since birth, but I took the sentiment all the same.
“Babe, I think Gabe’s probably got that stuff handled pretty well, yeah?” He asked her.
“He’s in New York!” She hissed back at him. “I can’t be here the whole time.”
“I get that, but babe, your boy is a grown man now. He’s going to be a world-famous rock star like his father one day soon, as will your other boys. You’re not going to be able to tag along on every tour they go on.”
“Bet,” Harley piped in. “I will be there, so you know mom will find a way,” she offered. There was no missing the fact that the sassy little thing was stirring the pot.
“See, I can be there. You can get on as security with the MC or Redemption Inc., Harley will take pictures, and I’ll cook for the boys or something.”
“Have it all figured out, do you?” Hex asked her as everyone just took in Kendra’s little meltdown. “And what are you going to do when the boys are nailing groupies in the hallway? Stand there and hand out condoms?”
Shit, I had to look away and turn my laughter into a cough. The boys didn’t miss it, as they were trying to hide their laughter from their mom too.
“Gross,” Kendra hissed again. “My boys are above that.”
“Gotta say, ‘No’ on that one, Mom,” Ford called out to her.
“Ford!” She whisper-yelled. “We’ll talk about that later,” she told him as she landed a narrow-eyed ‘you’re in trouble’ stare at him. Then, Kendra turned her attention back to Chevy, who groaned.
“Mom, I want to stay. Dad really did get one of the best doctors. Besides, when I’m all healed, we still have to finish the track we were working on together. I can’t exactly do that from down there.”
“Chevy, please,” Kendra begged him. “Think this through. You got hurt.”
“And I can’t get hurt in Johns Creek, Georgia? Atlanta? Anywhere that I might end up touring later on?” My boy took a hold of his mother’s hand. “I love you. I love all of you and I’ll be back to visit often. Even if you go to live in the mountains and become a biker babe,” he told her as he mock gagged on the last word. It worked though because she grinned at him and then smacked the hand that held hers. Luckily it wasn’t the one that was bruised all to hell. “I promise, I’ll be fine before you know it.”
“You look after my boy,” Kendra said, aiming her demand at me.
“Our boy,” I corrected. “I’d give anything to be in his place instead, believe that.”
“I do.” She turned back to Chevy then. “No more heroics for a while, okay? My heart can’t take it.”
“Mine either,” I hummed under my breath, but Chevy heard. His eyes drifted to me and he offered a small nod before his lids grew heavy and sleep started to take him under again. It was only then that I noticed his hand was on the button they offered him for pain relief.
4 - Fanatics
Chevy Kendrick, the patient I had helped care for in the ICU turned out to be the son of a famous rock God. A famous rock God who I had an entire conversation with while not recognizing him. Some days, I wondered if my divorce left me with half the brain matter that I started life with.
“Mel!” Brian Clout called out as he double-timed it in order to keep up with my pace. Good. At least the rat bastard knew I wasn’t slowing down for him. Our Chief of Staff tended to get handsy with some of the nurses, and then he would blow off the claims of sexual harassment and use his own God complex to do it. He would tell Human Resources that the woman must have wanted him to do those things, and that they were living a fantasy because he wouldn’t give someone of their stature the time of day. How do I know this? He had tried it on with my best friend. Unfortunately for him, she didn’t take his shit and kneed him in the balls, in front of some visiting dignitaries who were able to corroborate her claims.
As a result, Amanda no longer worked at the same hospital. She ended up being transferred to St. Mary’s instead. Fortunately for me, it meant that I never had to deal with Clout getting fresh with me. He knew the crazy apple didn’t fall far from our friend tree. “What can I do for you, Dr. Clout?”
“You worked with the musician’s kid in the ICU, correct?”
“Yes, though I didn’t know that was who they were at the time.”
“Well, we have to move the boy to another wing due to privacy concerns, and I’m sending you to go be one of his private nurses. You’ve been vetted and we know you weren’t one of the staff who leaked anything about them.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s common knowledge that you didn’t even know who the man was,” he snorted,
as if he would have recognized him on the spot. He must have forgotten that Mr. North wasn’t allowed in to see his son right away because he couldn’t verify that he was the father and Dr. Clout had been one of the people who asked for proof because he had no clue who Gabe North was.
It was incredible to think that the lead singer of world-famous Valhalla Rising was the man who I’d so casually tried to reassure about his son. Little had I known, their relationship was still new, and if the press was to be believed, Gabe hadn’t even known he was a father all this time because his manager, mother, and a few others lied to keep the secret, even as his son’s mom tried to do the right thing and tell him. How horrible that must have been for him to find out, establish a relationship finally, and come so close to having it taken away again. I couldn’t imagine.
“Who else will be working the wing with me?”
“It will be just you and Sophia Blankenship. You’ll do 12 hours on, 12 off, three day stretches, and then we’ll have another team come in and cover the next three. If he’s still here, then you and Sophia will come back on.”
Three on, three off sounded a whole lot better than my current rotation. Instead of arguing, as I’d been prepared to do, I asked the only question necessary. “Do I need special credentials for working over there?”
Dr. Clout held a folder out to me. “Everything you need is in there. Come about 45 minutes early for your shift tomorrow as there will be non-disclosure forms for you to sign before you can begin work.” When I just continued to stand there and wait for more instructions, Dr. Clout rolled his eyes and walked away. “You get the evening shift since I found Sophia first.” I cringed and shivered inwardly. I didn’t want to know what Sophia had done for Dr. Clout in order to secure the day’s half of the shift. To be honest, I thought it best that nights would be mine. It was quiet and I’d run less risk of the famous, rock star dad being around.
~*~
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