“How’s her heart rate?” Joseph asked the attending doctor, Michael Simms.
“Steady at 80,” he answered as he looked at the computer screen in front of him.
“How long are you giving her?” Joseph inquired. “At this rate, she should be fine if you start weaning her off of the induced coma.”
“Maybe another day.” Dr. Simms nodded his head. “She’s going to be okay, Joseph.”
Joseph was tight-lipped but acquiesced.
Dr. Simms took his stethoscope and stood close to Athena.
My feet moved and I stood across from him.
Every time the doctors came to check her, the monitors would go berserk. The second night she was here, I was close by when they did the rounds so when the beeping went off, I held her hand. For some strange reason, the lines on the monitor became steady and the beeping stopped.
We tried it again the next time she was being checked and as soon as my hands touched hers, the monitors went silent.
So now, I was here for the fourth night in a row, waiting by the foot of her bed, watching her while she aimlessly turned her head and hoped that soon she could come out of it.
With the amount of drugs the motherfuckers had given her, and the combination of GHB, Xanax, and a hybrid of Ambien and Ecstasy, it’s a wonder that she was breathing on her own. A few more hours and she’d have gone into cardiac arrest.
My heart exploded in violence every time I saw the faces of those shitheads.
According to the FBI, from the information that they could extract from them, they didn’t know what they were giving Athena. They just wanted her to be obedient and immobile.
If I could castrate them on the spot, I would have.
But Athena had priority. Getting her safe and alive took the top spot.
I’d broken their bodies into a mangled mess so that they would both have a hard time sitting down to take a shit on their own.
Their faces were beyond recognition, and the FBI had to run prints on them to identify them as Salvador Bernal and Tulio Vera. Tulio was a new recruit so he didn’t have much of a rap sheet compared to Salvador.
If the EMTs hadn’t arrived on time, the men would’ve been left for dead.
But while I had a hard time letting go of them, my concern for Athena took the top spot.
She was incoherent when we found her in the trunk of the car.
Her face had outward bruises gained from bumping into the small metal container that stored the drugs they used on her.
Her words were slurred and her eyes were non-reactive.
It pained me to see her in such a horrendous, helpless state that I wanted to howl in anger and beat the ever-living shit of out those fuckers who did this to her.
Her pants were wet and she smelled atrocious. One of the men said that they hadn’t let her out to pee since they’d stuffed her in the trunk.
I’m already talking to my friends in the FBI on how to make the lives of Salvador and Tulio very miserable in their jail cells.
No one deserved this. Especially not her.
Simms finished checking on her, but I didn’t let go of her hand.
I kissed the top of her head and whispered, “Sunshine, they’re going to wake you up tomorrow. Please wake up, okay?”
Her eyes moved and I knew she heard me.
Joseph hadn’t said much about my show of affection toward his daughter. While I’d love to talk to him man-to-man about this, my actions showed more than anything I’d ever wanted to say.
“I’ll walk you out.” Joseph gestured to Dr. Simms and two men walked outside, probably to talk more about what to do with Athena.
She had to be put in an induced coma. Her whole system was shutting down and firing off in a dangerous rhythm. Every part of her body was out of control and the only way to get her to rest and heal was to keep her in this state.
But she’d been showing signs of promise. Her heart rate had been steady and her breathing was almost normal. Well, as normal as someone with a tube in their throat could be. But Joseph had said that her labs were turning out well so this was as far as good news went.
As for me, I had no compulsion to leave her side.
She was in a private room at this state-of-the-art medical facility here in Los Angeles after being air lifted from New Mexico and I wanted to stay here until she opened her eyes.
Joseph had to pull some strings to get her here, but when you’re the only daughter of a reknowned and well-respected physician, all of the medical facilities in the country were at your disposal.
Even in her sedated state, she still shone brightly. There was always a ray of light around her. Even in the bleakest circumstances, her spirit never dimmed.
“She’ll pull through.” I didn’t hear Joseph come in because I was so focused on her, the way her chest lifted up and down, the effervescent glow of her skin that even the drab gray-blue hospital gown couldn’t hide, and the tender way her soft curls fell around her face, she was beautiful.
“I’m in love with her,” I announced, briefly removing my eyes from Athena to meet Joseph’s brown eyes. Athena inherited her mother’s hazel’s eyes, but she got that wistful look from her dad.
He looked away from me and scanned the monitors above his daughter’s bed. I waited but he wasn’t saying anything.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t want it to happen.” My words were coming out all wrong.
“You didn’t want to love her?” Joseph’s brows rose to his forehead.
“No, I mean as her bodyguard, I couldn’t fall in love with her…” I struggled to admit it. “I tried so hard to stay away. I didn’t want to break your trust. I owe a lot to you. You gave me Ryder and I – it’s so hard to reconcile falling in love with my detail, your only daughter, and I just want you to know that I love her.”
Joseph moved to the corner of the room and pushed the leather swivel chair closer to Athena’s left side, parallel to and a few inches higher than where I was seated.
He gently touched her hand and said, “Ryder was yours, Webb. I couldn’t deny a son his father especially when he was struggling for his life.”
The thought of Ryder brought stinging to my eyes. There wasn’t a day he wasn’t on my mind. Before it was because of grief. Now I thought of him as my lucky charm, even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he was there.
“I know you took on this job as a favor to me. And being the opportunist that I am, I didn’t change your view about it,” he said, his eyes never leaving Athena.
“You’re not opportunistic, I told you that I owed you my life and I meant it,” I countered, my hands on Athena’s elbow, she felt warm. Good. “When you gave me those moments with Ryder, I swore I would give up anything for you.”
He shook his head, I spotted a few grays, but Joseph was aging well. My father had half of his head white a few years before he died and he was two years younger than Joseph.
“I placed my daughter’s safety in your hands because I knew you’d never let me down,” Joseph admitted. “A man like you doesn’t have a bone in his body for failure. I trusted you with her life because I knew you believed that you owed me and even at the expense of your own, you’d keep my daughter safe.”
“I would…I tried.” The words came out stringy and flat. “But I couldn’t keep her safe. She got caught in the middle and she got terribly hurt.”
“You see those lines?” Joseph pointed to the big screen above Athena’s head.
“Yes.”
“Those lines mean she’s alive, Webb.” He affirmed, the creases on his face more significant now. Almost losing a loved one can age you five years. “Those lines exist because of you.”
“Sir – “ I was about to argue.
“Better get used to calling me Joseph, Webb.” Slowly he stood up, his eyes taking in his daughter, kissed her forehead then his left hand started to fix a wrinkle on his green shirt. “I don’t want my daughter’s boyfriend making me feel more ancient than I am.”
There was nothing else to be said. “Thank you, Joseph.” This time, my words came out sure and strong, “I’ll never hurt her.”
“My daughter deserves everything, son. She’s been cheated by a childhood disease. If you are who she wants and she loves you as much as you love her, I know that she’s in good hands. You’re a good man and I’ve seen it firsthand how much you loved your son,” he assured me and I let go of Athena and stood up.
“Does she know about Ryder?” he asked as his footsteps led us to the front of the door of ICU Room #2.
“Not yet,” I conceded, my shoulders feeling the weight of the events of the past few days. I’ve gained bruises and cuts from the ambush but nothing that I wouldn’t heal from. “But I’ll tell her.”
“You love someone, you tell them everything,” Joseph asserted, stopping short of leaving the room. “It doesn’t matter how big or how dark or how scary your secret is; if they truly love you, they’ll know what to do with it.”
I offered my right hand and Joseph took it without hesitation.
“Trust me, son. Learn from me, from my mistakes. Tell her everything before it starts eating you up.” He said it as if he was remembering something from the past.
“I plan to.” I put my hand down to my side and watched as he slowly gestured with his head that he was leaving.
“I’m gonna tell her Mom that we’re going to wake Athena up tomorrow,” Joseph said as he stepped out, his right hand waving to one of the staff nurses by the nurses’ station. No wonder the man was loved everywhere he went, he was so genuine and humble. “Her mom’s been a nervous wreck… Well, you know how she is.”
I did. Athena’s mom, Adelaide, fainted the first time she’d seen her daughter attached to all the tubes and monitors.
The second time wasn’t as bad, but she kept shaking the whole time she held Athena’s hand.
Who could blame her? Her only child was in dire conditions, and I knew that even if she and Athena didn’t get together as frequently as they both would like because of their schedules, Adelaide loved her daughter very much.
She was now staying at her friend’s house to be within five miles of Athena’s hospital. She’d offered to stay with Athena, but Joseph put the kibosh on it because he’d said that Athena needed a calming presence in order to heal. And because of her rattled state, Adelaide couldn’t. Adelaide hesitantly agreed, but she knew when her ex-husband was right so she visited every day until visiting hours were over.
She was a pleasant lady. She’d seen the way I lingered around her daughter and she’d asked that first time I met her who I was.
I’d been honest and said that I was Athena’s bodyguard and that I cared for her daughter very much.
It’s too bad we didn’t meet before all of that happened. Adelaide had been busy traveling so their schedules never matched up, meaning I never had the chance to introduce myself. I’m sure she knew me by name because Joseph and Athena often mentioned me, but still, it would have been nice to make acquiantances before this so I wasn’t just a stranger to her mom.
My thoughts were brought back to the present when Joseph tapped my shoulder and said, “Bye. I’ll call you later.”
I nodded my head and said, “Okay.”
I watched as he walked to the nurses’ station, talked to the few nurses who were now chatting around the computers, and then he waved back at me and I returned his wave before the doors opened to let him out of the unit.
I walked back to the room and sat by Athena’s side.
I never planned to fall in love with this wisp of a woman.
Her soft hand filled my right palm.
I never planned to get out of the dark and face this beaming light that she offered.
Her chest filled with air and my left hand reached for her face.
I love you, sunshine.
And when you wake up, I’ll tell you about him.
Ryder.
My son.