Chapter Five
Olivia
After I got off work, I went straight to the hospital. I met Gail leaving as I was going in.
“Hi, how is he today?”
“He’s tired. I think he’s had too many visitors.”
“Uh-oh. Is everything okay?”
“I suppose, for now. I’m just getting too damn old for all of this drama,” she said. “The police were here and his P.O. and his father. I think it all took a lot out of him.”
“The police came to see me too,” I told her. “They seem to be looking at Dax not so much like a victim, but like he did something to cause all of this. It kind of pisses me off, but then I have to remember what kind of mess we live in every day and what kind of shit the police have had to deal with the club over the past few years.” She put her hand to her head. I felt bad for her, but I didn’t know what to do.
Finally I asked her, “You’re not still blaming yourself for any of this, are you?”
She smiled and never really answered me. Instead she said, “I just want my boy back. I want the one back that they sent to prison. I miss him.”
Tears formed in my eyes and I said, “He’s still in there. We just need to whittle away at the shell he’s built around him.”
Gail nodded and gave me a hug. When I passed the nurses station on my way up, I heard the nurse taking an order to discharge Dax in the morning as long as his vital signs remained stable. That at least would make him happy.
“Hey gorgeous,” I said, sticking my head in the door.
“Hey! Finally, a visitor I can get on board with.” I smiled and went over and gave him a kiss.
“Did the doctor tell you they are discharging you soon?”
“No, what did you hear?”
“I heard some scuttlebutt at the nurse’s station about the super-hot guy in 217 being released. They were all depressed about it, even the male nurses.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I was the most popular guy on my block in prison just because I was so pretty.”
I chuckled and said, “Dear God, I hope that was the only reason. On a less gross note, your mom said the police came to see you today.”
“They did in fact. Made my day. It was the same detective that kept me in an interview room for hours after they arrested me for drug trafficking.”
“How’d it go?”
“As well as that sort of thing can, I guess. I told him I’d gone to get my sketchpad and I didn’t see who shot me. I don’t think he believes me, but I don’t think he can prove anything otherwise. My dad and the guys aren’t talking.”
“Why not?” I asked him. “Blake shot you. Why isn’t your dad more pissed off?”
“Because he doesn’t believe me when I say they set me up and because I had a gun and he thinks that means I brought it on myself.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“Yeah, well I have another plan.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, genuinely worried about what his plan might be.
He laughed and said, “Not that kind of plan. I’m going to get my parents to call a meeting. I want everyone together. I want them all to hear what I have to say. I want this out in the open once and for all.”
“Do you think they’ll admit to anything in front of the entire club?”
“I doubt it, but at least it will get everyone else to thinking about what they’ve seen or heard. It will also point the finger directly at them if anything happened to me.”
“I can’t wait for this to be over. I’ve been worried about what was going to happen to you for three years. This is killing me, Dax.”
“I know, baby. I want it to be over too. I really do.”
I visited with him until they kicked me out. We tried hard to talk about pleasant things, anything but the club and what was going to happen when Dax got out of there and confronted them all face to face. I was hoping if I stayed in denial, the bad things wouldn’t come to pass.
********
Dax called me before I was even out of bed the next morning and I groggily answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey! Can you come break me out of this place?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I just assumed your mom would be taking you home.”
“She said she would, but she had an appointment this morning. I didn’t want to wait ‘til noon. I want to go home…now.”
“Okay you big baby, I’ll be right there.”
“Big baby? I survived getting shot. How much tougher can you get than that?” he asked.
“You can be in love with the guy who got shot and survive that,” I said with a giggle.
“Yeah, yeah. Hurry or I’m going to start walking. Worse yet, I’ll take a city bus. You can catch anything on one of those.”
“I’m on my way,” I told him.
I jumped in the shower and quickly got dressed. After I was ready I went and let my uncle know what I was going to do. I wasn’t scheduled to work that day but I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t planned on me being there. He wasn’t, but he was concerned about me picking up Dax.
“Where are you taking him?” he asked.
“To his parent’s house.”
“Okay, so you won’t be near the club at all?”
“No, straight to his parent’s from the hospital. I’ll be fine.”
He nodded and said, “I used to worry about you, some. I knew you had sense enough not to get in the middle of their nonsense. But a gunshot…an internal war…that’s heavy shit.”
I kissed him on the cheek and said, “I know. I promise to stay away from all of that and be safe.”
“You better,” he said, “I kind of like having you in the family.”
“Yeah, well…you’re okay too,” I told him.
I made the fifteen minute trip to the hospital and when I got there, I found Dax fully dressed in clothes his mom had left for him. For a guy who had just got shot a few days ago, he looked really hot.
“Hey, look at you. You look good.”
“Thanks,” he said, pulling me into him and covering my mouth with his. We kissed deeply and it was the best kiss that we had shared in a long time. I felt his hand slip from my waist down to my ass and squeeze.
“Hey! We can’t do that here, mister.”
“Okay, but as soon as we get to my parent’s house right?”
I laughed. “Yeah right. That’s just what I want to do when your mother is sitting in the next room.”
“Then let’s just do it here real quick.”
“Stop it! You’re recovering from a gunshot and major surgery. I doubt that having sex is in your treatment plan.”
“If there’s no sex with you in it, I want no part of that treatment,” he said with a grin.
“Horn-dog,” I told him.
I didn’t hear the nurse come in but Dax saw her and said, loudly, “No, you’re the horn-dog. I just had surgery. I don’t think I’m supposed to have sex.”
“Dax!” I said. I could feel my face turning red. I looked at the nurse and said, “He’s the one who suggested it, not me.”
She was an older lady. She laughed and said, “I believe you, honey. He’s been ornery like that since he woke up from surgery.”
She had his discharge paperwork and as he signed it she read off all the follow-up and aftercare instructions. No strenuous activities were one of them. When she said it, he looked up at me and wrinkled his forehead.
When all the paperwork was signed, she gave us his copies of everything and put him in a wheelchair that he argued with her about and rolled him to the elevator and all the way out to my car. She had to be at least sixty and the whole way out, my boyfriend was shamelessly flirting with her. It was good to see him back in true form.
We stopped at the pharmacy to pick up his meds on the way to his parent’s house. I told him to stay in the car, but of course he ignored me. When I got up to the door he was right on my back. Besides his meds we left with three candy bars, a bag of beef jerky, a bag of Cheetos and another of pork rinds as well as a six-pack of soda and a pack of gum.
“What is all of this junk food for?” I asked him.
“Because I know my mother is going to have me eating healthy foods. I’m going to hide this stuff in my room where she can’t find it so I have something to subsist on.”
“Good luck with that. I’d be willing to bet she comes in there every day while you’re convalescing and cleans the room. She’ll find it.”
“You forget that I lived with her for eighteen years in that very same room. I have my secret spots that she has yet to find.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“That’s what my father said Brock called me.” The comment made the tone of the conversation turn serious. Neither of us cared to talk about it at that moment so we just rode silently the rest of the way to his parent’s house.
Gail, and surprisingly enough, Bull were waiting for us when we got there. Dax had stuffed the junk food as well as an entire six pack of soda in my purse. It was heavy and the strap was killing my arm. I told him we should have hid it in the Personal Belongings bag the hospital had sent home but he insisted she would take it and wash the clothes right away.
As soon as Gail said, “Hello,” she said, “Give me that bag and I’ll put those straight in the washer.” Dax gave me a smug look. I hated when he was right.
He sat down with his dad in the living room and I excused myself so that I could sit down the heavy purse. I had to smile when I saw his room. Gail had set it up with a little table at the side of his bed and she had folded the bed down halfway. He was such a mama’s boy.
I went back out and sat next to him on the couch. Gail had made cinnamon rolls and brought them out with coffee and juice. It was weird, but as long as I’d known Dax, this was the first truly normal family moment I’d ever been involved in with him and his parents. I guess it takes a shooting to bring some families together.