CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Preppy

I hate the term ‘nothing left to lose’.

Because lying there in that hospital room was everything I had to lose. I barely let the hospital staff tend to my gunshot wound and stop the bleeding, it was barely even a wound. It was a sandspur in my sock compared to the chunk of my guts destroyed the last time I’d been shot. But my injury wasn’t important. What was important was Dre and that’s why as ridiculous as the idea I just had was, I couldn’t ignore it. I’d try everything and anything to bring her back. I didn’t care if she was getting comfortable wherever she was. I didn’t care if they were ushering her through the pearly gates with a bottle of champagne and three-dozen white fucking roses. I didn’t care if she was the happiest she’d ever been and if heaven was everything she could ever want. Didn’t care. I was a selfish man.

She was mine, and I wasn’t letting her go.

Ever.

I closed my eyes and started the deep breathing technique Mirna had taught me years before. I hadn’t meditated since getting out of Narnia, but sitting there next to my wife I felt helpless. It was worth a shot.

It was only seconds, or at least that’s what I felt like, when I was no longer in the hospital room, holding onto my wife’s bloody hand as the machines she was hooked up to beeped and blink with the erratic rise and fall of her chest.

We were now on top of the water tower. She was awake, standing on the edge just like the night I met her. Except this time, she wasn’t naked. She was in a hospital gown splattered with red. The IV tube still taped to her wrist. Her eye and lip swollen and bruised. She looked over the edge of the rail. Her black hair blew around her battered face.

“Don’t jump,” I said, taking a step toward her. I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible, hiding the fear pitting in the depths of my stomach. Dre turned to me and smiled. I gasped when she leapt up to sit on the very top of the thin and rusted railing. My heart leaped into my throat and I step between her legs, wrapping my arms around her waist and resting my head against her tits. Holding her to me. Holding her onto the tower. “Don’t leave me,” I told her. “Don’t leave us. Bo misses you. I miss you.” I felt the vibration of her laugh and looked up into her bruised but beautiful face. Her smile was big although her bottom teeth were coated in red.

“Save me, Preppy,” she said, her voice an eerie echo that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from her mouth, but from the air around us. Her lips weren’t even moving.

“I did save you,” I argue. “At least I tried to save you. It’s up to the doctors now.” I held her tighter, but it’s not tight enough. It never was.

She shook her head and pressed her index finger to my lips, which I kissed on instinct. “No, you still have some saving to do. It’s not over yet. Not yet.” She touched my face and suddenly I was awash in an image. A doctor leaning over me and I realize it’s not me at all. I’m seeing him through Dre’s eyes. The doctor laughs when she tries to cough out her words. Questioning what he was doing and why. “Save me,” she said to me again, and the image of the doctor is gone. I’m back looking into the dark eyes of the only woman I’d ever loved. The breeze is now a wind. Leaves and pine needles from nearby trees cyclone around us, creating a wall of debris and a noise that sounds like a train clattering against the tracks.

“But...” I started to argue. I was cut off when she leaned back over the rail, pulling me with her. She’s falling and I fell right along with her, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Right before we reach the ground she shows me the backside of her hand, which has some sort of sticker on it. No, it’s a tattoo. A cheesy yellow smiley face. As the wind rips through my hair and the ground grows closer and closer I recognized the tattoo. A flood of memory I didn’t know I had rushes forward, playing like a movie in front of my eyes.

The truth won’t save us because it’s too late.

We crashed into the ground.

****

My eyes popped open and I inhaled sharply like I’d been drowning and someone had given me CPR. I was back in Dre’s hospital room and my eyes immediately landed on the doctor who was leaning over Dre. He had a needle in his hand, fidgeting with her tubes. He looked up at me with a smile that faded the second he saw the recognition in my eyes. “You look familiar,” he said, gulping nervously and pushing back on the sleeves of his white coat, revealing the stupid tattoo on his hand that gave away his identity.

I stood from my chair, reluctantly dropping Dre’s hand gently back to the bed. “I should look familiar.” I looked around the room. “I died here once,” I said, not recognizing my own voice that was deep dark and deadly, full of the anger pulling in my veins. Doctor Gonna-Be-Dead-Soon straightened his posture and was shuffling backward toward the door when Bear and King appeared in the doorway. Right away they noticed the look on my face and all it took was a tip of my chin for them to push the doctor back into the room and slam the door shut behind them. He fell to the ground and scurried into the corner like the scared fucking rat he was. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“What’s up?” King asked as casually as if he was wondering if I wanted to go grab a bite to eat. He points to the doctor.

I bend down on the floor over the doctor and grab him by the throat. “So you hand me over to the fucking lunatic biker, you try and make it seem like I was dead, you try to kill me, my wife, and you killed my fucking mother?”

The doctor frantically shook his head.

“It’s a little too late for denial now,” I tell him.

“No, I mean yes. I did that. Everything but kill your mom. Grace. It was the cancer. Not me. I swear!” he shouted. “At first I just did some paperwork for him. Patched him up a while back at his house when he got cut or shot. He paid me cash.” The doctor shook his head. “I was losing my house. I didn’t want to do all those other things for him. I had no choice!”

“You had to? Why?”

“Because...he had my sister. She was one of their biker whores. Their BBB’s.” He waved at Bear’s leather cut. “I just wanted to take her home. Keep her safe. Chop said if I didn’t do what I asked of him he’d kill her and then me.”

“That never happened though,” Bear said. It wasn’t a question.

The doctor shook his head. “No, that bastard killed her and the rest of them before he could keep his promise and give her back to me.” He sighed.

“So when I showed back up you figured you had to take me out yourself? Finish the job? Then my wife?” I shook my head and kicked him in the ribs. “You piece of shit coward.”

“I didn’t know what else to do!” he cried. When he tried to stand up King pushed him back down onto the floor and his head crashed against the wall, knocking him out cold. “Oops,” he said.

“She needs help,” I said when Dre’s monitors started beeping and blinking. “I don’t know what he might have done to her.” I ran out into the hall and almost crashed into the nurse that gave me Bo’s information months before. “I need your help,” I told her, pulling her into the room. She took a second to assess the situation but we didn’t have a second. “Please.”

“He tried to kill her,” I said, offering the quickest explanation I could. I opened his coat pocket and pulled out the needle and little glass tube thing. “He might have given this to her,” I said to her. She took them from my hands but continued to look down at the doctor on the floor. “Please. What is this?” I asked, snapping her out of her shock.

She looked down and turned over the little glass bottle. She sniffed it and scrunched up her nose. She pushed it back into my hands, ran toward a cabinet in the hall and came back with a pair of gloves and another two bottles with different colored labels than the one she just tossed onto the bed by Dre’s feet.

The nurse took the flashlight and peeled open Dre’s eyelids, shining it into each pupil. She gave Dre two injections into the port on the back of her hand.

“Nothing good that’s for sure. It’s that same shit that kills celebrities when they take it to help them sleep and realize it’s good for a coma and maybe a little death, but it’s not exactly Tylenol fucking PM. We don’t even use that shit here. Haven’t for years.”

“How much is in her system?” King asked.

The nurse shook her head and grabbed Dre’s wrist to take her pulse. She gently lowered it back onto the bed and sighed. “I’m not sure. I gave her something that should counteract it, but it depends how much she was given and how long ago. If he’s been giving her smaller doses to make it seem less suspicious when her heart stopped then we have a better shot at her recovering, than if he’s just injected her full of this shit.”

“How long will it take to find out?” Bear asked and thank God he did because for the first time in my entire life I couldn’t find the words. Panic. Fear. Physical pain from every nerve in my body. She glanced up at him. “If this works, it should only be a matter of minutes before she wakes up.”

We were all silent for five long minutes. My heart died a little more with each tick of the clock on the wall.

And then we waited ten more minutes.

And then I was screaming in Dre’s face, slapping her cheeks, demanding she wake up. “You can’t fucking die! You can’t!” I screamed, pounding my fist against the mattress beside her head. King rounded the bed and pulled me out of the chair, putting his arm around my shoulder. I lowered my voice. My words came out broken, only every other syllable made a sound. “She can’t fucking die,” I repeated. “There wasn’t enough time. We didn’t have enough time. She promised me she’d never leave me. She fucking promised.”

King and Bear tugged me back while the nurse shot me a look. THE look. She glanced at the clock and my eyes followed.

Twenty fucking minutes.

Dre

“Wake up. Wake up!” The voice is soft and feminine. Reassuring and loving.

“Grandma?” I ask, although I can’t see a thing.

I’m tired. I want to go back to wherever I just was. Dreamless rest. “Wake up! Wake up!” I hear again.

“Grandma it’s too early,” I groan, trying to roll over on my side but I’m stopped by something invisible. Something tethering my arms in place. “Come back later. It’s summer. No school today,” I tell her.

“Wake the fuck up!” The voice is now masculine and desperate. “Please, come back to me. Come back to us! Bo needs you. I fucking need you!” I recognize that voice and I realize that I’m not in my room at Grandma’s. I’m standing alone in complete darkness with no sign of an exit. Preppy needs me. Bo needs me. I need to go to them. I start to panic. My throat grows tight and my heart beats uncontrollably.

“I don’t know where to find you! Where do I go?” I shout back. A light appears as if it’s the answer to my question and it’s the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. One side of the room is blanketed in beautiful brightness and the other side is cloaked in the dark. I reach out for it with my hand. I take a step closer. I’m about to touch it when I come to a halt and shake my head, pulling back my hand. “What am I doing?” I whisper. I slowly take a few steps back before turning around and sprinting away to the opposite side.

The light was beautiful, but I chose instead to run blindly into the dark because I knew, without a doubt, that’s where Preppy would be.

****

“Thank fuck. There you are,” Preppy said softly, looking down at me with concern etched into his forehead and tear stains down his cheeks. He looked tired. One of his suspenders was hanging loose from his shoulder. His bow tie hung open around his collar. His beard, normally well groomed, was unruly and long. He smoothed the hair away from my face. “Took you long enough, Doc.”

“I knew I’d find you here,” I whispered.

“I knew you’d come back to me.”

“What...what...happened?” I asked groggily, my throat sore and dry. The second I asked the question I remembered the answer on my own.

Eric.

I gasped and looked to Preppy who flashed me a small smile. Tears welled up in his eyes. He cleared his throat and leaned in close so that his cheek was touching mine. “Okay, I’ll tell you.” He sighed. “Your injuries are the product of a horrible sex swing accident. The nurse said it was the worst one the hospital has ever seen. Don’t you worry your pretty head though. They’ve successfully retrieved the gerbil. He’s a bit shaken up, but they think he’s going to pull through.”

I laughed, because it was Preppy and impossible not to. However, it didn’t last long because sharp pain sliced through my shoulder. I hissed through my teeth. “Don’t make me laugh,” I choked out.

“That might be impossible. I’m a really, really funny guy,” Preppy said, wagging his eyebrows. He took my hand and pressed it against his face. I reached out two of my fingers and stroked the hair free patch of skin from his eye to where his beard starts.

“I know,” I said. “You’re also really, really mine.”

“Don’t you fucking forget it.” A lone tear spilled from the side of his eye and rolled down his cheek into his beard. He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His other arm in a sling.

“Did you finish it?” I asked. “Is he...”

“Yeah. He’s gone.”

“Good,” I whispered, my eyes growing heavy. “Where’s Bo?”

“He’s fine. He’s playing with Ray and the kids. Didn’t want to bring him here until I knew you were going to be okay.”

“Good,” I said, willing my eyes not to close. I needed to see him more. To know he was okay. To know that the life we were planning together was no longer going to be cut short.

“You can rest now. I’ll be here when you wake up, Doc,” Preppy said.

I nodded, unable to argue or put up much of a fight. My limbs joining my eyes in feeling weighed down and tired. But before I could close my eyes I spotted something in the corner of the room. King and Bear, along with a nurse in dark scrubs. They were lifting a big grey bag onto a gurney. “One more question,” I said, turning back to Preppy who kissed the back of my hand.

“Yeah.”

“Who’s in the bag?” I asked, pointing with my eyes to the scene in the corner.

“Hmmmmm...J. Edgar Hoover?” Preppy answered, a ridiculous fake smile plastered on his face that exposed both his top and bottom teeth.

“Try again.”

He sighed. “How about I promise to tell you all about it later. For now, just know that it’s a really bad guy who did really bad things, who is going to a really, really hot place.”

“Hell?”

“The incinerator at the morgue,” Preppy whispered. He placed his other hand over my cheek gently, stroking my skin with his thumb. “Now rest, Doc.”

“Okay,” I agreed, drifting off. This time my sleep was anything but dreamless. All night I dreamt of home. Bo. Preppy.

My family.