Chapter 2
Answer my text messages, or you’ll get even more text messages saying to answer your text messages. Nobody wants that, now, do they?
-Tai to Mia
Tai
I was nervous.
I couldn’t tell you why.
We did this sort of thing all the time.
But this time was different. This was someone I knew.
Well, knew of, anyway.
I didn’t know what to expect.
Most of the time, when we visited, it was to the healthier kids in the unit. This time I’d be in a part of the children’s wing that I’d never been to before.
After Mia had left on Wednesday, I’d started calling around to see who I could get to help.
I didn’t know why I was so invested. Maybe it was the desperation in her eyes. Maybe it was penance for doing that shit in the first place. Maybe it was just because she was pretty.
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.