Page 88 of Macon

The word Peshkov gets Ray even more upset.

“Protect!” she shouts, this time looking at me.

Pain etched all over her face. Beeping starts to increase from the machines next to me.

“Hide. Vi—” Raydene slurs unable to finish before her body starts to seize

Cheryl rushes in, and when she sees Raydene awake, she yells at someone in the hall to call the doctor.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with her?” I demand, feeling helpless.

Cheryl waves her hand for me to move. “You both need to wait in the hallway.”

Sin’s crying and rambling to her sister to hold on and not leave her.

Dr. Greg Wilson orders, “Talk to me.”

I move over to Sin, grabbing her around the waist and holding her up.

Cheryl starts calling off her stats.

When Doc comes running in, she assesses the room and ushers us out. “Wait in the waiting room. I’ll come get you.”

I embrace Sin, who is a complete wreck, guiding her out.

“She’s going to be okay,” I say, trying to encourage her, but my own heart aches. Will she be okay?

We’ve been sitting out in the waiting room for what seems like days, but it’s only been hours. Sin is lying down with her head in my lap. Dallas is on his laptop. Chiv’s got his arm around Violet, comforting her. Izzy and Redman went back to the clubhouse before we returned to the waiting room. They said they would be back in the morning.

When we came out, Violet saw Sin hysterical and freaked out. I explained what happened, trying to calm down everyone. Chiv and Dallas only had questions about what she was trying to say.

Everyone is trying to put together the pieces. Raydene said D. Dead. Hide. Then she said hide. Protect and hide Vi.

Sin explained how Ray calls her Dee, and she calls her Dean, so Sin thought Ray was saying that she was dead. But soon after, Sin thought of Dexter. Now, we believe it’s Violet she wants to protect, but it doesn’t make sense. Maybe Ray does know Dexter is dead. Perhaps she saw them kill Dexter. But why Violet? Dallas has been on his laptop trying to figure it out.

Raydene is obviously trying to warn us about something. I’m more worried about what is going on with her. She doesn’t look like an overdosing person. She’s done her fair share of drugs, so I don’t know.

I shake my head. I need to think positively. We can only pray and hope for the best.

The ICU doors open, and Doc emerges with Greg by her side. Doc looks grim. You can tell she’s been crying. We’re all on our feet, but Dallas rushes over to them.

“What’s happened?” I ask Greg since he’s Ray’s doctor.

Greg runs his hands through his hair, looking like he doesn’t want to say anything.

Damn, this is bad.

I reach for Sin, pulling her to my side and bracing for the worst.

“At first, we thought it was a drug overdose. We pumped Ray’s stomach and gave her medication along with fluids. When she was still showing signs of pain, we ran another blood panel and noticed her numbers were becoming worse. She doesn’t have pre-existing conditions, so again, we gave her medicine and tried to flush her system.

When her central nervous system started deteriorating, her speech was unclear, and she started having seizures. I did a more detailed blood and urine panel. When I saw those numbers showing me her kidney and liver levels, I rushed to treat her for poisoning. We gave her activated charcoal. Hoping it would absorb whatever poison was in her body from going into her system.”

“Wait. You think Ray has been poisoned?” Chiv asks next to me.

Greg looks to Doc, then to Sin, and with a grim expression, he nods. “Yes, I do. All I know is it’s moving through her system fast. Her organs are failing at a rapid speed, and her central nervous system is shutting down. She’s in a lot of pain, so we’ve sedated her.”

“So, you put her into a medically induced coma is what you’re saying,” Dallas says to Doc, not Greg. Doc bites her lower lip with tears streaming down her face, giving a quick nod since she can’t speak.

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