Page 58 of Through The Woods

Chapter Seventeen

Things have changed, and not for the better. She’s sick. I have no idea how long she’s been hiding it from us. Bobby found her unconscious on the stairs with a large gash in her forehead.

In a clubhouse like this, it’s a miracle that no one touched her. Luck wouldn’t have done a goddamned thing about it, but I sure as hell would have. Mac stood on guard outside while Vic sewed her head up.

When she came to, she didn’t remember a damn thing. She just told us that she’d felt a little off this morning when she woke up, but that was it. Bobby wouldn’t make eye contact with me after that. He knows something; I can feel it.

I’d wanted to press the subject until one of them cracked, but it was obvious that she needed some space. I decided to take her to Pearl’s for some clothes; everything seems to be falling off of her lately, even more of a sign that something terrible is happening.

I feel helpless.

In all my years, I’ve never not had a plan or something to fall back on. I’m completely out of my depth here; everything I love is slipping right through my fingers. The tighter I hold on, the faster everything falls away.

“Neve.” The whisper woke me with a start and I bolted upright with a pounding heart and a sense of dread.

“What’s wrong?” I searched for the voice in the dark.

“Sorry to wake you, Darlin’, but we got ourselves a situation downstairs. Guardrail had a few too many.”

I sighed and fell back into my pillow. “He’s always had a few too many, Rooster—what else is new?”

He pulled the blankets off of me. “He crashed his bike.”

I sat up again. “Oh my god—is he okay? Where’s Doc?”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me from the bed. “Doc’s still gone with Charm and Gunner on a ru—club business, I mean. You’ve spent enough time shadowing him; can’t you patch him up?”

It wasn’t until we reached the last stair that I woke up enough to realize what he was asking me to do. Sure, I’d followed Doc around from time to time when my work load allowed it, but to fill in for him? I was nowhere near ready for that.

We reached the basement and I could hear the groans coming from the biker I’d come to regard as a father figure. I turned to Rooster. “You sure we can’t take him to a hospital—preferably one that caters to outlaws?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure that sort of thing even exists.”

I tentatively approached the metal table, wishing like hell that I was still in bed. Joker and Twitch held Guardrail down by his arms, but the man continued to thrash and moan.

“Hey, friend,” I offered lightly, “What happened here?”

Sweat lined his brow from his struggle and he forced out through clenched teeth, “Had a little trouble navigating. My left foot took the brunt of it.”

I grabbed a cloth and ran it under cold water before applying it to his forehead. “Were you drinking?”

He nodded and looked away. “It’s just the way things have always been, Neve.”

I checked him over, starting at his head, working my way down. He’d been wearing his helmet and gloves so he fared better than he should’ve with what he’d had to drink. When I got down to his ankle he jerked away from my grasp.

“Easy there. You’re going to have to let me look at it.” His pants had been torn away from both legs when he crashed and he had road rash on the skin that was exposed on his left leg. I gave the other bikers their tasks and got to work; grabbing Doc’s go-to kit from the cabinet. I patiently picked pieces of gravel and debris from his skin with a pair of tweezers, while Rooster acted as my assistant, getting me whatever I needed to complete the job.

“You know,” I said quietly as I worked, “an estimated eighty-eight thousand people die from alcohol-related causes every year. It’s actually the third leading preventable cause of death.” I continued cleaning the wounds as best I could, falling silent after deciding that my speech on responsible drinking was falling on deaf ears.

“What are one and two?” Twitch asked, as he applied pressure to Guardrail’s shoulder, keeping him flat on the table. When I gave him a blank look, he elaborated, “The two leading causes of preventable—whatever you said.”

I smiled. “Oh. Uh, nicotine and sedentary lifestyles, respectively. Alcohol is a coping mechanism, obviously, and is still the most widely abused drug out there.”

I applied antibiotic cream and petroleum jelly before bandaging up his calf, while he looked at me in a way that was hard to describe; as if he was trying to figure me out. “How do you know so much about all of this?”

I shrugged, while taking in the damage to his foot. “I love statistics and I guess it just stays with me.” Thankfully, someone had the foresight to remove his boot, or we would’ve had to cut it off. His ankle was grotesquely swollen and already turning blue and purple from bruising. I gently palpated along his foot, just as Doc had shown me, to feel for broken bones.

“Do we have an x-ray machine?” Not like I would know what I was doing if we did, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

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