Page 87 of Through The Woods

“I came as soon as I heard,” he exclaimed.

Rooster furrowed his brow. “And how the fuck did you hear about it? Where have you been? You were supposed to be following us down to the Springs.”

I watched as his throat twitched slightly from nervousness. He’d waltzed into a pit of cobras, pretending to be a snake charmer, and I prayed that they’d see right through him and his lies. Unfortunately, he recovered before the others noticed. “Axel…I overheard him mention Neve and the plans he had for her. I tried to hang back and follow him, but I was too late. One of the others directed me here. Is she gonna make it?”

Axel growled and lunged for Blade, falling right through him and onto the linoleum floor. “Motherfucker,” he screamed. He got right back up and began throwing punches, all of which easily passed through Blade’s body.

It was at that point that the doctor walked in and looked around at the motley crew scattered throughout the waiting room. Axel gripped my shoulder in his hand and I held my breath, awaiting my fate.

“I understand you’re here with the female patient…” He trailed off, waiting for someone to give him my name.

Rooster stopped pacing. “Neve. Neve Ryan.”

That was most certainly not my last name.

The doctor nodded. “And you are?”

Rooster pointed at Joker, conveniently leaving Blade out. “We’re her brothers. Her husband should be here in the next five—”

The door flew open and Charm burst in, his eyes wild. “Where is she?”

Rooster cleared his throat. “As I was just saying, here is her husband.”

Charm grabbed the doctor by his forearms and began shaking him furiously. “I need to know if she’s alright! She has to be okay!”

The doctor took a step back, clearly terrified of the hulking biker. “If you’ll just have a seat, Mr. Ryan. We’ve got Mrs. Ryan in ICU. Her lab work showed high amounts of cocaine and fentanyl in her system. Based on the lack of any visible puncture wounds, it’s my belief that the drugs were inhaled.

“We noted some facial injuries and a couple of cracked ribs as well, but nothing that will require immediate treatment. We were able to get her heart back into a regular rhythm, but she isn’t breathing on her own, so she’s on a ventilator for now. We’ve got her mildly sedated in order to monitor the amount of oxygen she’s receiving and she’ll be weaned off periodically to try and get her to start breathing on her own.”

Charm fell into one of the plastic chairs near Joker with a loud exhale. “She’d gotten clean—it doesn’t make sense. Where’d she get the drugs?”

Blade stepped up to the doctor. “What happens if she doesn’t start breathing on her own?”

That’d work out just peachy for him, wouldn’t it?

The doctor looked back at Charm. “In the event she doesn’t respond to being off the vent, then she’s kept on it indefinitely until you make the decision to take her off.”

Charm sprang up out the chair to confront the doctor once again. “What does that mean? What the fuck are you sayin’?”

Rooster rubbed his hands back and forth across his eyes before answering, “It means we’d have to make a decision to keep her alive with a machine, or let her go.”

Joker dropped his head back down and his shoulders shook with sobs, while Blade looked relieved at the prospect of me never waking up.

And me?

I tried to process what that would mean—to be stuck in a realm somewhere between life and death. To watch the people I loved most grieve for me, day in and day out.

Charm pounded a fist against the wall above the doctor’s head. “That can’t happen. You do whatever you can to save her!”

The doctor nodded shakily. “We are, I promise you. Mrs. Ryan did have Narcan in her system—whoever had the foresight to give her that may have saved her life.”

Too bad the asshole who gave it to me only did it to get information before finishing me off for good.

The men looked over at Joker, but he shook his head. Charm cleared his throat. “If you didn’t give her the Narcan, then who did?”

Yes.

I silently pleaded for them to put the pieces together, but it was a rhetorical question. They’d have no way of knowing where to even begin to look.

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