Page 78 of The Jester and His Outlaw: Part 2

I’ve read all this and I’m well aware, but that nagging dread that’s been with me all day is still here. Unrelenting and hardcore in its pursuit to bring me down. “Yeah, I know, J. Thanks. Still difficult to see any of this. I shouldn’t have let her play. I had a feeling all day…”

“No. Do. Not. Go. There,” he warns, a stern expression turning his features to stone. My nod is almost imperceptible, but he catches it. “Good. Now let’s get to the hospital.”

“How is she?”I ask, spotting Kai first as he steps through the automatic door leading from the ER wing to the waiting room. He’s pale, with bags under his eyes and his black hair in a fucking mess, looking wrecked.

It’s been a little over an hour since we made it to the emergency room with no word about what happened. I’m trying my best to keep it together.

He chews the inside of his cheek, avoiding all of our gazes. Outlaw’s parents joined us about a half hour after we made it to the hospital. Kai was nowhere to be found when we got here, so we assumed he was with Outlaw.

“I, uh… I hung out back there because she was freaking out. They wouldn’t let me in the room, but I could talk to her through the door while they did their assessment. She was terrified, but they couldn’t give her anything to help her calm down until they knew what was wrong.” He pauses, swallowing hard. He scrubs his hand over his face, lining his jaw with his pointer finger and thumb. The same hazel eyes that my Outlaw has stare at nothing but are seeing everything with stark clarity, it seems. While they turn glassy, nothing falls from them. “She’s in a lot of pain. Her back. Her head. They’re taking her for scans now to see if the hit fractured anything.”

“Fractured?” Mrs. Miller shrieks and slaps her hands over her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to be so loud.

“A spine injury,” I mumble, staring straight at Kai. He finally meets my eyes, expression grim and the knife in my heart is a sharp one. “She can’t feel her legs, can she?”

“No, she can’t.”

CHAPTER34

RIGGS

Thoracic spinal fracture.Surgery. Paralysis. Concussion. Memory loss. Rehabilitation. Pins and screws. Loss of feeling. Bleeding. Infection. Blood clots… Physical therapy for the rest of her life if the surgery doesn’t work.

The words of the doctors, countless nurses, and Charley’s surgeon are floating through my mind. Floating is a poor choice. They are bombarding me, making it impossible for me to get any rest at all.

How can I rest when the future of the girl I love is up in the fucking air? Resting is selfish when her life is hanging in the balance. I don’t do selfish.

But there is nothing I can do. Nothing to do but wait.

I just want to see her, hold her, love her. The need to have her even just in my sights is overwhelming. The EMTs came and checked her vitals, got her talking, and stabilized her before rushing her to the ER. Kai left with her because she had no idea who I was and Jensen drove me to the hospital immediately. Everyone has tried to get me to leave, to go home and sleep, but I can’t. Leaving her side will not happen. It’s not even on my list of possibilities. If I can’t rest here, where my heart can sense her, where that pull to her is near constant, how am I going to rest so far away?

In a place that smells like her, where our memories, albeit a small amount of them, are already so engrained. The place where I first held her as if she were mine, where Imadeher mine. The apartment that is ours and the place where my love for her bleeds itself onto the wall.

She knew I loved her. She had to.

She knows, and she will come back to me.

There are no other options. It’s likely this is all temporary. In fact, the doctors believe her memory loss is exactly that, temporary. When she wakes, she will be fine.

I hope.

Not being able to feel her legs, on the other hand? Not so much. That’s going to take time.

Dread creeps up my spine, spreading hastily down my arms and legs, making my inability to sit still multiply. I rub my hands up and down my thighs, the whooshing noise of the movement the only sound in the desolate, surgical waiting room. I wouldn’t know that five other people are sitting here with me because no one is saying a word. All conversation halted when Outlaw’s parents walked into the hospital earlier. Foxy and Kai filled them in on what happened and instructed them we were to hurry and wait for Outlaw to get out of surgery.

Mrs. Miller has broken down multiple times, collapsing in her husband’s arms. Her reaction seems genuine and when it happens, her grief floods the tiny space, making it almost unbearable. I want her to be real for Outlaw. She fucking needs it. Her parents should be a crucial part of her life.

But my doubt is justified. This could all be an act. With how shady they’ve been lately, the only way I’ve known them, it wouldn’t surprise me if they somehow caused this. That thought makes the contents of my stomach, which is nothing but water and a few stale pretzels, curdle. Bile rises up my throat.

I can’t believe that. I can’t. No way parents would do that to their child.

It’s exactly what my parents did.No, no, I won’t go there. I can’t.

Time to bring myself back to the present. I open my eyes and take in my surroundings, noting the space. There isn’t much to it. It’s sterile, unwelcoming, and far from providing the calm that they would like it to.

The area is small, tiled floors, cream-colored walls on three sides, and windows on the fourth that overlook a pond on the far side of the hospital. There are a few couches spread out, a pile of low-backed chairs with flattened stuffing scattered around the place, and a vending machine hums in the corner. The water fountain that protrudes from the wall groans when the compressor turns on and occasionally a woman comes through dressed in a hospital staff shirt to use the bathroom. The woman at the front desk went home for the day hours ago, leaving us to answer the phones with updates on our own.

Huffing out a breath, I lean over to J and drop my hand to his forearm, giving it a shake. His eyes crack open, and sympathy trickles through me. I’m having a hard time fitting in these chairs, so I can only imagine how uncomfortable he is. He will not complain though, that’s just J. He’ll sit there for years if needed to make sure his friends are okay.

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