The doctor shook his head. “No, that bastard killed her and the rest of them before he could keep his promise and give her back to me.” He sighed.
“So when I showed back up you figured you had to take me out yourself? Finish the job? Then my wife?” I shook my head and kicked him in the ribs. “You piece of shit coward.”
“I didn’t know what else to do!” he cried. When he tried to stand up King pushed him back down onto the floor and his head crashed against the wall, knocking him out cold. “Oops,” he said.
“She needs help,” I said when Dre’s monitors started beeping and blinking. “I don’t know what he might have done to her.” I ran out into the hall and almost crashed into the nurse that gave me Bo’s information months before. “I need your help,” I told her, pulling her into the room. She took a second to assess the situation but we didn’t have a second. “Please.”
“He tried to kill her,” I said, offering the quickest explanation I could. I opened his coat pocket and pulled out the needle and little glass tube thing. “He might have given this to her,” I said to her. She took them from my hands but continued to look down at the doctor on the floor. “Please. What is this?” I asked, snapping her out of her shock.
She looked down and turned over the little glass bottle. She sniffed it and scrunched up her nose. She pushed it back into my hands, ran toward a cabinet in the hall and came back with a pair of gloves and another two bottles with different colored labels than the one she just tossed onto the bed by Dre’s feet.
The nurse took the flashlight and peeled open Dre’s eyelids, shining it into each pupil. She gave Dre two injections into the port on the back of her hand.
“Nothing good that’s for sure. It’s that same shit that kills celebrities when they take it to help them sleep and realize it’s good for a coma and maybe a little death, but it’s not exactly Tylenol fucking PM. We don’t even use that shit here. Haven’t for years.”
“How much is in her system?” King asked.
The nurse shook her head and grabbed Dre’s wrist to take her pulse. She gently lowered it back onto the bed and sighed. “I’m not sure. I gave her something that should counteract it, but it depends how much she was given and how long ago. If he’s been giving her smaller doses to make it seem less suspicious when her heart stopped then we have a better shot at her recovering, than if he’s just injected her full of this shit.”
“How long will it take to find out?” Bear asked and thank God he did because for the first time in my entire life I couldn’t find the words. Panic. Fear. Physical pain from every nerve in my body. She glanced up at him. “If this works, it should only be a matter of minutes before she wakes up.”
We were all silent for five long minutes. My heart died a little more with each tick of the clock on the wall.
And then we waited ten more minutes.
And then I was screaming in Dre’s face, slapping her cheeks, demanding she wake up. “You can’t fucking die! You can’t!” I screamed, pounding my fist against the mattress beside her head. King rounded the bed and pulled me out of the chair, putting his arm around my shoulder. I lowered my voice. My words came out broken, only every other syllable made a sound. “She can’t fucking die,” I repeated. “There wasn’t enough time. We didn’t have enough time. She promised me she’d never leave me. She fucking promised.”
King and Bear tugged me back while the nurse shot me a look. THE look. She glanced at the clock and my eyes followed.
Twenty fucking minutes.
Dre
“Wake up. Wake up!” The voice is soft and feminine. Reassuring and loving.
“Grandma?” I ask, although I can’t see a thing.
I’m tired. I want to go back to wherever I just was. Dreamless rest. “Wake up! Wake up!” I hear again.
“Grandma it’s too early,” I groan, trying to roll over on my side but I’m stopped by something invisible. Something tethering my arms in place. “Come back later. It’s summer. No school today,” I tell her.
“Wake the fuck up!” The voice is now masculine and desperate. “Please, come back to me. Come back to us! Bo needs you. I fucking need you!” I recognize that voice and I realize that I’m not in my room at Grandma’s. I’m standing alone in complete darkness with no sign of an exit. Preppy needs me. Bo needs me. I need to go to them. I start to panic. My throat grows tight and my heart beats uncontrollably.
“I don’t know where to find you! Where do I go?” I shout back. A light appears as if it’s the answer to my question and it’s the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. One side of the room is blanketed in beautiful brightness and the other side is cloaked in the dark. I reach out for it with my hand. I take a step closer. I’m about to touch it when I come to a halt and shake my head, pulling back my hand. “What am I doing?” I whisper. I slowly take a few steps back before turning around and sprinting away to the opposite side.
The light was beautiful, but I chose instead to run blindly into the dark because I knew, without a doubt, that’s where Preppy would be.
****
“Thank fuck. There you are,” Preppy said softly, looking down at me with concern etched into his forehead and tear stains down his cheeks. He looked tired. One of his suspenders was hanging loose from his shoulder. His bow tie hung open around his collar. His beard, normally well groomed, was unruly and long. He smoothed the hair away from my face. “Took you long enough, Doc.”
“I knew I’d find you here,” I whispered.
“I knew you’d come back to me.”
“What...what...happened?” I asked groggily, my throat sore and dry. The second I asked the question I remembered the answer on my own.
Eric.
I gasped and looked to Preppy who flashed me a small smile. Tears welled up in his eyes. He cleared his throat and leaned in close so that his cheek was touching mine. “Okay, I’ll tell you.” He sighed. “Your injuries are the product of a horrible sex swing accident. The nurse said it was the worst one the hospital has ever seen. Don’t you worry your pretty head though. They’ve successfully retrieved the gerbil. He’s a bit shaken up, but they think he’s going to pull through.”
I laughed, because it was Preppy and impossible not to. However, it didn’t last long because sharp pain sliced through my shoulder. I hissed through my teeth. “Don’t make me laugh,” I choked out.
“That might be impossible. I’m a really, really funny guy,” Preppy said, wagging his eyebrows. He took my hand and pressed it against his face. I reached out two of my fingers and stroked the hair free patch of skin from his eye to where his beard starts.
“I know,” I said. “You’re also really, really mine.”
“Don’t you fucking forget it.” A lone tear spilled from the side of his eye and rolled down his cheek into his beard. He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His other arm in a sling.
“Did you finish it?” I asked. “Is he...”