Braxton #2
She flips him off and disappears through the doors to her operating room.
“Okay. Who is she?” Ozzy asks.
“Maggie Lasher. The most brilliant and talented surgeon I know,” Liam answers.
“And a former flame?” Knox asks.
Liam tilts his head to the side. “Why would you assume that?”
“Because she obviously hates you, so one can assume she knows you pretty well,” Ozzy answers.
“You wound me,” Liam says, putting his hand over his heart, and Ozzy rolls his eyes.
I see Irina standing with her arms wrapped around Noel in the back of the room, and I make my way over to them.
“Hi, we didn’t get a chance to be properly introduced,” I say. “I’m Braxton. That’s Ozzy and Liam, and obviously you know Knox.”
“Knox explained who you all are on the way over here. I don’t know how my daughter met you, but I’m so glad she did.”
I’m not about to go down that rabbit hole, so I simply nod. “I feel the same about her.”
“Are you my sister’s boyfriend?” Noel asks and Irina gives her a small smile.
“I am.”
“Are you in love with her?” Noel probes.
“Noel, that’s prying a little too much. Even for you,” Irina says.
“I am,” I confirm. “I’ll let her tell you the story of how we met when she wakes up.” Plus, I don’t know what Vanessa wants her mom to know, and I’m not about to open a can of worms.
“She is going to wake up. Vanessa is a fighter. She always has been. Always had to be,” Irina says with a sad smile.
There’s pride in her eyes for her daughter, but a touch of what looks like regret.
Like maybe she blames herself for the reasons Vanessa has always had to be that fighter she’s proud of.
“What’s up, Jude?” Ozzy says into his phone. “Okay. That works for me.” Silence. “Yep. I’ll send Knox back. See you over there.”
He disconnects the call. “Petrov offered his house for”—he looks at Irina and Noel as though he’s considering what to say before his eyes dart back to Knox—“questioning.”
I know what that means. Russ and Damien are on their way to the one place they were running from for over a year.
Ozzy looks at Knox. “You go, and I’ll stay here with Braxton until we know how Vanessa is doing.”
Knox nods then comes over to me and gives me a back-slapping hug. “She’s going to pull through, brother.”
“There’s no other option I’ll accept,” I tell him.
Knox heads up the ramp, and I look at Ozzy. “You don’t have to stay with me.”
“Shut up. I’m staying.”
Ozzy walks over to a chair and sits, crossing his legs at the ankle before he leans back.
Guess that’s that.
It’s day two of Vanessa being unconscious.
Dr. Lasher wanted to keep her sedated for the first couple of days to allow her body to get the rest it desperately needed.
The bullet did a lot of damage, but it could have been worse.
It had lodged in her spleen, and thankfully, the doctor was able to remove the bullet without taking Vanessa’s spleen.
Irina, Noel, and I are sitting in the recovery room Dr. Lasher has in the basement of her house. Irina and Noel have been sharing a room upstairs while I’ve been down here, sleeping on a cot next to Vanessa for two nights.
Irina has been telling Vanessa stories about her childhood with her dad.
I don’t know if Vanessa can hear her, but it keeps Irina busy instead of sitting in silence, waiting for her to wake up.
I actually enjoy the stories. Vanessa never talked much about her childhood.
But I know her father had passed, and I know how much she loved him.
It’s nice to hear stories from Irina’s point of view and hear how much he obviously loved Vanessa, too.
The doctor walks in and checks Vanessa’s vitals. “I’m going to start bringing her out of sedation. We’ve passed the most crucial period after the trauma she sustained.”
“How long will it take for her to wake?” Irina asks.
“Hard to tell. She might be in and out for the first day or two, but that’s completely normal.
I still have her on IV pain medicine and antibiotics.
But if all goes well, you guys will be out of here in a few days.
” Dr. Lasher makes some adjustments to one of her IVs.
“All set. Come get me if she wakes up before I come back to check on her.”
Two hours pass and there’s no change. Irina is still talking about the good times from her childhood, and Noel is sitting in a chair, curled up with some giant textbook in her lap that Dr. Lasher is letting her read.
“Hey Noel, are you hungry?” I ask.
She looks up from her book. “A little.”
“I’m going to go upstairs and make some lunch. You want to help?”
She shrugs. “Sure,” she says and sets the book on the small table next to her chair.
Irina smiles at me, and I open the door for Noel.
When we get upstairs, I pull some bread from the cupboard and some meat and lettuce from the fridge.
Liam sent over several grocery bags filled with food the day after we got here so Dr. Lasher wouldn’t feel obligated to feed us while the three of us stayed.
He also sent a bottle of some Italian wine, and when the doctor saw it, she rolled her eyes and handed it to me.
All she’d said was, “Hope you like white,” before she walked out of the room.
I have a feeling there’s some history there that is not happy, at least as far as the doc is concerned.
“When my sister wakes up, I hope we can move. I don’t like living in New York,” Noel says.
“Oh yeah? Where would you want to live?” I ask.
“On a beach. Or a big lake. My mom and Vanessa used to talk about living somewhere else and sipping mai tais—whatever those are. But they were happy when they talked about it, so I guess that sounds good to me. You could live with us too.”
That’s not exactly the idea Vanessa had when we talked about the future. I suddenly wonder if she would be happy staying in Shine with me, or if she would rather live where she and her mom always dreamed.
We finish the sandwiches and walk back down to the basement clinic, me holding the plates and Noel carrying a few bottles of water.
We eat in silence and I take the plates from Irina and Noel. “I’ll go throw these away.”