Chapter Three
ZANDER TRIED TO open his eyes, but his eyelids were too heavy.
He felt strange, like he was underwater, trying to get to the surface.
Muffled voices and a steady beep, beep, beep had him trying harder.
He managed to open them just enough to see through the fuzz of his lashes.
Squinting against too-bright lights, he made out shadowy figures moving closer to him.
“He’s awake. Honey, he’s awake!” His mother’s face appeared close to his, her smile warm, her eyes worried. “Zander. Hi, sweetheart. Dad and I are right here with you.” She took Zander’s hand as his father leaned down from the other side of the bed, Preacher’s familiar blue eyes studying him.
“We’re here, son.” He placed his rough, warm hand on Zander’s forearm. “How do you feel?”
“Tired.” Zander didn’t recognize his own scratchy voice. He tried to see beyond his parents, searching for the angel who’d been singing and talking to him, but he couldn’t focus. “Where is she?”
“Who, baby?” his mother asked.
All Zander wanted to do was sleep. “Angel,” he murmured groggily.
“Sounds like those pain meds are doing their job,” his father said with amusement.
“She was…” He swallowed, but his throat felt rough. “Real.”
“You probably heard the nurses talking, sweetheart. You’re in the hospital. You were in a car accident last week,” his mother explained.
They weren’t making sense. Wouldn’t he remember a car accident? The last thing he remembered was leaving some woman’s house and talking to Zeke on the phone. “Accident?”
“Yes, honey. You were on your way to work, and a truck ran a red light and hit your car,” his mother explained.
“The guy who hit you took off, but they got him. Traffic cameras caught the whole thing, and Justice is handling it. You won’t need to go to court.
You can put all of your energy into getting better, and he’ll take care of everything.
” Justice was an attorney and a Dark Knight.
“You got pretty banged up,” his father said.
“Broken ribs, a punctured lung. You fractured your skull, too. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for a week.
They just brought you out of it this morning.
We explained all of this to you earlier, but the doctor said between the pain meds and the sedation, it might be hard to process. ”
A week? That didn’t seem possible. He reached up to feel his head and winced when he touched a large, tender bump.
“That’s going to hurt for a while,” his mother said.
“All those times your brothers teased you about being thickheaded, little did they know it would come in handy one day.” His father’s voice was laden with emotion.
“They here?” Zander asked hoarsely.
“They were earlier,” his mother said. “You’ve been going in and out of sleep all afternoon.”
“The whole family was camped out in the waiting room for days,” his father said.
“Aunt Ginger, Uncle Con, and all your cousins, including Baz. He and Emerson came home from Indonesia with little Brennan the minute they heard what happened. Your uncles and aunts from Colorado, New York, and Maryland are all praying for you, and Grandpa Mike has been here every day.”
“Hitting on nurses?” Zander managed.
“You got that right.” His mother smiled. “Mads got into an argument with one of the nurses because she wouldn’t let her spend the night in your room, and your grandfather did his best to sweet-talk that nurse.”
Zander smiled, imagining his sister giving some poor nurse hell, and his ornery grandfather, who was still madly in love with his late wife, doing his best to charm a nurse for Madigan.
His father gently squeezed his forearm. “You gave us quite a scare, Alexander, but the doctors have assured us that in time you’re going to be just fine.”
Zander apologized, or at least he thought he did as he gave in to the weight of his eyelids, whispering, “Tired.”
“Get some rest, honey. We’ll come see you tomorrow.” His mother brushed his hair away from his forehead and kissed him there. “I love you, sweet boy.”
“We all do,” his father said.
“Love you, too,” Zander managed, and finally surrendered to the lull of sleep.
ZANDER’S DREAMS WERE chaotic. One minute he was cruising along the coast on his motorcycle, and in the next he was thrown back in time to his cousin Ashley’s funeral.
Just as the pain of that loss slayed him anew, he was catapulted forward again, infiltrating a dogfighting ring with the club, carrying one of the lifeless dogs out to his truck, and then everything disappeared, and he was standing in total darkness, calling out for his family, unable to find them.
Her voice threaded into his dream like a melodic beacon in the darkness.
He followed it, but the faster he ran, the farther away it seemed.
Wait. Don’t leave me. The singing stopped, and he stilled, breathing hard, listening intently.
Her voice slithered through the darkness. “I heard you don’t have any major cognitive deficits. I’m glad you took my advice to heal.”
Her voice faded into the darkness, and he felt like he was floating.
Then he heard her again, a tender whisper calling out to him.
“So many flowers, pictures, and gifts, and all I got you was this song by Andra Day. I heard it on my way to my pole class, and it reminded me of you.” She started singing just above a whisper about being tired and broken down and standing by him, helping him rise up.
Her voice was soulful and real. He wanted to live in that melody, wrapped in the comfort of her voice.
He was so caught up in the soft sounds of her singing, he felt like he was floating.
As her voice faded, something brushed over his hand.
He curled his fingers, trying to capture whatever had touched him, but there was nothing there.
He forced his eyes to flutter open, catching a glimpse of a woman walking out the door, her dark hair pinned up in a ponytail.
“Come back,” he said, his throat scratchy and raw, but she was already gone, and he was fading back into the darkness.