Chapter 2 - Karter
“Anything else I can get you?”
I have a million and one things to ask for, but instead I shake my head. She’s too young for me. Too innocent. I might not know everything, but I know what I feel for her isn’t rational. Not when you factor in the length of time I’ve known her.
Sure, she was the first face I saw when I woke up. The one that smiled at me the second I opened my eyes and I felt a part of my soul getting pieced back together. I had no idea why it was broken till my brothers told me I’d been married. Had a kid. A life that I don’t remember.
And I hate it. Fucking despise it. I have so many memories in my head, but how can I forget people? People who apparently meant the world to me.
I don’t remember everything, not when the brothers press me.
I know bits and pieces. The club, my position there, and how I got my patch.
I even recall the brothers and some of the old ladies.
But my blood? The ones I’m meant to know?
They’re what’s gone. My wife, the elusive Special K, and Ruby, my daughter?
I have no clue who they are. No one has shown me a picture of Katrina, my deceased wife, and I haven’t asked. Why? I don’t know.
Maybe I don’t want to see her—standing with me or with Ruby—and feel nothing.
But when her name is brought up, the only image that comes to my mind is Nurse Zimmer. Something I doubt is the right thing to think, but it is what it is.
She’s been nothing but polite. Kind even.
Mad Max told me she was one of the main ones watching over me, for which I’m grateful.
She also treats me as more than a man in a hospital bed.
The other nurses and doctors, even General to an extent, act like I can’t do shit.
She knows I can, and she lets me do a few things that the others won’t allow.
But I also give her the least amount of shit when we have to appear in the nurse-patient realm with eyes on us. I don’t do that with the others.
What can I say? I’m a biker with memory loss. They can all go fuck themselves.
With a warm smile, she leaves, but she doesn’t shut the door completely. It winks closed, but there’s still enough of a gap to hear the world outside this room. I don’t think she meant to keep it open, just too focused on the other person on the other side of it to remember to close it fully.
“I’m not trying to replace your mom,” Nurse Zimmer says.
I couldn’t see who was outside the room before, but I do now.
Ruby.
My daughter, they tell me.
She’s come by often since I woke. At first I thought she was just another club girl till the boys told me. Then I felt physically ill. Thank God I don’t find her attractive—that would make me want to kill myself even if I don’t remember who I was.
She’s hotheaded and stubborn. If she really is my daughter, I know where she got both traits from.
When I see her, it just makes me mad. At myself, for not remembering.
Whoever this Special K person is, I can overlook knowing her for now.
I don’t remember her, and she’d gone. Tragic, but true.
Hopefully, with time, I’ll remember everything, even her.
I might be pissed at myself for the thoughts I have now, but how can I miss someone I don’t remember?
But with Ruby, she’s here. In my face. I see a resemblance.
General even showed me the DNA match, not that I asked.
She’s definitely mine, but I have zero clue about her.
I know many of the brothers. Some are in that black hole of memory loss, but most aren’t.
I might not remember everything about them, but they’re a familiar face to me.
But Ruby? Nothing. Blank. Not even a glimmer. And I hate that, because I see the pain I cause her. My heart aches for her—hard enough that it feels as if it should remember, even if my head doesn’t.
Still, I resent how she treats Nurse Zimmer. A kind woman who has done nothing but make me feel like a man who isn’t a science experiment being poked and prodded on a medical bed every day.
“How can you? He doesn’t even recall who she is. If there’s no Mom, there’s no me.” Ruby’s words are harsh and jabbing.
I look at Mad Max, who’s staring at the door. His jaw is clenched tight, and I know he’s pissed. At me. The situation. Ruby. All of it.
Mad Max is my personal protection. He’s been by my side for years, even before taking on the position officially when I became president of the Hounds.
Even when he got locked up, I still felt a connection to him.
More times than I can count, since I woke up and realized I forgot my own daughter, I question why it couldn’t have been Mad Max who I forgot.
Why could I remember him, someone I once thought of as a son to me, but not my actual blood?
“And there sure ain’t any him. Not in there.
No Dad. Only Law. Because if that was the man I knew, my dad, he would never, ever, look at another woman.
He loved Mom so much that even in death, she was his whole world.
You aren’t her. And him? He isn’t him either.
He died, just like I did since I never existed for him. ”
My chest squeezes, pinched from all sides at her words. Hard and sharp, put I push it down, not wanting to focus on feelings I don’t understand anyway.
The despair in her voice is clear, but so is the vile tone she’s directing at my nurse. Ruby isn’t mad. She’s at a breaking point. It’s clear in her words and the way she’s acting. And I don’t know how I feel about it.
Mad Max rises and pulls the door open. He must have been over her tantrum as well.
I don’t know what face he’s making, but Ruby’s eyes go from his to mine. I hold her stare. She can be pissed. At me, at herself, at everyone in the club for the lie they told her about me dying. But going after a nurse who’s just doing her job isn’t allowed.
My face feels tight as I hold in my anger. But I hope she gets that she crossed a line by insinuating that any woman, especially Nurse Zimmer, is beneath me in some way. That she could never stack up to her mom.
“Let’s go, Nat. This is another place I no longer need to be.”
She leaves, but Nurse Zimmer stays.
But only for a moment.
She turns her head, not enough to fully see me, or even at all. But I see her profile, and the sadness is clear in the way her shoulders hunch a bit.
“I’m sorry.” It’s soft, not a mumble or a whisper, but not loud enough for anyone but the two of us in the room to hear it.
She leaves quickly after that, and Mad Max shuts the door behind her retreat. Then he takes his spot by the bedside.
He doesn’t need to stay here day in and day out, but he doesn’t listen very well. He still feels responsible for what happened to me. Not that he should feel bad. There was nothing he could have done. I went in. I knew the danger.
Funny enough, that’s something I remember clearly. The attack on the clubhouse. Milly’s kid being taken. Only a handful of us went after them because our rides were fucked. I don’t regret having done it. Even if it led to a total lie for the club that had them giving me a full funeral.
I’m not sure how many of the sister chapters know what’s going on.
Word must be spreading by now. No one has reached out, but I doubt they would contact me.
Why would they? I’m no longer the president.
When you die, even if it’s a fake death, you get replaced.
I wasn’t done with the role yet, and I get bitter about it sometimes, but with all my shit going on that I remember and don’t remember, I know having someone else step in and make decisions for the club is the right thing to do.
“Her name’s Diana.”
My eyes cut swiftly to Mad Max.
“How do you know that?” I don’t know why there’s a growl in my voice, but I can’t seem to hold it in.
He lifts a shoulder and leans back in his chair as he folds his arms across his stomach. “General mentioned it when I brought in Fairy a while back. Doubt she even remembers us meeting before all this.”
I lie back and close my eyes. I need to get a hold of myself. I’m acting like I’ve got a claim on her or some shit. I don’t even know her.
But now I know her name.
Diana.
Babygirl.
The thought sneaks in before I can stop it.
That seems to fit her more than her name.
Especially since I’ve been calling her that in my head since I opened my eyes.
But I haven’t been foolish enough to say it out loud.
I got close a few times, usually when I got a hit of something.
I might be getting cleared to go home soon, but that doesn’t mean General doesn’t give me some morphine now and then when the pain of all this bullshit is too much and I want to just Zen out for a bit or get some sleep.
If I were back home or at the club, I’d smoke a joint.
But the hospital frowns on outside drugs, so I use what I can get my hands on.
Not a lot. General, for all his love of causing pain, still holds to the rules of being a doctor.
Sort of. He bends them a bit, hence why I get any morphine at all, but it’s never enough to dull the pain of still being stuck in the hospital completely.
Alarms sound in the building a second before Mad Max gets a call.
“Yeah.” He stands and is at the door a second later, gun drawn. “On it.”
He ends the call, and I’m halfway out of the bed already.
“What’s going on?”
“Active shooter outside. Atom got hit.”
“Let’s go.” I stand on steadier legs than I’ve felt in a long time.
Mad Max just shakes his head and positions himself in front of the door. “Casper wants you secure.”
I growl low in my throat. Then I grab the closest thing to me and throw the damn remote at the wall. I want to throw more, but I hold it in. Barely.
“This is bullshit.”
He just grunts. In agreement or disagreement, I don’t know.
“If she gets hurt….” I point at him while I make my threat, leaving the possibilities of what it could mean open. Even if I don’t fully understand why it feels that series right now. It’s mostly an empty threat, but still.
He raises a single eyebrow at me. “Which one?”
I look away. I don’t want him to read me any more than he already has.
It’s fucked up. Every part of this is fucked up.
Because I should say one name. A simple one.
One that I guess a few months back would be the only one I knew.
But if this were a few months back, I’d also be on the other side of this door and going there to help, not locked up like a caged animal that can’t do more than pace in its cell.
But life happened. And no matter how mad I am about the situation, things have changed. Things are still changing all around me, and I’m staying stagnant. Stuck.
Till now.
I don’t let guilt have an opinion on my wanting to call her name out first, that my concern is for my nurse above my daughter.
That should bother me more than it does.
But something tells me Ruby will handle anything that’s thrown her way.
She grew up with me as a father apparently; she has to be tough to have put up with my old cranky ass.
It’s Diana I worry about. She’s soft. Too soft to know what to do with someone as a threat out there. Especially with her job. She should hide in a safe space, but I bet her training taught her to seek out and help. Which will only get her hurt or killed.
“Where is she?” I grit out. Again. I’ve asked a few times already, and no one is telling me jack shit.
I’ve waited. Two hours. Mad Max has been on the phone with the club, but they only gave us details about Atom, not her.
I know active shooters draw attention, and if someone is hurt, they take precedence.
But it’s been two fucking hours, and no one can tell me where Diana is.
She might not be a priority for them, but she is for me.
“Sir, you need to calm down,” Nurse Vicky says again, with a zero-fucks-given look on her face.
I slam my fist down on the nurses’ station counter, drawing all eyes to me as I roar, “Fuck your ‘calm down.’ Where is she?”
“Sir, if you don’t quiet down, I’m going to have to ask an orderly to take you back to your room.”
I laugh at her threat. Mad Max isn’t saying shit, but he’s behind me on this. Literally. If anyone comes close, he’ll deal with them.
I spread out my hands on the counter and take a deep breath.
Twice. Then I look at the one nurse in the whole place who no one can stand but who does her job extremely well.
“If you don’t tell me where she is, so help me God, I will rip this place apart to find her.
And you won’t like how I do it, because not a fucking person will stop me. ”
She purses her lips and looks at me with calculating eyes, likely debating if I’m telling the truth or gaslighting her.
She must get the picture finally, as she taps on her computer for a few moments.
“She didn’t clock out, so she’s still around.”
She holds up a single finger as I open my mouth and glares at me for a second before continuing. “She was assigned to the east wing this morning, but”—another look up to me, this one more accusatory than anything—“she doesn’t seem to always stay where she’s told to be.”
I clench my jaw and move my hands off the desk. I really shouldn’t hit her, but the urge is strong.
“Boss,” Mad Max says at my back, and I turn to look at him. He gives me a chin lift to the right.
And there she is.
She looks as if she’s just run a mile at record speed to get here, the door to the wing still swinging in her wake.
I scan her over quickly from this distance, not seeing a single drop of blood on her but still making sure nothing else is off. She seems frazzled, and I would love nothing more than to grab her in my arms and triple-check that she’s okay. But I hold fast.
“There. You see? She’s fine. Now please, sir, go back to your room. In case it has eluded you, we are in lockdown till the police have cleared us. Please remain in your room till that announcement occurs.”
I give Nurse Vicky a scathing look, one that’s made grown men piss themselves, but move back to my room.
As I go, I look at Diana, my Babygirl, and give her a chin lift. One she returns shakily. She’s not okay, but she’ll be fine.
And I plan to make sure I’m the one to help with that.
As soon as Mad Max closes the door to my room, I go to the window and look out at the chaos below.
“Tell General I’m done. I want out.” I turn to look at my protector. “Now.”