Chapter 3 Rachel
THREE
RACHEL
WEST ORANGE GENERAL HOSPITAL
Ever since I’d heard the blast, ever since I’d run from my house to the compound with thoughts of Rex being no more, of us no longer sharing this earth, ever since I’d found Bear in pieces, ever since, ever fucking since then, I’d been less than my usual self.
I was still a control freak, but emotions had begun making an appearance.
A little like the cracks that global warming was making in the Thwaites Glacier, they’d begun to weave themselves into my personality.
I didn’t like it.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to stop it from happening.
Grief and anxiety, anger and fear, need and love, they were coursing through my veins, lighting up parts of me that I’d purposely put in the deep freeze, destabilizing areas that needed to be stable for me to function.
Gnawing on my lip as I made my way to Bear’s ward, the urge to see Rex was strong.
I’d been fighting that urge for days, but after church, after the mess the MC was trying to wade through with their main kingmaker out of action while he sat with his dad, I just needed to see him.
Pathetic.
“So fucking pathetic, Rachel,” I groused in the hope that speaking to myself in the third person would wake me up.
No dice.
“Hi Kian,” I greeted one of the staff once I’d walked into the ICU.
I knew him from school, and he’d been semi-decent to me back then so I saw no need to ignore him now.
“Hi Rachel. Happy holidays!”
I was sick of the goodwill already. When would this interminable season be over?
Pinning a false smile on my face, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him what a loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, stomach aches, and weight loss could mean, but I didn’t want to know.
I really didn’t.
It was there, a shadow at the back of my mind, but I had other fish to fry.
Those fishes were shaped like two Presidents of the Satan’s Sinners.
“Any news?” I asked softly.
We both twisted so we could look at the window that exposed Rex and Bear to the corridor.
In all the months that Bear had been in here, little had changed apart from the number of bandages that covered his face.
It didn’t inspire hope.
Rex looked depressed and exhausted—small wonder.
“Some good news, actually. He’s slowly but surely making progress. The doctors want to start reducing the meds that keep him in a coma so they can begin the process of waking him up.”
I cut Bear another look.
That was supposed to be progress?
“What’s the prognosis?”
“There isn’t one, Rachel,” he said with a sigh as if I were being greedy in asking for a miracle.
It made me wish Stone were here. I knew she’d have been liaising with Rex, but that was why I’d attended church so Rex could be at the hospital where he was needed.
“It’s time. That’s all we need. Each day is a step forward. ”
Why did it look like he was stagnating then?
I bit my lip to stem the tide of thoughts that I shouldn’t be thinking.
Memories kept flooding me lately.
Bear’s booming laugh as he revved his engine and raced off the compound.
The cackles of glee as he and Rex worked on their hogs together, shooting the shit and drinking the grog he made at Christmastime that was sixty proof.
His intimidating presence in the bar where men gathered around him like he was the emperor of all he surveyed.
That was not even night and day to the sight of him now. It was enough to make me start grieving him while he was alive—how horrendous was that?
“His heart’s a risk factor,” Kian murmured, unaware of my thoughts. “Another cardiac arrest like the last one and that’s…” He sighed. “We have to be positive, Rachel.”
Did we though?
I hummed under my breath. “So, this positive news means he’s going to be pulled out of the medically induced coma?”
“Yes. There could be periods of wakefulness, but they’ll be few and far between to start with.”
Limiting my expectations, I nodded. “Thanks, Kian. I appreciate you sharing that with me.”
“No worries. I know he’s like a father to you.”
In the absence of Axel, my stepdad, Bear was all I had left so he was right on that front.
He shuffled over to me, Crocs squeaking against the linoleum.
I stared at him in surprise when he reached over and pressed a hand to my shoulder. “Yes?” I asked coldly.
Kian’s smile was, in a word, winsome.
At least, I thought that was what he was going for.
Mostly, it looked like a man who wanted to get into a woman’s panties.
He hadn’t been too horrendous to me in high school, but that didn’t mean I was interested.
“If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
I arched a brow. “Why would I talk to you about anything?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “It can help to talk to someone with distance from the situation.”
I made a show of glancing between the ward and Kian. “Yes, some distance. You’re miles away from it.”
He patted my shoulder this time, the gesture patronizing.
God, I hated men sometimes.
“Honestly, Rachel, it’s good to talk.”
“Does this work?”
“Does what work?”
“This? This act? Like you really give a damn.” I snorted. “Try to play doctor and nurses with someone else, Kian. I’m not interested.”
He scowled down at me. “There’s no need to be a bitch, Rachel.”
My lips twitched. “Wondered when the ‘bitch’ would come out. Men are so unimaginative,” I said scornfully as I stepped into him, moving fast enough that he backed up against the nurse’s desk.
“I’m a bitch because I have no desire in ‘talking’ through my feelings and letting you pity fuck me to make me feel better?
I’m a bitch because I can see straight through you?
“Consider yourself lucky that I don’t report you for inappropriate behavior with the family of a patient.”
“Jesus, you’re crazy. Talk about reading me wrong—”
“I read you exactly right,” I spat, sneering at him.
“And unfortunately for you, Kian, my word means more in this town than yours does.” I reached up when his head jerked back like he’d been slapped.
I pressed my finger to the tip of his nose.
“I have to wonder how many other inappropriate liaisons you’ve instigated—”
He scurried away like the rat he was.
I pursed my lips even as success flushed through me, and spinning on my heels, I turned around and headed for Bear’s room.
After his last heart attack, he was back in the ICU, so I re-dressed in some protective gear and made my way inside.
Rex, catching my eye, shot me a scowl the second I closed the door behind me.
God, he was gorgeous. Even with his hair shaggy and his jaw covered in thick stubble, beneath it all, in the stark light of the hospital room, he was beautiful.
Strong brow, blade-like nose, kissing lips…
My mouth had traced the hard lines of that jaw. My fingers had drifted through that onyx hair.
I knew his reflection as well as I did my own.
“Rex,” I said calmly, belying the sudden surge in my pulse.
“Rach,” was his greeting as his gaze glanced off mine.
My brow furrowed at the sight of his clenched jaw—was he mad?
“Heard the good news,” I said brightly, if a little doubtfully.
Just a single glance at Bear would have any rational person reasoning that all was not well.
A part of me wondered if the doctors were concerned about Bear’s relationship with the local MC and that had them fearing the repercussions of failing to save the old Prez from the inevitable…
But Stone wasn’t like that.
She wouldn’t spoon-feed us hope.
On the same track as I was, Rex rumbled, “Yeah. Not sure how it’s good when he looks the same as ever just without the cuts and scrapes, but what do I know?”
“Bear… We’re not used to thinking of him like this. He’s larger than life. Never frail. This is an adjustment,” I tried to reason.
He grunted, and I had to figure that said it all.
For a moment, we just stayed like that, our focus on the man who’d helped shape both our lives, who continued to do so even when he was unconscious.
Change was coming.
There was no doubting that.
But he wasn't wrong.
False hope was cruel—
“What did he want?”
I blinked. “What did who want?”
“The nurse.”
My mind elsewhere, I was genuinely confused when I asked, “Which nurse?”
Rex’s jaw clenched again, this time hard enough that I was sure he could crack nuts with his teeth. “The nurse at the station, Rachel. The one you were flirting with before you came in here.”
My eyes flared wide at his accusation. “Flirting? Who was flirting? I sure as hell wasn’t.”
He mocked, “I saw you making a move on him.”
“You didn’t see me do anything,” I growled. “And anyway, what right do you have to keep tabs on me?”
He growled back, “Think through that question, Rachel, and you tell me where you went wrong.”
That statement, the tone of his voice, whispered through me.
Sinking into my bones.
My fucking marrow.
God.
Still, I was pissed. My ovaries were not in charge.
“Fuck you, Rex,” I sniped.
“I wish you goddamn would,” he sniped back.
A hiss escaped me and I shot Bear a pointed look. “Is this really the place for this conversation?”
“I don’t know, Rachel. Where would be better seeing as you almost constantly ignore me and I’m nearly always in this goddamn room with my dad?”
He had a point.
Sort of.
“You should be coming back to my place more. You need the rest.”
I knew Nyx visited nightly with news and updates on the club, but I also knew that Rex barely spent any time sleeping at my house. That meant he was in here far too much.
No wonder he was a grouch.
Trying to take that into consideration, I decided to do the diplomatic thing and ask, "What did Stone say?"
The storm was still in his eyes, making this the most fired up I’d seen him in months.
For a second, he seemed to be at war with himself, then he ground out, "That he's in bad shape. You don't need a medical degree to see that. Some of his wounds have opened on the amputation sites.”
“Oh, no!” I cried, my distress real.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead. “You come to give me the lowdown on church?”
“That’s Nyx’s job.”