Chapter 36
Myles
Dex had called to let them know that we were on the way with a man with a gunshot wound and a woman with severe lacerations, chemical burns, and completely unresponsive.
When we pulled up to the door to the ER, everything was in slow motion.
Two teams of medical staff came out with gurneys.
They loaded Cash on one and Mina on the other.
Their bodies were completely motionless. They rushed them inside and through a set of double doors. Alexandria and I ran after them, but a security guard stopped us both. Another doctor came out, and after much arguing back and forth, we agreed to wait in the waiting room.
Everyone else in the waiting room moved away from us as we sat down.
That was almost five hours ago. No one has come out to see us.
When we ask what’s going on, no one has answers.
Alexandria, Dex, and I have been sitting here panicking.
Every time a doctor comes rushing out, we jump to our feet.
Every time an alarm goes off for a Code Blue, we go running to those doors only to be turned away.
Visiting hours are well past, but that doesn’t fucking matter. I told them we aren’t leaving until we see them. When they argued with us, I called Fabian and had a donation made to this hospital. When you become one of the highest donation benefactors, they let certain things slide.
“Hey. I think I got something,” Dex says quietly.
“What is it?” Alexandria asks. Her head has been on my shoulder. She tears up every time she looks down at herself. She tried to wash up the best she could, but Cash’s blood still stains her skin. The staff gave us each a set of clothes since ours were either missing or stained with blood.
“I was able to hack into their system, and I can see the files. I just have to find Cash and Mina…”
He types away on his phone. Alexandria nervously looks over his shoulder. In the four minutes it’s taken him to find anything, I don’t think I have even breathed. What if he finds out one of them didn’t make it…or both of them?
“Mr. Langston?” My name sounds foreign to me when the doctor calls it. All three of us get up and rush to the doctor.
He’s older, maybe in his mid-to-late sixties. He looks shocked as he glances between me and Dex, then at Alexandria.
“Which one of you is Mr. Langston?”
“I am.”
“Come with me, please.” He turns to swipe his badge on the sensor to open the doors.
“What about us?” Alexandria’s voice cracks.
“I’m sorry, Miss. I need to speak with Mr. Langston.”
I quickly pull her into a hug and kiss her on the top of her head.
“It’s going to be okay. They’ll both be fine,” I whisper.
When I pull away, more tears fill her eyes. I don’t know what information I’m about to hear, but the knot in my stomach is getting worse.
“How well do you know Lumina Warner?” he starts.
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“I mean about her past. How long have you known her?”
“I knew her a long time ago, but we haven’t spoken to each other in years.
” I don’t feel like being judged by this man right now.
Yeah, I haven’t talked to her in twenty years because she and her parents, my best friends, died in a car crash…
but she actually didn’t die…I can practically feel the judgmental glare he would give me.
“So you were aware she was in a coma before? She had a severe TBI.”
“What?”
“She had a traumatic brain injury. She was in a coma for eight months.”
“Eight months? When?”
“Twenty years ago. She was just a child. We pulled her records and…Mr. Langston, when someone suffers a severe TBI like she did, they are more susceptible to them.”
“Where is she?” I glance down the hallway. It’s silent other than the beeping of heart rate monitors, a faint laugh track from a patient's TV, and the sound of someone sobbing behind a closed door.
The doctor takes a moment before he turns and tells me to follow him. We walk down another hall before taking two more turns then come to another set of locked doors marked ICU.
“This is technically going against protocol here, Mr. Langston. But you seem to have connections higher up. We’ve been instructed to accommodate you and your friends in the waiting room. They’ll be brought back later, but I wanted you to see her first.”
He swipes his card, and we enter a large open room. Glass walls separate the center of the room from the individual rooms for each patient. He continues forward. I try to keep my focus on the doctor ahead, but my eyes keep wandering and searching for Cash.
“Here we are.”
He stops next to a closed room. The curtains are drawn so you can’t see beyond the glass wall. My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s pulsing in my head. I can’t breathe, and my mouth is so dry it feels like my throat is closing.
“Mr. Langston, I just want you to be prepared…We don’t know how long she will be in the coma or…”
“Or what?”
“We don’t know yet if she’ll wake up. We have to wait for some of the swelling to go down before we can run more tests.”
He slides the door open and pulls the curtain back. I take two steps into the room, and my entire world shatters. My beautiful Mina is lying in the bed. Her small body is dwarfed by the number of machines hooked up to her.
Two blue tubes that merge into one are in her mouth.
Another smaller line is running into her nose.
Her head is wrapped in gauze. Her bruising is so much worse now.
Her eyes are rimmed in black and purple.
Her left hand is wrapped up, and both arms are bandaged from her wrists up to her shoulders.
Wires run from her chest beneath the fabric gown.
An IV is hooked to her right arm with four bags of clear to off white liquid and one bag of blood that’s almost empty. Her heart rate machine is beeping at a steady 73 beats per minute. The sound of the ventilator pumping to keep her breathing is the loudest thing in the room.
“What happened to her, Mr. Langston?” the doctor asks softly.
“She was kidnapped. A psychopath took her last night…Sorry, the night before last. It’s been a long couple of days. He ran us off the road before he took her.”
“Is that why you’re bleeding as well?” he asks as he gestures to my side. Blood is seeping through the blue scrub top. “Here. Sit down and lift your shirt. I can’t have you bleeding out in my sterile room now, can I?”
I try to protest, but he stops me. I flop in the chair across from her bed and lift my shirt.
The fabric sticks to the blood spots that have already begun to dry.
He kneels next to me with a bottle of something that he squirts onto the wound.
He wipes at it before using tweezers to remove two of the broken stitches.
“Who stitched you up?” he asks as he glares at the wound.
“Would you believe a stripper?”
The doctor laughs. He full-on belly laughs as he stands to grab something off the table.
“Honestly, yes. Yes, I would. Tell her she needs to work a bit harder on tying off the stitch…Here.”
He kneels back down and begins to remove the stitches. The pain is excruciating. My fingers dig into the armrest. Thankfully, I didn’t break it by the time the last stitch was tied off.
“Thank you.”
“You really should have gotten that looked at…by a professional,” he scolds as he finishes disposing of the blood-soaked cotton balls and old stitches.
“So give it to me straight, Doc…” I ask as I walk back over to her side. She hasn’t moved, and nothing has changed. I keep expecting her to open her eyes. To hear her laugh, which makes my entire world light up.
“Like I said, we won’t know more until the swelling goes down. She has severe lacerations and chemical burns on her body. She has a cracked skull and an intracranial hemorrhage. She also had a knife wound through her hand…”
“Through? Like all the way through?”
“Yes. I don’t know who did this to her, but I pray they suffer a slow, painful death.
The damage they did to this poor woman…Sorry.
Where was I? Oh, she has a few broken ribs and a fractured shoulder and wrist. All her vitals are stable right now, though, which is good.
We’ll keep a close eye on her, Mr. Langston. I do have one question, though…”
“What’s that?”
“When you found her…Do you know if the man who had her sexually assaulted her?”
“I honestly don’t know. She barely spoke one word before she had a seizure.”
“I’ll have the nurse bring a rape kit in for evidence. A cop will be by in a little while. With these kinds of injuries, we had to notify the police as soon as we had her stabilized.”
“What about my other friend, Cassius London?”
He pulls up his tablet and scrolls through a long list.
“Ah, here he is. He just got out of surgery twenty minutes ago. They probably already went to let your friends know.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“According to his chart, they are still trying to get all his vitals to stabilize. The bullet went through his liver and right kidney before it exited his body. A rib was shattered, and his lung was nicked. They had a lot of damage to repair, and he had a chest tube put in to remove the blood. But as long as they can get his vitals stabilized, he should make a full recovery.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“Press the red button if you need anything. I’ll be back by to check on her and you within two hours. A nurse will be by shortly with the kit…” He pauses, assessing me as he says the next words. “She’s going to ask you to step out of the room.”
“I understand.”
He gives me a grateful nod before closing the curtains then shutting the door quietly.
When the latch clicks into place, my world collapses around me.
I fall to my knees next to her bed. Everything turns dark.
No more color. No more light. Until she opens those beautiful eyes of hers, I’m not leaving her side.
My body shudders as I try to hold back my tears. None of this should have happened. If we hadn’t stopped on the side of the road. If I weren’t such an idiot and just kept driving. We were only a few miles from my house.
“I’m so sorry, Sunshine.” I continue to cry. The pain and exhaustion of the last two days are finally hitting me, and it’s overwhelming.
I’ve hardly slept or eaten anything. I gently lift her unbandaged hand and hold it to my face.
I kiss each of her fingers. Her skin is warm beneath my lips.
I look at the damage done to her hand. Scratches, bruises, and broken nails from fighting back.
My woman’s a fighter. She will fight this, too.
“I promise…I swear to you, Mina, no one will ever hurt you again. I’m never leaving you. So, I need you to wake up, baby.”
I rest my head on the bed next to her. I hold her hand in mine and rest my cheek against it. Her heart rate monitor picks up from 73 BPM to 80 BPM. I hold my breath, begging the universe for her to open her eyes. I’m watching her so intently I don’t even hear the door open, and the nurse walk in.
“She might be dreaming,” the nurse says softly. I jump up and immediately grab my side in pain.
“Shit!” I wince.
“I’m so sorry, Sir. I knocked a few times, but when there wasn’t any answer, I thought you had left.”
“No, it’s okay. I was just…Wait, did you say dreaming?”
“It’s never been proven, but a lot of us like to think that they’re in a calm dream. Somewhere where their mind can be free while their body lies here healing. At least that’s what I hope for them…”
“I’d like to think that, too.” I glance back over at Mina. Her heart rate has dropped back down to 74 BPM.
“If you don’t mind, Sir. Can you please wait in the hall while I perform this test?” She looks down at the box in her arms, then back at me.
“Can you tell me where my friend is at? His name is Cassius London.”
“Oh, he was just brought to the ICU a few minutes ago. He’s four doors down.
” She points to the left, and I nod. “Everyone on duty right now is aware of the accommodations being made for you and your friends…” Her last words were said with a hint of disgust. I don’t care, though.
If money is all it takes to make sure I could always be near her, then I’d give up every fucking cent I have to my name.
“Will you come and let me know when you’re finished, please? I don’t want her to be alone.”
She looks at Mina, then up at me with a soft smile.
“Of course, Sir.”
“Thank you.” I turn to leave, but her words stop me.
“She’s lucky to have you…The doctor let us know as to why she had the injuries she does…You saved her.”
“I may have been the one to rescue her, but she’s the one who saved me.”