Chapter 24
The next time Vin opened his eyes, he was lying in an unfamiliar room. The overhead dim light of a lantern shining down on his face irritated his still young consciousness, and he winced as the bright glow hurt his tired retinas.
He took a long, slow, deep inhalation, his breath rattling with fluid. A cough ripped its way out from his lungs, which sent the most intense wave of pain Vin had ever experienced coursing through his entire body.
Vin screamed in mind-numbing agony, his back arching as he sought some kind of relief, any kind of relief from the utter agony.
“Shit!” a voice cried out. “Adriel! Get in here!”
The room filled with movement and motion, but his eyes had not yet adjusted to the light, making him unable to say anything.
“Damn,” a new voice cried out, rushing into the room along with many others, who pressed him easily down into the bed. “Any stitches pop?”
“None that I can see, but not sure yet,” the first voice said in response.
“Put him back under, now!” the newer voice commanded, taking control of the entire room.
There was commotion beside him, and Vin noticed through the glare that there was an IV in his right arm. He saw someone stick a syringe into the IV’s port, and suddenly the world around him spun.
“Keep him monitored,” the newer voice said.
“Yes, Doctor,” the original voice replied. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” the new voice said, becoming distorted as Vin’s consciousness slipped back into the abyss.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first voice said. “He keeps shrugging off the sedatives.”
The newer voice, that of the doctor, replied again, but at that point, Vin couldn’t make out their words. His eyes closed heavily, and he faded back into the night.
The next time Vin woke, it was far easier and less sudden. It felt as though he drifted slowly back into consciousness instead of being violently jolted awake. He groaned and weakly turned his head, feeling the stiff muscles in his neck tighten and protest against the movement.
“That’s it,” a calm and familiar voice spoke into his ear, no more than a whisper. “Take it slowly now. You’re almost there.”
Finally, his eyes started to peel back, and Vin was once more greeted by the glare given off by several lanterns spread throughout the room.
“Where,” Vin started to say, but his throat was so dry that he stopped himself, opening and closing his mouth, which felt sore and achy.
His bottom lip brushed against something foreign, and he was able to summon the strength to lift one of his arms. It felt monumentally heavy as he pulled it up, and he could vaguely see it shaking in the light as it slowly moved toward his face.
“Easy now,” the voice said. “Take it slow.”
The figure beside him did nothing to dissuade him from moving his arm, so Vin continued on, bringing his hand up to his face curiously.
After nearly a minute of trying, he finally laid his fingers down upon the foreign object settled against his face.
It was a plastic tube that he traced up and into his nose.
“What…is…?” he started to ask, his voice once more dying in his throat.
“That’s a feeding tube,” the voice whispered back.
Vin’s fingers closed on it, but a strong hand covered by a latex glove settled onto his and gently but firmly pulled away his fingers. “I’m gonna have to ask you not to do that, Mr. Jackson. That tube has been keeping you alive for three months.”
“What?” Vin questioned, wondering if he was hearing correctly. Three months? He had been here for three months? That wasn’t possible. He started to slowly shake his head back and forth. “No…”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. Jackson,” the voice said lightly. “I suppose I could’ve broken that to you more gently. I apologize for that.”
“Who?” he questioned softly, his raw throat scratching against his nerves. He tried to sit up, but his body instantly filled with pain. It wasn’t as intense as the last time he had opened his eyes, but it was still a monumental avalanche of agony.
It wasn’t possible that he had been out of commission for three entire months.
That would be more than ninety days since the attack on the train.
That also meant Sean would have already handed the ranch over to Chainz, which meant Deb and Jimmy were in terrible danger.
He needed to get back on his feet. He needed to know what was going on out there.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” the voice said, as though reading the litany of queries racing through his mind.
“You were found several miles from here, out in the desert. You had been shot several times, and you were about as near death as I’ve ever seen a man.
Honestly, it’s a miracle you’re still breathing.
Especially with the limited equipment here that still works. ”
“Where…am…I?” Vin managed to choke out of his mouth.
“Ah, right,” the voice said, and a figure slid into Vin’s direct eyesight. He was a brown-skinned young man with long straight hair and a strong jawline. “You’re on the Native reservation. I’m Doctor Adriel Tilzilani. My team and I restored you to health.”
The Native reservation? Vin realized the train had been traveling faster and farther than he had originally believed if it had made it all the way out into the native lands. But why did they save him? What did the Natives have to gain from nursing him back to health?
“Why?” Vin asked, finding his voice again. “Why…did you…help?” His voice closed off again, and he gave off a series of small coughs that rattled his insides.
“Why?” Adriel asked, tilting his head in confusion. “Because you were hurt. Because it was the right thing to do.”
Vin was amazed and disbelieving at this act of kindness. Whereas most people in this world would have stepped over his body to get to where they needed to be, these people had taken him in halfway through death’s door and used their precious few resources to nurse him back to health.
All for what? For the sake of kindness? Because it was the right thing to do? This reasoning sounded like something he had heard from the old man years ago. It ran in flagrant opposition to everything Vin had ever believed regarding the nature of the world and its people.
But here he was, alive and recovering in relative comfort, all because of…
kindness? If this were true, it meant the old man had been partially right—there were people out there who believed in giving and caring and doing the right thing.
Vin believed Deb would feel happy knowing this and hoped that she was all right.
But still…he had been shot four times point-blank. How was he still alive in a medical center with no electrical equipment?
“How?” he asked, wincing as he tried to will his mouth to work. “How am…I…alive?”
“Ah,” the doctor said, shrugging his shoulders.
“I would say it’s because you’re a tough son of a bitch who was just a bit too stubborn to die.
That, coupled with several procedures and medicines, was able to prolong your life enough to the point where your body’s natural healing abilities were able to catch up.
That doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet by any means, though. ”
“I…can’t…move,” Vin said, trying and failing once more to sit up.
“That’s to be expected,” the doctor replied.
“You’ve been heavily sedated for months.
You actually were shrugging off a lot of our earlier attempts at sedating you, and we had to up your dosage in order to keep you under.
It’ll take some time to come out of that.
Plus, most of your muscles have atrophied, so we’re going to have to slowly build your strength back over time. ”
“My wife…” he spat out, unconcerned with his own recovery at the moment. “My son…they’re in trouble.”
“Three months ago?” the doctor asked, giving Vin a sympathetic look. “A lot has been going on out there.”
“They were from…Darcy Ranch,” Vin spat back out with some difficulty.
The doctor suddenly looked alarmed, his eyes doubling in size for a moment, followed by a look of profound pity. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson,” he said, shaking his head. “Darcy Ranch has been taken over by?—”
“Chainz,” Vin growled, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” Adriel said, nodding. “I see you somehow knew that already.”
Vin nodded, and then he realized something. This doctor had referred to him by name many times throughout this conversation.
“How…do you…know me?” he asked, grunting in exertion as he forced the words out.
The doctor smiled kindly. “Many of our elders were familiar with you and correctly identified you when you were brought here,” he said. “You have long been seen as an ally of our people.”
Vin nodded weakly. That made sense. Many of the bounties he had been hired to collect came from the reservation. Sometimes it had been poachers illegally hunting on their lands. Other times it was criminals who had fled the reservation and needed to face tribal justice.
Vin had never exchanged many pleasantries with the tribe. Most of their transactions had been purely business. They hired him, he went out and did the job, and they paid him. But he had done a lot of work for them over the years, so it made sense that some would recognize him.
“I’m sorry to say that Darcy Ranch is not what it once was,” the doctor said. “And the criminal Chainz uses it as a base to launch missions expanding onto reservation lands. He is trying to take control of the entire area, and there isn’t much we can do to stop him.”
Vin’s heart ached, imagining the old man’s farm being used for such horrors.
Sean had unleashed hell upon their home, and now Chainz was using that home in order to take the homes of others.
Vin wished he could explode out of bed, march onto the ranch, grab Chainz by his piercings, drag him out into the desert, and make him pay for his crimes.
But there was also a deeper fire burning in his heart, a deeper, darker hatred that called out for blood.
Sean.
He could still see the far-off, dead look in Sean’s eyes, the conflict behind his stoicism stained every word as he callously executed his one-time friend. But he had made a fatal mistake. Vin was still breathing; his heart was still stubbornly continuing to pound.
And the second he was able to get out of this bed, he would find Sean and Chainz and make them pay with their dying breaths.