Chapter 44 Wake Up
WAKE UP
Present day
Icracked open an eye. Harsh fluorescent lights hit me full force, and I screwed my eyes shut again.
“Oh thank God, minamahal you’re awake,” Reyna’s voice sounded worried. I blinked a few times trying to process. My eyes landed on her, and she smiled sadly at me, a tissue in her hand as she wiped away tears.
“W-hat happened? W-where am I?” My mouth was dry, and I tried to sit up. My ribcage felt like a thousand needles had punctured it, and my breathing was labored.
“Don’t try to get up, I’ll call the doctor in. You’re in the hospital.” She fussed.
I looked around at the surroundings and the few leads that were attached.
A bag of saline was next to the bed, dripping its solution into my forearm.
At least a nurse put it in a comfortable spot and not in the crook of my arm like a hundred other times.
I ran my hand down my face and looked around for my clothes. I needed to call —
“Well I wasn’t expecting to see you again,” the cop that I punched in the face during the riot peaked his head into the door.
“Looks like you’ve taken quiet the beating, want to file a police report?” The cop asked with an overly cocky grin on his face.
“No, I fell.”
“A pretty tough fall to have been stabbed multiple times, and what is that three broke ribs? You sure you don’t want to tell me who did this to you?”
“No” I ground out.
He shrugged and wrote something down on his notepad.
I stared irritably at him. “Well I’ll be around if you want to document the assault,” He turned away and, as if last second , “On second thought, I’ll just pull up a chair.
” He sat opposite Reyna’s chair where her bag sat unattended, pulled out his phone and began typing away.
I stared at him scrutinously as he continued to ignore me. Something about him seemed familiar, and not just from the riot at Riven. I rubbed the stubble on my chin contemplatively. “What’s your name?”
“Jones, Dustin Jones.” He replied without even looking up.
“Like rusty dusty?” I laughed.
“My mother was a big Kansas fan.” he replied.
“Huh, that’s different,” I turned towards the monitors gauging just what kind of state I was in.
My blood pressure was low, but that was to be expected after losing enough blood to knock me on my ass.
They were transfusing blood at a slow pace of a drop a minute, not really, but it might as well have been.
The hospital was the least of my problems, but it felt like a major setback.
Midas has a thing against hospitals, and I didn’t blame him.
Our people didn’t go to the hospital; the hospital came to us.
I looked up at the information board and groaned when I read the name of the attending doctor.
Reed. Of course he would be on call for a goddamn trauma; that dude was a psycho for trauma cases.
I turned back to the IV, watching the blood pool together at the top of the line, bead and then drop down the side of the casing towards the line.
The tubing had tiny oxygen bubbles throughout the deep red liquid.
“You know staring at that bag will not make it drip any faster,” Dustin spoke up.
“No shit.”
The IV pump started beeping a false notification about an upstream occlusion, and I threw my head back into the pillows that had long gone flat. The call button against the far wall didn’t work, so the incessant beeping continued until Doctor Reed himself popped in.
“Mathews, you’re not in my care for more than a few hours and you’ve already scared the pump shitless,” A hearty laugh followed as he silenced and restarted the machine.
“Go to hell,” I ground out. I wasn’t in the mood for doctor humor, especially knowing how much this overpriced fish tank cost to stay in.
“Dr. Reed, good to see you again, you got that fragment for me?”
“Fragment?” I scrunched my eyebrows together.
“Here it is, the little dagger pinned to your femoral if it wasn’t for that you’d bled out.”
“Thanks, Doctor.” Dustin took the canister, holding it up to the light.
“No problem detective,” He paused like he was going to say more, but a herd of nurses rushed by him, and he turned to follow. “Got to go.”
“Still think you fell?” Dustin asked as he set the container on the table in front of me. Damn, that was a really good knife. I picked it up, looked at the clean point and then set it back. “You know it doesn’t look good, only a few weeks out and you’re getting into trouble,” he baited.
“Yep. The law — I think I can afford to continue with that statement,” I recovered my fumble. Truth be told, I had no intention of going back to jail. Midas had something brewing, and I would be damned if I was stuck in a tin cage for that.
“Alright, let’s move on. Do you know where your wife is?”
“Shouldn’t you know? You are the one fucking her or did your fingers just accidentally slip inside her pussy?”
“Uhh”
“You know I wonder what it is she sees in you, because it sure as hell isn’t your personality,” I laughed and then groaned against the broken ribs.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, you must have hit your head a little too hard”
“Right and the snuff film says otherwise,” I rolled my eyes and watched as everything clicked into place for him.
“Fuck.” Dustin muttered.
“So tell me, how is my wife?”
“Are we really going to have this conversation right now? There are more pressing matters,” he was trying to get out of the situation. If my ribs didn’t scream every time I moved, I would have laughed at his avoidance.
I looked around, lifted my arms and shrugged. “doesn’t look like I am going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Minamahal – oh, you have company,” Reyna poked her head in. Dustin’s hand swiped the container with the blade point off the tray, stashing it in his jacket pocket. I pinched my brows together; it was a strange thing to do for someone you didn’t like. I respected it.
“It’s okay Reyna. What’s up?” I called.
“The kids will be awake soon, take care of yourself and call me once the doctor updates you.” She fussed as she planted a kiss on my cheek.
“Yes Nanay,” I responded cheekily, and she smiled. It wasn’t often I called her mom, but we had grown into it these past few years.
“You,” she pointed towards Dustin, “Find the man that did this.”
“Yes ma’am, that is the plan,” He straightened up and nodded towards her as she left the room. “She’s not here and she’s not in jail.”
“You lost her?” Anger stirred within me.
“Ouch, I wouldn’t say lost, unfortunately she’s not wanting to be found,” He rubbed the back of his head.
“What’s the last thing she said to you?”
“She didn’t, but she left me a crazy conspiracy board to wade through,” He pulled out his phone and showed it to me.
“Oh so that’s what she’s doing.”
“What?”
“It’s not obvious to you?”
“No. I was never good with crazy boards and connections.”
“This one is you,” I pointed to a badge in the middle of the chaos. “trace the blood down and you have the obsidians.”
“How can you tell that from no faces and names?”
“You’re joking right? Have you no observation skills? Geez, how did they ever let you become a detective.”
“That’s a long story. Why would Summer be looking into the connections between Obsidian and Syndicate?” He sat back thinking, and I didn’t even have to blink to know the connections.
“So which name goes in the report?”
“Huh?”
“You said Summer, so I am guessing you or someone you work with knew her identity.”
“Officially, Mia Williams was kidnapped from the hospital about a week ago by her lawyer, neither of them have been heard from since. We never had this conversation. I am just following up on an unrelated stabbing.”
“So you’ll just take your information and leave?”
“Yeah, officially you fell and the knife fragment that was recovered won’t hold up to anything in court without the other part, so it’s a cold case that will sit on the shelf until you decide to pursue it.” He stood, setting the chair back against the wall.
“Just like that?” It was hard to believe he would move on from this when it was clear he had every intention of finding the truth.
“Yeah. I hope I don’t have to see you again so soon.” He walked out of the room, leaving me staring at the closed door, recounting the conversation.