Ruthless Sinner (Ashby Crime Family)

The whiskey flowed, but I couldn’t move from my spot beside the bed. Couldn’t take my eyes off Sadie. Couldn’t believe she was finally awake.

Finally.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Jasper

It was a fluke. A fucking fluke. Sadie woke up, smiled, and talked some shit about Mo doing her makeup before she started asking questions about why she was in the hospital, how long she’d been there. Then, while Virgil was out of the room looking for Dr. Purcell, she closed her eyes again and hadn’t woken up since.

It didn’t make any fucking sense. “What the fuck, Doc?”

Purcell let out a frustrated sigh. I could see the man reaching deep into his well of patience before he looked across the bed at me, Sadie unconscious between us. He shoved his hands into his lab coat. “She woke up, Jasper, and that’s a good sign.”

“Yeah, well, she hasn’t opened her eyes since.”

“It takes time, Jasper. She’s been out of it for months, and now that she’s starting to wake up again, her body needs time to acclimate. Everything will feel new to her for some time. Walking and talking and eating, not to mention her memory. She’s not going to just wake up and become the woman she was the moment before the shooting.”

The sympathy in his voice was the only reason I didn’t lay the fucker out.

I nodded, too fucking exasperated to say or do anything else. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I knew Purcell was doing all he could to help Sadie.

“So you’re saying she could stay asleep for another few months, or she could wake up any minute now?”

“Pretty much. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we can’t rush head trauma. The most important thing is that she wakes up in her own time, when she’s ready, to minimize any further trauma.”

“Yeah, I got it, Doc. Thanks.” I’d been at the hospital since last night because I couldn’t bring myself to leave after she woke up. I had a childlike hope that she would wake up again in the night and everything would just go back to normal. Ashby normal, anyway.

Doctors and nurses were in and out of the room for hours, checking vital signs and looking at her body under the sheets. I only left her side a few times, to smoke and check in with Terry and Virgil. Eventually, the sun lowered in the sky, sending the last rays into the room, so at odds with how I felt about the fact that she wouldn’t wake the fuck up.

Sadie, always the drama queen, woke up slowly just as the sun made the final push below the horizon. It wasn’t quick like it was last night. No, this was a painful hour or two of her eyes working hard to flip open her lids, mouth twitching as if she was trying to speak but couldn’t. Her fingers moved slowly, one at a time and never all at once. She seemed to be taking stock of her abilities, what she could and couldn’t do yet.

I sat close to her ear and took her hand in mine. “Wake up, Sadie,” I urged as if all she needed was encouragement. I knew she’d wake up if she could. I could see her trying like hell.

“Come on, Ma. You’re almost there.”

Finally, a fucking eternity later, familiar green eyes stared up at me, giving me a blank look. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but she’d opened her eyes, and they stayed open. I couldn’t look away, too afraid she might slip back into unconsciousness. She smacked her lips, the dry sound pushing me to my feet and toward the call button because there was no fucking way I’d leave her alone again.

A nurse popped her head in, a question in her eyes. “Everything all right in here?”

“No. Get Dr. Purcell in here. Now. Tell him Sadie Ashby is awake and to hurry the fuck up.”

Fear flashed in her eyes before she nodded and slipped out quietly.

In the next few minutes, the room swarmed with medical personnel, doctors and nurses, residents and specialists alike. They poked and prodded her, took her blood pressure, checked her heart at least twelve times, putting her through a series of cognitive tests that put a smile on my face because those memory tests showed me that Sadie was still in there.

“What the fuck is a goddamn elephant, telephone, and book going to tell you about my head?” Her grumbled words had the doctors smiling too.

“Very good, Sadie.” Purcell nodded and tapped some things on his tablet. “Your short-term memory is fine.” He nodded my way. “Do you know who that is?”

She smiled. “My firstborn son, Jasper.”

Purcell nodded, clearly satisfied with her responses as he made more notes and cleared the room. “You too, Jasper.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but I wanted her to get better more than I wanted to keep my eyes on her.