Asher (Inked Brotherhood 1)

Tessa wanders closer to the group of doctors and nurses and comes back to tell us they’re taking Ash away for an ultrasound, to determine whether he’s bleeding inside.

> We wait until they wheel him out, then settle to wait some more in the small cluster of chairs. Time slows, the minutes plodding. After checking the hour on my phone for what has to be the millionth time, I get up to pace.

“What’s taking them so long? Shouldn’t he be back by now?” What if he’s dying and I’m here, away from him? What if they’ve found something seriously wrong and they aren’t telling us? After all, we aren’t next of kin. I’m ready to storm out of the room to go and find him.

But then the double doors open. Ash is wheeled back inside, and I freeze. I want to go to him but I’m not sure I can handle any bad news.

It’s as if I finally found my way to him only to lose him again, and the thought scares me to death.

The nurses lift him onto the narrow bed and fuss with the blankets and pillows.

One of them, a pretty young woman dressed in gray, walks toward us. Her dark eyes move from Tessa to me. “Is one of you Auds? Audrey?”

“I am Audrey.” My stomach turns over. “How is he?”

“Audrey, he’s been calling for you. He seems to think you’re in danger. Would you sit with him for a while? We’ve stitched up his side and it’s better if he doesn’t move about much, but we don’t want to use a sedative as there’s still a possibility he has suffered a concussion.”

I force myself to move and make my way across the room to the bed. The nurse pulls a chair for me and I sit, grateful.

Ash looks awful. The fluorescent light from above casts his bruised, swollen cheekbone and jaw in harsh contrast to his too-pale skin. The paramedics have cleaned the blood on his face and applied butterfly bandages to the cut on his forehead.

His eyes move behind his lowered lids, his dark lashes like coal smudges. They’ve removed his clothes and dressed him in a hospital gown. It leaves his strong arms bare, and they’re mottled with more bruises. God, he looks as if he’d been beaten within an inch of his life.

He shifts on the mattress, his body tensing. “Auds,” he rasps and his hands shift restlessly on the blankets they’ve heaped on top of him in an effort to warm him up. A needle goes into his left hand, secured with white tape. Bags with blood and antibiotics hang by his side. “Auds.”

The lump in my throat won’t let me swallow. “I’m right here.” I catch his fingers. They’re ice cold.

“Dangerous.” He rolls his face toward me. His lashes flutter as he tries to open his eyes. “You should leave.”

“I’m not leaving you.” I squeeze his hand. “This is where I want to be.”

“Auds...” he whispers again, his voice broken, and I wonder if he’s heard me at all. If he can feel my fingers wrapped around his.

Zane and Tessa approach the bed, their faces set in worried lines.

“Hey, fucker. Can you hear me?” A muscle jumps in Zane’s jaw. He leans over to touch Ash’s shoulder, then folds his arms across his broad chest and turns to the doctor. “What’s the verdict?”

The doctor strokes his goatee and seems to hesitate. Then he slumps a little. “Bruised kidneys. A slight laceration to the liver with minimal bleeding, which doesn’t seem serious but which we need to monitor at least until tomorrow. The cut in his side,” the doctor gestures at Ash, “is quite deep and he has bled a lot, which is why we are giving him a blood transfusion. If he doesn’t move too much for a few days, the sutures should hold. His body is quite stressed but it should heal fine.”

Liver laceration. My hand creeps up my side, to the scar of the incision where they fixed my bleeding liver and kidney.

Tessa wrings her hands together. “So no surgery is needed?”

“No surgery,” the doctor agrees. “Not if he allows the wound to heal, and if his liver stops bleeding. We also want to monitor the concussion symptoms, make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

It all sounds good. Truth be told, I’ve braced for much worse.

Zane nods. “Are you keeping him in?”

“He’ll be staying here at least until tomorrow. We were afraid of hypothermia, but you found him in the nick of time. He’s warming up nicely and there seems to be no real damage from the cold. He mustn’t have stayed out very long.” The doctor glances at my hand over Ash’s. “He seems calmer now.”

He does. His hands have stopped moving and his face is more relaxed.

“If you’ll excuse me,” the doctor says and gives a warm smile that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I have other patients to see, but I’ll be back later to check on him.”

He leaves, followed by two of the nurses, and as the door swings open, I get a quick glimpse of a vast room, endless rows of chairs taken by the people waiting. The hubbub enters in a wave, then recedes once more as the door closes.

Quiet returns.