Craig made a choking noise from behind his grandmother, getting a glare from her. “She was having problems drinking, so MeeMee here went and picked up some syringes from the shop. She’s been syringing Gatorade and whatever that weird shit is into her, a drop at a time.”
This news alarmed me even more.
“And Parker knows this?”
“Yeah, he’s been coming by to check on her a lot,” Jackson reassured me. “Miss Dahl declined a visit to the hospital, so he’s making house calls.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door.
“I don’t get it?” Craig mumbled as he moved to open it. “There’s a doorbell right there, and none of you lot use it.”
I winced at how right he was. The doorbell was there for security as well, and I was the turd who’d forgotten to press it even though I’d noticed it when I’d knocked on the door. In my defense, I was slightly distracted by getting to Sadie, but still.
“Yo,” Parker greeted as he came through the door, stopping when he saw me. “And welcome back. Glad to see you’ve gotten your head out of your ass.”
I would’ve said something back, but I was worried by the fact that neither mine nor Parker’s arrivals had woken Sadie up. She didn’t tend to go into a deep sleep, so this wasn’t typical behavior—which I pointed out to him.
Frowning, he joined me looking down at her. “She really needs to go in and get an IV, and some tests run, Elijah. The dehydration was making the pain in the wound on her shin sore again last night, to the point she was crying with it when I came round, but she just won’t go in.”
Dehydration didn’t make wounds suddenly sore, but the dehydrated muscle and tendon that was still healing would hurt more. All of it together made me more certain she needed to go to the hospital for treatment like Parker said. Looking at MeeMee to make sure I was doing the right thing, I was relieved when she nodded.
“Craig, you keep the front door open. Marcus, go and start my truck up,” I instructed, tossing my keys to him. “MeeMee, can you make sure Dobby’s all set up in case she’s away overnight, please? And, Jackson, once that’s all done, could you bring MeeMee to the hospital?”
Everyone jumped into action at the same time as I bent over and picked up my little pixie. Her eyes fluttered open as I put her in my truck and secured the belt around her, but she just scowled at me and fell back to sleep.
With Parker behind me and our brothers behind him, I made my way to the hospital, hoping that it wasn’t anything serious. I’d had stomach bugs and food poisoning before, and they made you feel like shit, but with her being as small as she was, I didn’t want to risk anything by leaving her any longer.
It only took us twenty minutes to get to the hospital Parker worked at, and then it seemed like everyone burst into frantic activity around us. Within ten minutes of our arrival, her paperwork had been filled out, she was in a bed and had been hooked up to machines, and they were putting an IV in one arm while blood was being taken from the other.
On his way past me, I grabbed Parker’s arm. “You make sure she’s okay, man. Nothing happens to her.”
Thumping me on the back a couple of times, he promised, “She’ll be fine. We get sick quickly, but we come back just as quickly. Once we get the results of this and the urine they’re going to take from her in a minute, we’ll know what we need to do to get Sadie back to fighting.” Just as I thought he was finished and was going to leave, he added, “I mean, I couldn’t deprive her of tearing your balls off and feeding them to the ugly cat, could I?”
I couldn’t even argue that I didn’t deserve it. I might not have known the full extent of what was going on, but I deserved anything she chose to dish out to me for leaving the way I did, regardless of my reasons.
Just then, Craig stood up and walked quickly toward the door. “Hell no, if you’re doing that, I’m heading out until it’s safe to come back in.”
Looking over at the bed, I saw a nurse with a tube in her hand, fiddling around under the sheet they’d placed over Sadie. Apparently they were taking the urine sample that way. Knowing she wouldn’t want me to see it, I turned my back to face the wall and started going through all of the ways that I was going to apologize and earn her back.
First on the list was begging on my knees. I figured if I went for something most men would normally put at the end, she’d see I had no shame and that I was being genuine.