Not with me on my bike, and not with me hell bent on getting where I was going.
The moment that I arrived at the small hospital in town, I knew that it was bad based on the sheer amount of ambulances and police officers milling around outside the hospital’s entrance.
I rode my bike up to the back of the wide-open ambulance and blanched when I saw the amount of blood inside of it.
I swallowed past the bile that was threatening to creep up the back of my throat and got off the bike, pulling off the helmet I hadn’t been aware of putting on.
The cops didn’t move or shift on their feet at the sight of me.
My eyes traveled around them all until my gaze fell on a shorter Latino man that looked like he wasn’t going to let me in that door unless I fought him.
“You the one in charge?” I asked, my hands fucking shaking.
He shrugged. “For now.”
“My girl,” I said. “We heard that she was attacked at the police station tonight. I need to…”
The man gestured with his head toward the side of the building, away from the door I might add.
I didn’t know what to think of that, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted me out of there, or he wanted to explain something to me—like my girl had died due to her injuries.
Either way, I wasn’t sure that this was going to be a good explanation.
He opened his mouth to say whatever it was he’d pulled me over there to say, but I stopped him by blurting, “Is she alive?”
The man nodded. “She’s alive.”
I felt like a two-ton truck had been lifted off my chest.
“Is she gonna keep staying alive?” I wondered next.
The man nodded. “She’s got some bad injuries. I’m not going to lie. They don’t look good at all. She had a compound fracture in her leg when I found her. I have to admit, I thought it was a weapon used against her at first and it was dark, so I reached out to pick it up and…”
I wanted to vomit.
The man had touched Swayze’s goddamn bone.
Son of a bitch.
“We brought her here to get her stabilized for transfer, but it’s looking like we’re going to have to ground and pound her,” he explained. “The life flights in the area are all out of commission due to a massive wreck on the interstate.”
“Take her to the life flight facility,” Lynn said, coming up behind me. “We have a pilot on site. We also have a doctor that can supervise her flight to town.”
I calculated the time it would take for us to get to the nearest trauma center—an hour and fifteen minutes.
The time it would take us to get to the life flight facility was about ten minutes.
I had no clue how long the flight would be…
“Works for me,” the officer said. “As soon as she’s stable, we’ll get her rolling. How are you, Mr. Mayor?”
“Lynn,” Lynn held out his hand to the man. “And I’m doing well. How are your children, Miguel? I hear that they’re graduating this year.”
The officer, Miguel, smiled. “If they don’t get their heads out of their asses, they’re going to have a hell of a time getting there. They’ve decided to fuck off the last six months and…”
I couldn’t do the small talk.
Slipping away, I made my way toward the door.
Another officer, a baby one this time, was blocking the door.
I walked past him, and though he said something that was along the lines of ‘get back here,’ I ignored him and kept walking.
I found her in the first small room on the right, and what I saw made my flesh crawl.
The last time that I’d seen her this messed up had been twelve years ago, and I’d beaten the man responsible to death.
A moan left my throat that I hadn’t even been aware of, because when the sound emitted, the woman on the table turned toward me.
Her face was… bad.
Her eyes were swollen shut, and the only thing that I could see of her beautiful blue-green eyes were tiny little slits.
By morning, she wouldn’t even have that.
I placed my hand on my chest, right over my heart, as if that would help the severe beating that it was taking.
Her hand flexed on the bed, and she started to inch it out toward me, slow, painful millimeters at a time.
It took until she had one pinky hanging over the edge of the bed for me to realize what she wanted.
The moment I did realize, though?
I was all the way across the room, shouldering a large woman out of the way and taking her spot.
Her indignant, “Hey!” was cut off just as fast as it started.
The moment our hands touched, the frantic beating of her monitor went from through the roof to ‘almost under control.’