“Axel…”
Like a man in a trance, he pushed his way through the crowd that had just watched him beat James into a bloody pulp. He could see Mia in the street with tears streaming down her face as she sat next to their son. Axel was still not moving. He dropped down to his knees next to Mia and his son. The blood pool underneath his head was larger now and although he was still breathing, his breaths were slow and shallow. “Where the fuck is the ambulance?” he screamed out to no one in particular.
“It’s coming, son. I can hear it.” Frank was at his side once more. Asher looked up at him and then down the street. It was suddenly like his head was in a vacuum. He couldn't hear the ambulance coming but he could make out the blurred shape of it through his puffy, blood-shot eyes. He looked back at Axel’s pale face. It was like he was watching the life drain out of him onto the asphalt. The ambulance stopped behind them and Asher had to physically move Mia out of the way. She felt as strong as an ox as she tried to break out of his grasp and get to her baby. They stood helplessly by as Axel was strapped onto a body board and loaded onto a stretcher. The light from the ambulance was blinding as they watched him be channelled to it.
Mia shrugged Asher’s hand off of her arm and ran to the ambulance.
“I’m going with him,” she said. She didn’t leave room for argument as she climbed inside.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Frank told her as the doors closed. Asher couldn’t take his eyes from his son. He stood there and watched as the ambulance rushed off down the street. When it disappeared Frank said, “Come on, let’s follow them.” Asher followed Frank to his car and that was when he saw the other ambulance and the police cars. They were loading James into an ambulance and one of the witnesses was pointing Asher out to the policeman. Asher waited while the cop made his way towards him. When he got close he said,
“Are you Asher Fury?”
“Yes.”
“The boy that was hit was your son?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“If you follow me to the hospital. I have to get there and make sure my son is okay.”
Asher’s hand was on the passenger side door as the cop said, “I need to get your statement first, sir.”
Frank visibly tensed as Asher stepped up into the cop’s face. “This is my statement, James Proctor ran my son down like an animal in the street. All the damage you see on his face now is not going to even come close to what I’m going to do to him if Axel is not okay. Now, I’m going to the hospital to be with my family. If you need any more than that from me, you can meet me there.” He got in the passenger side of the car and Frank scrambled quickly to the driver’s side. Neither of them said a word on the way to the hospital.
**
Frank had barely stopped the car before Asher stepped out and ran in through the sliding Emergency room doors. He walked up to the desk and the girl sitting there was on the phone. He could tell she was talking to a friend or boyfriend by the way she was twisting her hair and giggling. He gave her about two seconds to hang up and notice him. When she didn’t, he slammed his hand down on the counter in front of her. She lowered the phone and with a mixture of fear and attitude she said, “Can I help you?”
“My son was just brought in by ambulance. His name is Axel Halloway. I want to see him.”
“Have a seat and…”
“No. I’m not having a fucking seat.” He felt Frank touch him again. This time he shrugged him off. “Get on that computer and find out where my son is.”
“Asher, they’ll kick you out of here if you don’t calm down.”
“They can try,” he said. The girl was looking at the computer. A second later she said, “He’s in 3B.” Asher was already headed for the door. “You can’t go back there right now. The nurse has to buzz you in!” As Asher and Frank made it to the door, a doctor was coming out. Asher grabbed it to keep it from closing and went through. Frank followed him. Asher looked at the signs on the doors and when he got to 3B he found Mia sitting in a chair sobbing. She was alone. He felt like his heart stopped.
“Where is he? What happened?”
Mia looked up at them. Her face was swollen and her eyes barely opened. “They took him to surgery,” she said.
“For what? What’s wrong with him?”
“They said he was bleeding in his brain. They had to relieve the pressure. He had a seizure in the ambulance.”
“Fuck!” Asher ran his hands through his hair as paced the floor. Frank stood in the corner with wide eyes and Mia sobbed softly. After several minutes, a male nurse came into the room and said, “I’m Brad, the head nurse here. I’d like to take you folks up to the surgery waiting room. Axel won’t come back here. He’ll be in surgery for a while and then in recovery before they get him into a room.”
“Do you know anything? What’s wrong with him?” Asher heard his voice crack and that pissed him off.
“No sir, I haven’t heard anything new since the ER doctor spoke to Miss Halloway.”
Asher nodded and reached his hand down to Mia. She took it and he pulled her up against him. She clutched onto him as they followed the nurse to the surgical waiting room. It was a clean, comfortable room with about twenty anxious and depressed looking people sitting and standing and pacing and crying. It made Asher’s anxiety worse. The rage had finally lifted and made way for the anxiety and sadness. He held Mia and occasionally whispered reassuring words to her that he didn’t believe himself. Frank sat like a stone and stared at the television with no volume playing on the wall. Asher tried concentrating on the television or Mia or anything that would stop the vision of Axel being hit by that car and flying up into the air from replaying over and over in his head. They sat like that for hours and the morning light was already slipping in through the blinds when a doctor stepped into the room and said, “For Axel Halloway.”
They all got to their feet at once. Asher was happy to see the doctor had silver hair. He knew it didn’t make sense but he felt better knowing that his boy was being taken care of by a mature man and not a kid. He was clean-cut and his movements seemed deliberate and precise. He had a deep voice and when he started talking to them he used non-medical friendly terms, but he didn’t dumb it down so much that he made them feel like idiots.
“I’m Dr. Roberts. I’m the surgeon attending to Axel. You are?”
“I’m his mother, Mia.” Mia’s voice was a raspy whisper. Asher squeezed the shoulder he was holding onto and said, “I’m Asher Fury, his father and this is Frank Halloway, his grandfather. How is my son?”
“He took a really hard blow to the back of his head. There was an open area near his neck and that’s where all of the bleeding was coming from. But on the MRI we saw a spot deeper in the brain that was bleeding inside. The pressure was building inside his skull and that’s what caused the seizure on the way in. We repaired the bleed and put in a shunt to drain the fluid. That’s what took the longest. He also has a fractured arm and three broken ribs. One of the ribs punctured his lung. We repaired that as well. He will have to be attached to a chest tube for several days to drain the fluid.”
Mia was shaking so hard that her body leaning against Asher’s was making him shake, or maybe he was shaking on his own. He wasn’t sure. “Is he going to be okay?”
“The best answer to that is we did all we could for him and now we wait. Until he wakes up, we really won’t know. He’s in a medical induced coma right now, so I don’t want anyone to panic when you see that he still has a tube in his throat and a machine breathing for him. It will give his brain time to recover and be able to take the regulation of his vital signs back over more slowly.”
“Can I see him?” Mia sounded on the verge of tears again.
“He’ll be in recovery for an hour or so before they take him up to ICU. You can see him there.”
Frank thanked the doctor. Mia and Asher were still standing there like they were made of stone long after he left. Mia was sobbing silently again and Asher was thinking that this was his curse; one more person he loved had been struck down and it was his fault once again. When would this ever end?
The hour that Axel was in recovery passed excruciatingly slow. A nurse, dressed in scrubs with her hair in a blue net and blue shoe covers on, finally came in and called out Axel’s name. The three of them, exhausted, and puffy-eyed and tear-stained cheeks, leapt to their feet.
“If you will all follow me, I will take you to the ICU.”
“Is he okay?” Mia asked her. The nurse smiled gently and said, “He is still stable.”
As they followed her, in an effort to think about anything else but the images that were driving him crazy, Asher looked around at the décor of the hospital. The hallway she was leading them through had as much personality as the rest of it that he had seen so far. The floor was white with brown tiles and the walls were all white. The ceiling above them was made from polystyrene squares laid out in a grid. He had spent part of the night counting them. That hadn’t worked either. The lights were blindingly bright as they bounced off the white walls. It was intrusive, Asher thought. No one here felt well enough for the bright lights, not even the visitors. There were cheap commercial prints hanging here and there that did little to add to the appeal of the place, but overall he had to admit that at least it looked and smelled clean and the people seemed to be caring and professional.
The nurse led them through a set of heavy double doors that opened with a big metal button on the wall. Inside, they could hear the beeps and swooshes of the machines. Mia tightened her grip on him as the nurse led them deeper inside. She stopped at the third glass cubicle. A curtain hung on the inside of all four walls of the glass room. She pulled open the sliding door and that’s when they finally saw him. Asher’s chest hurt immediately and Mia collapsed into her father’s arms and began to sob again. Frank was shaking so hard Asher could see his arms and legs moving. Axel looked so young and vulnerable lying against the stark white sheets. His dark hair was partially obscured by a white bandage but strands of it poked out here and there and provided a sharp contrast to all the white around him. His skin was pale, almost translucent and he had a tinge of dark stubble on his upper lip and chin that made his skin look even whiter. He had a tube coming out his mouth that attached to another that went to a big machine beside the bed. An IV ran into one arm and three bags of liquids and medications hung from the pole. He had a sling on the other arm and his ribs were wrapped with tape or bandages. Another thick tube came out the side of his chest and was attached to a machine that sat on the floor next to his bed. Other machines beeped and dinged around him and the sight of it all was almost too much for Asher. He felt like his heart was breaking.
Mia let go of Frank and stood next to the bed looking down at her son. She leaned over the railing and placed a soft kiss on the side of his face. “I love you baby. Mom’s here. You keep fighting. We need you baby. Dad’s here and Grandpa. We all need you. You keep fighting to wake up. Please wake up.” One of her tears splashed off her face and onto Axel’s. Asher watched as it rolled down his cheek. He reached over without thinking about it and wiped the tear off his son’s face. He leaned down where his mouth was close to Axel’s ear and said, “Dad’s here. I won’t leave until you go with me. I’m so sorry, son. I’m so damned sorry! I love you so much!” Asher felt the burn of hot tears in the corners of his eyes. He stepped back and let Frank step up to beside the bed.
“Hey buddy! It’s Grandpa. Open your eyes and tell your Mama that you’re okay so she’ll quit worrying, okay?” Frank was fighting through the tears too as he leaned down and gave his grandson a kiss on his cheek. “I love you, Axel, so damned much.” His voice cracked and he had to turn away too. Eventually Frank had a seat in one of the chairs. Mia stayed in her spot next to the bed, holding his hand and Asher paced back and forth, wearing a hole in the tile. Asher couldn’t turn off the thoughts in his head. This was his fault. He had taunted Proctor and he left that office feeling pretty damned cocky about it. Now his son and the rest of his family were once again suffering because of something he did. If Axel died he would never, ever forgive himself.
Asher finally couldn’t stand the deafening silence in the room. “Does anyone want coffee?” Mia almost imperceptibly shook her head.
“Sure,” Frank said. “Maybe a bottle of water for Mia.” Asher nodded. He went over to where Mia stood and rested his hand on her back. She melded into his side and relieved, he held her there. He was so afraid that she blamed him too. He kissed the top of her head and said,
“Are you sure you don’t want anything, baby?”
She nodded and he felt her squeeze her arms around him for a second before letting him go. That made him feel a little better, but feeling good again was a distant hope. Axel would have to wake up and be okay, and the man who had done this to him would have to pay.
He left Axel’s room and started down the hallway full of glass rooms. He was almost to the exit door when he saw something out of the corner of his eye that caught his attention. A man laying in a bed like the one Axel was in. His face was swollen and his eyes were closed and puffy. He had a tube that went into his throat attached to a machine that was breathing for him. It was James Proctor and next to the bed stood Randall. The sight of them both, even with James in the condition he was, tore through Asher like a storm.