He started to explain something to them and then gestured to his head in a way that I knew he was talking about how Dory had been hurt.
He gestured to a few more places, but in the end, I looked away, unable to stomach how she’d been hurt.
“Come on,” I heard however long later. “We’re going up to the surgery floor. We’ll wait up there.”
Wake and Haggard.
Though it’d been Haggard who’d spoke.
I shook my head. “I’ll stay here.”
At least, that was my intention.
I didn’t stay there. I moved, and definitely not on my own volition.
Five minutes and an elevator ride later, I was all but plopped down into a chair in a practically empty waiting room.
There I sat.
And waited.
For hours.
How much can you take and keep moving forward. How hard could she be hit and get back up again?
I wasn’t sure that she’d survive this hit, though.
She’d survived so many before.
But not this one.
“The man that did this,” I said softly. “He…”
“We got the name from KD,” I heard Wake say.
I looked up and found the room otherwise empty except for him.
KD was gone as well.
“What?” I asked.
“We got the name from KD,” he answered. “Guy heard a lot while that fucker was standing on top of him. Trust me when I say, they’ll find him. If KD doesn’t wind back up in jail, anyway.”
I didn’t react.
But I was glad that they were out there looking.
Maybe that would mean that I could take him out before I left…
“Dory Crow?” I heard called.
I stood on numb legs and looked at the haggard looking female doctor that was standing in the entryway of the waiting room.
“That’s my wife,” I croaked.
The doctor nodded. “You are aware of her injuries?”
I nodded.
“We were able to fix all of them,” she said. “She has stitches from here to here.” She gestured from ear to ear. “All blood supply as of right now is looking good. We’re hopeful that there will be no lasting effects from that.”
I nodded and swallowed hard.
“The bones in her left hand were pulverized. We did the best we could with rods, screws, and the help of a phenomenal doctor. We’re hopeful that she’ll regain function of that hand again. But she’ll never be able to have any of those removed. They’re there permanently.”
I closed my eyes and felt grief well inside of me.
“The incision on her abdomen where we took the baby out was fairly large. We closed her up…” She gestured from sternum to pubic bone. “But she’ll have a lot of scarring there from a few pieces of shrapnel that we had to remove.”
My mouth was dry as the Sahara.
“She has a broken right ankle. Multiple broken ribs.” She hesitated, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what she said next.
“She’s had a stroke,” the doctor admitted. “Whether it was from the birth, or the surgery… we don’t know. She’s on life support. There’s a machine breathing for her. We’ve put her into a medically induced coma to hopefully help with the brain swelling.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” Wake said, eyeing the doctor. “Can he see her?”
The doctor’s eyes moved from me to Wake and back.
“As of right now, no,” she said. “She’s in the ICU. Visiting hours are over. They don’t open again until tomorrow morning at nine. However, your child can use a visit.”
Your child can use a visit.
“Please,” I croaked. “Just for a second. I won’t stay. I just… just for a second.”
The doctor’s eyes softened. “Follow me.”
I did. And wished I didn’t.
CHAPTER 26
Welcome to adulthood. I hope you like ibuprofen.
-Haggard to Bram
HAGGARD
“Oh, holy fuck,” I heard myself say.
“It’s really bad,” Tide said, eyeing the photos. “I just wanted you to see her so you could gauge how to act. She’s not doing well at all.”
I swallowed hard.
“We gotta find this man,” I said. “For the things that he did to her.”
“Agreed,” Tide murmured, giving the phone to Shine, who blanched.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Is she… can she come back from all of that?”
Meaning, would she be able to live a normal life after having suffered so much damage?
“People come back from a lot of things,” Tide said. “The doctor that did this work is a phenomenon. She’s going to look just fine. She hid all the scars in her hairline from where her scalp was ripped from her head. The hand that they had to reconstruct with all the hardware… that one might be tricky. But all the nerves, blood supply, muscles and everything are still there. Hopefully they’ll be able to get that back to functioning. Everything else is just a whole lot of bluster. Broken leg will heal in six weeks. Abdomen, women heal from C-sections all the time.”
“That wasn’t a normal C-section,” Shine grumbled darkly.
“No, it sure the fuck was not.” Price handed my phone back to Tide.
Easton, who’d been the first to look at the photo, had a green tinge to his face.
“We got any leads?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Got a name. An address, and everything else we could pull on him, thanks to your guys. I have a guy really good with computers on everything else from his end. All we need to do is find him.”
“Since he’s bomb happy.” Tide shoved his phone back into his pocket. “We need to be extremely careful about this.”
We did need to be careful.
And we would.
But we would locate him. We would bring him back to Texas. And he would be our newest ward of Hotel Crow.
CHAPTER 27
When I said I liked it rough, I didn’t mean my entire life.
-T-shirt
BRAM
“He’s gonna need to be here for about a week or so,” the nurse currently picking my child up said. “But we’d love to get him some skin-to-skin time.”
At first, I had no clue what that was.
Not until the nurse explained.
I swallowed hard past the lump in my chest at the sight of our baby hooked up to so many wires and tubes and pulled off my shirt.
The nurse handed me a warm blanket that she then helped drape behind my back, and I sat back in the chair that she’d pulled up to Harker’s bedside.
“Now, what you’re gonna do…” the nurse said, then explained exactly how I would hold him and what I would need to do to avoid pulling off any wires.
Minutes later, the nurse walked away, and I got my first good look at my son up close and personal.
“You have your momma’s nose,” I whispered to my boy. “And her hair. All that beautiful, blonde hair.”
The baby moved, his hand opening and closing over my chest.
“Your mother is the best person in this world,” I whispered. “Let me tell you all about her.”