“Yeah, I’m gonna?—”
He frowned as his phone started vibrating across the desk surface.
It was the hospital.
Levi flung off his headset without another word, ignoring the shouts of his teammates through the tinny speaker. He snagged his phone and headed to the tiny living room of their shoebox-sized apartment.
Shiloh? Had Jericho found him? Had Levi’s actions caused the boy a level of injury that required a hospital?
Levi shook his head. That didn’t make any sense. How would Jericho have found Shiloh and why would the hospital call Levi? If Jericho had somehow found Shiloh, Jericho would have been the one to call.
That only left one other person. Dread settled like a lead weight over his shoulders. He swiped to answer. “Hello?”
“Is this Levi Akira?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.
Levi hesitated before finally saying, “Yeah? Who’s this?”
The man seemed taken aback by Levi’s unnecessarily aggressive tone, but Levi didn’t apologize. “I’m Dr. Claymore. Your mother is Naomi Reynolds, correct?”
An eerie feeling settled in his chest, a strange tension or anticipation building like a wire being pulled tighter and tighter, until it felt like he was ready to snap. “Is she dead?” he asked, voice icy.
“What?” the man said, clearly startled. “No. No. But there has been an accident.”
Levi couldn’t even hide his sigh. Nico came out of his room wearing threadbare boxers and a hoodie, frowning at him in question.
Levi held up a finger at him to stay quiet. “What kind of accident?”
At the wordaccident, Nico drifted closer, mouthing, “Naomi?”
Levi nodded, putting it on speaker so Nico could hear and he wouldn’t have to rehash the whole conversation in five minutes when he hung up.
“It seems your mother was hit by a bus whi?—”
“A bus?” Nico gasped, clutching his chest like something out of a soap opera. He was nothing if not dramatic.
“My mom got hit by a bus?” Levi shouted, feeling like he’d slipped into theTwilight Zone.
“And she’s alive?” Nico stage-whispered, eyes bugging.
“Yes,” Dr. Claymore said. Levi didn’t know which of them he was answering, but it didn’t matter. “Luckily, it had just begun to pull from a curb when your mother…jumped in front of it,so they were only going about five miles an hour. She has some minor scrapes and contusions.”
“Was she trying to off herself or something?” Nico asked into the mic.
Dr. Claymore hesitated. “It was very hard to get a full narrative, but what we’ve pieced together is she tried to board the bus to go to the store, they refused her access, then she jumped in front of the bus as it was taking off so they couldn’t leave without her.”
Levi was long past being shocked by his mother’s antics. “Oh. Okay. Well, are you calling me to come get her or something…”
The man cleared his throat. “Oh, no, that’s not possible. Mr. Akira…your mother is—well, your mother was brought in with a blood alcohol level of 0.34. In most people, that would be enough to have them seizing, maybe even comatose. Your mother, however, was combative. She kicked one of the nurses and started tossing lunch trays off a cart in the hallway.”
Of course, she had.
“Jesus,” Levi muttered.
“We’re calling to notify you that we have her in medical restraints, but that we are following strict protocols as mandated to us by law. Due to her severe intoxication and disregard for safety, we do have her on a seventy-two hour hold as we believe she is a danger to herself and others.”
“Like a psych hold?” Levi asked, trying to wrap his head around what the man was saying.
“Yes, but she’s not being transferred to a mental health facility. She is being medically detoxed here in the ICU so we can closely monitor her.”
