WEAVER: ACK! No, please, I don’t need the visual. :P I just meant, maybe he knows something?
ME: I doubt it, but…I’ll ask.
Mason had just brought another round of coffee and food no one was going to eat. He sat down next to me and handed me back my phone. He’d asked if he could make a few phone calls, since his own phone was broken, so, of course, I let him. I watched as his fingers brushed over the now-taped screen of his broken phone, and I saw the band aids I’d insisted on across his own fingers. I knew it was a comfort thing for him, so I just sat there with him a while as he stroked it.
I put my arm around him and he snuggled into me, as much as the hard chairs of the waiting room would allow. He’d seemed especially touchy-feely since last night. It was like he couldn’t keep his hands off me if we were within touching distance. Like he was soaking up all the affection to revisit later, which made absolutely no sense.
I played with his hair, running my fingers absently through his curls. The flyer Martinez gave me felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket, but I couldn’t bring myself to care as much as I probably should have, because while I was gone the doctors had come out and said we were finally able to see Hicks and I didn’t want anything taking my focus away from him.
Martinez had shared more details of the scene when they had arrived. He told me that Hicks had been unconscious. Sonny had been awake, but not really aware. Neither of the twins remembered the accident, or at least they hadn’t when they’d been brought in. Sonny had been in too much pain from his leg to really be questioned and Hicks was so confused he didn’t even know what day it was. He literally didn’t know what hit him.
They had both been thrown against the outside wall of the store. Martinez had told me he thought Hicks had probably taken the brunt of the impact. When they’d been found, he had been cradling his brother’s body, keeping pressure on the wound in his leg. He was showing signs of a traumatic brain injury, dizziness, confusion, vomiting and memory loss. He kept insisting he had to save Sonny. Hicks had somehow managed to use his belt as a makeshift tourniquet on Sonny’s leg, otherwise he might have bled out before anyone even found them.
Mama K and Mama D had just come out from their first visit with him. When they came out, both of my parents’ eyes were red from crying. I wrapped my arms around them and just held them as they cried. After a few minutes they stepped back, then sat down in one of the chairs. I sat next to them, with Mason next to me.
“Lee, why don’t you go in and see him?” Mama D said, her arm wrapped around Mama K. “The… the doctor said his CAT scan showed some bleeding in his brain. He said they have to wait a few days to do an MRI, but right now they are going to keep a very close eye on him. You’re the only one of us with any real medical experience. Can you go take a look at him, then tell us what you think?”
I nodded, taking a deep breath and snagging Mason’s hand as I stood. I didn’t know that I would be able to add anything to what the doctor was telling us, but I would do anything for my parents. A volunteer with kind eyes told us what room he was in and opened the doors to the ICU for us.
As we walked into the ICU unit, the beeps, chirps and hissing noises from the various medical equipment flashing me back to the days I’d spent in the hospital in Germany after Mack died. The same plastic smell clogged the back of my throat and I had to swallow hard to get myself to walk through the doors of the unit. Mason just gripped my hand more tightly.
We found Hicks in the bed the volunteer had directed us to. He lay quietly, his eyes closed, skin pale. One arm was wrapped in an air cast and the other had an IV running into it. His hair, which he normally tied back from his face in a perfect tail, was spread around his headlike a halo. I’d half expected that he would have a bandage wrapped around it, but all I saw was a tiny cut on his forehead with dark blue bruising around it. As we stopped next to his bed his eyes flew open, confusion filling them.
“Lee?” He asked, his eyes jumping from me to Mason. A divot appeared between his blond eyebrows. “What are you doing here? Where am I?”
I felt a pressure in my chest and couldn’t talk for a minute, but I felt Mason’s arm tighten protectively around me and drew strength from it.
“Hey C.B.,” I said, gently squeezing his shoulder on his good side. “You’re in the hospital. You and Sonny had an… an accident,” I managed, though I was pretty sure at this point that it had been no accident.
“Accident? Where’s Sonny?” he asked, looking around and trying to sit up, but wincing as he put pressure on his injured arm.
“Sonny’s in surgery,” I said, confused. Surely my parents had told him this already.
“I need to get to him,” he said, his eyes opening wider and his heart rate starting to pick up. “I have to take care of him!” He jerked upright despite the pain, eyes darting around the room, as if he was looking for a way out.
“Hey, hey, calm down, tiger,” I said, pressing gently on his body as he tried to sit up. “The best thing you can do right now is rest and heal up. You can’t do anything for him right now. The docs are working on him, and they’ll bring him right over here next to you when he gets out of surgery,” I said, nodding to the empty bed next to him.
“…Promise?” He asked, his voice for a moment taking on the lost sound of a child reaching out to his older brother to make the world right again.
“I promise, Hicks. Sonny has the best doctors working on him right now. We’re going to find out what happened and make sure those sons of bitches can never hurt another person, ever again,” I said, anger filling me as he looked at me, his face full of fear for his twin. “Do you remember what happened?”
He seemed to calm for a moment as my promise sank in, but then confusion washed over Hicks’ face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The accident,” I answered patiently, keeping an eye on the various machines connected to his body.
“What accident?” He asked, confusion apparent in his voice.
The hiss of the blood pressure cuff around his good arm hissed as he glanced around the room, at Mason and then back at me, puzzlement plain on his face.
“The accident at the store,” I said, concerned as I saw his blood pressure start to spike. “You and Sonny were coming out of the store and were hit by a car.”
“Where is he?” He demanded, again starting to sit up. “I need to take care of him!”
Shit. He still didn’t remember.
I went through the same conversation with him twice more, my heart breaking as each and every time the terror and fear for his twin exploded out from him, before deciding it would be best to slip out of the ICU before his blood pressure went up further. We finally got Hicks calmed down by promising to send Bishop in soon, then left.
