Leigh
It felt like the day couldn’t get any worse.
Our CEO let us all go home shortly after the meeting with Carl, acknowledging he should have done so on the spot. No one was focusing on their task. Even the more stoic among us were just keeping to themselves, deep in thought, perhaps not showing what they were feeling or thinking but still experiencing it all the same.
Sonny still hadn’t said a word more to me. “Got it.” What kind of fucking response was that? I’d done him a favor, and he responded with two words? He might as well have just given a thumbs-up emoji if he was going to be that damn dismissive.
I tried to calm myself. I told myself he was a busy man. I told myself that he was a biker and probably not the world’s most effusive texter.
But two fucking words?
All of the self-pity and questions, though, vanished when my phone buzzed with a text from Hailey.
“Satan’s in the hospital. I need you here.”
* * *
It all has to be connected.
That was perhaps the only thought in my head from the time I left the house to when I got to the hospital. I had only told Hailey that I was on my way right now, so it wasn’t like we had a conversation to connect the dots, but those dots had to be connected regardless. Phoenix was no ghetto of a city; sure, there was crime, but “there was crime” didn’t mean “a shooting took place at a software company and a guy got put in the hospital in something separate” while there was a biker war going on.
It left me reeling. Did I want to be a part of that world? Could I even extricate myself from that world if I wanted to? Or, because I’d merely hooked up with Sonny once, was I now destined to remain a part of this world no matter what I did? That seemed like a bunch of fucking bullshit; I knew my lifestyle wasn’t the most stable, but that didn’t mean I fucking deserved to wind up in a hellhole like this!
It was impossible to quiet the voice in my head as I rode the elevator up to the third floor. Around me, nurses and doctors talked about patients, seemingly impervious to the madness going on—or the madness that seemed destined to strike even harder soon. Who was next in these halls? Sonny?
God forbid…
I brushed past everyone as soon as the elevator doors open, walking at a brisk and determined pace. I only needed to go so far, though, before I heard the sobbing.
Hailey’s sobbing.
I turned the last corner and found her standing outside a window. Melissa was walking away from her, in the other direction, appearing to give her space. I came up to her, softly said, “Hey,” and put my arm around her. Then I turned to see Satan lying on the hospital bed, tubes all into him.
I “knew” what he would look like before I’d gotten here. I could picture him and could imagine what he might look like with tubes in him. But that paled in comparison to the gut-punch of seeing him like this.
There was just something so off about seeing a man so powerful, so tough, so in control at the mercy of modern medicine. It was hard to imagine that Satan would have ever let himself wind up in such a spot like this, but this was the reality now. Without modern medicine, Satan would be dead.
Their whole deal was that they were independent from the world and only relied on themselves, and yet here was their leader, now entirely, one hundred percent dependent on a contraption.
And it wasn’t him who was suffering the most.
It was Hailey.
She wasn’t bawling out of control. She wasn’t wailing like a grandmother in church. But every time I tried to talk to her, she just looked at me, looked back at Satan, and didn’t say anything. I stopped after my second attempt, knowing it was probably only making things worse to try and keep talking to her. I instead just provided comfort by wrapping my arm around her.
But I knew my arm around her wasn’t anywhere near the same as Satan’s arm around her. My arms provided the comfort of friendship. His arms provided the comfort of everything.
I stood by her side as long as I could before I figured Hailey just wanted to be left alone. I looked in the direction Melissa had walked and saw her at the far end of the hallway, hunched over her phone, undoubtedly texting Spawn or just trying to kill time. It was only when I saw her that I remembered they’d already lost their parents, too; what would it mean to lose a boyfriend, a serious lover?
I couldn’t even fathom that level of heartache. As much as my father and I weren’t that close, we still talked; we could still open a dialogue of meaning at any moment. That was gone for the Cook sisters. It wasn’t coming back.
And so now, too, might not Satan.
I walked over to her, took a seat next to Melissa, and leaned back and sighed.
“I know,” Melissa said. “I don’t know how to handle it. I’ve told her I would be there to help her in any way, but I think she’s just in shock. I think best we can do is be somewhat close, but not too close as to crowd her mourning.”
“Makes sense.”
