“I was just following orders. Seriously though, open the door, we need to get going,” Bronze ordered.
I slammed the phone down and turned to Jamie. “We’re being taken to the hospital. You should get that looked at while we are there.”
***
Bronze led Jamie and I to a waiting room somewhere deep in the hospital. When my eyes fell on Dash, I took off running. I launched myself into his arms and thankfully, he caught me. “It’s not you!” I said into his neck.
He pulled back from me, “You don’t know?”
“No one told me anything, just that we needed to come here,” I said, irritated.
He pulled my hand and led me to a chair to sit. “I can’t say much, given where we are and all, but we found Phoenix.”
My eyes started to fill with tears, “Is he okay?”
“We don’t know anything yet. He was in a bad way when we found him. We brought him here right away and we haven’t heard anything yet.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“All I can tell you is that he was unconscious and he was barely breathing when we got there.” He held me close to his chest and I let the tears fall before I pulled myself together and waited to hear from a doctor. I was determined to be strong for my dad.
I looked up and glanced around the room to see who was in here with us. I noticed Byte and a few of the members from the Devil Springs chapter spread out around the room. My eyes landed on a guy that looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I leaned into Dash and asked, “Who’s that?”
“You don’t recognize him?”
“He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.”
Dash whispered in my ear, “He’s from the farm.” I immediately stiffened. Why was he here? “It’s okay. He’s the one who helped us find Phoenix. I’ll explain more later.” He helped them? And he was from the farm? Nothing was making any sense.
I leaned forward, “Hi, my name’s Ember. Thank you for helping them find my dad.” I held my hand out to him.
He reluctantly took my hand and gently shook it. “I’m glad I was able to help. I’m Coal by the way. My parents work at the dairy farm. Or they did…”
Dash cleared his throat, effectively interrupting him, “We can talk about all that later, when we have more privacy.”
Coal looked sheepish, “Yeah, sorry man. This is all new to me.”
“It’s all good.”
It was two more hours before a doctor finally came to speak to us. “Family of Phoenix Black?”
I leaped to my feet. “Yes! That’s me! I’m his daughter. Please, how is he?”
“He’s stable at the moment.” He looked around the room and eyed the bikers warily. He lowered his voice, “I am quite concerned as to how he acquired his injuries.”
Dash stepped up beside me. “So are we. We found him like that and got him here as soon as we could. If you haven’t already notified the authorities, I will. We were just waiting to hear how he was doing first.”
The doctor’s whole attitude changed after Dash spoke. “Yes, we have informed the police. It’s hospital policy to report things of this nature. Mr. Black was unresponsive due to a significant amount of drugs in his system. We were able to counteract some of them with medications, but we still need to monitor him closely until all of the lab work has come back and we’re sure everything has been flushed out of his system. It appears he was beaten, rather severely, with a blunt object of some kind. He has significant bruising over the majority of his body. He has blood in his urine due to a contusion on one of his kidneys. Currently, there is no active internal bleeding that we could find, but again, we will continue to monitor him closely. He has five fractured ribs, his left tibia is broken, and his right shoulder was dislocated. We have stabilized his ribs, set his tibia and casted his lower left leg, and reduced his shoulder. He is not awake, but he is breathing on his own. He’s going to be moved to the ICU shortly.”
“Can I see him? Please?” I begged.
“As soon as he gets to the ICU, you can see him. Any other questions?”
Tears fell freely down my face. “I don’t think so. Thank you for saving my dad.”
He looked at me with gentle eyes, “He’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s doing a lot better than he was when he got here. He’s in the best place he could be to beat this. I’ll go let the nurses know they can move him to his room now. You can go on up to the waiting room and they’ll come get you when you can visit.”
Dash held out his hand, “Thank you, doctor.” They shook hands and the doctor disappeared down the hallway.
