Oh, God, it still made him want to hurl.
He got his shit together and grabbed his bag, calling down to the desk to get him a cab. He’d go to the airport and wait for whatever flight they could get him on.
Dillon just had to pray that he could get there before Coke up and disappeared on him.
“What the fuckdo you think you’re doing? Pardon my French, sir.” Bonner stood at the door of thehospital room, eyes wide. “Mr. Coke, man. You’re gonna get me killed.”
“I saved your butt.” He winked over, trying his dead-level best not to puke on the kid’s so carefully polished boots. “Son, did you bring me a truck?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it gonna get me to Texas?”
“Yes, sir. Daddy said she was good to go.” Had he ever been so young? Coke didn’t think so.
Not at all.
“Then don’t you worry on me.”
He’d been in this goddamn place for two nights post-surgery, which was one night too many. Goddamn nurses bothering him and poking him and waking his ass up. A man with a broke neck needed his sleep.
He needed his house.
There was only so much any one man could take. He’d most likely lost a lover, broken his hand and his neck, had a zillion fucking stitches, and had tubes in his cock, his nose and his throat—all in a three-day period.
He had had enough.
Besides, the relief fund needed all the help it could get. That money could be spent on someone else hanging in the hospital.
Another week his ass.
Nate was at the arena, working with Fred. Ace was somewhere doing something stupid. Jason was freaking out at AJ’s, Brenda and Jack had called him enough that he’d just turned his phone off, and he had finally guilted the little boy whose ass he’d saved into calling Daddy and getting him transportation.
Sixteen hundred and fifty miles to home.
He could dothis.
“Hand me that there gauze, son. I gotta get this IV out before you help me get my boots on.”
“Whut? Mr. Coke, I…”
“Son, this ain’t my first broke neck. I got my jeans on, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I did it one-handed with the brace.” Hell, the shirt was gonna be a hell of a lot harder, not that he was going to tell the kid that.
Good boy. “Then come on, I’ve got a lot of road ahead of me and that harridan of a Yankee nurse might actually make rounds this evening.”
Lord help him. He just needed to get his happy ass home.
“I’m sorry,sir. He’s gone.”
“Gone.” The word came out flat and unsurprised. God damn it, he should have known. The fifteen-hour trip had taken twenty-six, and by midday Saturday, Dillon was feeling a day late and more than a few dollars short.
“Yes.” The little nurse clutched a chart in her hands and looked anywhere but at his face. “We didn’t know until late Thursday night. The doctor had told us to let him sleep and only wake him for his medication.”
“I see. Well. Thank you. If I see him, I’ll call.”
