Dylan's phone rings and he glances at it, then sighs. "It's my lawyer. I have to take this, excuse me.”
Dylan walks off, and I turn to Hawk, who gives me an encouraging smile.
“Feeling better?” He asks me.
I sigh but nod. “I’ll feel even better when DJ is in my arms.”
“I know.”
When Dylan comes back, he looks like he’s been tumbling around in a dryer. “It doesn’t make any sense. There has to be some other explanation. I would have known if my wife was a fucking drug addict. I would have noticed.”
“Addicts are the best liars,” Hawk tells him, but Dylan doesn’t seem to register it.
“Fucking shit,” he exclaims, kicking one of the plastic chairs. “It’s just one blow after another. This is the last thing I need right now,” he says churlishly, and I’m upset that Hawk’s stepped in front of me when the tantrum started because it makes punching Dylan’s idiotic face more difficult.
“Your wife almost killed our son, you asshole! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
My uncharacteristic display of ire seems to sober him. He looks around the waiting room as if he's seeing it for the first time.
“Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. Thank God Junior’s okay. Fuck. I’m sorry.”
His eyes are feverish while he rants, “Where would she even get the drugs? She was always...” Dylan breaks off, clenching his jaw. “That fucker Claw. I covered that asshole’s bail.” He shakes his head. “No. She was supposed to watch him for an hour and then drive him to the party. She wouldn’t have gotten high with my son in the house. There’s no way.”
His voice has been growing increasingly more desperate throughout his monologue.
I shoot Hawk a concerned glance. Could Dylan be having a nervous breakdown?
Thankfully, in that moment, a nurse walks up to us to take us to DJ’s room.
My boy laughs and babbles like nothing’s wrong, and I cry as I rain kisses on him. I clutch him to my chest for ten minutes, all the while thinking about what to do and how to do it.
This is Rebel’s third strike.
When Dylan cheated on me with her, I tried not to hold it against her. As morally bankrupt as she is, she wasn’t the one who owed me honesty or fidelity.
When she indirectly endangered my life through the mistaken identity kidnapping, I told myself that it wasn’t her fault. I mean, stealing from a drug lord was, but the two of us apparently looking alike and Beavis and Butthead being idiots - she had nothing to do with that.
But now… Now my hands itch to wring her neck.
That fucking bitch got high around my small child, maybe even exposed his system to the drugs, and then she put him in the car and drove while knowing she was impaired by whatever she took.
She could have killed him, I realize.
She’s pure evil.
“Can you two hang out with DJ for a while? I have to go to the bathroom,” I ask Hawk and Dylan, and both men nod.
One of the nurses directs me to room 304, and I carefully crack the door open to make sure no one but the patient is inside.
Pale, beautiful Rebel is lying in bed with all kinds of tubes attached to her. She looks much skinnier than the last time I saw her.
Her eyes are closed, but her breathing isn’t as steady as one would expect from a sleeping person.
“Hello, Rebel,” I say as I poke her bandaged clavicle.
“Ow,” she exclaims as she jerks away from me, but it only causes her more pain.
Good.
