Uncontrollable (48 page)

Josh grabs a hold of her and tries to get her over
to the chairs that align the wall. I look up to see my mom and dad enter the
hospital as well with Micah right behind them as he speaks quickly on his cell.
I’m guessing he’s talking to Holly. They have about the same reaction of
Courtney except my father is able to get a hold of my mother a lot easier.

I turn back to face the only person who can give me
any answers. “Did you get the call?” I know cops get called to crashes all the
time.

 He shakes his head. “I was following her.”

 I pause for a second then repeat his words.
“Following her? Why?”

 “I went to your house to see her.” I don’t know
why but his words make me furious.

I grab a hold of his uniform and slam his back
against the wall. “What the fuck were you doing over at my house for the second
time today?”

 “Really?” he growls placing his face in front of
mine. “I went over there to check on her. I told you, she was sick, but you
didn’t seem to care. Someone needed to check on her.”

“That’s not your fucking job,” I spit out.

“Where the fuck were you?” he yells.

 “What I do is none of your fucking business,” I
shout.

He tries to shove me off but I just push him into
the wall harder. He takes a deep breath and his light brown eyes stare into
mine. “Let me tell you what
your
business
is
,” he grounds out.
“Your wife!” he hollers. “You know the one you’ve been ignoring since
yesterday? You should be thanking me for being there today. I was the one who
screamed her name while trying to keep her conscious. I was the one scared to
death that my best friend was going to lose his wife and child while she lay
lifeless in the middle of a fucking street. Where in the fuck were you, Slade?
What in the fuck did you do besides ignore her all day?” His voice rises with
every sentence, and he’s spitting the words at me.

 By now everyone is staring at us and Courtney’s
cries have grown louder with the details but I can’t seem to focus on anything.
My head is spinning and my ears are ringing.
Lifeless body lying in the
street? Lose my wife and child?

“Slade?” Parker asks more with concern than hatred
as he places his hands on my shoulders.

 What do I do? One of my best friends just told me
he saved my wife’s life when I wasn’t there for her. And what do I do?

 I hit him. I hit him with all the anger I have. I don’t
deserve her. I don’t deserve him as a friend.

I reach out and stabilize him before he falls to
the floor. He looks up at me wide-eyed—shocked that after what he confessed I
hit him instead of hugged him.

Then his eyes narrow on me.

 A hand hits my chest hard pushing me back into the
opposite wall. My dad stands between us and glares at me. “Control yourself!”
he demands.

I spin around and see a tray full of medical
supplies. I shove it over. The sound of them hitting the floor covers
Courtney’s cries but it also attracts the attention of others. So I turn around
and walk back out the front doors of the hospital. Two arms grab me from
behind. I’m shoved into the outside wall of the hospital and Parker is in my
face. “Now is not the time to get arrested. Do you understand me?”

“Parker?” my father yells from behind him. He pulls
away and takes a step back.

 I look down to my white button up dress shirt, now
covered in my wife’s blood. My legs give out, and I slide down to the cool
ground and pull my knees up to my chest.

 “What the fuck happened?” My voice shakes as much
as my body does.

Parker stands over me as he looks out over the
parking lot. “I went over to check on her,” he repeats. “She was a total mess.”
He swallows. “She…” He pauses and I see him close his eyes tightly before he
opens them and continues. “She said she had gone to see Jax.”

 “What?” I choke on the word. “When…why?” Words are
lost on me.

 “She went sometime today. He told her that someone
was after you. Someone wanted to hurt you. She said she called and texted you
to try to warn you but you wouldn’t answer.”

 I place my forehead against my knees. This whole
time she was trying to warn me, and I was ignoring her because of what I found
out about Jeremy. How could I have been so careless?
Please forgive me,
Angel.

 “She said you were going to leave her. I reassured
her everything would be okay. That you guys just needed to talk.” He pauses for
a few seconds. “Work was slow so I told her to get in my car. That I was gonna
take her over to your parents for you two to talk. After several minutes she
agreed to go but she wanted to drive. She said she didn’t want to be out late
and that she was already tired.” His voice is quiet, and I have a feeling he’s
blaming himself for what happened.

“I was right behind her. I saw the entire thing. I
couldn’t do anything but watch.” His voice cracks. “You have to believe me, I
tried to do everything I could.”

 Tears run down my face and I try to swallow the
lump in my throat.
He tried to do everything he could?
Does that mean he
knows she’s not going to make it?

“What about the car that hit her?” my father asks
trying to take Parker’s eyes off of me as I cry. “Are they here as well?”

 Parker shakes his head looking down at his feet.
“After it hit her, it veered off and hit something else.” He shakes his head.
“I didn’t see what it hit. I just know that it caught on fire, and they didn’t
make it,” he adds quietly.

 I can’t even imagine what those family members are
going through right now. I’m a fucking wreck just thinking about losing her.

 I hear the sliding glass doors open to the
hospital and then my mother comes running out. “A nurse is looking for you
Slade.”

 I take off once again

I sit quietly in the
waiting room with everyone as we wait for her to get out of surgery. I have
been updated twice so far. The first time I was told that she had internal
bleeding due to blunt force trauma. They had to put her on ventilator, and that
she has a chest tube due to a collapsed lung. They said that once she is out of
surgery they will keep her sedated for eight to twelve hours in order for her
body to rest.

I rock back and forth as I go over the last couple
of days. Everything has been perfect, and I fucked it all up. I still hate that
she kept what happened with Jeremy from me but I hate how I reacted more. I
should have never treated her that way. To the point where she thought I was
going to leave her. She’s pregnant for fuck’s sake, she’s probably been scared
to death. Parker did say that she was sick. Plus she went and saw Jax. What
would make her do that?

 I stand quickly when I see the same nurse in blue
scrubs from earlier approaching me. “It shouldn’t be much longer before we move
your wife up to the ICU. If you guys want to head up to the twelfth floor, the
receptionist will tell you where to wait for her,” she says nicely.

“Is she still doing okay?” I pray to God that he
saves her. If I could, I would take her place. I would do anything to keep her
from having to go through this.

 She nods once and then responds, “She’s stable.”

I asked about our baby earlier, and they said that
they were monitoring the baby and it is doing well for now. The fact that she’s
not very far along is a good thing, because in some cases where the mother is
farther along, a woman’s body will automatically sacrifice the baby in order to
save the mother.

 It was still going to be a long road to recovery,
but at least she got through surgery with no complications.

We all get up and make our way up to the twelfth
floor. When we were told everything went well, and she was going to be sedated
for at least eight hours, I tried to send Courtney home. But she just ended up
crying harder, refusing to leave the hospital until she could see her best
friend.

 At some point, Tate finally arrived. I guess
Parker had already called him before I had. He was a couple hours out of town
but made it back in half the time.

Micah keeps checking his watch. He had called Holly
as soon as we had been told the news of her accident, and she caught the next
plane home to be here for her best friend. I couldn’t help but be jealous as he
apologized to her for how he reacted to him finding out about Jeremy.

I wish I had been that forgiving. I wish I could
have been the man I promised her that I would be in front of our friends and
family. Instead I was hotheaded and a piece of shit to her. The same way I’ve
always been.

I make my way to the desk and tell them my name
along with hers. We are then shown to a new area where we can sit.

I take a seat, and Tate comes to sit beside me.

 I clear my tight throat. “Has anyone called
Missy?” I ask looking up. She’s the only one besides Holly who isn’t here.

 “I tried. She wouldn’t answer,” Tate says so only
I can hear.

 Courtney nods her head as tears run down her face.
“She’s on her way,” she sobs as Josh wraps his arms around her.

 I just nod my head to her. My head drops down, and
I run a hand through my messy hair. I think back to the first time I ever heard
Angel’s voice. How much she had affected me before I ever even saw that
beautiful face.

“Hi. I’m, uh, looking for Slade.” The sweetest
sounding voice that I have ever heard comes from the other end of the line. My
body instantly reacts, making my already hard cock jerk.

“That’s him…me. I mean, this is he.” Fuck,
what’s wrong with me? I clear my throat, since I can’t seem to speak properly,
and continue to stand in the dark, waiting to hear what she has to say.

“Hi, Slade. My name is Samantha Hall. I’m so
sorry to be calling you this late…early. Your brother, Micah, said you could
help me.”

Help her? I haven’t been any help to her. All I’ve
done since then is hurt her. It started out as instant attraction. I wanted
her. Needed her sexually. Then I ended up falling in love with her. Needed more
than her body. I needed her to give me everything she had to offer. And now it
looks like she’s giving her life for my stupidity.

“It’s not your fault you know,” Tate interrupts my
thoughts.

 “Yes it is,” I mumble. It goes back to the
beginning. If she wouldn’t have fallen in love with me she would have gone down
a very different road. One that didn’t lead her to this hospital.

“Mr. Long?” My head snaps up when I hear my name.

 “Yes?”

“You may see your wife now,” a nurse says getting
my attention. I stand quickly and wipe my sweaty palms on my dress slacks,
before I walk over to her desk. She points me to an alcove-like room that is
open to a central region. The staff sits at a big circular area in order to
view all patients while in ICU.

 The area is busy with RNs, physicians, nurse
aides, and other staff.

I make my way over to her small room and pull back
the curtain. A nurse in light yellow scrubs looks up at me from a machine.

 “Hello,” she says in a kind voice. “I’m Vicki,
you’re wife’s nurse.” She motions down to the chart in her hand. “I’m just
going to write down a few things and then I will leave you two alone.”

I nod once before my eyes land on my wife laying in
a hospital bed once again. But this time is different. I take a step toward her,
and my heart stops. I have physical pain in my chest as if someone just stabbed
me with an ice pick. She has tubes and wires running to machines that are on
both sides of her bed and hanging on the wall behind her head. She looks so
frail and lifeless. I instantly have that vision of how we found her when Jax
had taken her but this time she looks worse. Bruises and cuts dot her beautiful
face. Her eyes are swollen, and she has a white bandage wrapped around the top
of her forehead. She doesn’t look anywhere near like herself. Her usually tan
skin is white as if drained from all color.

“Is she in any pain?” My voice cracks, and I feel
my legs start to shake.

“Here,” the nurse says coming around to me. She
scoots a chair closer to the bed and gestures for me to sit.

I run a hand over my face as I try to swallow the
lump in my throat. I shakily grab a hold of the chair and sit down.

“No,” she says getting my attention. “She’s heavily
sedated and on a continuous infusion of pain medication. We’re watching her
closely, to control any pain and anxiety.”

 I go to grab a hold of her hand, and I see that
her wrists are tied down to the bed. “Why…” I go to ask, but she answers before
I can.

“She has been restrained for her own protection.
Prevent her from pulling the tube out without knowing it,” she says referring
to the ventilator.

 “Why does she have a bandage around her head?” I
ask.

 “She had a head laceration that required ten
stitches,” she informs me.