Humbled || Watch Dogs

Chapter Six

"Clear the way!" the doctor ordered as she and a group of nurses rushed Aiden down the hallway on a gurney.

To the hospital's credit, they didn't ask questions when T-Bone came bursting through the doors. They sprang into action immediately, pulling the barely conscious Aiden from the car. But then, T-Bone Grady didn't have a face people felt they could ignore.

He followed closely behind the emergency team as they ministered to Aiden. They already had an IV going with a bag of O Negative feeding into it. One man held a gauze pad over Aiden's bullet wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. Another took his blood pressure and heartrate, reporting, "Elevated heartrate, blood pressure dropping." The other three nurses carried out various duties in an attempt to get Aiden stabilized.

The main doctor turned to Kenney. "What's his name?"

"Aiden," T-Bone answered automatically, then scrunched his face as he realized his mistake. He had been too distraught to come up with an alias for Aiden on the fly. Too late now, he thought. T-Bone didn't have long to regret his slipup because Aiden was going downhill and stole T-Bone's attention back.

Upon hearing Aiden's name, the doctor put it to use straightaway. "Aiden? Aiden, can you hear me?" she asked as she waved a light over each eye. His eyes were rolling, his face exceedingly pale. Understandably, he didn't respond. She moved down toward his chest and parted his torn shirt to assess his condition.

"General bruising over the body, extensive electrical burns across the chest, several broken ribs, gunshot wound to the left shoulder," she listed. When Aiden started being unable to breathe, she added, "His lung is collapsing. We need to intubate." One of the technicians obeyed, inserting a long tube into Aiden's trachea and squeezing the attached bag every couple of seconds.

Noticing his leg laying at an obscure angle, the doctor went over to check it. "Severely sprained knee. Possible torn ligaments," she said with disbelief then looked once again to T-Bone. "What happened?"

T-Bone couldn't think of any lie that would suitably explain Aiden's state so he just told the truth—partly. "Ran into the South Club." It certainly wasn't a lie. And the South Club was a serious presence in Chicago. It couldn't have been the first time they had sent someone to the hospital in critical condition.

The doctor's widening eyes confirmed T-Bone's assumption.

One of the nurses looked across the gurney to the nurse on the other side, inquiring in a whisper, "How is he still alive?"

The other technician shook his head and shrugged. "I honestly don't know. By all rights, he shouldn't be."

T-Bone heard their discourse and knew the answer, though he didn't say it aloud. The simple fact was—it was Aiden. Aiden could take a beating like no other man T-Bone knew and still keep on going. He certainly had in the past. But every man had his limits. T-Bone hoped Aiden hadn't just reached his.

When they neared a set of swinging doors, one of the nurses detached from the procession and stopped T-Bone from entering. T-Bone protested none too subtly, fighting to gain entrance. "You better get out of the way, little missy. That's my friend in there and I'm not leaving him."

T-Bone tried to push past the woman, but to her credit, she continued to bar the way. "No, you can't go in there, sir. Your friend is going to get all the help he needs." When T-Bone didn't back off, she raised her voice, saying, "You won't be any help to him in there, sir! Let us do our jobs."

At that, T-Bone stood still, simply staring through the small window in the door at Aiden. Seeing that T-Bone would pose no more threat, the nurse pushed through the door and returned to her post. The frantic beeping of the machines attached to Aiden and the chorus of voices spewing medical jargon assaulted T-Bone as the doors swung open; then left him in intolerable silence as they sealed closed.