Ruin Me

53. Question me

All I can do is stare at my dad for what feels like eternity. I stare and I stare as my jumbled brain struggles to process what's happening. I will it to work faster but it still feels foggy and disorientated, must be from the meds I was on.

My dad pushed me out the way.

He. Pushed. Me. To. Safety.

He risked his life for me. In any typical father daughter relationship I guess that's to be expected. But we're not your average father and daughter, we barely even know each other. I know they say the love of a parent is unconditional but I've never really believed that to be true, I mean parents can do all sorts of shitty things, like leave and not come back, like risk getting involved with dangerous powerful people and getting murdered for it. Or maybe that's just my parents.

This restores my faith a little. Someone does love me, I'm capable of being loved. I hate to admit it, but since my moms death I was afraid I couldn't be loved. Jackson never loved me properly, not like I deserved to be loved. My mom didn't love me enough to put me first when deciding to play poker against killers. My dad didn't love me enough to stay. But now I can see he does love me, I mean he jumped in front of a bullet for me.

I look at him now, with tubes coming out of his arms and liquids dripping into various receptacles before running under his skin. I gape at his pale face that looks sunken and aged beyond its years. He has all sorts of electrodes attached to him and wires coming off in all directions. Seeing him like this makes my stomach want to hurl itself out my body, but the consistent steady beat of the heart monitor reassures me a bit.

"He looks worse than he is," Mitch stated as if reading my mind, "the bullet only cut his skin, it didn't go in. It got him on the side of his chest on the left, under his arm."

"Only a couple of inches from his heart though," Nico added in a reverent tone. Mitch shot him a look so harsh he paled and looked at me with pink embarrassment touching the tops of his cheeks, "the point is that it missed his heart. All the doctors say he's going to make a full recovery."

"He's going to be fine," Sawyer repeats standing by my side, I feel his hand brush against mine as he links his pinkie finger through mine. A feeling of soothing ran up my arm and I instantly felt myself become calmer, Sawyer was better than any meds they could offer here.

"He'll be awake by the end of the day they reckon and out within a week," Mitch contributed in an overly cheerful voice. He hated this whole thing I could tell, he despises it when things are out of his control, when he's not able to protect the people he loves. I've never seen someone with such a drastic urge to take care of those around them.

Behind me I hear Nico's phone ping, then Mitch's and finally Sawyers in quick succession.

"Grey," they all state at the same time.

"Let's go and see him before he injures someone," I sigh. I want to see Grey but I feel bad leaving my dad. After he risked his life for me the least I can do is stay by his bedside.

"He probably won't be awake for a few hours," Sawyer whispered in my ear, this whole mind reading thing was getting creepy now. I guess we spend so much time with each other we've all become tuned into each other's thought processes.

"Bye dad," I disconnected my hand from Sawyer's and instantly felt the emptiness from his lack of touch. I walk over and take my dads hand instead and give it a small squeeze. My form of a thank you.