Motorcycle Girl: Book Three

Chapter 9: Home

Odeletta

He slept for three hours and woke up in a lot of pain, pain so bad that he had to beg me to hit the button for his morphine.

He didn't have to be though, all he had to do was say morphine and I would've hit the button.

My poor baby is in so much pain. He fell back to sleep after that. He's awake again. He's only able to sit up when the bed moves him up. I help adjust him and the president has guards at all the doors and only our family and a few hospital staff members are allowed in here. Raylen is sitting at his legs playing with his alphabet blocks. His right thumb is in his mouth and his left hand is stacking the blocks between Nathan's legs. Nathan is playing a game on my phone and I'm holding a sleeping Noemie and watching Raylen play. Everyone else is just sitting around doing whatever.

Raylen looks up from his blocks suddenly and clambers on top of Nathan to see what he's playing.

Before I can react, his knee presses into the wrappings of the bullet hole.

I hear Nathan cry out in pain and in seconds I've ripped Raylen off of him. I hear his heart monitor start going crazy and then his eyes roll back into his head and he starts shaking. I cover the kids eyes, but Noemie is awake and screaming and Raylen is screaming too. Doctor comes sprinting in, shoving me back. They roll him on his side and I realize he's having a seizure.

"Daddy!" Raylen screams, clawing at my hand. I keep his eyes covered, pulling them further and further away. A nurse is being shouted at in French to give him medicine. The moment it's injected through the IV, his body stills, his heart monitor returning to normal.

Raylen's blocks are all over the floor.

They start rolling Nathan away.

"We're going to take him to see what caused the seizure." The nurse in the purple scrubs says.

"I-we-" I cut off. "We know French."

Realization dawns on her and she nods.

"Okay." She says.

She follows the doctors out.

The room is silent, our family standing up. Peyton's hand is clamped over Opal's eyes and she's crying too.

Annie, with tears streaming down her cheeks, grabs the bag of toys and starts packing up the blocks.

"Let's go to the waiting room."

I slowly remove my hand from Raylen's eyes and both of his tiny hands clutch my left hand.

"I kill Daddy!" He sobs. My eyes widen and I crouch in front of him, balancing Noemie on my right thigh.

"Hey, you did not kill Daddy." I say. "He's okay, okay? He just got hurt and now he's sick."

He just keeps crying, stepping forward and whimpering Mama over and over in my neck.

I swallow the softball sized lump in my throat and pick him up with my other hand. I turn around to ask somebody to get the diaper bag but Annalise is already swinging it over her shouldering and handing the bag of toys to her husband.

Silently, we all to go the waiting room. I nurse Noemie to calm her down. When she falls asleep using me as a pacifier, I pull her off of me and give her a real pacifier, and then I pass her to Julian.

"Can you just hold her while she sleeps?" I whisper. He nods, his eyes red and blotchy. I pull Raylen into my lap and let his tiny body curl against me. I run my fingers through his blonde hair whispering to him in French that it's going to be alright, that Daddy is going to be alright.