The Fighter

Chapter 16

I fell asleep on Gavin's shoulder in the waiting room. He was wide awake the entire time. I woke up a couple times, but then went right back to sleep. I was hoping that I would just wake up in my bed and this would all just be gone. "Mickie, wake up." Gavin shook me until I woke up. "Yeah, what's up?" I opened my eyes and sat up on my side of the bench. "The nurse just came out and said that they are finishing up and he might be out soon." "So, he's alive?" "Yeah, he's alive. They wouldn't be doing surgery if he wasn't." he couldn't help but laugh at me. "Hey, I'm half asleep. Let me wake up a little before you start your shit." "Okay. Thanks for drooling on me by the way." "I did not drool!" I whipped my mouth just in case I really did, and I did. "How long have we been here?" I asked yawning. "Let's see you left at 5:30, came home at 7:44. We fought for like five minutes and then we came up here at like 8. It's now 4:30am. So if you can do math, that's eight and a half hours." "Whoa, you should be a math teacher because you gave me more useless information then I needed. You could have just said that we've been here for almost nine hours!" "That was too easy." "No, that still would have been a little complex for me." "Because you wouldn't have believed me and done the math yourself anyway." "Probably, yeah....... I just want you to know that we make absolutely no sense at all." "Yeah, I know. We're worse when we're running on little to no sleep." He laughed and I put my head back on his shoulder. "Hey! Don't fall back asleep!" "I'm not going to. I'm just resting my eyes." "Sure!"

Half an hour later, they were wheeling dad's bed back into his ICU room. Gavin and I jumped up when we saw his bed. The doctor met us in his room. "Okay, your father has obviously made it through surgery. He is still in critical condition. We still don't know and we won't know until he wake up (if he wakes up) if he has brain damage or not. We got the swelling to go down, but this head injury is still very serious. His lungs and chest are okay right now. Basically right now, it's just the waiting game." He explained. I stayed quiet. "Okay, so what do we do? We've never done this before." Gavin asked. I mean sure we were by our mom's bedside when she was sick, but we knew everything beforehand. This is a figure it out as we go type of thing. "It's hard to say. His condition isn't very predictable. We didn't expect his lung to collapse and him to go into cardiac arrest. He has many internal injuries that we weren't really aware of, until this. We're going to run more tests later on in the day. I want his body to rest for a while today. If you need anything let me or the nurses know." "Thank you." Gavin spoke for the both of us. We went into dad's room and sat down. Why am I even here? I could be at home with Avery.

They took dad in for tests at 10am and Gavin and I went home to shower and change. I decided not to go back to the hospital. I hate hospitals, I always have, and I always will. Gavin took his car, picked up Julie and went back up. Grandma had taken Avery out to her sister's house with her three hours away in Hommel for a few days. I was thankful that she got her out of here. I called Kyle, he didn't answer so I assumed that he was with Tessa. I called Greg and asked if he wanted to grab lunch. I hadn't eaten in over 24 hours. He agreed and we met at McDonalds. Yes, very healthy.

"Hey. How are you?" he asked giving me a hug. "I'm okay, just really hungry and tired." I smiled. It was nice to talk to someone other than my brother. I filled him in on the whole night starting with after I left the station. "So, why didn't you want to go back up?" he asked when I was done. "Because I don't want to be there. I was only there for Gavin, and now he's got his girlfriend up there with him, and he doesn't need me." "He does need you, because you're his sister. "I don't know. I freaked pretty bad, I don't think of that man as my father, so I don't really want anything to do with this." "I get it, don't worry." "Oh, well. He's going to be up there all day, maybe all night and Avery is three hours away with my Grandma." "So you're alone. It's a good thing that you called me." "Yeah, I figured why not? Something to do." I laughed. "That's my line and I'll have to beat you up for stealing it." "Bring it tough guy." "It's already brought." "I'm so scared." "You should be."

We went back to my house and put in a movie. "You're not going to fall sleep on me in the middle of the movie are you?" Greg looked at me as I sat down next to him. "No I won't or I'll at least try not to." I yawned. "Don't be so tired Mickie!" "I can't help it!" "Sure you can't." he tickled me and I then fell back on him. He put his arm around me and smiled. I think that he was surprised that I was letting him and honestly so was I. I looked up at him. "What are you looking at?" He looked back at me. "I'm still trying to figure that out." "Oh really? I might have to tickle you again." "No! I'll beat you if you do!" "Oh, yeah?" He started tickling me again and I was laughing really hard. At some point I managed to get out of his tickle grip and stand up. He followed me and chased me for a second before I turned around and tackled him. I landed on top of him and we both laughed.

He and I both stopped and looked in each other's eyes. Gag me, I know. I couldn't look away. He kissed me and I kissed him back. The pager went off, "Hale County to Clarksville Report of a structure fire 772 Larock Rd." it came across and we both jumped up and ran. We got our gear on and jumped into his truck. Our kiss was interrupted and now it was going to be awkward.