Minutes to Midnight

Shadow of the Day (Chapter 5)

"In cards and flowers on your window. Your friends all plead for you to stay...And the Shadow of the Day will embrace the world in gray, and the sun will set for you."

Shay's POV//

The race was going so well for Ryan until everything in front of me just stopped. I don't even remember getting down from the Pit Box, the only thing I blatantly remember was that I had to get to him as fast as I could. While I was running to the Infield Care Center a NASCAR official stopped me to let me know that they were taking Ryan straight to the local hospital here in Vegas. When I finally caught my breath I told them thank you and that I would immediately head there. Whitney ran up to me and just hugged me for a minute before telling me that she had told Mariel to stay there at the track while she was going to drive me to the hospital, since I was in no position to drive at the moment. I pulled out my phone and it was already dinging with notifications one after another about the wreck. I let Ryan's family know first that he was being transported to the local hospital here in Las Vegas and that I didn't know what his status was at all. Ryan's parents Dave and Lisa called me and told me that if they need to catch a flight out here to Vegas they would to be with both him and I, but more so him right now than me. 

We got to the hospital and Whitney and I ran straight back to where the nurse's station was to see what information they had. The sweet nurse informed us that they had already whisked him away to the operating room for surgery, but would keep me updated as soon as she heard something. Whitney and I slowly walked towards the waiting room to go and sit. When we sat down Whitney looked at me and noticed that I was still shaking like a leaf and on the verge of having a breakdown crying. I texted Ryan's family to let them know that he had been taken into surgery and that when I got news on what was going on I would let them know. Whitney texted with Mariel who was still at the track to let her know that we had just got to the hospital and that Ryan had been taken immediately into surgery. I am so thankful for Whitney and the friendship that we have that she would drop everything like that to come and sit with me for who knows how long in this hospital. While we sat in the waiting room there was a little tv that had some HGTV show on that Whitney and I ended up watching to take my mind off of everything that was going on around me. Whitney leaned over in her chair and hugged me telling me everything was going to be okay, we just needed to have faith. 

After a few hours a nurse in some teal colored scrubs came out and was asking for the family of Ryan Blaney. I immediately stood up and began quickly speed walking over to her. The nurse said that Ryan was now out of surgery and in a recovering room, he had suffered a severe concussion and a broken collarbone but other than that he came out unscathed from the crash. He has to be monitored all night because of the concussion being severe he could fall into a coma if we aren't careful.I looked at the nurse and wanted to ask when could I get to see him, she said that I needed to sign the paperwork first and then I could go back and see him. I informed Whitney with what the nurse said and I also texted Ryan's family to let them know as well. Ryan's family was going to stay home in North Carolina, but if anything were to happen to let them know and they would be on their way out to us in Vegas. I signed the paperwork that the hospital needed and then was led by the same nurse who came out to tell me what was going on down to Ryan's room. I was nervous to go in and see him because I didn't know the severity of how badly bruised up he was, but I thought to myself here goes nothing and went inside...

I walked in and already had tears in my eyes just waiting to spill out. I saw my "ry ry" laying there in the hospital bed connected to so many wires and covered in bruises from head to toe. I sat down in the chair next to his bed and gently grabbed his uncovered hand that didn't have the IV in and kissed it before taking his hand back in mine. The nurse told me before she left that Ryan would probably be sleeping for 2 hours before he woke up. So I got comfortable in the chair next to him while still holding his hand and started to fall asleep, knowing that he was okay made me feel at ease. After a few hours I felt my hand either being squeezed or going numb I wasn't too sure, but when I opened my eyes I saw Ryan looking back at me with his pretty blue eyes. I jumped up and engulfed him in a hug before I started crying again, I finally calmed down and Ryan began asking me what had happened and why did he end up in the hospital? I didn't want to go into the extreme details of the wreck and scare him so I just simply said that he had been in a bad wreck, and that we were in the hospital here in Las Vegas. I asked him how he was feeling and he said that he had a "pounding headache and that these lights in the room were too bright." I got up and told him that I would be right back, and went and got his nurse that was at the nurse's station. She came back and said that she would give him some morphine after he ate something. So we picked something off of the menu for him to eat for dinner since he was definitely going to be in the hospital for a few days. Ryan ate some soup because that was the easiest thing that we saw on the menu, and then was able to get some morphine to help with his headache. It was time for him to go to bed so before I let him Facetime with his family so they could see that he was okay at the moment. He then got off the phone with them being happy that he had seen his family and had "his girl" right there by his side. He didn't have any trouble falling asleep which was a good thing, while I on the other hand took forever to finally get to sleep. I had just dozed off when these alarms started beeping in the room which caused me to jump up and panic, soon many doctors and nurses had came into the room telling me that I needed to get out of the room now...

Author's Note: Heyyy sorry this has taken so long to be updated. While I have some free time I am going to continue to update this story and the Chase Elliott story that I am also currently writing. Don't forget to comment, vote, and let me know what you think so far. ALL MY LOVE-MK