Soulless (Lawless #2)(42)
The solemn look on both their faces made me realize they were there for a much bigger and more serious reason than trying to catch us in the act.
“You might want to put some clothes on for this,” King said, and suddenly I was all too aware of my nakedness. Bear led me into the bedroom and I was still getting dressed when he left the room after throwing on a pair of boxers, leaving the door open on the way out.
“What the f*ck is going on?” he asked. I looked out and spotted the worried expression on his face and suddenly I was as worried as he looked.
“It’s Grace,” Ray said, choking out a sob and burying her face into King’s shirt. He held her close by the back of the head and stroked her long icy blonde hair.
“What the f*ck is wrong with Grace?” Bear barked, an angry burst of yelling that I felt deep in my chest.
King reached out and placed his other hand on Bear’s shoulder, but Bear jumped back like King was trying to stab him instead of comfort him. “Tell me,” Bear demanded.
I stepped out into the living room just in time to see King kiss Ray on top of the head. He looked back up to Bear when he spoke again. “She’s in bad shape, man.”
“How bad?” Bear asked, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the table. He put one in his mouth, it dangled from his lips as he scurried around, searching under couch cushions for a lighter.
“The kind you don’t come back from.”
Bear’s cigarette fell from his mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bear
I f*cking hate hospitals.
Always have.
For good reason, too. Ain’t nothing good ever has come from stepping foot in one of them. Not for me anyway. Actually, the f*cking worst always happened. A wave of bad shit, along with the smell of antiseptic and disappointment, hit me in the f*cking face every single time those automatic glass doors opened, followed by me frantically asking a million white-coated f*ckers where the brother I was looking for was.
Usually, they were dead.
It was at that very hospital where we’d come to see Grace, through those very same f*cking doors where a white-coated cocksucker came out and officially told us that Preppy was a goner.
I’m sorry. There was nothing we more we could do.
I remember everything about that night, down to the *-ass yellow smiley face tattoo the doc had on the outside of his hand.
The last time I was there was when I drove Ray, who was in pretty bad shape after being beat to shit by her f*cking ex husband douche-bag, and King, who was all shot up, to the emergency room that smelled of unhealed wounds and misery. My immediate reaction whenever I went to a hospital has been to get on my bike and drive as far away as I possibly could.
Which sounded pretty f*cking good to me as we walked down a sea foam colored hallway, the wallpaper peeling at the seams.
King and Ray were ahead of us with Thia and I staying back a few steps.
The last time I saw Grace, she was in better shape than I was. Where I had been wrestling with every demon I’d ever come across, hopped up on so much booze and blow it was a wonder I was even alive, she’d looked as if she could place in a marathon or give that juice guy on late-night TV a run for his money.
We knew Grace had cancer. She’d had it for years. More than a decade, I think. At one point, her pain got real bad and King gave her some weed and showed her how to smoke it so she could manage it better. For a while that seemed to work. After that she told us that the cancer couldn’t keep her down and that she decided she wasn’t going to die.
Crazy thing about Grace was that we all believed her. When she said she was going to do something, she did it.
Why did beating cancer have to be any different?
But in walking down that depressing ass hallway, looking into the rooms where countless other patience were hooked to tubes and machines of all kinds, I realized that this was different.
Very different.
Which was why seeing her in that hospital room with tubes coming out of her arms and a breathing mask over her face, looking every bit the frail woman she never wanted to be with sunken cheeks and deep circles under her eyes, caused me to stop in the doorway.
The woman lying on the bed didn’t even look like her. The woman I’d known for fifteen years had a fire around her that could make the biggest, baddest motherf*cker out there say thank you, ma’am, and wipe his boots at the door.
“There you are,” Grace said with a low scratchy voice, her chest contracted and she gasped. “I’ve been waiting for my boys. Where is my Abel?” she asked, taking King’s hand.
“I’m right here,” I said, tugging Ti in behind me.
“Maybe you should take turns speaking with her,” the doctor stated, without taking his eyes off of his clipboard. “We don’t want to overwhelm her.”
“Who the f*ck are you?” King asked, a vein in his neck pulsed and whatever the doctor said next would determine if he’d still end up a doctor at the end of the day, or a patient. The doc opened his mouth but he quickly shut it. Smart man. He scanned the barcode bracelet on Grace’s wrist with a tool connected to an iPad and made himself busy by checking numbers on the numerous machines and entering them into his tablet.
“Brantley my dear. It’s fine,” Grace said, tugging on King’s hand to bring his attention away from the doctor and back to her. Ray kept her hand on the small of his back, using her own method of calming him down.