Page 68 of In the Grey of Dawn

I heard Dimi make some phone calls and I trust that he told whoever he needed to what had happened. I'm sure Dante and Ace's contacts would have heard something too.

I should feel bad the way I’ve left everyone hanging by a thread but I don't have the capacity to take on their emotions when I'm struggling to stay afloat, smothered by every possible outcome but the one in which he stays alive.

The clock says 3 a.m. when we hear low voices from outside the room, the door pushing open with a tired surgeon walking through. The devil's hour is here and it's come to claim another soldier into the pits of Hell. Stepping forward, I’m full of anticipation, full of hope, knowing the look I've seen so many times before.

“He's stable.”

He’s alive.

The doctor's words come in and out of focus as I try to make sense of what he's saying, crumbling to the floor sobbing as I finally let my emotions run free. He's alive and I can finally breathe.

???

They wheeled him into the suite not long after the doctor told us he survived. He had been in recovery for observation and they wanted to be sure his vitals didn't fluctuate before moving him. Dimi insisted on a full intensive care set up in the room, just in case they needed it. So we were surrounded by different machines as they beeped and hummed, but I barely even heard them because they were all working together to keep him stable.

The doctors intend for him to be in an induced coma for at least ten days while they get a jump start on his healing. Each and every day I stay by his side, with one of Dimi’s men bringing me anything I need when I ask; and on the tenth day of sitting next to him we wait eagerly for the medical staff to start reducing the medication that keeps him asleep. Doctors and nurses surround us monitoring his vitals, ready to step in as they slowly remove the various tubes keeping him alive as his body starts to take over.

And I wait.

Wait for his mouth to part on its own.

Wait for his eyes to open and find me among a sea of people.

Wait for him to tell me he loves me.

But he doesn't, and my heart breaks for every moment of it.

???

Twenty days pass and still nothing. He is stable and completely off life support, but he doesn't wake up. I want to scream at him, cry over him, beg him to make me whole again but he continues to sleep and I hate and love him for it.

???

Thirty days and nothing has changed. Mel is struggling with the bar. Mila is thirty five weeks along, her hyperemesis is extremely manageable now that it's just a shell of what it was. Despite still vomiting, she can almost eat and drink normally.

I can feel my identity slip away every day I sit here with him. I’m so consumed with the idea of him never waking up that I think I died alongside him that day back at the bar.

We’re both floating in this abyss of nothingness while life continues to move outside of this room and I feel guilty for wanting to be a part of it again. So I start to write. My thoughts, feelings and ideas all go in journal after journal. Nothing is off limits. Fantasies, intrusive thoughts, questions. Anything to get out the words that repeat over and over in my head.

Chapter 41 - Charlie

Unsteady - X Ambassadors?

Two months since that night

“Well, I would call that a success, Mel. I think it's pretty clear that we're making Ride em’ Cowgirl a monthly staple,” I say, wiping the sweat off my brow.

The warmer weather and the extra people in the bar tonight has got me sweating like a fat kid in a candy store, and for the first time in a while I feel okay.

“He's going to roll out of his hospital bed when he hears what you've done,” she says, laughing at me.

We both live in this place where Porter is just away on a business trip or a long weekend. Well, more like I live in that place and she entertains it for the most part. I am not a businesswoman and neither is Mel but between us, we're making it work.

I've taken over the paperwork side of things and she helps with the stock and ordering. I'm forever grateful for her help because I accidentally ordered one hundred gin bottles from the supplier and she wasn't having any of it. Calling the guyand telling him he wasn't going to try that shit and if she had to march down to his office and waterboard him with the gin herself he was going to take the return.

I'm surrounded by him here and I love it. His apartment, his office,the cellar. They’re all reminders of us and I know I made the right decision by coming back.

Coming home.

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