Lose the Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 4 – Walking Blind

"You go and I'll be ok. I can dream the rest away. It's just a little touch of fate, it'll be ok."

Before she could do much more than brace her palms on the door in preparation for shoving it inward, a masculine hand wrapped around her wrist. With some difficulty she fought to remember she was a designer. Not a martial artist, or a mechanic with a short fuse. It wouldn't do to start throwing punches before she got names and intents this time. "Excuse me?" she questioned before she allowed herself to look at the person with a grip on her. When she did turn her head to find the face attached to the person who dared stop her progress, she found herself looking at a large, plain clothes, African-American police officer.

"And you would be?" he asked her.

She was fairly sure the veneer of pleasant interest was fake and hid a desire to slam her into a chair and play good cop bad cop, without the benefit of the good cop. "The sister of the person in this room."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Why? Is Jess in some trouble with the police for getting himself shot by a homicidal manic?" The lack of sleep and quantity of caffeine in her system made her punchy and irritable. She spoke without thinking. She knew it would be smarter to try and make herself out to be sweet and biddable; a more typical female than she was. But she was too tired to put on a convincing act right now anyway. So she figured sarcastic, snappish Tempest was going to have to pass for Jessica, balls and all.

"No, he's not in any trouble. But we'd like to know the whereabouts of his friends that ran off. We don't really believe him when he says he doesn't know where they are. So whether he did anything wrong or not, he's going to be in trouble if he's withholding information in an ongoing investigation."

"If my brother told you he doesn't know anything he doesn't know anything. Jesse was the baby of that group of petty thugs he lived with. I have no doubt the big, bald dumb ass that called himself the leader didn't care to share anything important with Jesse."

Her assessment of Dominic got a chuckle out of the previously serious officer. He sobered quickly. "So you don't know anything about the whereabouts of Dominic Toretto and the rest of his team?"

"No, and if I did, and it would save Jesse some grief, I'd tell you in half a heartbeat. Dominic Toretto and his band of merry idiots mean nothing to me."

As though he could see by the set of her face, and the look in her eyes that she was telling the truth, he let her go with a nod, walking off down the hall. She tried to psych herself back up in preparation for going into Jesse's room. The encounter with the cop had shaken her to the point where she wasn't quite ready to face Jesse just yet. Why were the cops so interested in who visited Jesse? She was very glad she'd listened to the little voice in her mind that had told her not to be Tempest when she got involved in this situation.

She happened to look down the hall before opening the door to Jesse's room, and saw a nurse coming her way. Another one came out of the room behind her and the two started a hushed conversation. Giving herself time to calm down, Tempest allowed herself to eavesdrop with half an ear as she took deep breaths. And people say this is supposed to be calming!

"It's just such a sin."

"What is?" the shorter, fatter nurse asked her taller, thinner co-worker as she left the room directly behind Tempest.

"Such a young man—not to mention what a man—just up and deciding he has no reason to go on."

"So there's no change then?"

"None. There's no logical reason why he hasn't come out of it yet. The doctor says it's like he just doesn't want to live. His heart is beating on its own, and he's breathing by himself, but yet he just isn't getting better. Only steadily worse."

"Do you believe in that sort of thing?"

"It's hard not to. Despite the blood loss and trauma, he's young and strong. He should be recovering. He should be awake. But yet his vitals just keep getting weaker and weaker. There is no other reason that I see for him to keep declining like this unless he simply doesn't want to live."

With a shake of her head, Tempest stopped listening to them and pushed into Jesse's room. It was sad that someone so young and strong had decided to die rather than to fight to get well, but it was hardly her problem. She had Jesse to worry about and take care of. If someone else had no one, it was sad and she emphasised just because the two nurses were so shaken up about it, but she had her cousin to worry about. She couldn't take time to shed tears over a stranger.

Finally resolved, she finished making her way into her cousin's room. Being prepared for the worst made reality almost easy to accept. Jesse seemed to be sleeping. He wasn't on the heart stopping array of machines which TV and movies had taught her to expect. He seemed to be breathing on his own, though there was a tube under his nose to provide him with oxygen in addition to what was available in the air. He was dressed in one of those horrid hospital gowns she hated, but she figured that was to be expected. He was in the hospital. There was a machine keeping track of his heartbeat, and he was on an IV. She looked again. Ok, on two. And it was clear they weren't letting him up to go to the bathroom.

She was just so glad to see him breathing with a steady rhythm and see proof his heart was beating, a wave of relief hit her at the knees and she had to sit down. She collapsed into one of the chairs provided for visitors at the bedside and sat. She put her head between her knees to fight off a bout of dizziness. She had built up Jesse's injuries to near fatal in her mind. The realization that yet again she'd let her tendency to look for the worst instead of the best in every situation build things up to proportions they'd never actually reached. For the first time in three days, she began to accept the fact that Jesse was likely to be fine. Clearly he had some recovering to do. But he wasn't anywhere near as bad off as she'd convinced herself he would be.

She could only surmise that she'd leaned back in the chair to rest her eyes and drifted off. She woke up to a nurse answering Jesse's questions about her.

"Your sister was very worried about you, from what I've heard. She's been there in that chair for the last two hours. She must have fallen asleep waiting for you to wake up."

"Sister?" she heard Jesse croak.

"Hey Jesse. How you feelin'?" she asked, her voice husky with relieved worry and fatigue.

"Like I was shot three times by some Asian asshole on a motorcycle."

"If you can crack bad jokes, you're going to be ok." She rose wearily from her chair and crossed to sit on the edge of Jesse's bed. She waited with a patient—faked—smile for the nurse to leave. She finally did after checking Jesse's bandages, IV, and making sure he wasn't in any unnecessary pain.

"Sister?"

"Somehow when Hector called to tell me you were shot I got the feeling all wasn't well. When he told me you were here all alone because everyone else ran off, the feeling got worse not better." She leaned in close to Jesse. "So I had Angelo make me a new identity. No one but Angelo knows I'm down here."

"Border patrol?"

"Surprisingly easy to avoid if you know where to go to do it. So he told me where, made up ID and a past for me as Jessica Adams and sent me on my way. I don't think we look enough alike to pull off twins, but Angelo would disagree."

"So he's still hacking for profit I guess."

"Don't get pissy. He's the reason why I could come here. But you gotta remember that I'm your sister and to call me Jessica. We don't know when people might be listening. It's important that they don't know."

"How'd you know it was important?"

She shrugged. "Gut feeling. Leon woulda called me Jess. If the shit hadn't really hit the fan hard, Leon would have called. No matter what he would have found a way to let me know about you, and why he was running off. He might not have told me where, to protect me of course," she grimaced sarcastically to show what she thought of that idea. "But he would have called. Told me not to worry. Told me that everything would be ok. He would not have left me in the dark and you all alone. It's not his style."

"When did you get to know Leon so well?"

"Before," she answered evasively. She never had filled Jesse in on just how close she and Leon were, or how they had initially gotten that way. "So, how do you really feel?" she changed the subject before pausing to brush her hand over his cheek affectionately. He seemed to think for a moment about his answer.

"Guilty."

"Why?" Tempest asked incredulously. "What do you have to feel guilty about?"

"I did something stupid. Bet the Jetta against Tran for slips and lost."

"Jesse! You had no right to bet your dad's car!" She caught his reproachful look and snapped her mouth closed on further lecture. "I'm sorry. You know that now, obviously. But that's nothing to feel guilty about."

"That's not what I feel guilty about. I feel guilty because if they hadn't been distracted about me, and where I was. If they hadn't been worrying about me. If I had been there with them to do my job, maybe the whole thing wouldn't have gone to shit so badly."

"Yeah, and now you'd be on the run with the bald idiot."

"How do you know?" Jesse snapped.

The tone was foreign coming from Jesse and it caused Tempest to do a double take. She wasn't used to hearing anything so vehemently spoken coming from Jesse's mouth. She was still floundering for a retort when Jesse carried on.

"How do you know? If I'd been there to do my part, maybe we would have known more. Maybe we wouldn't have done the job. Maybe we would have done it earlier or later. At the very least I don't deserve a free ride from the blame because a stupid move on my part kept me from being there with my family."

"Jesse." She didn't know how to put into words what she had to say. "I have no idea what they were into because Leon never told me about it and neither did you. And I don't wanna know. If I know, I'll tell that cop if he hassles me again, because I want to save you and I a headache more than I want to protect Dominic and the rest of them. You all follow that big, dumb, bald Neanderthal a little too blindly for my tastes. But whatever it was, I somehow doubt that you could have changed too much about it. Anything that turned into this kind of clusterfuck wouldn't be swayed too far either way by one man."

"But I still should have been there." A single tear rolled down his pale cheek. "I should have been with my team. Not running from my loss like a fuckin' coward. You woulda handed over the fuckin' keys and you're a girl! I pussied out like a god damn chickenshit."

"Yeah, and now you're paying for it. So what? That was your mistake. If you wanna feel bad about something for awhile, feel bad about that. Don't feel bad about whatever the fuck Dominic did to get himself and the rest of the follow the leader patrol in hot water. Besides that, you're family. In my world you don't leave family off running from a homicidal maniac on a motorcycle while you go off to do whatever the fuck! They should have forgotten about whatever it is they did that they fucked up so badly in the first place. They should have left it alone until they found you. Until they kept you safe from Tran. Not left you off on your own and continued on their merry way. And I woulda expected Dominic, Leon and Vincent to know that."

Jesse nodded like he agreed, though the look on his face seemed to tell another story. "How long you staying?"

"Until you're better. 'Til I'm sure you're gonna be ok and until you're settled at home. They tell you how long you're lookin' at before you can go home?"

"Not really. The cops came in here right after I woke up and asked me a bunch of questions about Brian and what happened with Tran. They tried to get me to talk about the trucks but I pretended I didn't know anything."

"Trucks? What are you talking about?"

Jesse looked up at her guiltily before telling her the whole story from start to finish. Much as she said she didn't want to know, he had to tell someone. She was the only one he could tell where he knew for sure it wouldn't come back to bite him on the ass. For all her big words, she wouldn't tell the cops what he'd told her. When he was wrapping up, another nurse came in to check on him again, and administer some pills to him. She looked at Tempest. "Miss, you're going to have to leave. Visiting hours stop from now until six pm. You can come back then."

"What am I supposed to do in a city I don't live in for the next two hours?"

"Go to our house, take a shower and a nap," Jesse caught himself about to call her 'T'. "Jess. Go to our house and take a shower and a nap. Then come back and we'll catch up some more."

"I guess. I hope I can still remember the address."

"Buy a map. You'll need it. You'll never get to our house from here. Not when you haven't seen the roads in years."

"I've upgraded my ride a bit since you and I saw each other last bro. The Escalade has GPS."

There were questions begging to be asked dancing in Jesse's eyes. But, mindful of the gaze of his nurse, he couldn't pose them. "You're coming back later, right?"

"Of course big bro. I'll be back later. A little nap'll do me good." After she watched Jesse nod his acceptance of her plan, she left the room and went back out of the hospital the way she'd come.