Lose the Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 8 – You Save Me

"When I'm a ship tossed around on the waves, up on a high wire that's ready to break. When I've had just about all I can take, baby, you, baby you save me"

He could only figure that no matter how much sleep a person had had in the last week, it wasn't enough on the level of morphine he was being fed because he managed to fall asleep again. He woke some time later to the presence of not one but two nurses in his room. But much to his surprise they hadn't tried to remove the still sleeping Tempest. Rather, one of them had her wrist in her hand as she took the sleeping woman's pulse.

"It's the darndest thing," the nurse whispered to her companion. "When I checked him last his heart rate was close to a hundred. We figured he'd be dead within twelve hours."

"Now it's down to seventy?" The other nurse asked, curious. "Just like that? In a matter of hours?"

"Yeah. But it gets weirder. Take the girl's pulse and watch his monitor."

Tempest's wrist changed hands. She slept on as the second nurse found where her pulse beat steady against the translucent skin of her wrist with her eyes on his heart monitor. "Are their hearts beating with the exact same rhythm?"

"Yes. Have you ever seen the like? I mean, seventy beats a minute is low for a woman in the first place. She looks very fit, so that's explained at least. But for his to drop so extremely, right down to normal over night and to keep the exact same rhythm as hers." She shook her head, setting the girl's hand back where she'd found it. "Of course, we really should get the doctor and get her up and off of him."

Oh no they didn't. "You wake her, and the second I'm able I'll find you and kill you."

Use to all sorts, his harsh words didn't really phase the nurse whose nametag proclaimed her Martha. Somehow she managed to keep her expression and tone from showing any shock she might have felt at her comatose patient threatening to off her at his earliest opportunity when she hadn't even known he'd woken. "Now honey," she began, her tone one which had surely calmed hundreds of agitated patients over her career. "You're badly injured. You haven't even been awake in a week. The last thing you need is a dead weight on top of you while you try to get better."

"She's the only reason why I'm gonna get better, so leave her alone and let her sleep. It was hard enough to convince her to get on the edge of the damn bed. If you scare her off, I'll find you. She's fine where she is. I can handle her just fine, and it's not like it's the first time."

"V?" Tempest questioned sleepily. She wasn't really awake. Her mind was just testing reality as she thought it was verses what it actually was. She had a recollection of telling Vince she'd loved him once and hearing him answer in kind. She thought he'd convinced her to spend the night beside him and now she felt as if she was once again moulded to the length of him. But surely that couldn't actually be her reality? It had to be some fantasy her subconscious had created to lull her into a state relaxed enough to allow her to find rest.

"I'm still here," he caught himself about to call her Temp and stopped just in time. Damn drugs! "Trouble." He couldn't call her Jessica. She'd never remember her alias in her barely coherent state. She hadn't even had five hours sleep yet. He had no doubts that in her mind, they were in his room with a lot less clothes on in his bed, having just exhausted each other. Twice. His good arm rubbed her back absently. "You need to go back to sleep. It's still night time."

The right voice calling her Trouble put a sleepy grin on her face. It wasn't a dream, or a fantasy. The skin under her lips was his. It really was the scent of him filling her mind with thoughts of safety and comfort. "You're sure this is still ok?"

"It's perfect. Sleep." Her fingertips traced his collarbone unconsciously for a few moments before she slid back under the dark pull of exhaustion. He'd always wondered at her fascination with the ridge of bone along his chest, but her soft touch there was comforting, familiar.

Nurse Martha cocked an eyebrow. "Trouble? I thought her name was Jessica and she was the other one's brother."

"She is and it is. She has a nickname. I gave it to her. Shit, why does this matter?"

"Aren't you scared you'll wake her?"

"Naw, she'll sleep through a world war now that she's out again. She heard a couple nurses talking about how I was gonna die yesterday. Shook her."

"Well, you were going to die. You seem to have made a very remarkable turnaround."

"She needed me to."

"Just like that?"

"She needed me to. She needs me. Listen, I can't stop telling you shit I don't really wanna tell you, likely because you have me drugged to the point I'm so high I'm practically on the fuckin' moon. Can you fuck off now so I can go back to sleep, or back to feelin' her up, or whatever the fuck, without an audience?"

Nurse Martha giggled. "I suppose so, since you asked so nicely. But no feeling her up. Not until you've been off death's doorstep for longer than four hours. Deal?"

"Whatever it takes to get you the hell outta my room."

"Ok, but you should try to get some more rest. Tomorrow morning when the word gets out you woke up, you're going to have one hell of a day."

"Thanks for the heads up," he muttered back at her, his head tipping sideways so his cheek could rest on Tempest's. The last thing he heard was Nurse Martha talking to her silent companion about how 'weren't they just the cutest thing ever? The way she 'needed' him and the way he stood for her.' That 'awww' tone was in her voice, that tone women normally reserved for babies and cute puppies. Had he been able to, he'd have gotten up and kicked Nurse Martha's ass all around the hospital. Instead, he did the only thing he could do. His hand slid down Tempest's back to rest on her ass. The last thing he heard before he fell asleep again was the forcefully restrained laughing of the nurse.

When Tempest woke up the day had broken and she felt like she had slept too long, leaving herself with a feeling like she was operating under deep, heavy water. A quick check of her cell phone showed her that she had been asleep for quite some time. It was disorienting to wake up on something warm and alive rather than a cold, inanimate mattress, but it brought back memories of much happier times for her.

And that was dangerous territory wasn't it? Happy certainly hadn't lasted long. Hadn't lasted was likely the understatement of the century. Happy had shattered into a million splintered pieces that the most skilled forensics team on earth wouldn't have been able to piece back together. So what the hell was she doing allowing herself to remember how it could be for her with him? This wasn't unlike the last time. Due to something stupid done on his part he was going to leave her again. Leave her alone to break into pieces that would never quite be glued back together correctly again. Last time it had been by his own choice, this time it would be by the choice of Officer Goodcop but in the end it was the same thing. Either way, she hadn't been able to have him then and she couldn't have him now.

She'd done her duty to Jesse. She'd come in, saw the condition Vince was in, and now she could leave, fully able to report back to her cousin that his friend would live. Whether he'd ever live his life outside the walls of a prison remained to be seen. But that certainly wasn't her problem. And she had enough of them to worry about. So now her only worry was how to get away from his side without waking him and thus necessitating a conversation about where she was going, when she would return, and what was occurring outside the four walls of his room.

She slowly started to extract herself from under Vince's arm. It was 9 o'clock in the morning. She figured she'd get up, do her report to Jesse and then head back to the fort to get cleaned up. Then she'd get a bite to eat and head back to sit with Jesse for awhile. She got out from under Vince's arm so easily she knew that the nurses had not turned down his morphine drip over the course of the night.

What the fuck was she supposed to do about Vince? To say she didn't want anything to do with him was the biggest understatement she'd ever heard. But he was, or at least had been, dying. Could she be the girl who left someone to die alone, with no one, because of spite for something he'd done two years ago? If she told herself she didn't want anything to do with him often enough, would she convince herself?

Did she have something to put in perspective here? Did her personal involvement make what he'd done back then seem worse because of how necessarily close she'd been to the situation? Could she deem what he'd done cheating when they'd never made any official commitments to each other, not even for the two weeks those commitments were even possible? She had, after all, dated Jim in the middle. However, at that time they'd been officially not having anything to do with each other, and when he'd done what he'd done, there had been no such official break in their thing.

Given he'd admitted the feelings that he'd had for her had been similar to those she'd had for him, she knew she didn't have what he'd done out of context. He'd done what he'd done out of some misguided opinion she was better off without him. And she hated him for it. But she wouldn't let him be all alone in the hospital for his last days of freedom and she knew it. She knew she wasn't that cruel and heartless.

She laid Vince's arm carefully across his body and went to slide off the edge of the bed. Just as she was about to move, the door opened and the nurse walked in. Tempest put a finger to her lips to indicate quiet. She did not want the nurse waking Vince up before she could escape. She needed some space to think. The nurse nodded to show she understood and Tempest stood up slowly, glancing furtively at Vince the whole time. He snored once, shifted, but didn't wake.

Tempest crossed to the door, and by proxy the nurse. The latter indicated she wanted to see her in the hall. Tempest nodded her agreement and followed 'Martha' out the door.

"Who are you?" Martha questioned the second the door was closed behind them. While there was a small look of the boy to the girl, she didn't think it was enough for them to be siblings, let alone twins. She also didn't think that someone who hadn't seen their brother in 5 years had had time to fall so very far into love with his friend.

Hmm, how to answer that one, Tempest mused, fighting to keep a smirk off her face. She felt like she had more identities than Bond at this exact moment in time. "I'm Jesse's sister." She finally went with the safe answer that toed the party line she had created for this party in the first place.

"Umhmm, and you told the desk when you got here you hadn't seen him in five years. So how'd you come to know that one," she asked, pointing at Vince's door.

Shit, Tempest thought. She'd only been down a day and she was fucking up the story already. The truth might work. "I lied."

"Umhmm." Nurse Martha nodded to show she'd already figured that out. "About what, exactly?"

"About not having seen Jess in 5 years. I came to visit him a few years ago for a few weeks. While I was staying with him I had a," she struggled to put her and Vince into a few words, "a thing, with Vince. It ended. Badly. And I haven't had anything to do with Jesse or the rest of his housemates since."

"So what drove you to sleep in his hospital bed all night then?" Nurse Martha clearly wasn't convinced. And if Tempest didn't miss her guess, the nurse was also being protective. Of Vince. Against her. Oh hell no.

"Because Jesse wanted to know how he was. And he didn't trust any of ya'll to tell it to him straight. So he sent me. And I didn't have any idea who was in there until then. But I had heard two nurses talking about the man in that room and his slow, painful dying act. So I went to check on him for Jesse and sure enough he was dying. Do you know what it's like to fall in love with someone from the moment you meet them, contemplate giving up your life for them? To make a new one? With them? And then find them with some vapid whore whose name you'd be willing to bet they don't even know the night you go to tell them that you've chosen them over your own life?" Tempest worked herself up into a fine state by the time she was finished explaining to Martha her history with Vince, and she could see by the look on the other woman's face she would never have judged such a good looking man as Vince as being capable of doing that to a girl. "Don't judge a book by the cover!"

"That should explain why you looked and ran, not spent the night."

Martha was such a practical name for such a practical woman, Tempest thought with an internalized sigh. More painful honesty? "Love and hate have such a fine line." She gave the nurse a tight smile.

"So you think you still love him?"

Tempest groaned. "I dunno. What's it matter to you anyway?"

Nurse Martha looked up and down the corridor before dragging Tempest into another patient room, a room that Tempest noted on entry was vacant. "They're going to take him to prison. Your brother is safe because when he was brought in here shot and from where gives him an alibi. They know that Vince was part of a crime, and when the cops find out he's conscious, they'll be here to question him and when the hospital tells them he's stable enough to be moved, they'll take him to finish recovery in a prison hospital. Then he'll stand trial for what he and all his friends were doing."

"Why on earth are you telling me this?" Tempest was confused. The nurse sounded like Vince's grandmother, and not at all on the side of the law on this one. Shouldn't she be ready to see him go to jail and get out of her hospital?

Martha shrugged. "When you see someone come into a hospital and they're badly hurt, you generally have a good feeling for who will live and who will die. It's just a sixth sense that you develop over years and years of E.R. work. I had him pegged as young and strong and one of the ones who'd make it. I figure I'm looking at the reason why he wasn't going to. That means that whatever he did to you hit him so hard that he decided when he had the choice of go on or don't, he picked don't. He told me last night when you were sleeping that you were the reason he turned around, the fact that you were here and needed him to. I guess I just figure on the basis of that confession out of him, you and he deserve to know that two weeks is all I can buy you. I can't promise you'll even be allowed to see him when the cops find out he's awake."

"Thanks for the head's up." Tempest's mind was spinning with all the information Martha had just imparted.

"Enjoy the time you have. If the cop that's been hanging around is to believed if they get the chance to send him to jail, it'll be for 10-20." Martha left the room and as soon as she was gone Tempest melted into a nearby chair in disbelief.

Vince gone to jail for 20 years. She'd waited 2 already. Waiting to be able to forgive him at least enough to speak to him without throwing things at his overgrown head. And now that she'd come back to L.A. and found out that the time she might be able to have that conversation was now, she had a week, two at the outside and then he was going to be gone from her life for 20 years. And now she had to hold it together and break it to Jesse.

She left the room after a few minutes needed to try and pull herself together and walked into Jesse's room. To anyone outside looking in, it was her same old confident stride. How she managed she didn't know because she had no idea how she was still walking around like everything was ok. She had no idea how to tell Jesse that his only friend still in the country with him was a week away from 10-20 at California State Prison Los Angeles.

She pushed open his door and crossed to his bedside without saying a word. She wasn't sure how yet. She didn't make eye contact because she didn't want to invite any questions. She didn't want to collapse as she relayed her report. He'd trusted her to give it to him straight and she was going to. There was no sense trying to sugar coat anything when he would only find out when the cops carted Vince off in handcuffs anyway.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Jesse asked. He could tell from his cousin's pallor that she didn't have good news to share.

She finally looked Jesse in the eyes. "On two counts. He was dying until last night. Now that he's going to live they'll give him a week, two at the most, to recover and then they'll take him to a prison hospital. The cop told the nurse he's going down for 10-20." She watched Jesse tip his head back onto his pillow with his eyes closed and knew he was fighting tears.

"I should be facing that too. I should have been with them."

"There's no point it in now. Do you think Vince wants you to go to prison? Do you think you'll survive prison life? At least Vince can do the time."

Only the fact a tear ran down her cheek stopped him from telling her in no uncertain terms what he thought about her assessment that Vince could do the time. "I don't want either of us to go to prison."

"I know that Jess, but they have him at the scene, shot up and injured. I don't hold out a lot of hope they won't convict him of armed robbery on the basis of all that."

They both sat in silence for what felt like hours. "You have to save him," Jesse finally broke the silence.