Chapter Six
"Clear the way!" the doctor ordered as she and a group of nurses rushed Aiden down the hallway on a gurney.
To the hospital's credit, they didn't ask questions when T-Bone came bursting through the doors. They sprang into action immediately, pulling the barely conscious Aiden from the car. But then, T-Bone Grady didn't have a face people felt they could ignore.
He followed closely behind the emergency team as they ministered to Aiden. They already had an IV going with a bag of O Negative feeding into it. One man held a gauze pad over Aiden's bullet wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. Another took his blood pressure and heartrate, reporting, "Elevated heartrate, blood pressure dropping." The other three nurses carried out various duties in an attempt to get Aiden stabilized.
The main doctor turned to Kenney. "What's his name?"
"Aiden," T-Bone answered automatically, then scrunched his face as he realized his mistake. He had been too distraught to come up with an alias for Aiden on the fly. Too late now, he thought. T-Bone didn't have long to regret his slipup because Aiden was going downhill and stole T-Bone's attention back.
Upon hearing Aiden's name, the doctor put it to use straightaway. "Aiden? Aiden, can you hear me?" she asked as she waved a light over each eye. His eyes were rolling, his face exceedingly pale. Understandably, he didn't respond. She moved down toward his chest and parted his torn shirt to assess his condition.
"General bruising over the body, extensive electrical burns across the chest, several broken ribs, gunshot wound to the left shoulder," she listed. When Aiden started being unable to breathe, she added, "His lung is collapsing. We need to intubate." One of the technicians obeyed, inserting a long tube into Aiden's trachea and squeezing the attached bag every couple of seconds.
Noticing his leg laying at an obscure angle, the doctor went over to check it. "Severely sprained knee. Possible torn ligaments," she said with disbelief then looked once again to T-Bone. "What happened?"
T-Bone couldn't think of any lie that would suitably explain Aiden's state so he just told the truth—partly. "Ran into the South Club." It certainly wasn't a lie. And the South Club was a serious presence in Chicago. It couldn't have been the first time they had sent someone to the hospital in critical condition.
The doctor's widening eyes confirmed T-Bone's assumption.
One of the nurses looked across the gurney to the nurse on the other side, inquiring in a whisper, "How is he still alive?"
The other technician shook his head and shrugged. "I honestly don't know. By all rights, he shouldn't be."
T-Bone heard their discourse and knew the answer, though he didn't say it aloud. The simple fact was—it was Aiden. Aiden could take a beating like no other man T-Bone knew and still keep on going. He certainly had in the past. But every man had his limits. T-Bone hoped Aiden hadn't just reached his.
When they neared a set of swinging doors, one of the nurses detached from the procession and stopped T-Bone from entering. T-Bone protested none too subtly, fighting to gain entrance. "You better get out of the way, little missy. That's my friend in there and I'm not leaving him."
T-Bone tried to push past the woman, but to her credit, she continued to bar the way. "No, you can't go in there, sir. Your friend is going to get all the help he needs." When T-Bone didn't back off, she raised her voice, saying, "You won't be any help to him in there, sir! Let us do our jobs."
At that, T-Bone stood still, simply staring through the small window in the door at Aiden. Seeing that T-Bone would pose no more threat, the nurse pushed through the door and returned to her post. The frantic beeping of the machines attached to Aiden and the chorus of voices spewing medical jargon assaulted T-Bone as the doors swung open; then left him in intolerable silence as they sealed closed.
Scared and unsure, T-Bone watched as the staff bustled around Aiden's lifeless form. It drove him crazy to not be in the room, but the nurse had been right. He couldn't do anything more for Aiden.
He stared, horrified, pressing closer to the window when Aiden started convulsing on the table, forcing a few of the nurses to step back. Worse still was when Aiden crashed back to the table and ceased moving. The green spikes on the monitor flattened to a solid, straight line. One of the technicians plunged a needle into Aiden, injecting him with a clear substance while another wheeled the defibrillator over. The doctor grabbed the paddles and mouthed the word "Clear!" before placing them on Aiden's chest. His chest heaved, but the line remained on the monitor. She charged the paddles again. Still nothing. For a third time, the electricity raced to Aiden's heart, this time forcing it back into motion. The doctor stowed the paddles and T-Bone let out the breath he didn't realize he was holding.
He lost sight of Aiden when someone from the hospital staff came and gently nudged him towards the waiting room. He let himself be led away, too much in shock to object.
"What's happening over there?"
It had been a few hours since T-Bone entered the waiting room. Unable to sit still, he had paced the tiled floor incessantly, every horrible possibility running wild in his imagination. He had only just remembered to call Clara. He had already brought her up to speed on what had happened up until they arrived at the hospital. He spared her the details thereafter.
"Aiden's… alive. He's in surgery now. I haven't heard any news yet."
"That's it, I'm coming over there."
"No! Clara, you gotta lay low." T-Bone lowered his voice when a few people shot him interested glances. "I'm pretty sure the Club isn't very happy we just shot up half their crew. They're after all of us, and no offense, but you ain't exactly familiar with a gun. Just stay in the Bunker until we get back. You'll be safe there."
"I don't care about being safe. Aiden needs—"
"Aiden needs medical help. And he's getting it. There's nothing you can do for him here, so just stay in the Bunker. Please."
Clara let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine."
T-Bone looked up and saw the Aiden's doctor walking towards him from across the room. He told Clara, "I gotta go," then turned to face the woman.
Forestalling T-Bone's question, she held up a hand and said, "Aiden's out of surgery. We've removed the bullet and patched him up as best we could. His lung has been re-inflated and he's stable for now."
"Where is he?"
At his request, the doctor showed T-Bone to Aiden's room at the end of the ICU. He lay unconscious on the bed, the IV still dripping slowly into the catheter.
The doctor spoke again, drawing T-Bone back to her. "I don't know what happened to your friend, but he's lucky to be alive. I've seen a few come in here after their run-ins with the South Club looking like that. But none of them were this bad. And none of them ever walked out again."
"Aiden's just lucky, I guess." It was the only thing T-Bone could think to say.
The woman paused, staring at Aiden as if thinking of a way to broach a difficult subject. When the silence stretched into awkwardness, she finally broke it. "Look, I couldn't help but noticing your friend's clothing. He almost looks like that guy that's been on the news lately. That vigilante."
T-Bone masked the fear that had risen to his throat. "I don't know what you're talk—" he started to lie.
The woman cut him off mid-sentence. "It's ok. You don't have to lie. You have nothing to fear from me." At the look of confusion on T-Bone's face, she went on. "A few months ago, my sister was on her way home from work. She was in a hurry and cut across some back alleys. I always told her not to, that it was dangerous in this city, but she didn't listen. Two blocks from her house, a man stepped out in front of her in an alley. When she turned to run, another man blocked the exit behind her.
"They were going to rape her, rob her, maybe even kill her. She screamed, but no one came to help. Until the vigilante showed up. He took care of the men and made sure she was alright. He came to her rescue when no one else would.
"Since that day, I've been wishing that I would one day get a chance to thank that man. Today I did. So you don't have to worry. I haven't told anyone my suspicions. As far as I'm concerned, he's a hero."
Stunned into silence at the turn of events, T-Bone merely nodded his understanding before the doctor exited the room.