Daddy Next Door

by Kylie Walker

  “Are you Asher Fury?”

  “Yes.”

  “The boy that was hit was your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “If you follow me to the hospital. I have to get there and make sure my son is okay.”

  Asher’s hand was on the passenger side door as the cop said, “I need to get your statement first, sir.”

  Frank visibly tensed as Asher stepped up into the cop’s face. “This is my statement, James Proctor ran my son down like an animal in the street. All the damage you see on his face now is not going to even come close to what I’m going to do to him if Axel is not okay. Now, I’m going to the hospital to be with my family. If you need any more than that from me, you can meet me there.” He got in the passenger side of the car and Frank scrambled quickly to the driver’s side. Neither of them said a word on the way to the hospital.

  **

  Frank had barely stopped the car before Asher stepped out and ran in through the sliding Emergency room doors. He walked up to the desk and the girl sitting there was on the phone. He could tell she was talking to a friend or boyfriend by the way she was twisting her hair and giggling. He gave her about two seconds to hang up and notice him. When she didn’t, he slammed his hand down on the counter in front of her. She lowered the phone and with a mixture of fear and attitude she said, “Can I help you?”

  “My son was just brought in by ambulance. His name is Axel Halloway. I want to see him.”

  “Have a seat and…”

  “No. I’m not having a fucking seat.” He felt Frank touch him again. This time he shrugged him off. “Get on that computer and find out where my son is.”

  “Asher, they’ll kick you out of here if you don’t calm down.”

  “They can try,” he said. The girl was looking at the computer. A second later she said, “He’s in 3B.” Asher was already headed for the door. “You can’t go back there right now. The nurse has to buzz you in!” As Asher and Frank made it to the door, a doctor was coming out. Asher grabbed it to keep it from closing and went through. Frank followed him. Asher looked at the signs on the doors and when he got to 3B he found Mia sitting in a chair sobbing. She was alone. He felt like his heart stopped.

  “Where is he? What happened?”

  Mia looked up at them. Her face was swollen and her eyes barely opened. “They took him to surgery,” she said.

  “For what? What’s wrong with him?”

  “They said he was bleeding in his brain. They had to relieve the pressure. He had a seizure in the ambulance.”

  “Fuck!” Asher ran his hands through his hair as paced the floor. Frank stood in the corner with wide eyes and Mia sobbed softly. After several minutes, a male nurse came into the room and said, “I’m Brad, the head nurse here. I’d like to take you folks up to the surgery waiting room. Axel won’t come back here. He’ll be in surgery for a while and then in recovery before they get him into a room.”

  “Do you know anything? What’s wrong with him?” Asher heard his voice crack and that pissed him off.

  “No sir, I haven’t heard anything new since the ER doctor spoke to Miss Halloway.”

  Asher nodded and reached his hand down to Mia. She took it and he pulled her up against him. She clutched onto him as they followed the nurse to the surgical waiting room. It was a clean, comfortable room with about twenty anxious and depressed looking people sitting and standing and pacing and crying. It made Asher’s anxiety worse. The rage had finally lifted and made way for the anxiety and sadness. He held Mia and occasionally whispered reassuring words to her that he didn’t believe himself. Frank sat like a stone and stared at the television with no volume playing on the wall. Asher tried concentrating on the television or Mia or anything that would stop the vision of Axel being hit by that car and flying up into the air from replaying over and over in his head. They sat like that for hours and the morning light was already slipping in through the blinds when a doctor stepped into the room and said, “For Axel Halloway.”

  They all got to their feet at once. Asher was happy to see the doctor had silver hair. He knew it didn’t make sense but he felt better knowing that his boy was being taken care of by a mature man and not a kid. He was clean-cut and his movements seemed deliberate and precise. He had a deep voice and when he started talking to them he used non-medical friendly terms, but he didn’t dumb it down so much that he made them feel like idiots.

  “I’m Dr. Roberts. I’m the surgeon attending to Axel. You are?”

  “I’m his mother, Mia.” Mia’s voice was a raspy whisper. Asher squeezed the shoulder he was holding onto and said, “I’m Asher Fury, his father and this is Frank Halloway, his grandfather. How is my son?”

  “He took a really hard blow to the back of his head. There was an open area near his neck and that’s where all of the bleeding was coming from. But on the MRI we saw a spot deeper in the brain that was bleeding inside. The pressure was building inside his skull and that’s what caused the seizure on the way in. We repaired the bleed and put in a shunt to drain the fluid. That’s what took the longest. He also has a fractured arm and three broken ribs. One of the ribs punctured his lung. We repaired that as well. He will have to be attached to a chest tube for several days to drain the fluid.”

  Mia was shaking so hard that her body leaning against Asher’s was making him shake, or maybe he was shaking on his own. He wasn’t sure. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “The best answer to that is we did all we could for him and now we wait. Until he wakes up, we really won’t know. He’s in a medical induced coma right now, so I don’t want anyone to panic when you see that he still has a tube in his throat and a machine breathing for him. It will give his brain time to recover and be able to take the regulation of his vital signs back over more slowly.”

  “Can I see him?” Mia sounded on the verge of tears again.

  “He’ll be in recovery for an hour or so before they take him up to ICU. You can see him there.”

  Frank thanked the doctor. Mia and Asher were still standing there like they were made of stone long after he left. Mia was sobbing silently again and Asher was thinking that this was his curse; one more person he loved had been struck down and it was his fault once again. When would this ever end?

  Chapter 30

  The hour that Axel was in recovery passed excruciatingly slow. A nurse, dressed in scrubs with her hair in a blue net and blue shoe covers on, finally came in and called out Axel’s name. The three of them, exhausted, and puffy-eyed and tear-stained cheeks, leapt to their feet.

  “If you will all follow me, I will take you to the ICU.”

  “Is he okay?” Mia asked her. The nurse smiled gently and said, “He is still stable.”

  As they followed her, in an effort to think about anything else but the images that were driving him crazy, Asher looked around at the décor of the hospital. The hallway she was leading them through had as much personality as the rest of it that he had seen so far. The floor was white with brown tiles and the walls were all white. The ceiling above them was made from polystyrene squares laid out in a grid. He had spent part of the night counting them. That hadn’t worked either. The lights were blindingly bright as they bounced off the white walls. It was intrusive, Asher thought. No one here felt well enough for the bright lights, not even the visitors. There were cheap commercial prints hanging here and there that did little to add to the appeal of the place, but overall he had to admit that at least it looked and smelled clean and the people seemed to be caring and professional.

  The nurse led them through a set of heavy double doors that opened with a big metal button on the wall. Inside, they could hear the beeps and swooshes of the machines. Mia tightened her grip on him as the nurse led them deeper inside. She stopped at the third glass cubicle. A curtain hung on the inside of all four walls of the glass room. She pulled open the sliding door and that’s when they finally saw him. Asher’s chest hurt immediate
ly and Mia collapsed into her father’s arms and began to sob again. Frank was shaking so hard Asher could see his arms and legs moving. Axel looked so young and vulnerable lying against the stark white sheets. His dark hair was partially obscured by a white bandage but strands of it poked out here and there and provided a sharp contrast to all the white around him. His skin was pale, almost translucent and he had a tinge of dark stubble on his upper lip and chin that made his skin look even whiter. He had a tube coming out his mouth that attached to another that went to a big machine beside the bed. An IV ran into one arm and three bags of liquids and medications hung from the pole. He had a sling on the other arm and his ribs were wrapped with tape or bandages. Another thick tube came out the side of his chest and was attached to a machine that sat on the floor next to his bed. Other machines beeped and dinged around him and the sight of it all was almost too much for Asher. He felt like his heart was breaking.

  Mia let go of Frank and stood next to the bed looking down at her son. She leaned over the railing and placed a soft kiss on the side of his face. “I love you baby. Mom’s here. You keep fighting. We need you baby. Dad’s here and Grandpa. We all need you. You keep fighting to wake up. Please wake up.” One of her tears splashed off her face and onto Axel’s. Asher watched as it rolled down his cheek. He reached over without thinking about it and wiped the tear off his son’s face. He leaned down where his mouth was close to Axel’s ear and said, “Dad’s here. I won’t leave until you go with me. I’m so sorry, son. I’m so damned sorry! I love you so much!” Asher felt the burn of hot tears in the corners of his eyes. He stepped back and let Frank step up to beside the bed.

  “Hey buddy! It’s Grandpa. Open your eyes and tell your Mama that you’re okay so she’ll quit worrying, okay?” Frank was fighting through the tears too as he leaned down and gave his grandson a kiss on his cheek. “I love you, Axel, so damned much.” His voice cracked and he had to turn away too. Eventually Frank had a seat in one of the chairs. Mia stayed in her spot next to the bed, holding his hand and Asher paced back and forth, wearing a hole in the tile. Asher couldn’t turn off the thoughts in his head. This was his fault. He had taunted Proctor and he left that office feeling pretty damned cocky about it. Now his son and the rest of his family were once again suffering because of something he did. If Axel died he would never, ever forgive himself.

  Asher finally couldn’t stand the deafening silence in the room. “Does anyone want coffee?” Mia almost imperceptibly shook her head.

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Maybe a bottle of water for Mia.” Asher nodded. He went over to where Mia stood and rested his hand on her back. She melded into his side and relieved, he held her there. He was so afraid that she blamed him too. He kissed the top of her head and said,

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything, baby?”

  She nodded and he felt her squeeze her arms around him for a second before letting him go. That made him feel a little better, but feeling good again was a distant hope. Axel would have to wake up and be okay, and the man who had done this to him would have to pay.

  He left Axel’s room and started down the hallway full of glass rooms. He was almost to the exit door when he saw something out of the corner of his eye that caught his attention. A man laying in a bed like the one Axel was in. His face was swollen and his eyes were closed and puffy. He had a tube that went into his throat attached to a machine that was breathing for him. It was James Proctor and next to the bed stood Randall. The sight of them both, even with James in the condition he was, tore through Asher like a storm.

  Randall saw him too and stood up. He narrowed his eyes and said, “If my son dies, I will kill you, and I will make it hurt.”

  Asher, once again, saw red. This time he used his forearm to push the older man up against the wall. He held him there, putting enough pressure to make Randall feel like he was choking to death. “My son is in a coma because this mother fucker tried to hit me with a car and missed. If Axel dies, I will cut him into pieces while you watch and then I will kill you, slowly. So whoever it is you pray to, you better start praying that my son wakes the fuck up.”

  Asher caught sight of a blue uniform from the corner of his eye. He let go of Randall just as a man in a suit and two uniformed officers walked into the room. Randall was glaring at Asher still. He tore his eyes from him and asked, “What do you want?” to the officers.

  The man in the suit said, “I’m Detective Riley from the Colfax County Sheriff’s department. Are you Asher Fury?” Asher nodded. “And you are Randall Proctor?”

  “Yes! What is this about?”

  “We need to talk to your son when he wakes up. He is very likely going to be arrested for reckless driving at the least, attempted murder at the worst.”

  Randall snorted out a laugh. “My son is going to be arrested? What about him?” He pointed at Asher.

  “From what the witnesses told me, Mr. Fury was the intended victim.”

  “Victim? Do you see my son? Look at him. He can’t breathe on his own because of what this animal did to him.”

  “Were you there, sir?”

  “No, I wasn’t there.”

  “Can you present a witness that will say Mr. Fury laid hands on your son?”

  “A witness? Are you kidding? There was a fucking street full of witnesses.”

  “Yes sir, there were. What we were told was that the car came towards Mr. Fury and the young man stepped in the way. Then the car continued to barrel across lawns until it smashed into the side of a brick house. The air bag in the car didn’t deploy. Your son’s injuries were likely sustained in the crash.”

  Randall sounded like he was choking. “You must be crazy! Do you know who I am? My son is the mayor of Haddenfield!”

  “Good for him,” the detective said turning to Asher, “Mr. Fury, on behalf of the Colfax County Sheriff’s Department, I hope your son has a speedy recovery.”

  “Thank you,” Asher whispered in disbelief. The neighbours had stood up for him. They hadn’t cowered down to the Proctor’s. This was huge, yet he still couldn’t feel any joy. Any joy he ever felt again would only come after Axel was awake and okay.

  “Excuse me,” he said. He left and went out the doors towards the cafeteria. On the way he passed a small chapel. Asher wasn’t a particularly religious man. He hadn’t been to church since his mother died. He stepped inside and looked around. It was like a dollhouse in comparison to his size. He closed his eyes for a second and tried to breathe in a feeling of reverence. Then, opening his eyes, he sat on one of the tiny pews and looked up at the statue of Jesus on the cross in front of him. He didn’t utter a sound out loud, but in his head, he spoke to God.

  ‘I know it’s been a really long time since I’ve been here. It has been way too long since I’ve spoken to you. What I’m asking isn’t for me, it’s for my son and Mia. I missed so much of his life. He had to grow up without a father and although he had the best mother he could ever ask for, it just wasn’t fair. He’s such a good kid, God. He’s smart and funny and he has everything going for him. Please don’t let him die like this. Please don’t let that scum, be the one to take him away from this earth. He’s too good for that. Please help him God. Please don’t take him away from his mother. She loves him so much.’

  Chapter 31

  Asher got the coffee after he left the chapel and he saw Dean and Lyle in the ICU waiting room when he was on his way back to Axel’s room. Dean told him there were a few of Axel’s good friend’s downstairs in the main lobby too and he had promised to keep them posted. Asher explained Axel’s injuries to them and thanked them for being there.

  “Where else would we be man?” was Dean’s reply. He hugged his friend and Lyle and then headed back in. He passed James’s room again, noticing that one of the uniformed officers was still there. Randall glared at him as he went by. The fury Asher had felt since the night before was wearing on him. His whole body hurt from it. He was exhausted physically, mentally, and emotiona
lly.

  He shook it off before he went back into the room. Mia didn’t need to see him fall apart. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, handed her her water and then gave Frank his coffee. Eventually they urged Frank to go home and Asher and Mia both fell asleep in chairs on either side of the bed. After about twelve hours, the doctor came in and removed the breathing tube. They were told that the fact he was able to breathe on his own was a good sign and that they’d stopped giving him the meds to keep him in the coma so he should wake up soon.

  Asher went back out at about the sixteen hour mark to get Mia a coffee and insisted she drink it. When he got back to the door of Axel’s room and saw Mia crying again, he wasn’t sure he could take whatever it was she had to say. He felt like one more thing might just put him over the edge once and for all.

  She looked up and saw him. Through her tears she smiled. “He’s awake!”

  Asher nearly dropped the coffee as he raced to the bedside. He set the cups down on the bedside table and looked down at his son. “Hey Buddy!” Axel tried to smile, but it looked painful. Asher reached out and stroked the side of his son’s face. “I’m so happy to see you. I love you so much.”

  Just when Asher had been ready to give up, just when he didn’t think he had an ounce of fight left in him, the dark blanket that smothered him was lifted and replaced by bursts of light. Mia’s smile. Axel’s eyes. His heart was so full right at that moment that it physically hurt, but it was a good hurt. His son was awake. He would be okay. Waves of relief and happiness washed through him. He felt it soak deep into his bones. He was almost dizzy with it and for a second he closed his eyes and savoured the moment, thanking God while he was at it. Axel was going to be okay, he could handle anything else the world threw his way.

  **

  About a week after Axel got out of the hospital, Asher went over to Frank’s house to see him and Mia. Mia smiled and stepped up on her toes to kiss him as he came inside. God, he loved that. He loved the way she greeted him so warm and lovingly. “Hey baby, how is the boy?”