Page 86 of Chains
Chains looked up. “Pretty fucked up. He took two bullets—I think they were both in the chest.”
“Doc won’t be able to fix this. He needs a hospital.” Paco ran his fingers through his hair. “Fuck! We should’ve killed the bastards the minute they came into the house. Fuck!”
“Don’t blame yourself for this. We all knew the risks.” Chains glanced back at Eagle and his heart squeezed. “I’ll get Crow and we’ll take him to the hospital.”
“Go on—I’ll make sure we clean up this fucking mess around here,” Paco said, clasping his hand on Chains’s shoulder.
Five minutes later, Crow was burning rubber on the backroads, only slowing down when they reached Alina. The last thing they wanted was some damn badge to pull them over and start asking a ton of questions.
Chains jumped out of the car before Crow had completely stopped it. He rushed into the ER and said, “My friend’s been shot.”
Immediately the nurses, doctors, and techs sprang into action, and within no time, Eagle was laid out on a stretcher and rushed through the wooden double doors. Chains paced for several minutes before going up to the front desk.
“I need to know what’s going on with my brother,” he said to the woman behind the counter.
“You’re his relative?”
“Yeah.”
“What insurance does he have?”
“He’s been shot and you’re asking me about the fuckin’ insurance?”
The curly-haired woman pushed her large-framed glasses up her nose with her index finger and smiled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I’m not sympathetic because I am. It’s just hospital policy to ask.”
“No insurance—private pay.”
For the next twenty minutes, Chains gave the woman all of Eagle’s personal information. The mechanics of it were almost a relief because it kept him from thinking about the real possibility of his friend dying.
“We’re all done. I’ll check on the status of your brother,” the intake woman said.
Chains turned away from the desk and walked over to Crow, who sat hunched in a chair near a muted television set, staring blankly at the screen.
“I checked these fuckers out,” Chains said as he sank down next to Crow.
“Don’t own this shit, dude. You did what Steel asked and more. We all voted to go forward with this. Bad drug deals happen—you know that,” Crow replied in a low voice.
“But… Eagle. Fuck!” Chains pounded the armrest, then leaped up from the chair and started to pace.
“You—we—didn’t know it was gonna go down like that,” Crow said.
“Eagle had a bad feeling ’bout tonight.” He blew out a breath, scrubbing his hands over his face. “So did I.”
“Me too.” Crow stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “We all did.”
“We should’ve been no shows. Fuck.” He glanced over at the double doors. “I wonder what the hell’s going on in there.”
“I’d say the docs are trying to save our brother’s life,” Crow replied, his face a mask of glumness.
A blast of cold air rushed into the room, and he turned to look at the front glass doors just as Steel, Sangre, and Scorpio hurried over.
“How’s Eagle?” Steel asked, concern etched across his face.
Chains shrugged. “Haven’t heard anything yet. He was hurt pretty bad.”
“Fuck,” Steel muttered. “What the hell happened?”
