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Tayla

T he beep I heard added to the pounding headache happening inside my head. I also felt the dizziness, even though I lay perfectly still. I assumed I was in a hospital.

Open your eyes, Tay.

My eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t lift them.

I focused on my other senses to confirm.

The sterile smell of the room hit my nose.

I was also covered by heavy blankets that felt like they weighed my body down.

My hand felt cold as the IV I felt attached to pumped fluids into me.

They couldn't have been doing what they were supposed to because I still felt like I was dying.

Open. Your. Eyes.

I tried and failed again to open my eyes as my body's fatigue wouldn’t allow it.

I vaguely remember being saved by Stephon and Devin.

I’m not even sure how they’d known where to find me.

I was just glad that they’d shown up when they did.

Then I heard the door close in the background, and heavy footsteps trailed a path to where I lay.

He had squatted beside me. I could feel him exhale as it fanned across my face before he took my hand and began to speak quietly.

“Tay, Baby, you gotta pull through. I did everything I was supposed to, but now you gotta do your part. The job isn’t done.

We need you; I need you. Shit is just fucked up in my world right now.

It’s been fucked up since you left, if I’m being honest. Just open your eyes, Tay, please,” Brice said.

I could hear the stress and worry in his tone.

I also heard the undertones and promises of Ice.

He was ready to go to war. When he said the job wasn’t done, I knew that Nina wasn’t lying in that parking lot beside me.

Shit!... Wait, we? Does he know about our baby? Does JoJo know about any of this? I’m trying, Brice! Open your damn eyes, Tay!

My eyes refused to give me even a sliver of light. To add to my distress, my mouth wouldn’t move either. I tried to let his presence calm my mind. It wasn’t until I felt his lips press softly against my forehead that I began to relax.

“I’ll be back, Tay. I need to finish my rounds,” he whispered before I heard his footsteps trail the path to the door, which opened and closed the same way he had come in. After some time had passed, the door opened again.

Brice?

I tried to listen, but whoever was in the room wasn’t making a sound.

Then my hand was lifted, but it wasn’t Brice.

It was a woman’s touch. I could smell the faint, sweet, and floral scent she carried with her.

She stood beside me motionless before I felt my arm lift and a sensation flow through it.

My headache immediately subsided, and I no longer felt any pain.

I felt high. I let the euphoric feeling take me higher until I blacked out.

Brice

Something was wrong. Tayla should have been coming around and should have awakened by now. I’d gone over her chart and surgery write-up one hundred times, trying to find any clue as to why she was damn near comatose.

The last time I returned to Tayla’s room, her heart rate had slowed substantially. Her face, which had shown a returning brightness again, looked blue and devoid of oxygen.

Figure the shit out, Brice.

I stood at the foot of her bed, studying her, hoping that she would telepathically tell me the reason why she wasn’t coming around from her surgery.

As a last-ditch effort, I left and headed to the lab.

I needed to collect a blood sample. When I finally reached it, I was happy that the tech wasn’t present.

I was going against protocol. Bloodwork needed to be ordered, but I was about to bypass it all.

I looked around the small room, reading the labels on all the drawers and cabinets until I saw the collection tubes.

I quickly searched through the vials, finding the ones I needed while also grabbing a tourniquet, vacutainer needle, and alcohol swabs.

I threw them into my coat pocket, and then I headed back to Tayla damn near in a sprint.

I swiftly entered her room, washed my hands, and then threw on a pair of gloves.

Everything I had inside my pocket was placed on the bed beside her.

I placed the tourniquet above her elbow and waited for her vein to show.

Once it had, I used the alcohol wipe, opened the needle, and put it inside the vein.

From there, I gathered the two tubes of blood.

I slowly retracted the needle and reached into my pocket for a gauze packet and a self-adherent wrap that I always kept. I bandaged her wound and then headed back to the lab. When I returned, I paused because the attending tech was back at his station.

“What’s going on, Dr. Washington? You ordered some blood work?” Ryan asked. I pondered a moment before deciding he could use some extra ends.

“Not exactly,” I said as I reached into my pocket for my wallet and pulled out five hundred.

“I need you to run a drug test on these vials and look the other way. If anyone asks, I wasn’t here.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now,” I said sternly, handing him the vials. He took them and went through the blood testing routine while I waited. Within minutes, he printed the results and gave them to me.

Morphine, Potassium Nitrate? What the fuck?

The results showed that Tayla had near-overdose levels of morphine running through her blood as well as potassium nitrate. I was sure the potassium nitrate gave her the bluish tint because it stopped the blood from carrying oxygen sufficiently, among other harmful side effects.

“Thanks, man. Also, remember what I told you,” I said, leaving no room for opposition .

“Yeah, I got you. You were never here.” I nodded, then left the lab. I ducked into one of the empty rooms and took out my encrypted phone.

We need to get her out of this hospital tonight.

Steph

Whatever you need.

It was after visiting hours, which meant that someone, a patient or staff member, was trying to finish what Nina had started. I had already lost her on the table twice. I wasn’t about to let this slide. My blood began to boil in anger. Shit like this was precisely why I had trust issues.