Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (15 page)

He held his breath, unable or unwilling to even believe the hope that had imploded inside.  Bishop’s heart was beating hard and fast, evidenced by the bleeting of the machine he was connected to in some way.   A fact that his angel with the big, baby browns seemed to pick up on.  “In plain English, Bish?  They’re gonna knock you out and then sink a tube with a camera down your throat.  Dr. Levin here thinks you have ulcers.  Ulcers are just a fancy word for open sores, but to us regular people, makes us think of something to do with our stomachs, right?”

Bishop could both feel and hear how her explanation helped to relax him and he nodded to signify he heard her.  But the hope that was detonating within him seemed to push out any sort of understanding.

“He thinks that you have open sores not only in your stomach, but in your esophagus and your duodenum as well, which is just the fancy medical terms for the pipes that lead both into and out of your belly.  It would explain your pain as well as the blood in both your stools and your vomit.”

Bishop stared up at her beautiful face almost afraid to breathe, to hope that what she was saying was true.  “No shit, Stell?  I ain’t dying?”

“Not at all, big guy,” she breathed holding his gaze.  “That sort of stuff we can fix in no time.”

He blinked, trying to clear the water in his eyes.  “Real and true?”

“Would I lie to you, Bishop?  As Trey’s favorite aunt and former Hellion princess, would I,
could
I ever tell you something that wasn’t truthful?”

He closed his eyes and felt one watery track snake its way across his temple as he muttered a soft, “no.”  The nuclear cloud within him blazed almost searing his corneas.

“Okay, then,” she whispered, squeezing his hand before dropping a sweet kiss to his forehead.  “So are we good to go, on getting you better?”

“Absolutely,” he breathed even though he was afraid to open his eyes, fearful that the doc would yell, ‘just kidding’ and burst the bubble of hope which had erupted inside him.

A bubble that was trying to contain a future which also included a thirteen year old boy from Casper.

“Let’s figure out what’s wrong with me,” he finally said into the static silence that had taken over his room, trying and failing to keep his volume, his goddamn anticipation of a motherfucking future from his pitch.

A fucking future! 

“Yeah, let’s do that, big guy.”

And as soon as both Stella and the doc had cleared his doorway, leaving him to work through their summations and explanations, Bishop let loose.

Let the fucking cloud of hope out.

“I’m gonna motherfucking
live
!” he bellowed to the ceiling, giving full vent to everything that was blasting inside.

His laughter rang out in the room.  “I ain’t goddamn
dying
!”

Christ!

Seriously?  He could yell loud enough even in his weakened state that the large window shook in its frame?

From the ‘shh-ing’ sounds that came from beyond his opened door though, Bishop knew he needed to keep a lid on it.  “I ain’t dying.”

There was still a life to be led, a son to be claimed and a second chance at finding happiness.

Dropping his head back onto the pillow on his canted mattress, Bishop made a vow.  “I’ll make the most of it.  I will.”

Smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, he closed his eyes in order to add emphasis to his words, his vow.  “I absolutely fucking promise.”

Chapter Twelve

I levered myself on one elbow and I again turned in my bed, shuffling the covers as I tried to see the clock on the TV.  Dropping back into the mattress, I groaned in knowing it was only three-thirty in the morning.

And that my kid was already up playing video games even though I couldn’t hear him.  Which only told me he was wearing his headset, talking with his virtual ‘teammates’ as they conquered another set of people within their pretend, nebulous battle.  But he’d slept most of the time we’d been waiting at the hospital.  Something that made sense of why my kid was still awake in the middle of the night.

I pushed back the bedclothes with a sigh.

I was tired but couldn’t sleep.

Couldn’t sleep because I was…what?

Overjoyed that Stan didn’t have cancer?  That my boy hadn’t lost his father before I’d even had the chance to tell him who had helped create him? 

Or was it that I hadn’t yet found the bravery to even confess to my kid even as I held his father’s admission so close, enfolding myself in what he’d confided?

As my body again tensed, I realized it was the latter.

That it was time.

I blinked, staring up at the sharp bars of light on the ceiling from the beams that came through the mini-blinds from the parking lot, beyond the curtains that covered the one window in my room.

It really was time.

Time to tell my little man the truth.

I stood up and reached for my robe while wondering if I should brush my teeth, comb my hair. A mother should look good when admitting her perfidy, right?  Especially when I’d had thirteen years to either give away my secrets or at the very least be prepared to tell them.

But the delay in performing even those daily tasks might’ve found me losing my nerve, one which was draining away from me with every second that passed.

Pulling the robe-tie at my waist tightly, I dropped my chin and stepped firmly to the door that separated me from my boy.  Rapping lightly, in knocks not too loud and of not too many, I waited for J.R. to give me the approval to enter.

And waited.

Still waited, only to receive no response.

I knocked again, harder that time.

And again received nothing, not even a break in the flashing lights I could see from beneath the connecting door.

It occurred to me that he couldn’t hear my tapping because of his headphones.  Headphones I’d provided the Christmas before so that he could play his games without me and the rest of the neighborhood having to experience it all right along with him.

So I went back to the nightstand and texted him instead.

‘I need to talk to you, JR,’ I typed.  ‘Can I come in?’

‘1 sec,’ came the brief reply as I again waited, impatient to get the whole of it over and done with.  Nervous as hell to get it behind me.

“Hey, Mom.  What’s up?  I thought you were sleeping.  Did I wake you?” my beautiful boy asked as he strode into my room, bare-chested, wearing only his board shorts that I knew he liked to sleep in. 

Wait…what? 

We were supposed to have that particular talk in
his
room,
his
space so I didn’t have to face the fragrance of his disapproval that was sure to color the air in the morning. 

But I was nothing if not a flexible, go-with-the-flow, mom.

Or so I told myself as I invited J.R. in, only realizing I was running a nervous hand over my short locks when my fingers gripped the tips at my crown.   And pulled to the point that the hard clench made my eyes water.

“C’mon in, baby,” I offered, feeling much like the eight-legged beastie in the old spider and fly story.  “We need to talk.”

Watching as he settled himself lengthwise on my mattress, I copied his pose of head on hand, elbow to mattress as I lay down in front of him.  “You know how you’ve always wondered about your dad?” I murmured haltingly.  It wasn’t the best of openings but it was the best I had at that moment, at o-dark-thirty in the morning.

“Sure.  You mean, the man I thought was dead but actually isn’t?” he shot back in a deadpanned voice.  As if I couldn’t surmise his attitude from the closed look his face held.

I took in a deep breath, praying for courage before I let go of the real I’d never told my son.  “The fact of the matter is…well.
Stan
is your dad.  I married him at the county courthouse the day after I graduated high school.”

There was no change in J.R.’s expression.

So, I continued.

“We were married for five years and then I…ah, left.”

J.R.’s eyebrows moved but only to press together in a frown as he stared at the ceiling.

I hurried to explain.  “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I…ah, went away.  But once I knew you were coming, I was determined to make the best life I could for and with you.”

Oh boy, that piece of news wasn’t welcome, not if what I saw in J.R.’s scrunched face was correct.  So I just shut my mouth, giving him the time and the space to process it, hoping that his reaction wouldn’t be the same as the expression I was seeing.

“So you’re telling me that Stan is my dad, right?  And I’m guessing you named me after him.”

“Yes, baby.  I did.”

“So you and he were married for five years but you only discovered you were pregnant after you walked away from him?”

I swallowed as my kid’s voice rose in both volume and pitch at the end of his question.  “Ah…yeah, that’s true.”

J.R. rolled himself onto his back and stared at the ceiling directly for a time before asking, “Does he know?”

“I told him earlier.”

J.R.’s head made a slithering sound as it turned on the comforter so he could look at me.  A gaze I wasn’t brave enough to face.  “Before the ambulance came?”

I closed my eyes, firmly reminding myself not to lie.  “Yes.”

“So who the freak is Bishop?”

Of all the questions my kid could’ve asked me at that moment, the one he uttered sent me into the world of the confused.  “What?”

“Who is Bishop, Mom?”

“Bishop is Stan’s Hellion name,” I replied softly, as quiet as my voice allowed.  “What does that have to do with anything?”

“So Stan is a Hellion.  A motorcycle club member.  A biker, right?”  God, could my little boy sound more grown up?  “And you never told
him
, just like you never told
me
.”

I again swallowed deeply.  I didn’t know what conclusions J.R. was drawing, but I knew with everything within me, it wasn’t good.  “Yes.”

His chin went back to the ceiling and it got quiet again as my little boy-man thought.  “That’s fucked up, Mom.”

For the first time, I didn’t warn him about his language, knowing in my heart of hearts what he’d announced was more than deserved.

“All these years, I’ve felt like an outcast, like some sort of alien because I like things that
you
hate.  That our sense of humor is different and how you don’t get my jokes.”  I watched my boy’s Adams-apple move as he swallowed.  “But
now
you’re telling me that
after all this time
, I’ve had a dad.  A guy who is into bikes and who likes to laugh.  Who treats me like I’m someone special, a person he’d like to be around.”

I wanted to gather J.R. up against me, to stroke his back as I used to do when he was younger and I could soothe away the hurt of the moment.  But I was very aware that my mothering in that instance, wouldn’t be welcome.

“I needed to know I had a father, Mom.  I asked you over and over again about him.  And for you to lie…to make me think that he…”  J.R.’s voice stopped but I saw his fists were tightly gripping the comforter on either side of his hips. 

There wasn’t anything I could say, no way to defend myself.

“Someone
exactly
like Bishop who could accept me, appreciate me for myself.”  I could hear the tears behind my kid’s whisper and my heart broke at the sound.  “But you
kept
him from me.” 

He turned his head and I read the same devastation on his youthful face just as I’d read it on Stan’s earlier in the day.  “Why,
Mom
? 
Why
would you do that?”  His thin frame almost shuddered when he swallowed.  “Why would you do that to
all
of us?”

I realized then exactly what my leaving so many years ago had cost me.

But also knew I had no further words in which to answer my child’s questions.

Or my own.

*.*.*.*.*

Christ, it had been a long morning and it wasn’t even nine o’clock, the time when visiting hours started.  First had been the lab-tech, or ‘Dracula’ as Bishop called him, with his tray of needles and vials that needed a few samples of blood.  Then they’d given him a sedation pill prior to wheeling him down to where they were going to do the camera test thingy, but Bishop had been out of it before the elevator doors had even reopened.

And when he’d finally came to, he’d been back in his room with a pretty little Filipino nurse changing out his IV and doing the whole fix-the-patient’s-bed shit.  But even after all the fussing and tests, Bishop was ready to go, to get fucking gone from the whole hospital experience.

He’d had enough of that shit in his life in the doings of his early years with both his dad and grandpa.

Then Dr. Levin came in, re-describing the procedure in vivid detail (and without enough medico-speak that Bishop could understand him), telling him he was lucky none of the severe ulcers he’d sported had eroded into a perforation.

Goody for him.

The hospital dietician soon followed leaving a shit-load of booklets that had to do with what he’d be able to eat and not eat going forward.  A woman so full of herself that she’d talked for almost a full fifteen minutes almost without taking a fucking breath or giving him even a glance.   

So it was no wonder that when Dare, Huff and Trey piled into his room, their loud voices lifted in greeting, that Bishop finally found some peace.

“You don’t look sick to me, shithead,” Huff groused as his eyes moved over all the medical paraphernalia that Bishop was connected to.  “Get your hairy, lazy ass out of bed and back to your office!”

“Yeah, fucker,” Dare added with a laugh.  “Our goddamn busiest time of year and here you are just fuckin’ lounging in your motherfuckin’ jammies, getting all your meals brought to you and wondering which pretty nurse will be the lucky winner in giving Bishop his beddy-bye hand job.”

Bishop couldn’t hold back his own laugh at his brother’s teasing and shot back, “I prefer a blowjob but a hand job will do in a pinch.  That is if she knows what she’s doing.”