Shock Advised (Kilgore Fire #1) (2 page)

“What’s your name, darlin’?” He asked.

I turned more fully to the man as I watched Tai get up and start walking towards me.

“Mia,” I said. “And you, sir?”

The man grinned.

“My mama named me PD, but you can call me
honey
…or
sweetie
. Whichever you prefer,” he offered.

I snorted.

“That’s lovely,” I said, smiling for the first time in at least a week. “But I came here to see Taima.”

Taima, or Tai as Baylee had called him, finally reached my side.

“What can I do for you?” He asked.

No bullshitting for him.

He was all business.

“I was hoping I could talk to you…privately,” I said, glancing around at the full room.

He nodded and walked out the door, and I noticed his grey shirt was nearly completely covered with sweat on his back.

He led me out the main door once again, until we came to a stop next to the huge, red fire truck.

He looked around the bay to make sure we were completely alone, then offered me a seat on the big chrome bumper of the fire truck.

I took it, glancing around nervously.

“I have a son. His name is Colt. He's sick. He has leukemia. He had his first chemotherapy treatment two days ago. He needs stem cells for a transplant. Our first option is to hope he finds a donor. As a backup I was going to have a child just in case they needed to harvest the stem cells from his cord blood,” I blurted. “But the match has to be perfect. You were a perfect match. But then you withdrew your specimen…and now, well, I’m here to beg you to rethink it.”

He frowned and took a seat on the massive bumper on the front of the fire truck.

“What was so special about me?” He asked.

“Your blood type. Your health status. Your heritage. You were the closest I could come to actually getting his biological father, which is something I can no longer do since he’s already refused,” I told him bluntly. “And I have to have the best possible match, because I need this to work. I need this…for Colt. Just in case the bone marrow transplant doesn’t work or another donor isn’t found.”

“How much time does he have?” Tai asked.

I looked down at my hands that were fisted between my knees.

“I don’t know. It’s very advanced,” I said, looking up at him. “He started chemotherapy two days ago. Right now they’re watching to see how he responds to it. Then, once they get those results, which we should have in about two weeks or so, we can move on from there. However, the doctor is fairly positive that he’s going to need the stem cell transplant due to the advanced stage of the disease.”

Tai look tortured.

“What if I tested my bone marrow? What if we held a rally, and we got a lot of people to get tested?” He offered hopefully. “What if we do that, first, and then we go from there?”

I thought about that for a moment.

What if?

Could that work?

Could that possibly help Colt?

The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that it really was a good idea.

If a match was found faster, then the transplant could be done sooner and then that would be better for Colt, right?

And we could always explore the stem cell option later, if it was needed.

Which it might not be.

Right?

“Okay,” I said once I’d thought his suggestion through. “We can try that. Can I…will you take my number? Maybe give me a call, and I can tell you where to go and what to do?”

He nodded.

“I can do that. I’ll give you mine, too,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and handing it over to me. “Put your digits in there and call yourself so you’ll have my number.”

I did as he asked and quickly typed in the numbers.

My phone didn’t ring because it was on vibrate, but I heard it buzzing from the bottom of my purse.

When I handed it back, he looked at me for a long moment.

“We do visits at the hospital…does Colt like firefighters? I’m sure I can convince the boys to make a run by there later on,” he offered.

I smiled.

“I think he’ll like that,” I said softly. “Right now he’s in the children’s wing at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview. But you’ll have to do it soon, because by this time next week, he won’t be able to have any visitors, except me and my mother, due to his compromised immune system.”

Tai frowned.

“How does Friday work for you?”

Answer my text messages, or you’ll get even more text messages saying to answer your text messages. Nobody wants that, now, do they?

-Tai to Mia

Tai

I was nervous.

I couldn’t tell you why.

We did this sort of thing all the time.

But this time was different. This was someone I knew.

Well, knew of, anyway.

I didn’t know what to expect.

Most of the time, when we visited, it was to the healthier kids in the unit. This time I’d be in a part of the children’s wing that I’d never been to before.

After Mia had left on Wednesday, I’d started calling around to see who I could get to help.

I didn’t know why I was so invested. Maybe it was the desperation in her eyes. Maybe it was penance for doing that shit in the first place. Maybe it was just because she was pretty.

And she was that.

As I turned the corner and entered the hospital room that, according to Mia’s text earlier, Colt had been moved to following some complications with one of his medications, I once again caught my breath.

I’d done the same when I saw her the first time as well.

She’d walked into the training room at the station, and all eyes, even Fatbaby’s, had been on her.

Fatbaby had trained himself to not notice the opposite sex, seeing as if he did, his wife liked to make him feel terrible for doing so.

She was
that
captivating.

Medium length blonde hair that came down to the tops of her breasts. Perfectly perky breasts that would probably fit my hand well

Pale, milky white skin that just begged me to run my work-roughened palm over it.

Beautiful honey-colored eyes that had a rim of green around the pupil.

Bow tie, full lips.

And curves oh yes, those were my favorite.

I loved curves.

Especially on her.

I lifted my hand to knock on the door frame, and Mia’s face lit up like the Fourth of July as soon as she heard it.

“You made it!” She exclaimed excitedly.

The little boy’s eyes moved, following his mother’s movement across the room.

Not once did he pick his head up, though.

I’d never seen a child lay so still before.

My niece and nephew were hellions. I don’t think I’d ever seen them as still as this little boy was, which made me realize that something was
really
wrong with him.

Logically I’d known that.

But knowing it and ‘seeing’ it were two different things.

“How’s he doing?” I asked, giving in to the urge and rubbing my hand up and down the outside of her arm.

She stopped the movement, but didn’t remove her hand from the top of mine, making me realize that she wasn’t bothered with the touch. She just wanted to hold my hand

“He’s been better. They had to put a feeding tube in today because he’s lost about two pounds. He’s not holding down any of his food or bottle. They have him on some antiemetic’s, or nausea meds, as well as some fluids for dehydration,” she frowned.

My heart hurt at how much this young child was suffering.

Babies didn’t deserve to suffer.

At this young age, he was unjaded by life, still good and pure. So what, exactly, had he done to deserve it?

“I brought him something,” I said, holding out the tiny bear.

Mia took it with a smile that stole my breath away.

“He loves bears,” she said, turning around and walking back towards the hospital bed that Colt was laying in.

“Colton,” Mia said softly to the little boy. “Look what Mr. Taima brought you!”

Colt attempted to lift his hand to reach for the toy that his mother held out for him, but he just couldn’t lift it high enough.

His chubby little hand only rose about an inch off the bed before his exhausted limb couldn’t handle the effort anymore and dropped back to the bed with a small thump.

“Oh,” she said, moving until she could place the toy in his hands. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy will give it to you.”

“He loves firefighters,” Mia said. “My dad was an active duty firefighter when he was killed in an automobile accident,” she said, looking down at the firefighter bear I’d picked up on a whim while I was picking up some new uniform bottoms earlier. “My mom has tons of firefighter memorabilia that she lets him play with. Hats. Old hoses. You name it, she still has it. And Colt just loves it.”

I smiled.

“A future firefighter in the making,” I murmured.

Mia turned her smile up at me, but the little boy on the bed held his hand out to capture her attention.

“What is it, sweetheart?” She asked him.

The little boy was devastatingly cute.

He had brown curls that were scattered around his face. Porcelain white skin. Bright blue eyes. And just two teeth on his bottom gums.

Seriously, he was really freakin’ cute, and I didn’t much like any kids except for my own brother’s.

He picked his hand up and brought it somewhere close to his face, then repeated the process.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

Was he signing?

“We’ve been watching Baby Signing Times, educational videos over the past month or so. He’s got quite a few words now that we’ve had nothing to do but relax,” she explained.

“What’d he say?” I asked.

Mia grimaced.

“Daddy.”

Understanding dawned.

“Oh,” I said walking toward his bed. “No, little man. I’m not your daddy, but any man in his right mind would claim you since you’re so stinkin’ cute.”

His eyes smiled as he opened his hand, and I placed my index finger into his grip.

He squeezed tight, and I smiled before taking a seat next to his bed.

“Did the doctor give an exact time that he’d meet us here?” I asked.

Mia shook her head.

“No,” she said. “He just said that he wanted to discuss the possible donors. Which I want to thank you for, by the way. You’ve done amazing things in the last couple of days. I don’t know how you got so many people to come forward and get tested. I feel humbled.”

I shrugged.

“Sometimes it’s helpful to be a firefighter. We’ve got a lot of guys standing at our backs, and I have lots of friends,” I said.

I’d gotten over a thousand people to get tested, including my friends at the local PD. My fellow firefighters. And even my brother and his friends.

People had come from as far as Benton, Louisiana, a little town about an hour away, home to a well-known motorcycle club.

In fact, the entire club, The Dixie Wardens MC, had also been tested.

“Do you think he found a match?” I asked.

Mia smiled hopefully. “I want to think so.”

Suddenly, I did, too.

The little boy that was holding my hand was sweet, and he’d fallen asleep in the two minutes it’d taken me to ask his mother about the bone marrow transplant.

He had this adorable snore going on that was making my brain start to contemplate the joys of parenthood…a thought I tried to cut off before it got too far, but found that I just couldn’t.

“So who,” a man that sounded like the doctor I’d spoken with on the phone, said, “Is Jackopa Stoker?”

I blinked.

“That’s my brother,” I answered.

The doctor, Dr. Griffiths according to his nametag, smiled widely.

“Well, I have a near perfect match when I compare Colt’s labs to Jackopa’s.”

My mouth dropped open.

“You’re shitting me,” I said.

He shook his head. “No. Not at all. Yours was very similar, as we discovered, but your brother’s is near perfect.”

Elation started to pour through me at the thought that this kid might have a fighting chance.

“So what now?” I asked since Mia seemed busy trying to gain her composure once again.

She wasn’t doing too good of a job at it, either.

“Now we get them both more deeply tested to make sure they’re truly a match. Then we start making plans to get the transplant done, that is if Jackopa is still amendable to donating,” Dr. Griffiths said.

I grinned.

“Oh, he’ll be amendable.”

I guaran-fucking-teed it.

Three hours later, I had Catori, my five-year-old niece, in my lap as I watched her parents fight.

“You what?” Winter yelled.

“I swear to God, Winter, I didn’t fuckin’ mean to do it!” Jack growled, throwing his hands up in the air.

“You can’t just go and do this shit without freakin’ telling me! I’m your wife, I deserve to know if you’re going to go do something life-changing like this,” Winter spat.

I grinned.

“I would hardly call a tattoo life-changing, Winter. I would probably call it more of a…,” he hesitated, looking over at his daughter that was in my lap.

“Call it more of a what?” Winter asked, not realizing that her daughter was listening avidly.

“A sexual enhancement,” he said, looking over at his child once again.

Winter burst out laughing.

“Honey, you could wear a damn sack over your head, and I’d still fuck you,” Winter teased.

“What is fuck?” Catori asked.

Jack shot Winter a dirty look.

She shrugged unabashedly.

“So, what did you come over here to talk about?” Winter asked, plopping down onto the couch right next to me.

She growled and leaned towards me, pulling a naked Barbie doll out from under her ass and tossing it to the already-cluttered-with-cars-and-Barbie-shoes coffee table.

“You get a call from the doctor yet?” I asked.

“No. Why?” My brother questioned.

I shifted Catori until she was on the couch next to me and wrapped my free arm around Winter.

Winter leaned into my shoulder and laid her head against my chest.

My brother ignored that, instead pulling out his phone from his pocket and scanning it.