Chapter 4
Jett
When I open my eyes, it’s bright as hell in here. My head is killing me, but it feels slow as well. Sluggish. This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up in a cold hospital room with all the sense knocked out of me. I get it immediately. I know why I’m here.
Dirt bikes. It has to be.
I close my eyes and try to focus on my breathing, hoping my rapid heartbeat will calm down if only to make that stupid machine shut up. Where the hell am I and what race is it?
That’s right. Details come back to me slowly. San Antonio. Heat race.
I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.
“Shit,” I say, opening my eyes. I get a bright dose of hospital lights and I lift my head, but I can’t sit up much. I’m groggy, heavily drugged from the feel of it.
“Hello!” I call out. There’s hospital blankets on top of me, and I smell like sweat. I look down and see my leg is in a cast. Fuck.
A cast. A real one, plaster and all, not just a walking cast or a splint.
This is not good.
A curtain opens and a white coat doctor with graying hair appears with a cheerful smile on his face. I look around find myself surrounded in these white curtain walls. That explains why it’s so damn loud in here. We must be in the ER.
“Hello, Mr. Adams,” the doctor says in a booming voice.
“Mr. Adams is my dad,” I say on impulse, although that doesn’t really matter right now.
“How’s your head feeling?” the doctor asks.
“Like shit. What’s wrong with me? My leg? Anything else? How bad is it?”
I try sitting up on my elbows but I quickly fall back down because the drugs are making me woozy. The doctor chuckles. “Just take it easy, son. You’re not in too bad of shape. Just a minor concussion and a fractured tibia.”
I sigh and curse under my breath. “A fracture is a big deal, doc.”
“You’ll be healed up in about six weeks,” he says, giving me an assuring smile that does absolutely nothing to assure me.
“Six weeks is a lifetime in my world.”
He chuckles again and holds a narrow flashlight up to my eyes. He does a few more checks and says some more shit about how I’ll be able to leave the hospital today and that my head isn’t that bad. I don’t pay much attention. All I’m thinking about how is how I can’t race for Team Loco for the next six freaking weeks. This might ruin me. What if Marcus kicks me off the team?
The tail end of something the doctor says catches my attention. “Your sister is here, so she’ll be in here soon…”
I look at him. “My sister?”
He nods. “She’s here. You do have a sister, right? I’m tired of these dirt bike guys being followed around by stalkers claiming to be family members.”
I nod slowly. “I have a sister but—my parents are here?”
“No, just your sister. She told me you live few hours away.”
That doesn’t make any sense. My sister is a baby. How the hell is she here?
The doctor opens the curtain and motions to someone, and then Keanna appears. She’s got a timid smile as she slips past the doctor and approaches my bed.
“Hey,” she says. “Good thing I was here because they only letfamilyjoin you.” She gives me wink.
I grin. “Thanks, sis.”
