Chapter 89

None of us was in a good mood when we walked out of RFN’s building. Dom and Brian led the procession with Liz and Ryan right behind them. I was a few feet behind with Jill and Skye.

I had held the door for everybody since it was about the only contribution I could make. My head jerked up at the sound of screeching tires and metal striking metal.

A white panel van had jumped the curb and knocked over one of the metal pylons that separated the sidewalk from the one-way street in front of it.

“What the...” I managed to say before the van struck Brian and sent him sprawling to the pavement. I had started to move forward when the side door opened and five men in ski masks jumped out. Dom had looked at his friend on the ground and got hit with a metal baton across his back. He went down to one knee but unleashed an uppercut right into the groin of the man that had attacked him.

A guy tried to make a grab for Dom but Brian managed to get up and tackle the guy. Both men grunted in pain. Brian hit the guy twice in the face before he and Dom managed to help each other to their feet.

Two others engaged Ryan from the front but he was showing what he learned on the football field. He was pushing them back and keeping Liz safely behind him despite the fact that they had hit him several times with the retractable metal rods. The last guy was trying to work his way around behind Ryan. I was 20 feet away and I did the only thing I could. I reached down and picked up a large rock from the planter along the walkway. I no longer could throw a bullet across a baseball diamond. But I was too far away for any other sort of offense.

I set my feet, opened my hips and unloaded with all I had. The pain in my arm made my vision go white and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. I don’t think it would have mattered. The brick sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a watermelon when it caught the assailant in the side of the head. I ran through the blood on the pavement but I didn’t stop to deliver a fresh kick. Ryan had taken a vicious shot to his arm and two more glancing blows to his head. He was starting to stagger.

“Get her out of here!” he ordered Dom, who had managed to get make his way over. Brian had blood on his lower leg and he was trying to hobble to us but it just wasn’t working.

Dom grabbed Liz by the arm and dragged her toward the SUV that was waiting down the block. One of the guys tried to make a grab but Ryan, disregarding his own personal safety, threw a punch that knocked the man off balance. It cost him, though. The other guy swung and caught him in the knee and Ryan went down. I was a second too slow to stop it.

My right arm was completely numb and I couldn’t move it. But my left was still good. I caught the man around the throat and tightened. The man that had made the grab for Liz lifted his baton to bring it down on Ryan’s exposed head. I pivoted, keeping my grip around the second man’s throat, ignored the fact that he was trying to claw my arm off, and drove my foot right into the outside of the first man’s knee. He crumbled and the baton clattered across the pavement. I tightened my left arm around the neck of the guy I had trapped there and lashed out with my foot again toward the guy that had just fallen. I caught him under the chin and his head snapped back.

The van driver had stayed behind the wheel during the melee but now jumped out. Ryan had made it up to one knee and he launched himself. The driver never had a chance. Ryan caught him just under the ribs and drove him into the van door. I was sure I heard bones break.

I sensed someone behind me and spun, taking my captive with me like a rag doll. Skye was standing there with her hands up. I saw her mouth moving but my ears didn’t appear to be working. My heart was pounding too loudly, I think, for words to seep through.

She reached forward and tried to pry my arm away from the man’s throat but I wasn’t budging.

“You’re going to kill him!” Skye said as she tugged frantically at my elbow. When that didn’t work she pried the fingers from my left hand away from my right shoulder where I had locked them to gain leverage. I let go and the man dropped to the ground, his head bouncing off the pavement with a sickening thud.

I sat down hard on the planter and held my face in my left hand while I cradled my right arm on my lap. I slumped forward and let the last few seconds wash away.

The next thing I knew, Liz was crouched in front of me.

“Why aren’t you somewhere safe?” I snapped.

“I’m OK,” she told me. I lifted my head and saw the area was awash in the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.

“How’s Brian?” I asked.

“Are you OK?” Liz asked.

I nodded.

“I’m good,” I said.

“You’re scaring me,” Liz said. “I’m going to get an EMT over here.”

“I’m OK,” I said. “Help the others.”

I knew Brian needed medical attention. I saw bone sticking through the fabric of his lower pant leg. Ryan had been clubbed in the head, appendages and torso any number of times. Dom had to have broken ribs from the shot he’d taken in the back.

I looked down and saw Liz had been holding my right hand. I couldn’t feel it and I couldn’t move it. The skin on my left arm was scratched raw from the man’s frantic attempts to free himself and the blood had covered my left forearm from elbow to wrist. I saw a red set of tooth marks on the underside. I looked past Liz. Ryan was sitting up and two EMTs were working on his arm. Brian was being loaded on a gurney but he appeared awake and alert. Dom had his shirt off while a woman checked his back and side.

The assailants were littered on the sidewalk with paramedics around them. The cops didn’t care that the men were in no condition to move. They had handcuffed them. A tall woman in surgical scrubs left Ryan’s side and headed toward us.

“I’m told I have you to thank for sending my husband home to me,” she said.

“This is Sondra Davis, Ryan’s wife,” Liz explained.

“He would do the same for me,” I replied.

“He’s not making any sense!” Liz said, her face going white. “He’s speaking gibberish.”

Sondra moved Liz out of the way and knelt down in front of me. She reached up to lift one of my eyelids but I shook her off. She grabbed my chin and held it still while she peered into one eye and then the other.

She frowned and then checked the pulse at my neck.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I tried to move away.

“Sit still, God damn it,” Sondra hissed. She touched me on the throat again and then grabbed my arm and felt along the inside of it. She jumped to her feet.

“I need a gurney and a bus,” she yelled. “Right now. Call Regional Hospital and tell them you are 10 minutes out with an internal arterial bleed. See if Unesto Viggo can get there from Vanderbilt.”

“What’s going on?” Liz asked.

“He’s torn the artery in his arm and he’s bleeding internally,” Sondra said. “He’s going into shock. I’m going to ride with him to the hospital but ... it’s going to be close.”

“Oh, bullshit,” I said.

“Don’t try to stand,” Sondra said. “Just keep talking to me. OK?”

“Just let them take care of you,” Liz urged. The sight of two EMTs racing across the pavement with a gurney brought every eye in my direction. Ryan shook off his minders and limped over.

“What’s wrong?” he asked urgently.

“That rock he threw did more than save your ass,” Sondra said. “It ripped his arm to shreds. I can’t find a brachial pulse and his fingers are cold to the touch. His pupils are dilated and he’s suffering from aphasia. If I don’t get him under the knife in the next few minutes ... he’s going to lose the arm at the very least. He might not survive.”

“I’m OK,” I protested. At least my brain told me that’s what I said. It sounded a lot different to my ears.

“I’m not too banged up to put you on that bed if you make me,” Ryan said, alarm clear on his face. “My girl knows her shit. If she says you’re in bad shape, you’re in bad shape.”

I shook my head as a wave of vertigo overtook me. I remembered making it inside the ambulance and then I blacked out.

It took me a few minutes after I woke up to fight my way through the haze in my brain. The video player in my head kept showing the fight on the plaza. I saw the fear on Liz’s pretty face. I saw a dear friend hit by a van and another attacked while his back was turned. I saw Ryan doing his best to fight off three attackers.

I kept my eyes closed as the movie continued. I might have killed a guy, I thought. No, I corrected mentally, I might have killed two men – one with a rock and another with my bare hands (or at least a bare arm). I remembered the sounds and the smells. The guy I grabbed around the neck had severe body odor. I hadn’t noticed when I was choking the life out of him but I remembered it now.

I remembered Liz crouching in front of me. I smiled slightly. At the time, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I could see up her short skirt but in my recollection I could see the white cotton panties that she’d put on that morning.

I felt a hand pat my arm gently. I opened my eyes and turned my head. I thought I’d find Liz there or maybe Ryan. I never expected the person I found.

“Mom?” I croaked. She had left for home while we were headed to the meeting at the label. I couldn’t believe somebody either caught her at the airport or made her fly right back to Nashville.

My mother gave my arm another gentle rub. My throat hurt when I tried to talk so I gave up the effort.

“You gave us quite a scare,” she said.

I struggled to get a little bit of moisture into my mouth but it just wasn’t possible.

“Why?” I asked in a whisper.

“Don’t try to talk right now,” Mom advised. “They had to put tubes into your throat. The nurse is going to get your doctor.”

I nodded and pain radiated from my right side. I looked and saw my arm encased in bandages and metal plating that ran from my shoulder to my wrist. It was suspended to the side with my elbow bent and my hand extended straight in the air. I reached over to touch it and saw my left forearm was heavily bandaged, too.

I glanced toward my mother and then put my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes.

I tried to process the visual images I’d just seen. It was pretty obvious that I’d had the surgery that I’d put off for years. The left forearm made only a little sense to me. I wondered if they had done a ligament transplant or something. I’d heard of doctors using a ligament from a pitcher’s healthy arm to repair a damaged one in his throwing arm. That didn’t make sense but I was still having trouble chasing thoughts to completion.

I heard the door open again and a woman I thought I knew came in. I just didn’t know how I knew her.

“Well, there he is,” she said brightly. She wore light purple surgical scrubs and I thought she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. The scrubs made sense to me but I had always been able to see through a doctor’s fake cheer. “Let me get you some ice chips.”

The cool wetness felt like heaven and I swallowed greedily.

“Easy, Travis,” the woman said as she sat down on the edge of the bed. My mother had arisen and moved a few feet away. “I had to intubate you in the ambulance on the way here and we kept the tubes in you until just a while ago. You went into shock and you stopped breathing. Your throat is going to be very sore for a few more days.”

“What?” I asked. The woman offered a soft smile and put a couple of more chips on my tongue.

“Do you remember how you got here?” she asked softly.

“The plaza,” I rasped.

“Good,” the woman said. “So you know that you threw a brick at one of the guys.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Is he dead?”

“No,” the woman said. “But he damned sure knows he’s been hit. He has a severe concussion along with a broken jaw and cheekbone. There’s a slight fracture to his skull but he’ll survive.”

I nodded in relief.

“The other one?” I asked.

“He’s going to heal eventually,” the woman replied. “They had to perform a tracheotomy at the scene. The surgeon that worked on him said he doubts he’ll be able to talk again. You crushed his trachea and damaged his voice box. But he’ll live.”

“OK,” I said. For some reason, I knew that Ryan, Dom and Brian were OK but I didn’t know how I knew it. But I knew all of them were hurt.

“Our guys?” I asked.

“They’re good,” the woman said, smiling at me. “Brian has a broken tibia. That’s the bone in your lower leg and he’s pretty bruised. Dom has three broken ribs ... but at least he’ll be able to have children.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said as a new memory arrived. Dom had lifted the guy off his feet when he hit him in the balls.