The nurse nodded. "I'm pretty sure she's with your son in his room. Pretty lady with long golden red hair?"
As if summoned by the nurse's description, his mom appeared in a doorway.
"Mom!" Gage bolted from his grandmother's side when he saw his mom. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight, almost smothering him.
"It's all right. I'm here."
He moved away and pinched his nose. "Sheesh, you stink!"
His mom laughed and hugged him again. He let her for a minute and then he backed away. "Where is Dad?"
"Right here." He looked beyond his mom and saw his dad sitting up in a bed with an oxygen mask covering his mouth. He walked to the bed. "What happened?" There were bandages on his hand. Big white strips of cloth wrapped around them, and his face looked like it had a real bad sunburn.
"Well..." His dad coughed hard and held his hand up, like the woman had earlier, but you could tell his dad wasn't being disrespectful. Finally, he said, "I was getting some evidence from a building that had caught fire. Your mom helped me to get out. We got a lot of smoke in our lungs, and I burnt my hands a little."
"But you're okay?"
"Going to be fine."
Gage stared at his dad for a long time. He'd talked to his father on the phone a lot while he and his mom worked, but he was still kind of a stranger. "Do you have to go back to working there?"
"No," his mom said as she sat down with his dad on the hospital bed.
"Well, thank goodness for small favors." His grandmother spoke for the first time. "We've been waiting downstairs for the last two hours. I didn't know you were up here."
"No worries, Mom. You didn’t miss much. I just got back from x-ray. We would have texted you, but our phones didn't make the trip."
"X-ray?" His grandmother stood up straighter.
"Precaution. They'll take another one in a couple days." His dad coughed again. "It's because of the persistent cough. The doctor didn't want to take any chances, and he's playing it safe."
His grandmother nodded and then reached forward and pushed some of his mom's hair away from her face. "And you? Chauncey said you were transported here, too?"
His mom smiled and shook her head. "Treated and released. I made it up here just before they took him to radiology. I was going to try to get Dawn and have her contact you."
"She's downstairs, Mom."
His mom sent him a questioning look.
"We were told you were going to the third floor. After waiting forever, Grandma persuaded the woman to find out exactly where you were."
His dad chuckled and then coughed, but not as bad as the last time. "You persuaded the woman, Mom? A nurse? Please tell me you weren't in hover-copter mode."
His grandmother kicked up her chin. "She was an aide, not that she was of much assistance, and I was perfectly nice. Right, Gage?"
He glanced up at his grandmother and then at his mom and dad. "I don't ever want Grandma to be perfectly nice to me. Ever." He rolled his eyes, and all three of the adults started laughing. Both his mom and dad ended up coughing, but it was worth it to watch his grandma's shocked expression. "I'm ten, Grandma, not two. She was disrespectful and you put her in her place."
His grandmother sniffed and stuck her nose up in the air. "Sometimes people need a little encouragement."
He glanced at his mom. "You know that word I can't say that Nick and Simon say cops are?"
His mom narrowed her eyes and nodded.
"Yeah, well Grandma is the OG of badass."
The way his mom and grandmother sputtered and fussed at him shouldn't have been so funny, but his dad thought it was hilarious and laughed until he started coughing again.
Chapter 23
Brody glanced around the front room of his apartment. The setting sun filtered through the floor to ceiling window tinting the room with a golden hue. Brock, Blay, Sean, Kyle, Rory, Carter, his dad and Colm McBride sat around two nice card tables he and Blay had built. They folded and the legs collapsed so they traveled when needed. Tonight, they made the trip from Blay's apartment to his. Blay and the guys at the station had borrowed them last weekend for a marathon game of Pokémon. And no, he still couldn't understand the fact grown-ass men were playing a child's game and taking it