CHAPTER 4
ROWAN
Prying my eyes open, I was greeted with a blinding light that triggered reflexive eye squinting. A few seconds later, my eyes adjusted to the light, and I became fully awake. But as my eyes darted around the unfamiliar room and to the ceiling above me, I wondered how the room could have been brightly lit when I never slept with the light on.
“Oh, you’re awake?” From the other side of the room, I heard a rather familiar voice, and I turned my gaze in that direction, as Alex walked up to me with a wide smile. I scrunched my brows. What’s going on? How did I end up in a hospital?
I bobbed my head and slowly added, “I am.”
“Oh my God! Thank goodness,” he exclaimed, and as I opened my mouth to ask him for an explanation, the door opened and a middle-aged man in surgical scrubs walked in alongside another doctor and a female nurse in uniform. “Good morning, Mr. Rowan,” the middle-aged man said with a small smile, as others nodded and smiled at me.
“He opened his eyes just now,” Alex announced. “That’s great,” they all commented in unison.
“How come I ended up in the hospital?” I asked, still baffled as I tried to get off the bed, and then I realized how heavy my right foot was.
“No, Mr. Kyles. Please, you have to stay still for now,” the man in scrubs said, just when a surging pain shot through my back.
“What? Don’t tell me I’m stuck in this bed,” I asked, almost in a scream.
“No, you’re not, but for now, you have to relax and let’s conduct a check on you,” the doctor said.
I obeyed, but when he finished his business on my body, smiled at me, and was about to leave, I lost my patience.
“Will someone just tell me how I ended up being confined to this bed?”
“You had an accident,” the doctor said, and as if scanning my eyes for an answer, he added, “Don’t you remember what happened, Mr. Kyles?”
My eyes fluttered, and I bobbed my head, as thoughts flickered through my mind just then.
From what I recalled, I was shot at while delivering my speech during a meeting. “But why was I shot?” I whispered in Alex’s face, as he sat gaping at my eyes.
It wasn’t like I was involved in any dubious deals that may have made me enemies.
“I don’t think anyone can answer that except the shooter. Thank God you came around after being unconscious for two days after the surgeries,” Alex explained and I scrunched my brows.
“Surgeries?” I asked.
He bobbed his head. “Yeah, you had both chest and leg surgeries. It was actually a long one, but by God’s grace, you pulled through. Do you know you almost died yesterday too?”
“How? A relapse or what?” I asked, my eyes intent on his face.
He shook his head. “Nope. He was disguised as a doctor and tried to kill you. But for the timely presence of the lady that saved you at the AGM, he would have succeeded.”
“Seriously? The same shooter?”
“Yeah, most probably he was, and certainly, he’s after your life. But be rest assured, the cops are doing their jobs, and he would be nabbed soonest,” he explained while I tried digesting his words, wondering what I could have done to warrant a death threat.
“You mean he wanted to finish me off after finding out I was alive?” I asked stupidly as I tried to sieve through possible reasons that could make me the target of assailants.
He nodded, and then gave me a reassuring smile.
“Do you know this lady that saved me twice?” I inquired, and he nodded again before removing his phone from his pants pocket.
He responded by handing me his phone. When the sound of a video caught my attention, I clicked on it.
I wondered what that had got to do with my question. It was a video of a young lady saving a man who was certainly me.
A knock came from the door when I was only two minutes into the video. I glanced at Alex, who smiled at me before turning to the door, which opened just a few seconds later, and then Adrian and Edna strolled into the room.
“You’re awake,” Edna shouted as she dropped the basket with her on the table and rushed to me with an excited look. “Oh my goodness!” Before I could utter a word, she pulled me into a hug, and I squeezed my face.
“When did he wake up?” Adrian asked as he turned to Alex.
“Not quite long.”
Edna pulled out of the hug and looked down at me with a grin on her face. One would think she really cared for me with all those expressions.
I knew Edna too well to know all that was a farce, nothing but a cruel hoax. Maybe not totally though, because she did care for me at a time in our lives until a year ago when she found out I wasn’t who she thought I was.
Adrian, on the other hand, wasn’t different from her, except that he never cared for me, not at any time. So, I was utterly shocked to see him in the hospital looking like he cared any bit and that made me suspicious of him.
Could he be responsible for my near-death experience? I mean, he was the only one I could think of at that time. He was the eldest brother, and perhaps the most pained because he expected he’d be the heir to the family business.
So, to think that the illegitimate child would be the one to take over could have made him so upset that he would want me dead. It wouldn’t be surprising though, as he’d always wanted me gone. He without doubt hated my guts and had always bullied and treated me like I never belonged there.
It was safe to think of him as the perpetrator, but could he really be that callous to spearhead such a dastardly attack?
He was the only one I could suspect. Alex, on the other hand, could never think of doing that, as he wasn’t even interested in the family business if that would be a premise for suspicion. So was Edna, except she wanted to help her husband and…
“It’s good that you’re awake now. We all thought you would remain in a coma for a long time,” Adrian uttered.
I fought the urge to glare at him. That was typical Adrian; he never hid the fact that he didn’t give a damn about my life. “I was sorry to disappoint you,” I responded, and he shrugged.
“Now that you’re alive, you better get back on your feet quick enough, because we have other better things to attend to,” he announced.
“So soon?” Edna inquired, and Adrian nodded.
“Of course, since he’s awake,” Adrian uttered before heading to the door. Edna turned to me with a small smile, which I didn’t return.”
I’ll check on you later. Get some rest, please.” She took her leave after that.
“Isn’t Edna just the sweetest sister-in-law?” Alex asked, and I merely scoffed.
“Can I meet this doctor to show my gratitude?” I inquired.
“I’m afraid not.”
I was surprised at the terse prepared answer, and my brows crunched. “Why?” I asked.
“I wanted to show my gratitude yesterday too, but I was told she wasn’t available. She’s on leave or something. ”
“When will she be back?” I still managed to ask.
“That… I don’t know.”