Red Hot ~Nikki Sixx

Part 43: Blindside

A/N: Sorry for the delay. Work is kicking my ass and I wanted to take some time with this part because it's kind of a big deal......so here we go....

Ashten sighed deeply as she stepped into a steaming hot shower and let the water run down her aching body.  Although she would have been content to just stand idle and let the heat soothe her muscles she was more than delighted at the chance to wash away the sticky residue left behind from the tape which held her IV to her arm.  She was also all too happy to scrub off that intoxicating blend of latex, rubbing alcohol and bleach which seemed to permeate every hospital and attach itself like a parasite to any available body.

Too bad she wouldn't be able to wash away the day as easily as she washed the complimentary emergency room cologne from her hair.

Alex's staff kept her in the ER until around midnight to ensure she was out of the danger zone only discharging her when they felt certain the medication was serving its initial purpose.

Ashten was never one to be easily shocked but she would be the first to admit when she read her chart at the hospital she didn't quite know what hit her.  For the first time in as long as she could remember she was truly at a loss for words. 

What the hell had just happened? And HOW did it happen?

She wondered the same aloud to Alex earlier when he dropped her back off at the hotel.  He rattled off the medical statistics regarding the rate at which vasectomies and the pill can fail, even though they both knew the question was rhetorical. She knew how it'd happened. She was a doctor too after all and was well aware of how biology worked.  She also had to admit to herself that this very well may have been her fault.  Her crazy travel schedule while on tour with Mötley had messed her calendar up so much she barely knew what day it was half the time.  In turn, she'd inadvertently missed some of her birth control pills.  Typically, she would have taken other precautions such as having some Plan B pills on hand but she figured with Nikki's vasectomy they had no cause for worry.

Apparently, she was wrong.

But she supposed the how of it all didn't really matter much. It'd happened just the same. She and Nikki would just have to navigate through it the best way they could.

Nikki

He was another issue entirely. Maybe not so much him, but his abrupt absence wasn't sitting well in her gut.

Ashten turned off the water and stepped out of the shower letting out another deep sigh as she checked her phone for approximately the hundredth time that night. 

No text messages. No missed calls.

She'd been trying to reach Nikki ever since he left the hospital. That was at six that evening. Countless text messages and six calls that went straight to voicemail later it was now almost 2:00 AM and she hadn't heard a word from him.

Ashten wasn't quite sure the meaning of the radio silence but she was almost certain it wasn't good. A silent Nikki was never a good thing.  He'd  already been teetering on the edge and this latest piece of news surely didn't do much to keep him from losing his grip on the earth.

After drying off she sat on the bed in her hotel room brushing out and drying her hair, an Audrey Hepburn movie on mute her only companion.  Ashten had prebooked their rooms months in advance so she still had one reserved for herself, which she took advantage of the previous night believing she had the flu and didn't want to infect Nikki. Turns out there was no danger of passing along non-existent germs and normally she would have welcomed the solitude, but that night it was unnerving.

She finished getting the tangles out of her hair and turned off the dryer, checking her phone one last time.

Nothing.