He was going to get better.
He would show them.
Every single one of them would see.
What was so difficult about being sober?
He would be sober, and that damned Rohan would take him seriously.
Everyone would treat him as he deserved to be treated.
He deserved to be allowed to help find his daughter.
She is his daughter, after all, not theirs!
He would stay sober and get a job! Then he could get his children back and take them home!
"Sober, yes," he thought as he lifted the glass of beer to his mouth.
Right after having this last drink, he would do exactly as he had said.
They should have found her by now, right?
Thomas's gaze went to the small blinking TV atop the head of the bartender.
The small tavern was the type where he could get a cheap, watered-down beer.
Just the type he could afford with the last dregs of his latest sales - his mother's china plates.
The bartender had collected money upfront before pushing the sloshing beer his way.
"Snobs everywhere. Even a stinky bartender dared to disrespect me these days," he thought in self-righteous disgust.
They should all wait. They would see.
Thomas was about to drain his beer in the almost vacant tavern when he blinked at the muted TV again.
"Hey, increase the volume," he said to the bartender without taking his eyes off the TV set.
The bartender paused in his current act of coin mining on his phone.
He gave Thomas a curt, annoyed look for interrupting him.
Then he increased the volume anyway while muttering "Cheapskate".
He promptly went back to his tapping.
Thomas had sat straighter at this point.
He leaned forward on the stool he sat on, almost tipping over, as he realised that he had not been wrong after all.
He knew that shade of hair anywhere.
And the girl!
The camera moved from the patients who were being rushed into the hospital and turned to a petite reporter who was talking about how they followed the Rohans from the scene of the incident to the hospital.
They still had no idea what had happened, as the police were not divulging any information yet.
By the time the reporter was telling the viewers to stay tuned, Thomas was already on his way out.
He had caught the name of the hospital after all.
"Hey, you…!" The bartender seemed to remember that he had collected money before as he stopped his furious call and grimaced at Thomas's departure before turning to what he was doing.
Tap…tap…tap.
*******
"But he is not."
"He is not what?"
"Here, take some more sips. I don't think you should be talking yet. You need to conserve your energy," Maxwell said anxiously before he moved the straw closer to Reyona's mouth.
Reyona nodded, then grimaced in pain as she sipped some more water.
She leaned back against the bed with her eyes closed and laid her hand on her stomach.
Thank God her baby was okay.
As soon as she woke up, she was concerned that something had happened to her child.
As she anxiously asked, Andrew quickly pressed the call button beside her while Maxwell came to reassure her that the baby was fine.
He was afraid to hold her but Reyona had told her she was not too fragile for his hug.
In truth, her body ached like she couldn't ever remember it aching before.
Yet, his warmth as he held her with such gentleness filled something deep within her.
When the horror of the past few hours wanted to crawl into her mind, she only inhaled his scent to keep it at bay.
His anxious and apologetic gaze was more than she could have hoped for at the moment.
It was a far cry from the maniacal look that had dogged her even in her unconscious state.
He had wanted to tell her something when the doctor entered.
"Allysyn? Is Allysyn fine?" she asked as the doctor entered, followed by a nurse. "That bitch hit her! She was protecting me. She went limp."
"Allysyn is fine," they all chorused before the doctor checked her and asked the nurse to bring her some liquid for her parched throat.
It wasn't until the doctor went out before Maxwell filled her in that they needed to look for Thomas urgently.
"What for?" She asked in surprise.
Then they explained.
Something was not adding up though.
She rested her woolly head for a moment before it came to her.
She gathered her strength again and said "He is not Rh-Null. Thomas, I mean. He is AB negative."
"What? How could that be? Could you have gotten it wrong?"
"I was the man's wife for eight years, remember? I know everything about his blood work. He is not Rh-Null. Maybe the doctor got it wrong? Can you check again?"
"No, no, I don't think so," Maxwell said, and they pressed the call button again to get a nurse to call the doctor treating Allysyn.
The man was shocked by Reyona's revelation.
"I am not sure what happened, but I am sure of the girl's blood type. It is so rare that it can't be mistaken for another. Maybe there is an error in your reminder of the father's blood type?"
"Or maybe he is the one with the recessive gene," Andrews said. "Could that be the reason?"
"That is not a typical case, sir." The doctor answered. "If one of the parents had the recessive gene, then the dominant gene would have overcome the recessive one. That is what the baby would have carried. Not the other way around. We can still check to be certain though. Rarities have never been unheard of."
"Does this mean her brother has it too?" Reyona asked suddenly.
The doctor gave her an odd look as he asked carefully, "Uhm, you don't possibly think we should…"
"No, what? Of course not." Reyona said in a stronger voice. "I would never expect you to take blood from a five-year-old, I just wanted to know how this works. How on earth did she end up with this rare blood when her parents do not have it?"