Chapter 12 #2
Parker’s hands were shaking but she didn’t want to let the nice Italian gentleman know that. She murmured something, dropped the key to the street door, picked it up, got into the building, ran up the steps, fumbled the key to her apartment door, finally got it open and slammed it behind her.
She shed her filthy clothes as she ran to the bathroom, stepping out of her panties just as she entered the shower stall, and turned the water as hot as she could get it and stood under the stream, crying, until she got it out of her system.
She had no idea why she was crying. She and Nick had both survived something terrible, but they were okay. But as long as she lived, she could never forget that moment when Nick came flying at her, covering her with his body, and the feel of the punch as the bullet hit him.
For one horrible moment, she thought she’d lost him, as the blood poured out of him.
That she hadn’t lost him was a miracle, but she understood that as he raced toward her, throwing himself over her, he was consciously sacrificing himself.
Shielding her with his body, fully prepared to die. For her.
It didn’t bear thinking about. She sat on the floor under the shower head, legs pulled up against her chest and sobbed. The tears came in great wracking gulps of air, almost spasms. She cried and cried until she couldn’t breathe, until no more tears came, until her chest hurt.
She sat against the shower wall until her sobs ceased, and her breathing returned to normal. She sat for a long time, thinking of nothing, mind completely empty. Letting the hot water pour over her, warming her up from the bones out.
Though it was a hot day, she’d been freezing. Shock, no doubt. But now she was warm again.
Parker stood up, easily. Her legs had been unsteady when she walked into her apartment, but now they carried her easily.
She felt light, as if the crying jag had liberated her from a black bolus of evil.
She turned the water off and stood there, herself again.
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to get back to Nick.
It felt like her life had split into two.
Before Nick and now with Nick, and she needed to be by his side, right now.
They’d both survived something that should have killed them. The earthquake and the shootout, either one. But they weren’t dead. They were alive, and Parker felt life sparkle in her blood down to her fingertips.
She dressed, packed a small bag because she intended to stay with Nick for as long as the hospital staff allowed her to, and went downstairs.
Just outside the door, she stopped. Remembering that moment—could it possibly have been only 24 hours ago?
—when she came home with Nick. Their first kiss against her door.
That feeling of something new and vastly exciting starting.
When she looked around her familiar surroundings, it was as if everything became new.
The driver was where she’d left him. He got out and opened the back door for her. “Sorry to take so long,” she said.
“No problem at all, ma’am,” he answered.
It was late. She’d lost all awareness of time. Today had been endless and it wouldn’t end until she was able to see Nick, and if possible, talk to him.
“There are sandwiches and hot tea in a thermos in the bag,” the driver said.
Nick, looking after her even from a hospital bed. The arrangements had probably been made by Dylan, but the impetus would have come from Nick.
The crying jag had made her hungry. She opened the container and pulled out a tomato and mozzarella sandwich and poured herself a cup of tea.
The container had three types of sandwiches, carrot sticks, grapes and two cannoli.
She polished everything off just as they pulled into the hospital parking lot.
To her surprise, the driver got out of the car too. “You don’t have to accompany me inside,” Parker said.
“Oh, but I do,” he answered with a smile. “My instructions are clear. I will accompany you to the floor where Mr. Gardner and Mr. Garin are.”
He was smiling, but there was steel visible under the smile, and Parker knew that short of shooting him, too, he was going to accompany her.
He took her small case and Nick’s big suitcase as they walked inside and took the elevator to the third floor. The hospital was silent, with few people around. A nurse came forward, tall, dark-haired, and said “Dr. Donovan?”
Parker nodded and she said, “Follow me, please.”
They went down several halls, through a door beyond which was utter quiet. There was only one Marine, standing at attention just outside a door.
The nurse stopped at the door. “Mr. Garin is in here. He came out of anesthesia about half an hour ago, but he is still only semi-conscious.” She walked away.
Dylan was sitting in a chair and got up. Parker looked up at Dylan. “Do you think they’d let me stay the night? He might need something.”
Dylan smiled. “Parker, I don’t think you have quite grasped the situation here.
Nick’s a hero. You’re both heroes. The hospital staff doesn’t know any details, nor will they ever, but they do know you and Nick did something extraordinary.
Everyone has instructions to bend over backwards to help you. ”
Parker blinked. She was a hero!
Dylan pushed open the hospital room door, and she walked in, and there he was! Nick. Pale beneath his tan, with tubes running in and out of him. Oh God. It took everything she had not to hug him and risk pulling a tube out of him.
There was a chair in the corner. She picked it up and quietly placed it by his bedside and sat down.
It was preternaturally quiet except for the beeping of some machine monitoring something.
Parker knew nothing about medicine except for the fact she was intensely grateful for modern medicine and Dr. Crowley for keeping Nick alive though he’d been shot.
If Nick had been a legionnaire—no, if Nick had been a Roman in antiquity, he’d have been a general—and had had a spear thrust through his abdomen, he’d have probably died. Of blood loss if nothing else. Definitely of septicemia.
But—here he was. Alive. Breathing peacefully. A little dinged, but she’d been assured he’d have a complete recovery.
A miracle.
There was a faint gray tint to the sky outside the window. Dawn was coming. A new dawn, a new day.
It was all ok.
She put her hand over his on the cotton blanket, put her head down next to his and fell fast asleep.