Chapter 31 #2
Because I knew beyond reasonable doubt, I was dying. And the last thing I had to see in this world was my family.
Hands held me down.
I was too weak to speak but still I thrashed. I caught them in the corner of my eye. Beau standing, holding Clara.
“I love you,” I managed to say that out loud. A croak, barely a whisper but I said it.
Darkness crept into my vision. But I held on to Beau and Clara. The last thing I saw when I left this world.
BEAU
I was finally able to sit next to her. Hold her hand.
It was cold.
Too cold.
“She needs more blankets,” I barked at the nurse checking her vitals.
She jumped at my harsh tone, averted her eyes, and nodded before pretty much running out of the room.
I should’ve been sorry for eliciting that response from someone doing what was often a thankless job, someone who devoted their lives to healing people. But I didn’t have it in me.
I was empty, all that was good in me scooped out. All smiles, all kind words. What scraps remained I reserved for my daughter. My scared, traumatized daughter, who had finally cried herself to sleep two hours ago.
In our bed.
Hannah’s and mine.
Where Hannah should’ve been too. Would’ve been, if not for me.
I’d held Clara’s small, fragile body for an hour after she went to sleep, staring at the ceiling, counting my daughter’s breaths. Calliope was at the hospital, had promised me that she’d call me with any updates. My phone was clutched in my hand. She hadn’t called.
No news was good news. No news meant that Hannah was still alive. For now.
She’d died. Right there in the snow. Right after she’d said “I love you” in a horrifying, wet tone. I’d held Hannah to my chest until the EMTs forced her from me so they could begin compressions.
They got her back. Weak pulse, they’d said.
But no promises could be made. She had been shot in the chest.
Calliope was the right person to be with her if I couldn’t.
She would make the difficult phone call the second Hannah’s heart stopped beating, knowing I’d need to know.
My family might’ve waited a minute, ten, an hour.
To preserve my heart, give me more time to be blissfully ignorant of Hannah’s fate.
Good intentions, but it would be something I’d carry with me all my life.
So Calliope was the best choice. I trusted her to be there when I couldn’t.
And my father and brother? I trusted them to be there for my daughter when I was with the woman we loved. The truest mother she’d ever have.
Though I longed for Hannah, it hurt me physically to crawl out of the bed with Clara. I wanted her with me. I wanted to carry her body strapped to mine, like I had so often when she was a baby.
But she didn’t need the trauma of more hospitals. Not after what she went through that day. Not when there was a chance Hannah wouldn’t make it.
I walked through the room that was still ours, even though Hannah had packed up her things last night. Because of me.
I vowed that her clothes would hang in my closet again. There was no other option.
Elliot was waiting outside my bedroom door. He’d dragged one of the chairs from the dining room over so he could sit right in the hall. He’d been there for two hours, by the look of him.
“She asleep?” He rushed to his feet as soon as he saw me.
I nodded. I wouldn’t speak unless I had to.
Elliot reached out to place his hand on my shoulder. Even though I flinched from the contact, he kept his hand there and squeezed.
“I’ll go sit with her.” He jutted his chin toward my room. “In case she wakes. I’ll call you if she does. Go be with Hannah.”
Again, it pained me to even think of being under a different roof than Clara, but she’d want me to be with Hannah, that much I knew. She’d wailed the house down, thrashing and screaming because I’d told her we couldn’t be with her at the hospital.
I’d questioned my choice. I still questioned it now. But I couldn’t have her back in that place, not if it might be the last place she saw Hannah.
Not that seeing Hannah bleeding out in the snow was better. What was the better option? What would hurt Clara less? I didn’t know. I prayed I’d made the right decision.
“Thank you,” I croaked at my brother. It was all I could manage.
He gave me a sharp nod, squeezed my shoulder again, then quietly entered my room.
If Clara woke, he’d be there for her. Hopefully able to calm her. My chest ached leaving her, even in the presence of someone she loved.
My father stopped me in the living room before I left. He was holding a mug of tea, his eyes shiny as he took me in. He placed the tea on the coffee table, moving in two quick strides to bring me into his arms.
I didn’t want the contact, the comfort. But reflexively, my body relaxed into his, and I quietly cried in my father’s arms for thirty seconds. It was what I allowed myself before pulling back.
My father’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “She’ll come back to you, son. Have hope.”
I didn’t dismiss my father’s words because he was the kindest man I knew, and his face was painted with hurt.
I merely nodded then left to be with Hannah.
She was out of surgery by the time I arrived, Calliope relaying all the facts to me with brutal precision. She didn’t offer hugs, thank fuck.
Critical.
Her condition was critical.
She was in the ICU. It was past visiting hours, apparently. But Calliope had taken care of that. I didn’t ask her how, I just thanked her before beelining it for Hannah.
It was a cruel twist of fate that I’d lived to see both of my girls lying in hospital beds, unsure if they’d ever make it out.
Hannah looked so small in that bed.
She was connected to so many things. Heart rate monitors. An IV. A tube down her throat. Because she couldn’t breathe on her own.
I made myself look at her. I made myself take in every single detail. The shade of white of her bedsheets. The smell of cleaning products and faint whiff of someone else’s perfume. The pallor of her skin. Her hair splayed over the pillow.
Every detail, I etched in my mind, to revisit, to punish myself with. To show myself what happened when I made choices for Hannah about what was best for her. Two men took her choice away from her. One with a gun, the other with words.
Then I sat. I grasped her too-cold hand, I shouted at nurses.
And I waited.
For life to give me another miracle.
One I didn’t deserve.
But Hannah sure as fuck did.
Clara sure as fuck did.
So I hoped.
Hoped that that was enough.
Finn arrived in the middle of the night.
The chief of police didn’t need to abide by visiting hours.
I barely glanced at him as he stood at the other side of the bed. He was silent for a handful of moments, watching Hannah.
“She’ll make it through,” he said to himself, maybe to me.
I didn’t reply.
“I’d put out a BOLO for Waylon’s plates.” Finn sounded tired. He had no idea… “I pulled every string I could so I could track his movements. I’d been driving around town searching for his truck all morning until I saw it at the park.”
His voice was wracked with guilt. A good man wouldn’t pile on him.
I wasn’t a good man.
“And yet he managed to follow her,” I grumbled, my eyes never leaving Hannah’s face. “He still managed to stand in front of Hannah and my daughter. He managed to shoot Hannah in the chest after she refused to let him have Clara.”
Clara had recounted the story in between sobs, telling me that if she’d gone with the “bad man” Hannah would’ve been okay.
Clara was blaming herself. My daughter. My five-year-old daughter not only witnessed Hannah get shot but blamed herself for it.
“She protected my daughter with her body,” I spoke quietly, staring at the monitors, the one telling me Hannah’s heart was still beating.
“Brother—”
“She used herself as a HUMAN SHIELD for my daughter!” Hannah would’ve jumped at the sound of my yell if she weren’t in an induced fucking coma.
Since learning about her past, what she’d gone through, and punishing myself every day for unknowingly activating triggers, I hadn’t raised my voice with her.
Tried to ensure I didn’t do anything that would make loud, sudden movements.
Never in my life did I want Hannah to flinch with fear as a result of something I did.
But she didn’t move a muscle. Nothing.
She was as still as death.
I eyed the monitor again.
Her heart was still beating.
I took a steadying breath, clutching Hannah’s small hand in mine to anchor me to that moment. My mind kept ripping me back to the park. My terrified daughter. Hannah. Covered in blood. The life leaving her eyes.
I ran my fingers over her bare skin. Cleaned now. No blood.
“Thank you,” I told Finn quietly. “Even if you didn’t kill him.”
I wished the man who did this was no longer drawing breath. Wished that I could be the one to watch him take his last gulp of air. But I was a father. I had my child and Hannah to protect before I tried to seek vengeance.
“He’s behind bars,” Finn told me. “He’ll stay there. For life.”
I nodded. That’s all I could do. I shouldn’t have been wishing for his death right then. Life in prison was enough.
Hannah’s life was all I wanted.