28. Kyle
28
KYLE
I flatten my body against the saturated ground and peer over the side of the cliff.
I can see her. Just about. The ledge on which she landed must be no more than a few feet wide. A freak stroke of luck, that the outcrop caught her and held on tightly. The universe is on our side. If ever I needed a sign that things would finally go our way, this is it.
“Sienna!” I call out, the sound plucked by the gale and carried God only knows where. “Sienna! Don’t move! I’m coming to get you.”
On my hands and knees, I crawl to the edge directly above the rocky shelf containing my future.
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder before I can turn around and lower myself over the side. Patrick. He doesn’t try to pull me away. Instead, he kneels beside me and follows my gaze.
“The others are coming, lad.” He gestures with his head towards the gloomy mansion looming above the treetops. “We’ll get her to safety, don’t you worry.”
“Kyle.” My mom crawls closer, her eyes dark, her face paler than I’ve ever seen it. “I can’t let you go down there.”
I want to tell her that she can’t stop me. No one can. Sienna is down there, and she needs me, and I made a promise that I can’t break. But the adrenaline pumping through my veins is fading rapidly, and I can’t seem to form the words and get them out there. My mouth opens and shuts, and my mom throws her cold wet arms around my chest and hugs me tightly.
The other men appear then, emerging from the woods and sprinting across the clearing towards us.
Patrick stands and waves his arms above his head, gesturing to the cliff’s edge. Everyone else is still functioning normally, processing the danger, and doing what’s necessary to keep us all safe. But their loved ones are not at stake here. For me, the stakes have never been higher.
“We checked the property.” Damon faces me with his legs planted firmly apart, weathering the storm like a seasoned fisherman who has tamed the sea. “There’s no one else left.” He glances at Nick’s corpse and back again, barely acknowledging it.
Patrick steps forward, taking control. “Sienna is about a dozen feet down on a narrow ledge. It broke her fall.”
Damon’s eyes flit back and forth between us. I know what he’s thinking: she got lucky, but she isn’t out of danger yet.
“Is she conscious?” he asks.
“Difficult to tell.” Patrick spreads his hands towards the sky.
Cillian and his pal join us. I wait for Damon to explain the situation, their expressions never faltering. They’re here to do a job; they won’t walk away until it is completed.
They crouch on the ground and unpack the equipment stowed inside their backpacks. Ropes. Metal hooks that resemble anchors used for mountaineering. Harnesses. Without a word, the two lads step into the kind of heavy-duty harnesses used by professional climbers and skydivers. They fasten them around their bodies and attach the ropes to the metal hooks, then peer behind them at the woods.
A couple of men dutifully run with the ends of the ropes and fasten them securely around the widest trunks. It’s a seamless organization, each understanding their role in the process.
“I’m coming with you.” I yell above the wind and stand in their way.
“You done this before?” Cillian asks. There’s no judgement in his tone, or none that I pick up anyway.
“Nope. But that’s my woman down there.”
He smiles and claps me on the back. “Stay here, pal. We’ll take good care of her, I promise.”
They don’t linger on the cliff’s edge. They don’t give any instructions to the family members standing in the clearing. Without me noticing, several men have taken up position along the length of the two ropes supporting the climbers. Damon and his brother Aiden are lying face down on the ground, their heads and shoulders over the edge of the cliff, waiting to play their part.
Patrick and Mom flank me, and the two young men disappear over the side of the cliff. The ropes pull taut. I freeze. My ears strain to hear the signal that they reached her, but the wind appears to have gotten stronger, whipping the trees and our clothes into a shrieking frenzy.
I can’t keep still. I need to do something.
“It should be me down there.”
I don’t even realize that I said the words out loud until Mom wraps a trembling arm around my shoulders, comforting me in the only way she knows how.
It feels like an eternity passes by before a head appears from behind the cliff. Damon and Aiden scramble closer to Cillian, while two burly men grab their legs and dig their heels into the soggy soil. They brace themselves, working as a team, everyone an integral part of the operation to rescue Sienna.
The two brothers half-disappear over the edge, head down, and my heart is in my throat. What if something goes horribly wrong? What if we lose them? They’re only here because of me when they should be at home looking forward to the holidays.
Then they’re being dragged backwards, and there’s a bedraggled figure between them, and I’m running to Sienna, my mom and Patrick close behind me.
Sienna’s body flops onto the ground like a fish out of water. Her eyes are closed. Her skin is gray, and her lips are turning blue.
“No. No. No.” I lean my face close to hers, my cheek pressed against her icy lips. “Come on, Sienna. Don’t die. I’m here now. I’m here…”
I can hear someone sobbing, my mom maybe, but I pay them no heed.
I rest my head on Sienna’s chest, searching for a heartbeat. Behind me, I hear Cillian and his pal clambering back into the clearing. Patrick kneels on the other side of Sienna and takes her wrist in his hand.
“She’s alive, lad.”
That’s when I hear the faint heartbeat.
I pull Sienna into my arms, transferring what little body heat I have to her, rocking her back and forth. “I’ve got you, Sienna. Everything’s going to be okay because I’ve got you. I’m here, Sienna. I love you. Hold on to that, mo leoin. I love you.”
The ambulance rushes Sienna to Letterkenny University Hospital. I go with her, cradling her icy hand in mine while the paramedics monitor her vitals. Her body is covered with a foil blanket to raise her body temperature. She opens her eyes several times, and her eyelids flutter, but she doesn’t regain consciousness.
“She’s going to be alright,” I murmur to the paramedics. “She isn’t going to die.”
“Her body has gone into shock,” one says. He’s a middle-aged man with graying hair, and a kind round face. “Lucky you found her when you did before hypothermia set in.”
Lucky.
This isn’t the kind of luck I’m accustomed to, but if everything else from this moment forward goes well, I’ll be eternally grateful that the universe chose to keep her alive tonight.
But there’s one more thing.
“She’s pregnant,” I say. “Will the baby survive?”
“Gestational period?” The round-faced man raises his eyebrows questioningly. “How far is she?”
“I-I don’t know.” I’ve been back from Ireland for less than a month, so it isn’t hard to calculate. “A few weeks.”
He nods. “We’ll do everything that we can. She’s in safe hands.”
Safe hands.
He probably says this to everyone who accompanies a loved one to the hospital. Comforting words. It’s all part of the job.
But no one’s hands are safer than mine when it comes to Sienna. I make a silent vow to the God I’m not entirely sure I believe in, to protect her for the rest of my life, or he can strike me down any way he sees fit.
When we reach the emergency room, they make me stay in the waiting room while the doctors treat Sienna. My mom and Patrick arrive shortly after Sienna is admitted. They get me coffee in a flimsy plastic cup that I don’t drink. They sit on uncomfortable plastic seats in silence, surrounded by people with worried eyes and thin lips, while I pace back and forth, my clothes drying in the cloying heat and sticking to my skin.
It feels like I’ve been waiting for an eternity.
Time drags. People come and go. Faces light up as patients emerge from the bowels of the hospital and announce that they can go home.
I want to believe that Sienna will survive. I know exactly what she would say if our roles were reversed: stay positive and manifest the outcome that you want.
But it isn’t that simple when you’ve recently witnessed the love of your life falling from a cliff in the middle of a raging storm.
“Kyle, why don’t you sit down, love?” My mom’s voice is tender.
I haven’t even asked how she came to be at the property, carrying a loaded pistol. I’m grateful that she was. If she hadn’t shot Nick when she did…
A medic in green scrubs approaches me then. She’s young, surprisingly fresh-faced considering her profession, dark hair cropped into a short, blunt bob.
She smiles. “Mr. Murray? You can come through and see Sienna now.”
“I can?”
Mom and Patrick are both on their feet. Mom squeezes my hand before I follow the young woman along the busy hallway to the room where Sienna is being treated.
She pulls back a green curtain, winks at me, and says, “I’ll give you some time alone.”
I step inside. My palms are sweating, and my eyes start twitching when I see Sienna in the raised bed, a drip inserted into the back of her left hand, her right arm strapped onto and supported by raised blocks. She’s still deathly pale, there’s a Band-aid covering her left cheek, but she smiles when I enter, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that she will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me.
“Hey.” I feel like an inexperienced teenager all over again, mentally tripping over what I want to say while my cheeks grow hot. I lean over Sienna and kiss her forehead, smoothing her hair away from her face. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a truck.” She pauses. “Again.”
A small smile appears on her lips, and my chest floods with relief.
“They need to operate on my arm.” She flexes her fingers which tap lightly on the thermal blanket. Her voice is hoarse. “It’s broken in two places.”
“Have they given you something for the pain?”
“Uh-huh. I have a concussion.”
“From the fall?”
“Not exactly.” She doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t press her. She’ll talk about it in her own time.
I notice then that one of her legs is raised above the bed. “What happened to your leg?”
“Long story.” She swallows painfully.
I fill a small plastic glass with water from the jug on the bedside cabinet, support her head with my arm, and raise the drink to her lips. There’s a lump the size of a tennis ball on the back of her head, and her jaw is mottled with blue-black bruising.
“Sienna, I’m so sorry. This should never have happened to you. If I’d been on that flight?—”
“Don’t, Kyle.” She settles back against the pillows, trying to get comfortable. “There’s no point wishing you could change things. We can only do what we think is right for us at any given moment in time.”
She is wise beyond her years, my leoin.
But I’m skirting around the question that I’m afraid to ask.
“Sienna, are you… I mean, the pregnancy, is it…”
I can handle a meeting with a renowned violent mafia don, the police commissioner, and the mayor of New York City, but I don’t know how to ask the woman I love if she is still carrying our baby.
“The baby is fine, Kyle.” Tears well in the corners of her eyes, and I catch them with my fingertip. “ Our baby is fine.” She sniffs loudly. “This isn’t how I imagined telling you that you’re going to be a dad.”
I move in closer and kiss her on the lips. “We’re not like other couples, leoin. But I promise you on my life?—”
“No, Kyle. You should never swear anything on your life. Not even for me.”
“Too late. I already did. I will always protect you and our child, no matter what it takes. I will never let anything like this happen to you again.”
Her smile widens, even though her eyes are dark and heavy. “Thank fuck for that. Just keep me away from cliff edges, will you?”
“Deal.”
She grows quiet, pensive. “The doctors have suggested that I take it easy for a while. Until the pregnancy reaches the second trimester. The effects of trauma can take some time to present themselves.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t let you so much as lift a finger if I can help it. Think of me as your slave for the next eight months.”
“Slave, huh?” She slants her eyes. “Does that mean that I get to handcuff you and force you to pleasure me?”
“I don’t need forcing, leoin, but you can handcuff me and throw away the key if it makes you happy.”
Footsteps approach us from the corridor, and disappointment weighs me down. I’m not ready to leave her yet. But they keep on walking, and we both sigh with relief.
“You don’t have to stay here in Ireland.” I pull the visitor’s seat closer to the bed, sit down, and cradle her hand in mine. “We can fly back to New York as soon as you’re able to travel. You can move into my apartment, or we can find an apartment elsewhere. Whatever you want to do, Sienna. Wherever you want to go, I’ll be right there with you.”
I hesitate. Before she came to Ireland, Nick Morris had proposed to her, the gallery had been trashed, and our relationship was still teetering at the top of the roller coaster ride that began almost six years ago. Sienna might be having our baby, but we’ve never openly discussed how we feel about each other.
Pulse racing because I need to know, I add, “If you’ll have me.”
What will I do if she says no? What if she doesn’t want me to be a part of this baby’s life because she wants nothing to do with my family? What then? How will we move forward from this?
Sienna chews her bottom lip. “I think I’ll stay here, Kyle. For now. I don’t want to go back to the city.”
I wait for her to enlighten me on where I fit into her plans. Outwardly, I must appear calm, but inside, I’m swallowing great ugly sobs that I want no one to ever see.
“With you,” she says finally. “Because I love you too.”
I kiss her on the lips while the words to the Sum 41 song ‘With Me’ play in my head.
I’d wait here forever, just to see you smile, ’cause it’s true, I am nothing without you.