Chapter Twenty-Three
Mira
Caleb passed out before help arrived. He looked pale, and his flesh was cold to the touch.
I watched the precarious rise and fall of his chest like it was my salvation as I put all my weight onto the seeping wound on his leg with the cleanest saddle blanket I had found.
The only things keeping him alive now were his bear and me.
When they loaded him into the ambulance, Sheriff Clancy tried to strong-arm me out of the way.
“No!” I screamed, sobs wracking my body. “I’m going with him.” I let my anguish show as I pleaded with the paramedics. “Please. He’s mine.”
“We don’t have time for this,” a stout lady who worked furiously over Caleb’s body said. “She needs to go to the clinic, anyway. Let her in.”
I hopped up behind the paramedics and gave Sheriff Clancy the finger. It hurt like hell on injured hands but the scowl on his face made it worth it.
“I’m coming by for your official statement tonight, Fletcher. No leaving town,” he yelled as we sped away.
A second ambulance passed us on the way out, probably to pick up Angus. They didn’t have a shot in hell at saving him. I’d seen what Caleb’s bear had done to his throat.
A helicopter landed in a vacant lot behind the clinic, and Caleb was care lifted to a big hospital in the city.
The nurse said the clinic wasn’t equipped for that kind of head trauma.
I, however, was a perfect candidate for clinic medicine.
Ruined hands and feet, twisted ankles, and lacerations over my face and arms. A swollen and bruised neck where perfect fingerprints could be seen.
The deputy, Young, took pictures of my injuries before they cleaned me up.
His brown eyes were sad and sympathetic, and he told me the pictures would help to build a case against the monster who did this to me.
Numbness fell over me like a blanket. Without Caleb here to save, my reserves were spent.
I didn’t talk, but my silence wasn’t the confused or traumatized kind like the first time when Angus had killed my mother.
I was simply too tired to make conversation.
The nurses tossed around worried glances and talked quietly outside the door before administering a sedative to help me sleep.
Sadey showed up early the next morning just before the clinic discharged me. She somberly held out a bag of clothes and helped me dress.
I was afraid of the answer so I stalled and pulled my hair back before I asked, “Is he okay?”
Sadey shrugged and leaned against the thin clinic mattress, misery written over every tired feature. “He hasn’t woken up yet. They don’t know if he will. Said it’s just a waiting game now.”
Bending, she slid flip-flops over my bandaged feet and pushed my wheelchair out to her waiting car.
After I was tucked in and had waved the nurse away, Sadey sat in the driver’s seat, then grimly gripped the steering wheel.
“Angus French is dead.” Sadey tilted her head and waited for a reaction from me that wouldn’t come.
I didn’t know how to feel. Sorrow at the deepest betrayal from someone who was supposed to protect me? Anger with him, with the system that released him, with my fate? Relief over the death of someone I knew but hated?
I stared blankly ahead and watched a mother tote two small children into the clinic. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Mira? Are you okay?” Sadey’s eyelashes were wet with unshed tears.
I tried to smile reassuringly but was pretty sure I failed. “If Caleb is okay, then I will be, too.” It was the best I could offer her.
Sadey wiped her eyes with her fingertips and pulled out of the parking lot. “I talked to Opal this morning. She’s coming to visit you today at the big hospital while we wait for Caleb to wake up. Said she’s bringing you a slice of devil’s food cake in honor of your stepdaddy.”
I snorted and covered my mouth with my gauzed hand. I wanted to laugh and cry and scream all at once.
The waiting room of the hospital was filled with a thick, quiet somberness.
Some people I recognized. Caleb’s family, one of the men who worked on the rig with him, Becca.
The others I didn’t know. The man I cared for was beloved by a town that respected his family.
A momentary panic hit me when I entered the room and all of those eyes slid to me.
Did they blame me for their fallen hero?
What did they think as I stood in front of them, bandaged and bruised, unable to hold any of their gazes?
“Over here,” Caleb’s father said, waving his hand slightly to be seen over another row of seats.
I smiled at Sadey. “It’s okay. You go sit with your family. I’ll go to the cafeteria or something.”
Sadey’s eyebrows, just a shade darker than her blond hair, drew down. “He’s talking to you.”
I glanced at Mr. McCreedy in question, and he gestured again. Sadey and I picked our way around people sitting on the floor, and he offered me his seat.
“It’s all right. I’ll just sit on the floor if that’s okay.” I gestured with my bandaged hand to the comfortable expanse of purple and yellow printed carpet.
Evan pulled his head out of his hands. “Mira, you look like shit. Sit down before you make everyone in here uncomfortable.” He stood and pressed my shoulder until I sat in his chair, then he took a seat on the carpet near me.
The chairs were wide enough for two slim girls to fit in. “Sit by me?” I asked Sadey.
When we were settled, Mr. McCreedy cleared his throat quietly. “I was mistaken about how much you meant to my son, Mira. He brought you to me for my approval, and I kept it from him. From you.”
I stopped him, unable to stomach more. “Sir, you don’t have to apologize to me. You were trying to protect him in your own way. You’re a good father.”
Mr. McCreedy’s breath hitched, and he rubbed a shaking hand through his graying hair. Sadey rushed to him and sat in his lap. “He’ll be okay, Dad. He’s tough.”
In a move that shocked me into momentary stillness, Mr. McCreedy wrapped Sadey and me into a hug.
I fluttered my hand lightly onto his back and searched for something to ease his worry. “You raised a strong boy, Mr. McCreedy. Caleb is very brave. He went through hell to save me. He’ll come back to us.” I hoped with an overwhelming desperation that the last part was true.
Mr. McCreedy released us, then rubbed his hand over the stubble on his face and sniffed. “You guys hungry?”
Sadey and I shook our heads, though by all rights, I should’ve been. I hadn’t eaten since the spaghetti dinner at Caleb’s house last night.
“I’m starved,” Evan volunteered.
“Brian? Emily?” Mr. McCreedy asked. “Let’s go to the cafeteria and grab some lunch. I need a breather.”
A dark-headed woman, Emily, Caleb’s other sister, waved to me and introduced herself on the way out.
She didn’t even treat me like a leper. Mr. McCreedy gave Joseph Reyes strict instructions to come find us the millisecond a doctor came with news.
Outside of the waiting room, I inhaled deeply.
It was much easier to breathe without half the town’s watchful eyes on me.
A half a chicken sandwich, a cup of green Jell-O cubes, and a handful of pain pills later, and I felt much better physically.
That could have been partly due to the pain meds.
The next time I decided to go gallivanting through a mile of rough woods in the dead of night, I’d have to remind myself that normal people wore shoes.
As we sat in the booth, full of hospital food and all exhausted from a long night, I took in the soft murmur of the McCreedy family.
It was comfortable to be among them when Evan’s insults weren’t directed at me.
Sadey braided my tangled hair and chimed in on the conversation about how they’d have to take shifts at the hospital when Evan and Mr. McCreedy would have to go back to work tomorrow.
Was this what it was like to be part of a family? This feeling of belonging?
My head snapped up when Joseph Reyes came jogging through the cafeteria, scanning the tables. “Joseph,” I hailed him.
“He’s awake,” he said excitedly before he even reached us. “They’re allowing family only, but he asked for Mira to come in there, too.”
“Oh, my God,” I murmured as the tears I’d been holding back spilled down my cheeks.
He was alive, and now awake, and it dawned on me that we’d survived together.
Overwhelmed, I squeezed back when Sadey grabbed my hand.
A sob wrenched from me as the metal of my chair screeched against the tile floor.
I followed Mr. McCreedy at a run down the hallway and up a flight of stairs. The others trailed just behind us.
“You go on,” Caleb’s dad offered when we reached the door. “He wants to see you first. We’ll talk to his doctor and be in there in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” I whispered through trembling lips. Hurriedly, I wicked the moisture from my cheeks and took a long, steadying breath, then pushed open the door.
Monitors beeped, and the room was cold and generic, drowning in clean white.
Caleb lay on the bed, quiet and still as death.
The small bandage on his head didn’t seem to do his injury justice, and the thin sheets lumped over his misshapen leg.
He must have a cast. His closed eyes threatened to buckle my knees.
I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to see the vivid blue in his eyes until right now.
I had to focus on the positives. The color in his cheeks was back, and he was cleaned up.
His leg seemed to rest comfortably enough under the sheets, and his face was relaxed, as if he didn’t feel any pain.
And he was alive.
It could’ve been so much worse. I reached for his hand and smiled at the familiarity of his warm palm against mine.
“Hey,” Caleb said in a hoarse whisper. “Come here.”
I swallowed hard, fighting back tears of relief at the crooked smile I so loved on him. “Will I hurt you?”
“Nah. I don’t think I’d feel anything right now,” he said with a chuckle.
The bed creaked under my added weight, and he reached up to touch the side of my face. “Remember that time you saved me from Eli?”
I nodded, unable to speak through the thick emotion that churned ceaselessly inside me.
“Now I saved you back.”
I huffed a laugh and wiped my eyes. I kissed his hand for a long time, trying to control my ragged emotions. He’d used these hands to bring me back to life. To fix my house and to hold me. To protect me. My vision blurred and warmth trickled down my cheeks as I dragged my gaze to his.
Because of him, I’d never have to hide again.
“You saved me in more ways than you know.”