CHAPTER 14 #2
“I’m relieved to hear that. I was worried about you. How are you feeling?”
“I’m alright, Dio. There’s nothing to worry about. Rafe’s been with me the whole time, and I’ll be back home soon.”
“Okay. I’ll let Arran know. He’s been pacing the hall most of the time you’ve been gone,” he laughed.
I glanced behind me to check where Rafe was, and seeing he was a few feet behind, talking with Brax, I pressed the phone closer to my ear and whispered, “We need to talk later, all of us. Rafe was asking me about Cal. He wanted me to know that he knows about us.”
“I know, baby. Just breathe. Everything’s fine, but we should all talk. I think it’s about time we told Rafe the truth. I hate sneaking around behind his back,” Dio explained.
“We’re hardly sneaking around. We haven’t really done anything.”
“No, but we’re keeping secrets and I don’t like it. Rafe and I never keep secrets from each other. He needs to know the truth.”
“I know,” I agreed, sure he was right. I hated the lying too, even if my relationship with the guys hadn’t really come to anything more than kissing and holding one another so far. “We’ll talk later,” I added in a rush as I sensed Rafe coming up behind me.
“Just get home safe. I’ll let Terza know you’re on your way and she can…”
Whatever Dio was saying was lost as a loud pop rang out through the space, echoing around me. Many more shots followed, making my ears ring loudly, and the next thing I knew, I was being pushed to the ground hard and fast, and my phone flew from my hand.
“RAFE!” I cried, realising he was the heavy weight that landed half on top of me as I hit the cold, hard concrete with force.
“Stay down!” Rafe uttered urgently.
More gunshots boomed loudly around and above us, and I fought my overwhelming panic and instinct to cower, instead pushing my front half up on my hands so I could glance around us.
Rafe and I were in an open space, but there was a car at one side and a wall at the other.
Around us Rafe’s men had spread out, ducking behind parked cars and the concrete pillars of the structure, guns in hand and firing at men who were obviously aiming for us.
Rafe wasn’t moving though. His weight was splayed across me, weighing me down. At first I had thought he was just staying low too, but when he didn’t move at all, not even his arms which were partially hanging over my shoulders, I realised something was wrong.
“Rafe!” I gasped as I fought to push myself out from under him.
Somehow I wiggled enough to slide free, but as I moved the last foot to get out from under Rafe’s dead weight, warm wetness trickled over me, hitting my right ear first, then running down my neck. As soon as I sat up, I rubbed at the streak, then looked at my fingers. Blood.
My heart felt like it stopped, then started beating in triple time as I pushed up to my knees and moved to Rafe’s side. He was laid out on his front and blood was already pooling beneath him.
“Oh God!” I gasped as I grabbed Rafe’s arm and fought to turn him over.
He was so much bigger and heavier than me, but I managed to get him onto his back.
The first glimpse of the bullet wound through his abdomen had me wanting to cry and vomit in equal measure, but Rafe wasn’t moving, and thankfully logic won over panic.
I reached for his neck, smearing my bloody fingers around as I searched for the feel of his pulse.
Finally I found it. It didn’t feel as strong as I thought it should, but it was there.
“Rafe, wake up!” I ordered as I shrugged off the thick coat I wore and ripped off the sweater underneath.
I balled up the thin wool and pressed it as hard as I could over the oozing wound against Rafe’s abdomen, just desperate to stop the bleeding.
“Rafe!” Tears were running down my cheeks but I refused to give into my fear or panic. Rafe was not going to die.
“Cara!” I looked up and found Brax standing over me, Rafe’s other guys closing in and more appearing from behind us. “How bad?”
“Fucking bad! Get help!” I yelled.
I swiped the tears from my cheeks against my bare shoulders, not even caring that I was now in nothing but my bra on my top half. I took a deep breath and tried to think straight. This was a huge mess. The police were definitely going to be on their way, and all of Rafe’s men seemed to be armed.
“Joey!” I looked up to the only other guy I knew by name as Brax ran inside the hospital for help.
“The police…we have to get rid of the guns and the…there can’t be this many men here.
We have to clear this place out fast,” I ordered, just trying to do what I could to minimise the damage and think straight.
“She’s right,” Joey spoke up. “Clean up fast. We’ve got no cameras down here, so get rid of the bodies. Where’s their car?”
The rest was drowned out as all of Rafe’s men started to move. Only Joey stayed at my side. I returned my focus to Rafe, who’s skin looked a sickly shade of grey. The blood was still pooling around him, finding its way out under my hands, no matter how hard I pressed down with everything I had.
Brax returned with doctors and nurses and I was pulled away from Rafe by Joey and Brax. One of them wrapped me in my coat, but I didn’t notice more than that. All I could do was stare at my brother and the people fighting to save his life.
As they rushed him away on a gurney, I followed numbly, my blood soaked hands clutched in front of me as Brax and Joey kept me moving between them, covering me as much as they could with my coat which kept on slipping off.
I knew I needed to put my arms in it, and move faster.
I needed to be with Rafe, but I felt like I was frozen with the fear of my brother never opening his eyes ever again.
***
We were shown into a waiting room on the surgical floor. Rafe was in surgery. I asked the nurse if he was going to live, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me.
I sat in a chair in a tiny waiting room, a window beside me, bright posters all around the sickly blue coloured space.
The police came, but I didn’t say a word as they asked me questions.
Brax told them I was in shock and offered to give a statement for the time being.
He disappeared and then Joey was there, sat opposite me. I don’t know if he spoke to me or not.
Everything around me felt like a blur. The sounds blended into one. The light was too bright; the room, too cold. I felt like I should be crying, or screaming. Maybe I should pray?
Wasn’t that what people did in such awful situations? But I didn’t believe in God – not when he clearly didn’t believe in me. My body was shaking. I remember thinking that because the chair beneath me shook too, but I barely felt it. I was just numb, and maybe that was for the best.
“Cara?”
I lowered my eyes down from the stupid poster about patient feedback, and found Arran crouched before me. One of his big hands covered my left knee while the other pushed wild strands of my hair back behind my ears. I hadn’t even felt him touching me.
“There ye are, wee one. Are ye hurt?” he asked softly.
It took me way too long to process the question, but eventually I shook my head. I wasn’t hurt – not in the way he meant.
“She hasn’t spoken a word since we were forced to drag her away from Rafe, so the doctor could get closer,” Joey spoke, and his unfamiliar voice startled me. I looked up past Arran and found him standing against the wall opposite me.
“Wait outside now, lad. No one gets in this room wi’out verifying their ID,” Arran rumbled, then Joey was gone, the door snicking closed behind him.
“D-do you know…Rafe…is he…?” I whispered, the words coming out shaky and broken.
“He’s still in surgery, lass. Dario’s tryin’ to get an update,” Arran assured me.
I nodded, then returned my gaze to the stupid poster again. My patient feedback was that this hospital was bullshit at communicating with me! I just needed someone to tell me Rafe would live. He had to. I’d already lost Gia. Rafe was all I had left.
Arran was talking to me again. I could feel his hands trying to comfort me, holding my limp hand, then tightening my coat around me when he got no response. I think he sat at my side at some point.
When Dio walked into the room, sometime later, I turned to look at him, wanting to know about Rafe, but when he only told us the doctor would come in with an update as soon as they could, my gaze returned to that poster, reading the words over and over again.
It was the only thing I could make myself focus on. Everything else was too terrifying.
Dio tried then. I felt his hand on my thigh as he sat beside me, felt his fingers running through my hair, but still I stared at that poster, reading the words blindly, and willing Rafe not to die, over and over and over again in my frazzled, numb mind.
I don’t know how long we sat there. I do know that Arran and Dio were with me the whole time, because I heard the drone like rumbles of them talking occasionally to each other, and trying to talk to me. Time passed. It could have been hours, could have been days for all I was aware.
Then suddenly Cal was there. He didn’t kneel before me like the others. Didn’t even try to talk to me. I just heard his voice, and before I could lower my eyes to look for him, I was being scooped up from the chair.
Cal sat with me on his lap, my legs straddling his thighs and my front pressed hard against his.
I felt my first emotion as I lay my head down against his soft sweater – relief.
The familiarity of his smell surrounded me as strongly as his arms did, and in that moment I allowed some of the tension to leave my tense body as I collapsed against him.
“I’m here, Cara. We’re all here, and Rafe is holding on. You just take the time you need,” he whispered. I felt him softly kiss the top of my head, then he just sat there, holding me, and let me be.
I didn’t sleep as more time passed. I couldn’t. Even as numb as I felt, my terror for Rafe was enough to stop me from finding any solace in sleep. But I did rest against Cal. My heart beat slowed, as did my breathing. Eventually the shaking slowed too and I was able to close my eyes a little.
“Rafe De Santis’ family?” A female voice rattled through my fuzzy mind.
I startled and sat up, looking around until I spotted a tall woman wearing blue scrubs, stood just inside the door of the waiting room.
She was older, maybe in her fifties, with short, greying hair, and a gentle smile.
She looked exhausted, and I wondered if she was Rafe’s surgeon.
If she was, how long had she been working on him?
“I’m his brother, Dario,” he spoke up as he stood and walked closer to her. Cal didn’t move and Arran stayed sat at my side, all of us watching on and holding our breath. “Is he out of surgery?”
“Yes. He’s been moved up to the intensive care unit. He’s stable for now, and he will be closely monitored up there. I’m afraid the bullet that hit him caused a lot of damage,” the doctor explained.
“But he’ll live?” Dario pushed, sounding as desperate for a positive answer as I felt.
“I can’t make you any promises. The bullet ricocheted around and caused a lot of damage, especially to the right lung.
We managed to stabilize him, but we have had to put Rafe on a ventilator to help him breathe while his lung tissue repairs itself.
As a result he has been placed in a medically induced coma. ”
“A coma?” Arran repeated as he pushed forward in his seat, his own anxiety showing through.
“W-will he wake up?” I asked as my emotions caught up in a tidal wave and tears slipped free.
“The coma has been induced by us, with medications. We can wake Rafe up when we feel that he’s strong enough, but for now it’s better for him to be unconscious so he won’t fight the ventilator. His lung tissue will need time to heal before he can breathe alone again.”
“How much time?” Dio asked.
“It’s hard to say. Every one heals at varying rates, but I’d anticipate at least ten days. It could be much longer than that though. We’ll be led by your brother’s recovery.”
“Can we see him?” Cal asked.
“Visiting hours are over for the day, but I’ll have a nurse come and get you so you can see him briefly. After that I advise you all to go home and rest. Rafe will be closely monitored in the Intensive Care Unit.”
As Dio and Arran thanked the doctor and shook her hand, I just turned back to Cal and pressed my face into his chest again. Rafe was in a coma and on a ventilator. His doctor couldn’t promise us that he would live. And now we were expected to leave him.
My sobs were quiet, but no less desperate or mournful. I didn’t want to go home without my brother. I didn’t want to leave him when his life was hanging in the balance.
“He’s going to come through this, Cara. He’s strong. It will take time, but he will come back to you,” Cal soothed as he held me against him again.
“I d-don’t want to leave him,” I whimpered. “If he…if something goes wrong…I don’t…he can’t be alone, Cal. I won’t let him die alone!”
“Hey,” A hand rubbed up and down my arm and I knew it was Arran. “Nothin’s gonna happen, Cara. Rafe’ll no’ go out that easily. He’s the most stubborn man I have ever met. He willnae leave ye, lass, and ye ken it too. He’s gonna hold on, fer you, if fer nothin’ else.”