26. Emma
I ride in the ambulance with Bianca, covered in her blood, praying the entire time that she’ll survive. That she’ll be able to smile and call me on my bullshit again one day.
During the thirty seconds it takes for the ambulance to pull out onto the road to the hospital, every single officer in the county is made aware of what’s happening. I can hear it through the radio in the front. Almost immediately we have an escort through town. Not that we necessarily need it, but we have one nonetheless.
Then all I can do is wait. Sitting in the waiting room, surrounded by my family, Dom’s family, and our law enforcement family, I wait.
“The hospital, again.” Kennedy groans from the floor, where she has Nox lying in her lap. “I hate the hospital.” She looks over at Parker, who’s holding her youngest child in her arms. “So much. We need to find a better place to get everyone together.”
Our eyes are locked on the waiting room doors, like they’ve been for the last few hours, waiting for any update on Bee’s condition.
Bria Keller walks in through the sliding glass door and heads straight for me. “Emma.” Her voice breaks as she makes it to my side. “Emma, is she okay?”
I look up at the woman I’ve called my friend for years, and there’s nothing I can do to help ease the panic I can see on her face. I can’t even help myself.
“She’s not okay,” Dom answers for me, anger in his voice. “Her uncle, who you put her with, tried to kill her. None of us are okay, Bria. None of us are going to be okay for a long time. Even if she survives. They’re operating on her now, trying to get the fucking bullet out of her head.”
“Don’t you dare,” Ian snaps from his chair across from us. “Not only is that my sister that you’re being a jackass to, but it’s not Bria’s fault that she followed the law, Ortiz.”
My head snaps up. “Stop.” I don’t yell, but my voice carries a hell of a lot farther than anyone else’s has. “All of you just fucking stop. Bee needs us right now. So shut your mouth and pray to whatever higher power you believe in that she survives. Bria did her job, Dom. Don’t you dare put it on her. The only one responsible is the piece of shit who’s missing half his head right now. And you.” I point at Ian. “Don’t talk to my fiancé that way, or I’ll put sporks in your yard, and I know damn sure that Malone will lend me his kid to help get it done.”
If I don’t have everyone’s attention before that, I sure as hell have it with that announcement.
“Emma.” Dom lowers his voice and brings his mouth to my ear, pressing a kiss to the side of my head. “Really?”
I nod, unable to help it, and turn my head so that our foreheads are touching. “I’m not stupid, Dom. You tried to get in the way of a bullet for me. Why would I let you get away?”
Bria sits down on my other side, and I grab her hand, holding tight. “She has to be okay,” I cry softly. “She has to be.”
We stay.
We all stay.
And I’m not ashamed to admit that we pray, too.
Sometime after the sun comes up, I notice that half of the people in the waiting room have fallen asleep. The only two people awake besides me are Nox and Linc, who are playing an intense game of Go Fish on the ground next to me.
“You know she’s going to be okay, right?”
I look down to see Nox staring at me, the cards momentarily forgotten in his hand. “What?”
“Bee.” He slaps a pair down and breaks eye contact so that he can grin at Linc. “She has to be okay, because I promised that I’d marry her one day. You know I don’t break my promises. So she’s going to be okay.”
Linc and I share a look over his head, and my brother shrugs. “Hey, man. I’m not the one to question him. He knows way more than he should for his age. Plus…” He drops his voice to a loud whisper. “He’s been buried alive and is now a zombie, so you never know. He could be psychic too.”
“I’m not a zombie, Uncle Linc.” Nox points at him. “You’re a zombie.”
They go back to their game like Nox hasn’t just announced that he is going to marry Bee one day, and I close my eyes to try and picture Bee on her wedding day. Instead, all I can see is her lying there in her pajamas, covered in blood.
Linc, however, doesn’t share my hesitancy to ask.
“When did you decide that you’re gonna marry Bee?” He folds his cards and we both turn our attention to him.
Nox cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
Linc and I share a look. “Well,” I say. “You just said that you promised to marry Bee one day. We were wondering when that happened.”
“Yeah,” Linc agrees. “I just want to make sure that I have all the information so that in twenty years if it happens, I can tell everyone about the story.”
Nox huffs, collecting all the cards and arranging them into a neat pile before he says anything. And when he does, something tells me that I should have taken my phone out to record it.
“There are some things that you just know. Like… I knew that I was gonna have a little sister before Mom knew. Or like, how when you have a really perfect cup of ice cream. When I met Bee, I just knew that she was gonna marry me one day. So, when she was afraid that moving in with her uncle would mean that she wasn’t part of our family anymore, I told her that wasn’t true. One day, we’re gonna get married and she’s gonna be stuck with all you guys then.”
“Technically, my man, that means that she’s gonna be stuck with you.” Linc pats him on the shoulder in a commiserating way.
“If Kennedy heard you saying that you’re stuck with her, she’d beat you with a stick,” Nox informs his uncle. Then he turns to me with that intense stare we’ve all come to know and expect from him. “You’ll see. Bee has to be fine, because I don’t break my promises.”
With that air of finality, I have to hope my nephew’s right. After all, our family has already lost so much. It wouldn’t be right for fate to take her from us.
When I hear the doors open on the other side of the room, I almost don’t look up. Every time someone walks out, I get my hopes up, and every single time, it isn’t Bee’s doctor. But I’m a sucker for punishment and I’m so full of hope that I can’t help it.
My eyes track the doctor until he’s standing right in front of us.
“For Bianca Hart?”
I’m up and out of my chair in an instant, knocking Dom onto the floor with a thud, and then he’s up and standing at my side, along with everyone else in the waiting room.
“Is she okay?”
One heartbeat, and then two, before the doctor finally says anything.
“Your daughter is alive. But she’s not out of the woods.”
I don’t correct him about Bee as my world is falling apart at the seams, but Dom is there holding me up. Reminding me that I’m not doing this alone. That Bee isn’t alone.
The older man in scrubs keeps going, and I try not to burst into tears. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it isn’t for Bee to suffer. She deserves so much out of this life, and she’s almost been robbed of it.
“I’m Dr. Shaw. I operated on Bianca. She’s got a lot of swelling in her head and around her brain from the bullet. We were able to remove it, but it’s too soon to tell about any lasting damage. Because of her age, I’ve got to keep her sedated. Bianca is going to be in the PICU for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m not her mother,” I correct him belatedly. “Her parents died. We’re all she has.”
Dr. Shaw looks around and offers me a sad smile. “It seems to me that she’s got an army out here.”
Bria steps forward, wrapping her arm through mine. “I’m Bria Keller, her social worker. Can you take the two of us to see her, please?” When he hesitates, she clears her throat. “I’ll need to see and document her injuries myself, since she’s a ward of the state. And there’s nothing in any of your policies that would prevent me bringing Emma along.”
That gets us through the door, and Bria wipes tears from her eyes when Dr. Shaw escorts us into the room where Bee is unconscious, but alive. White and sanitized, there’s a machine beeping in the corner, and tubes are connected to almost every part of her body.
With her eyes closed, she almost looks peaceful, except for the now-drying blood that colors her blond hair.
“She likes to be called Bee,” I tell him quietly. “I know her name is Bianca, but when the nurses come in or anyone talks to her, she likes to be called Bee. If that’s something that you can do for her.”
He nods and then steps back toward the door. “I’m going to be right at the nurses’ station when you’re finished here.”
“She’s alive,” Bria says once we are alone with Bee. “And I have to think that’s because of you. Anything else that comes, we will be able to handle. You’re the one who jumped into action. The one willing to fight for her this entire time.”
“Can you place her with the Ortiz family?” I know I’m asking a lot of them, and I haven’t even spoken to them about it yet, but I need to make sure that Bee goes to someone who will be able to love her and give her everything she needs.
“It’s funny,” Bria murmurs while reaching over and brushing a strand of Bee’s hair out of her face. “They already called my boss and put in the request. Before I got to the hospital. The paperwork’s done.”
“When she gets to come home, she’s going to be so loved.”
I sit with Bee while Bria takes her photos and documents everything that the doctors and nurses noted in her chart. The entire time, I alternate between holding her hand while murmuring random plans for the future and rubbing her legs through the thin hospital blanket.
I don’t even notice the hours passing by. Not when I’m focused solely on the little girl in bed, hoping and praying she’ll wake up without the scars I know she’ll have.
The doctor doesn’t make me leave, and I don’t think the nurses have the heart to ask me to go. Someone brings a reclining chair into the room for me to sleep in. One by one, Bee has visitors checking to make sure that she’s still breathing.
First the nurses, then my brother and family stop in to see her. I manage to hold it together through their relatively short visits. But when Alta walks in with her husband at her side, my heart breaks for them.
They love Bee like their own child, and watching her here, I can see the devastation.
“I told you, mi amor. I told you that he would hurt her.”
Alta pats her husband’s arm. “We did all of that research and couldn’t find anything. But you were right. We’ll heal her, though. She’ll never know another day of pain as long as she lives.”
Dom’s standing at the doorway, his eyes locked on mine. “I know we can’t stay very long, but we’ll come back first thing tomorrow, Emma.”
“I don’t want to leave her.” I can’t stop the tears. “I don’t want her to be alone.”
“We’ll take turns.” Alta steps forward, a fierce expression on her face. “You two go get cleaned up and deal with the dead body.”
Dom holds out a hand and I take it, trembling while I get to my feet. Before we leave, I lean down and press a soft kiss to her sleeping brow. “Little Bee, you have to wake up. There’s going to be a wedding, and I can’t get married without my favorite girl by my side.”
“You shot someone today.” Dom drapes his arm over my shoulder and pulls my body against his while we’re in his shower an hour later. “How are you doing with that?”
“No clue.” I tell him honestly. “I don’t think it’s sunk in. I’ll probably need to get counseling or something. And I’m definitely going to have to move out. There’s no chance in hell I’m ever going to be able to sleep there again.”
“You can move in with me.” Dom holds my hair to the side while I rub soap down my body. “I want you here.”
“No.” I shake my head, which doesn’t actually move very far because he’s still holding on to my hair. “I love you, but I don’t want to invade your space like that.”
His laugh, pure and unfiltered, takes me by surprise. “Emma Hayes. From the day I met you, you’ve invaded every single part of my life. I don’t want to spend another day away from you. And your condition… being done with the Reserves? Done. I already knew I was done before you said a word. I would do anything for you, but I don’t want you thinking that you’re giving me an ultimatum or making me choose. In my mind, there is no choice.”
When the water starts to run cold, we get out and he hands me a towel.
“I did not see the last twenty-four hours going like this.” The admission breaks free when we’re lying in bed together.
“I didn’t think you’d give me a chance,” Dom tells me. “So yeah, we may be living in a nightmare until Bee wakes up. But I’m okay with that because the light at the end of the tunnel is you. You and me. Anything else, we will get through together.”