Chapter Fourteen
Iwoke to the smell of antiseptic and harsh fluorescent lights.
The soft hum of machines had been my constant soundtrack for the past three days, since I came to in the back of the ambulance after I drove the truck into a tree.
Even with my seat belt, I’d still taken a hard hit to my forehead, requiring several stitches.
But I was alive and that was all that mattered.
So were hundreds of people. Dawson had planned to blow up the entire building.
He was alive too, but barely. He was in critical condition, and guarded around the clock.
The detectives were still combing through all his things.
They’d gone through the truck, his backpack, and his home.
His plan had been elaborate and thought out.
Where he’d channeled all his loss. They’d found blueprints, homemade bombs, and boxes of ammunition, coupled with pages from his notebook, where he’d spelled out exactly what he was going to do. He’d come close.
I was so thankful it was over. That I’d stopped him.
The knock at my door was soft and hesitant. I regretted telling my mom that I wanted to meet Dawson’s wife in private. I was suddenly so nervous I didn’t even know if I’d be able to talk. At least not in coherent sentences.
She stepped into my room. She was small boned and wore an oversize cardigan like a blanket, wrapped around her body.
Her chestnut hair was streaked with gray at the temples and pulled back into a loose bun that had half fallen out.
She clutched a small photo album to her chest like it was a shield. Carried flowers with the other.
“I’m Elizabeth, Aurora’s mother,” she said nervously.
I just nodded at her and motioned for her to come closer to the bed. It was surrounded with balloons and flowers. My dad had wanted to tape all the cards on the wall too, but I told him that was a bit much.
Elizabeth walked slowly into the room and sat carefully in the chair beside the bed. The one Mom pulled out and made into a bed every night. She hadn’t left my side. She’d been at the hospital to meet me the moment I arrived.
Elizabeth’s hands trembled as she sat the photo album on her lap. Her eyes were striking. Hazel flecked with green. The red rims betrayed she’d probably been crying in the hallway before she came in.
She sat carefully in the chair beside me and opened the book.
Her hands trembled as she turned the pages and showed me pictures of her little girl.
Every stage. As a chubby baby, smiling, to her first days of kindergarten, all wide eyed and missing teeth.
Elizabeth didn’t spare me the pictures of Aurora when she got sick.
Her hair gone from chemo, but a smile so bright it nearly broke me.
“Aurora,” she whispered. “We called her Rory.”
She smoothed a photo with her thumb. “Dawson wasn’t a monster, you know .
. . not at first. He just broke. He could never get over it.
He got hung up on the idea that the treatment would’ve saved her, and when they denied it, that’s all he saw.
Rage was the only thing he had left. Really, the only thing keeping him alive.
And it got so scary once he got delusional. ”
My throat closed. “I’m so sorry.” And I meant it. For Aurora. For her mother. For all of it.
“The truth is, we don’t know if that treatment would’ve done anything or even made a difference.
Nothing else ever did,” she said. Her face wore lines of grief that only someone who’d experienced great loss could possess.
“We tried so many different things. All the traditional treatments, of course. Radiation. Chemo. Trial drugs that left her sicker than the cancer itself. But we also tried everything else too—red light therapy, detoxes, frequency healing. And I clung to hope every single time we tried something else, but nothing made a single bit of difference. She just got sicker and sicker. By the end, she was stage four. That’s terminal.
Short of a miracle, she was going to die. ”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, but I didn’t know what else to say.
Tears slipped unchecked down her cheeks.
“I used to pray for that miracle. We all did. But sitting in those waiting rooms, I hated the way it made me feel. As if God was up there in the sky, picking and choosing who lived and who didn’t.
Like your baby got the miracle card and mine didn’t.
It made me sick.” She closed the photo album.
“Aurora’s life wasn’t less important than any of those other kids.
She lived for as long as she was supposed to be here.
Dawson . . . he never made peace with that. ”
“How did you?”
“Honestly, it was all the family support groups that I went to. That’s the only thing I did differently than Dawson.
He refused the support groups, but I went every single week.
Unless you’ve got a kid dying of cancer, you don’t know what it’s like.
I found people who understood what it was like to watch your child die.
That became my family. They helped me find a place for the grief.
Not to fix it. Not to make it okay. But to live with it.
” She finally looked up at me. Her eyes were soft and worn.
“He was a good man. His brain just broke after Rory died. That’s all. ”
I swallowed hard. I thought about the way Dawson’s hands had pressed a cold cloth to my forehead. The way he’d spoon-fed me broth when I couldn’t sit up. The tender way he’d sung and read to me while I wrestled with my fever.
I reached over and took her hand. “I know he was a good man. I understand.”
“Thank you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “And thank you for doing what you did. For risking your life to save all of those people.”
Elizabeth gave me a hug and left quietly.
The weight of her grief lingering in the room even after the door closed shut behind her.
They said on the news Dawson was going to prison for a long time, but I wasn’t sure that would change things for him.
Not when he’d been living in prison since the day Aurora took her last breath.
Maybe I’d write to him once I felt better.
The door banged open again. This time without a knock, and my sister burst through.
She had a huge grin on her face and Oliver squirming in her arms. He took one look at me and leaped out of her arms. He hit the ground running, his claws clattering against the hospital tile, and launched himself onto my bed.
His tongue was frantic against my face and his tail shook with joy.
I buried my face in his fur and pulled him close, breathing him in.
I was home.