Chapter 34
Independence Day
Callie
Everything hurts.
My head hurts.
My chest hurts.
My arm hurts.
What is beeping?
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Is it my alarm? What do I need to get up for again?
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
“Nothing’s wrong honey, she’s waking up.” Who is that?
My eyelids feel glued shut. Am I hungover? How much did I drink that I can’t remember drinking at all?
I manage to unglue one eyelid; the white tile ceiling is confusing. I don’t recognize this place. I close the eye.
I smell the air; I need a clue. Disinfectant. Flowers.
Something rustles and I turn my head slightly. It hurts to move. I wince.
“Don’t move, baby. It will hurt.”
I recognize that voice. He comes to me in my dreams.
“Cash,” I croak out of my dry throat.
“I’m here, Hurricane. Don’t try to move. Don’t talk. Just relax.” It’s then that I feel his hands wrapped around mine. The points of contact are warm and vital. I squeeze his hand and get a squeeze in return.
“Hey, sweetheart. You squeezed my hand; I’ve wanted you to do that for days.”
Wait. “Duke?” My voice is scratchy but comes out a little clearer.
“Yes, Sunshine, I’m here.” He squeezes my hand again.
I try to open my eyes but it’s so difficult. I give up, breathing heavily from the effort. I take a few deep breaths before there’s another voice.
“Caroline? Can you hear me?”
I try to nod but it hurts. “Yes,” I breathe instead.
“I’m Dr. Jones. I need to examine you. I’m going to ask your friends to leave and then I will need to check you over while we chat. Can you open your eyes?”
Squeezing both of their hands, I hold on.
“Doctor, she doesn’t seem to want to let go,” Cash tells the man.
“Stay,” I croak.
“Okay, they can stay. If you would just move to one side of the bed, please.” I hear more rustling, and the sound follows Duke from my side until he and Cash are both touching my arm on the same side.
“Okay, Caroline. Can you open your eyes?”
“Hurts,” I try to say.
“Hey Tina, can you grab me a bottle of warm saline and some clean gauze?” he tells someone. “Okay, we will come back to that. I’m going to just move your gown a little and check your wounds. Do you remember what happened?”
“No.” A breathy whisper. It’s getting easier now.
“Well, you were assaulted. I will let the police explain that part. But your injuries have been quite extensive.” He unbuttons my gown at the shoulder and moves it open, shielding my breast but exposes my side.
He gently probes my ribs, and a hiss of pain escapes my lips.
“You had a punctured right kidney, a lacerated lung, and a gallbladder bleed. We managed to control the bleeding in your gallbladder. We did have to remove the kidney as the damage was too great, but the good news is you can live with one. You will meet with a nephrologist, a kidney specialist, as soon as you’re feeling a little better to explain what this means.
Your lung was punctured but seems to be doing okay post-surgery. ”
As he lists off the various injuries, I hear the breathing of the men beside me become shallower and at one point, Duke removes his hand which had started shaking.
“Thank you, Tina. I am going to just apply some pressure with warm saline to your eyes and see if we can help get them open, okay?” I feel the wet cloth placed against my eye, warming me. Once he’s finished, I try to open my eyes again and I am successful this time.
A kindly looking man with gray hair leans into my field of vision. It’s a little blurry but if I concentrate, he comes into focus. “It’s so good to see those green eyes open, Caroline. I’m just going to continue my exam while I ask you some more questions, okay?” I try to nod again and wince.
“Don’t try to move your neck. You have some significant bruising to your trachea and the neck tissue which will make talking and moving your neck difficult for a few more days.
It should get better every day. Now, let’s see.
” He probes my shoulder, and I whimper. “Yes, that is quite sore I’m sure, but it’s a flesh wound and didn’t require stitches or anything so it should be feeling better soon.
Bite marks can be so painful.” Bite marks?
Honestly, I have no idea what has happened. I can’t remember anything. I have a missing kidney, a punctured lung, a bite mark, and a bruised throat.
“What day?” I ask, pushing my sore throat to its limit, hoping my point comes across.
“It’s Thursday, Caroline. You’ve been asleep for five days.
You came in on Sunday morning around three am.
Okay, I will leave you now, but I am scheduling a follow up CT scan to check for any rebleeding in your abdomen and to check on the healing of your lung and gallbladder.
Tina will take good care of you.” And then, he’s gone.
I’m laying almost completely flat so I move my hands, feeling around for the buttons I know must exist.
“What can we do, Caroline?” Duke asks, leaning over me so I can see him.
“Up, please.”
“Okay, Caroline, I’m going to raise the head just a little at a time, let me know if it hurts,” Tina tells me before slowly lifting my head and the rest of the room appears.
“Okay,” I tell her when the angle starts to be too much.
“Great, let me just get some vitals and I will be out of here.”
“Can she have, like, water or something? For her throat,” Cash asks her.
“Of course.”
Once she’s gone, Duke returns to the other side of the bed and they both sit. We exist in silence for a little while and I am dying of curiosity about what happened and why they are both here.
“Duke,” I whisper, and he jumps up, leaning over slightly.
“Yeah, baby?” Hearing him call me baby makes me want to melt into the bed, but I have no idea what any of this means.
I slide my eyes toward Cash and see him watching me earnestly, affection in his eyes.
He doesn’t seem to care that Duke called me baby or is here at all.
What happened? What landed me in this bed and what happened while I was asleep?
“What ha—” My voice breaks halfway through the word, and I feel a tear run down my cheek. Duke wipes it away. He looks at Cash and they stare at each other for a few heartbeats before Duke begins his story.
After he finishes, ending with me being stabbed and them coming to the hospital and sitting with me for four days, I ask, “Roger?”
He again pauses, looking at Cash again as though they are having some sort of private communication that I am not privy to.
It’s Cash that speaks this time. “He’s gone, darlin’. Like, forever.”
“Dead?” I croak.
Cash flinches from the word, and Duke looks a little peaked.
“Yes,” Duke answers. It is so bizarre seeing them together and being one side of a conversation. Not finishing each other’s sentences exactly but working so closely together to have this conversation that one seems to know where the other will need them.
“How?”
Duke rubs his neck. Cash fidgets a little awkwardly.
“How?” I ask a little more forcefully, but it still comes out weakly and cracking.
“I did it,” Duke whispers, almost too low to hear. “I’m sorry, Caroline. He hurt you and I lost control. I’m sorry.” His own tear drips onto the mattress near our joined hands.
“Come here,” I command, barely above a whisper. He leans down until he is close to my mouth, turning his head so I can get close to his ear. “Thank you.” I try to lift my arm to wrap around him, but I’m weak and so tired, so it just kind of bumps him and he chuckles slightly.
Lying my head back, I drift off to sleep.
The next few days pass in uneven periods of waking and sleeping.
My neck feels better every day and soon I can talk in full sentences.
Repeat tests show I’m healing well but it’s a long road.
The police stop by and ask for a statement, which is hard the first day, but the memories return day by day.
By day four, I can remember every minute of the home invasion/attempted murder.
Realizing he came all the way to Montana to murder me is a sobering thought; I never even considered this as a possibility.
When all the information becomes clear, I can finally tell the guys what happened before they got there.
“I heard him knocking and it was getting scarier, so I texted you. I was also going to text Cash, but I never got that far.”
“Why would you think I would be at your house in the middle of the night banging on your door, Caroline?” Duke asks me, clearly perplexed.
“I didn’t. It was just, well, when he started knocking it was gentler, urgent but not scary.
And since I really only know the two of you well enough to show up and knock on my door, it was just the only thing that made sense, I guess,” I tell him, confessing without words there are no other men who would have shown up.
The slightly pleased look on Cash’s face indicates he understood what I didn’t say.
“Okay, so then what?” Cash leads me.
“After you replied back, asking why, I was trying to tell you someone was banging but he got through the door at that exact moment, and I was too scared to keep typing.” I remember it now, in such vivid detail, it’s as though it just happened moments before.
“How did he get in? When we got there, the door was closed and locked,” Duke questions.
“I’m actually not sure. I feel pretty certain I locked it, but I may not have. I don’t know.” I shudder, the fear of those moments snaking up my spine. “Once he was inside, he came upstairs and grabbed me.”
“How did he find you? How did he recognize me as soon as he saw me? He didn’t even know who Duke was.”
“It was so weird. He looked right at Cash, ignoring me completely. But if he had been watching you or something, he would have seen both of us.” There’s curiosity but also hurt mingled in Duke’s question.
“He saw us on TV. No idea why he was watching a rodeo from Lewistown, Montana but he said he saw you and I after the rodeo, when you won and told national television I destroyed everything…” I trail off, my voice softening.