Page 7 of Love What's Left
I push matted strands of dark hair away from her face.
“Gabriel, you need to put her down now. She needs a CT scan and an MRI.” Frederick Granthy, Josh’s father, has arrived.
He’s been our family doctor my entire life. He cried when he saw the bloody mess carved and burned into my ten-year-old body. Then he’d blinked his tears away and told me everything was going to be okay.
Dr. Granthy will help Sydney.
But my arms remain tight around her. She needs me more. So, I sit with my wife in my lap and rock her in place as time passes into seconds or minutes that I can’t feel. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
“Son, put her on the gurney,” my dad says.
I shake my head.When did my parents get here?
Mom brushes her hand over Sydney’s forehead, then dabs my face with Kleenex. “Put her down so they can make sure she isn’t bleeding internally. You have to do it, honey. You got her out. Now, it’s time to let go.”
I lift my head, her words sinking through the fog of fear and grief. I rise and attempt to lay my wife on the gurney, but she flinches and jolts. So I remain bent over, maintaining contact with her. I reach blindly behind me. “Get me a pillow. A blanket. Something.”
Someone places a cotton blanket straight from the warmer into my hand. I roll it into a bolster, rip my shirt over my head to wrap around it, then press the makeshift pillow against her, arranging her arm over it and fitting a piece of the shirt into her fist. It’s not me, but it’s something to hold on to. “I’m not going anywhere, Sydney. When you wake up, I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
Her twitching subsides. Hospital staff snap the safety rails up and guide the gurney out of the room. I follow, only realizing we’re picking up a parade of family and friends when someone takes my hand.
I look down to find my mother, her Arctic-blue eyes misted with grief or rage or hope. I can’t tell which. Maybe she doesn’t know either.
“You need to have someone look at that.” She indicates the bruising on my left side.
“It’s not important. Nothing is broken.” I keep my eyes on Sydney’s pale form as we move through the corridors.
My sister, Bronwyn, joins us, looking like a younger version of our mother. “You can’t know that for sure until you’ve been checked out. You’ve got BABT from backface deformation.” The “you idiot”is silent.
Of course, I have Behind Armor Blunt Trauma. The Kevlar absorbed and redistributed the kinetic energy of a bullet. “They’ll separate us, take me to an exam room, then send me for X-rays just so they can tell me afterward to ice it and take something over the counter for pain. It was small caliber. The vest worked exactly as intended. Let it go,” I say.
“I’ll find you an ice pack and Advil,” Henry mutters behind me.
Mom releases my hand to pass me a green hospital-issued scrub top.
“Thanks,” I say gruffly, wincing as I drag the thing over my head.
The smell of disinfected linen briefly supplants the stench of Sydney’s captivity. Wherever Nikolai Markov originally held her reeked of mildew.
When Sydney was in my arms, I thought inthis moment and this moment and this one.Without her, unfiltered pain threatens to escape the leash of my self-control. Years ago, I’d have pulled out a flask to take the edge off.
Tonight, I rub my chest and brace myself to ride it out. Sydney is the strongest person I’ve ever known. She’s going to wake up soon. She’ll look for me. Reach for me. And when she does, I’ll be here waiting . . . stone. cold. sober.
5
Sydney
Amachine beeps in time with my racing heart in this warm, dark room. I could sleep if my brain wasn’t filled with fire ants. If I didn’t sweat and shiver at the same time. If everything didn’t hurt.
My skin feels too tight. Rage and fear are voltage stored inside my bones, waiting for a chance to break free of their cage.
Weight depresses beside me on the bed.
A man guides me to a sitting position and removes my nightgown. I don’t have underwear to take off.Don’tfight him. Get through this and wait for an opportunity to escape.
He lays me down, murmuring nonsense about how he’s going to help me feel better.
He drapes my lower body with some kind of fabric and disconnects the lead lines attached to the machine. Terror floods through me until it’s impossible for me to separate fear of the man from the shaking that’s already killing me.
