Page 56 of In My Heart
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.”
CHAPTER 15
CARA
I woke early the next morning with a pounding head, aching and stinging eyes, and my stomach rumbling. I barely remembered getting home after seeing Rafe in the Intensive Care Unit.
Just seeing him hooked up to so many monitors, IV lines, and tubes had been my breaking point. He had just been so still and pale, a monstrous tube coming from his mouth. It just left me feeling so hopeless, despite Cal - who had been with me, all but keeping me on my feet - telling me it was all completely normal considering Rafe’s condition, and that it was all helping him to heal. To me, Rafe just seemed like he was already gone.
The only saving grace had been that he was unconscious and not aware of the way I just shattered right there in that room. Cal had been forced to carry me out of there. I remembered ending up in Dio’s arms at some point, then the rest was a nightmarish blur.
We’d arrived back home in the dark, then I vaguely remembered being back in my room. My guys had been with me all night as I moved through restless sleep, grief like turmoil, and screaming nightmares.
It was little wonder all three of them were passed out around me, as I slowly sat up in my bed and scanned the room. Arran was right beside me, laid on his side facing me, his hand heldout as if it had been wrapped around me. Cal was on the floor between the bed and my wardrobes, laid out like a starfish with a blanket haphazardly covering his middle. And Dio was in the uncomfortable chair from my desk. He had moved it in front of the bedroom door and was asleep with his head leant right back against the wood, his arms folded over his chest. I hazily remembered demanding to go back to the hospital several times during the night, so I guessed Dio had settled there to stop me from leaving if I woke with the notion again.
I looked between them again, feeling guilty for the way I had fallen apart on them all the night before. Yes I’d been terrified for Rafe, but he wasn’t justmybrother – he was theirs too. They loved him and had to have been just as scared we were all going to lose him. And I’d selfishly made them go through that while also trying to hold me together.
