Page 76 of Letting Go

Bryce was still in surgery when I left for the MRI. It's been three hours since they wheeled me back. Through the discussion in the waiting room, I find out more about the story. How Nic swept around the corner firing off shots like some kind of superhero, taking down Mike with a single shot to the thigh. At that point, Finn came out and the two of them ran down the alley turning the corner just in time to see Reed standing in front of another metal dumpster. He raised his gun and then suddenly three shots rang out and Reed folded to the ground.

That's when Finn's voice starts to crack and even Nic stares out the window. "You sure you want to hear this?" Finn asks.

"Yes," I say, "I want to know everything." I gave up living in ignorance

a long time ago.

In alternating waves of conversation, Nic and Finn relate what happened next. My screaming was so loud, they thought I had been hit by bullets. When they came thundering around the corner of the dumpster, they found me sitting on the ground, Bryce propped between my legs. He was covered in blood, unconscious with my arms around him.

Nic was the one on the phone to the ambulances. He was the one who coordinated their swift arrival time while Finn knelt and found a bullet to the right shoulder below the right pectoral. And a second above that and a third to the left side.

Hearing it all in the quiet space of the waiting room feels surreal. The day slips into night. Still, we wait. All I want to know is if Bryce will live, and that he'll be okay—yet that damn door stays closed, and no one's come through for hours.

I'm not leaving 'til it's over.

Well neither am I.

That door opens exactly at eleven pm.

I expect miles of tubes and lines crisscrossing Bryce's body, and yes, there's a mobile patient monitor unit with flashing lights and scary waves and that IV still in his arm, a stint in his chest to relieve pressure, and his right shoulder and chest is bandaged up, but there's no mask over his face, just a nasal cannula. He's sleeping, the only clue he's coming out from anesthesia are the sudden, small twitches of his fingers.

"Excluding complications, Bryce Tucker is going to be fine." I have to keep mentally repeating what the surgeon said as I sit watching him sleep.

The reassuring rise and fall of his chest, the steady electronic beep of his heart, is a balm. Even his color is better.

Not a punctured lung, a collapsed lung. A nick in his brachial artery in the shoulder. And the final bullet, the one I felt tear through him as I held him, grazed his abdomen, left side. Never penetrated. It shattered the granite to my left, a fact that never even registered.

Everyone else became suddenly ravenous after the good news and wanted to head out to grab some food. I saw right through Finn. He was whisking them all away so I could be with Bryce alone when he woke.

Midnight comes and goes. The darkness outside is glassy. I see only myself in the reflection of the windows. It's too bright in here, I decide. Luckily, there's a dimmer switch. I mute the light, take my place in a light blue plastic chair near his bed, lace my fingers through his, being careful not to bump the pulse oximeter clamped to his index finger, and close my eyes.

I don’t know how much time passes before a sound wakes me. It’s Bryce. A moan, soft, vulnerable, escapes his lips and he weakly shifts under the sheets. Somehow, I know he is searching for me. He thinks I am in danger.

He doesn’t know he saved Mateus and us both.

"Hey," I say, keeping my voice steady, low. I'm still hoarse from the pepper spray, so I just try to sound like myself. "I'm fine, I'm okay," I repeat over and over, stroking the hair from his forehead. He tries to turn his head towards me, to follow the sound. Holding my hair with one hand, I lean down and leave a swift, light kiss on his lips. "I'm here. I'm holding your hand. Can you feel me?"

There's the small, but reassuring pressure of his hand squeezing mine. I think about Claire, how she cried and held me in the ambulance. How I felt her love, and for the first time in forever, was strong enough to trust that feeling. I had to let go of certain things from my past in order to live. And to love. I kiss him again, this time, a little longer, tasting him on my lips, feeling his mouth, soft, tender, quiver against mine. As I pull back, I know one thing for sure.

"I'm not letting go of you," I say and watch with a real ache in my throat as a single tear slips from the corner of his eye.

Chapter Twenty

Bryce

The last thing I remember is Reed's face. A gun going off near my right ear. Being deaf for a moment before I blacked out. These are the images and sensations swimming in my mind.

Then I hear Chloe's voice. First from afar, then closer, and the feeling of her lips on mine, swift, sweet. I squeeze her hand.

The next time I stir, I'm more awake—awake enough to forget for a moment why I'm here and just glad to see her smiling at me.

"Hey," she says, "welcome back."

I try to say something, but my throat hurts. It seems as dry and ragged as sandpaper. She puts a finger to my lips. "You're not a talker anyway, she says, "so don't try to be one now."

I remember Mateus. I try to say his name and lift my head thinking, somehow, he must be here.

Instantly her fingers are stroking my hair, trying to make it all go away, trying to offer comfort. But it's her words that stop the tumult of sounds and scenes in my head.