Brawler (40 page)

I know Jonas fired several rounds, but I didn’t hear them. I didn’t hear anything. So when he picked me up and carried me upstairs, I knew I was slipping further away from him. The pain was less, my breathing had become shallow, and even then, I couldn’t feel our baby anymore. Even then I knew I was losing him, and there was nothing I could to stop it, but I held my belly anyway hoping, by will alone, I could keep him from leaving me.

When Jonas explained the details of my surgery I nodded and took mental notes. I didn’t add the things I also knew likely happened that the doctor’s didn’t share, but being a nurse, it’s not abhorrent to me like it would be him. The team here saved my life even while I had to lose my son in the process. Truth is, I knew I lost him the second that bullet entered my stomach. I was just about four months along; he was still so tiny and fragile. I’m surprised we were able to find out the sex, but we did, and now we know.

Now as I watch my husband sleep on what’s probably the world’s most uncomfortable piece of furniture, looking at his half-eaten dinner and watching his chest rise and fall, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him tired. For a man like my husband, an enforcer of laws and a doer of good, I know it’s hurting him that a threat to his wife is still breathing within these same walls. Quite frankly, it’s wearing him out.

Careful not to make a sound, I purse my lips together and bite down on my cheek to stop the groan from leaving my mouth as I start to move. Sitting up slowly I get my bearings, letting the dizziness pass first. Scooting forward, I slowly shut off the drips to both IVs and disconnect the connecting hub. Turning the volume down on the monitoring equipment I move the poles to the side and ease my feet to the floor. I practice standing first. Instinct has me bringing my hands to my belly so I embrace it. Holding my belly still brings me a sense of peace. I snag a pair of latex gloves from the table and keep them in my hand. Taking one step followed by another, I make it to the door. Looking back, he’s still asleep. Peeking through I see the hall is empty.

Hurrying my pace as best as I can, I make two turns, and with one final hall I’ll be at the reception of ICU. I force myself not to scowl at the pain or the burning in my belly. Focusing on my feet I shuffle past a thankfully empty reception desk and look at the name plates on each door. Three doors down on my left I’m standing in front of the door of B. Freeman, who is allergic to penicillin. Peering in his room I see it’s empty, and the only light is shining from above his bed and from the machines employed to keep him breathing.

Spotting a chair next to his bed, I slowly ease myself into, it needing a break. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I rub my belly lightly while taking in his appearance. I tried calling up the hate but I don’t hate him. I’d have to feel something for there to be hate. I wanted to do good and he chose to do evil. He abused my trust, our friendship, and my body. He was also the reason behind the deaths of those men Jonas had thought I killed.

He abducted four innocent women for the sole purpose of experimentation and hurting me, because he was
told
to. He changed their lives forever. He certainly changed my life forever. In plain terms, Ben was a leech. He took from everyone and everything around him. Behind that baby face and under those fancy clothes lived a monster.

He came from money and privilege, yet behaved with expectation. I truly believe he felt the world owed him something, but I just don’t know what. I also truly believe in justice. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I truly believe monsters aren’t just under our beds, or in my case, my parents. Some monsters are out mingling with the rest of us, hiding their true natures. I also truly believe we all carry the ability to be cruel, to harm others, and lie when the purpose suits us, but most of us are able to curb those urges. Ben was not one of those people.

Standing up on shaky legs, I walk over to his mechanical ventilator. Taking a moment to read his vitals and commit them to memory, I lean down, supporting myself on the bed rail as I put both gloves on. I turn off the machine easily by pressing the red button, followed my pulling the plug from the wall. One loud beep is all I hear; then the room is bathed in quiet. I watch as the machine ceases in reproducing air; I watch as his chest rises and falls a little less with each breath. I stand there silently watching nature take its course.

When his last breath is close and death even closer, I lean over putting my face above his and I speak to him from my heart. “You took life from me. Now I take life from you.”

I am able to watch him go. It doesn’t take long. In fact, the moment I shut those machines down they should have come in here. Standing there, I keep waiting for staff to run in when the front desk is alerted that he’s stopped breathing. I wait for them to try and resuscitate him. When nothing happens, I wonder if they decided just to call the police instead. Exhausted, I take a step back. I’m not sure how long I stand there waiting for the staff, police, or someone to come and punish me for what I’d done, but it never happens. It’s when I close my eyes that I feel my husband’s arms around me, turning me toward him.

“Come on Princess,” he whispers in my ear. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

And that’s what he does.

It’s what my husband always does; he protects his wife.

A
fter helping her reconnect her lines and reset her machines, I crawled into bed with her. Not a word is spoken. It takes a while, but eventually her breathing goes deep, and mine follows. We sleep soundly; we sleep deep, knowing for tonight she is safe. Tonight, I dream of my wife. I dream of our future and I dream of kids and grandkids, dogs, and barbecues, and I dream of the family I’d waited forever for.

It isn’t just us, though. There are Rogue and Venessa, Max and Jules, and even Tony, which I’ll think on later. Did I mention kids? So many kids. Laughing, playing, beating the shit outta each other. It’s the best fucking dream I’d ever had. Especially when I look on the porch to see my wife smiling at me in that special way she does. That smile that says she knows how lucky we are, and that she doesn’t take it for granted any more than I do.

I want the dream to last forever, but it doesn’t. I felt a presence, so I snap my eyes open to see my partner staring at me.

“The fuck you trying to do?” I whisper at him. “Give me nightmares?”

“Ain’t so sure you should be in her bed partner,” he whispers back. “You move, you could hurt her.”

“Thank you, Doctor Black,” I say. “Can you back up, man, my eyes are crossing.”

“Ben’s dead,” he says not moving or breaking his stare.

“And?”

“Just thought you should know,” he says, looking at me in the eyes like he’s waiting for me to confess.

“Thanks for waking me up to share the information,” I tell him. “Where’s Venessa?”

“At home,” he says. “Needed to see you first, alone.”

“Quit looking at me like that, partner,” I tell him. “I ain’t left this floor all night.” Which isn’t a lie. Ben’s room is on this floor, but he doesn’t know I know that.

“Even if you did, you know I wouldn’t —”

“Partner,” I tell him straight, letting him figure it out. “I didn’t shut off his life support.”

After he blinks several times he gives me that smirk. He looks around me to my sleeping wife and then back at me and tells me straight, too. “Go back to sleep partner. You look like shit.”

With that he gets up and walks out.

Staring at the door he walks out of, I smile. He gets it. Turns out the staff at that front desk got it, too. They didn’t stop my wife from doing what she needed to do; seems like they had other shit going at that time. Heard through the grapevine one of the women taken and held by Ben happened to work on this very floor. It also turns out the coffee pot wasn’t working and it was an all hands on deck kinda thing to get it fixed. I get it, the women need their coffee. They also didn’t run to his aid until I had my wife safe back in her bed. Those women have husbands and children of their own; I owe them a debt for letting my wife give Ben what he deserved. Those same women respect my wife and the women taken, and they ain’t got no respect for a man, any man, shooting another woman, a pregnant woman, one of theirs, in the stomach.

You just don’t fuck with the female species.

T
he second Rafe brings me home my body starts healing by leaps and bounds, but it is my heart that can’t seem to move on. I remind myself to stop touching my belly in front of people, but I can’t help it. It comforts me. When Jonas catches me doing it, I see him flinch, and most times he just leaves the room after. I want to apologize, but I don’t know how to put it into words. I feel guilty that I wasn’t strong enough to save both myself and our baby. I still feel my son there, and I’m not strong enough to move forward yet, because I just don’t know how. When I woke up in the hospital it was that feeling of being alive and being so grateful to have my husband that making promises to move forward seemed attainable at that time. Turns out it’s a lot harder than I thought.

Sleeping is close to impossible for me. We go to bed together, but the first few nights I would get up to pace so he could sleep, and at first I would go into every room in the house, but would avoid the nursery. The other night I figured a step in my moving forward would be to go into the nursery to find some closure. The second I walked in the guilt overwhelmed me and I didn’t get any closure. Instead, I let the grief take me. When I was in the nursery nothing could touch me. This wasn’t a sanctuary; it was my punishment. I deserved it, and I’d stay here as long as possible. So that’s how the pattern started. At night I would find my way here, put in my Skulls and put “Beautiful Pain”
on repeat, turn the volume all the way up, and let the words work me over. It’s like it was written for me to hear. I wanted to take his advice, but I was still too raw to grasp the meaning. Eventually I’d nod off then I’d wake up to my husband carrying me back to bed, taking my Skulls out, shutting my phone off, and pulling me close to him until I fell back asleep.

Days of this wasn’t going to be enough. Maybe years wouldn’t be enough, either. My fear is it will never be enough. I’m angry I took Ben off life support. I’m angry because he didn’t even know it was me who ended his life. I was impatient. I should have waited until he gained consciousness and did it up close and personal so he saw me when he took his last breath. His death wasn’t enough for me. Sitting here in my son’s nursery, I still won’t touch anything. I just sit here in a rocking chair listening to Eminem. He’s right, every word is fucking right on. I am standing in the flames, and it is a beautiful kind of pain, and I need to find the light, but I’m too god damned afraid. I’m still pissed.

If I know anything, it’s loss. Even dealing with blow after blow in life, I’ve never had a loss like
this
. My husband needs me, we need each other, but how do I put this behind me? Is it selfish to move on and be happy? How do I rebuild after something like this? How do I fucking forgive myself?

This morning, I woke up determined to break the cycle. All day I try to get his attention, but he avoids me now. As depression sets in again. I realize this, too, is my fault. I pushed him away, I forced him to suffer alone. I have so many sins stacked against me it’s a struggle to breathe. So instead of bothering him, I go into my lab, close the door and start the process of transferring all of my research to flash drives and getting it in the right hands. It may not be closure, but it is a step, and for me, it’s a big one. My dreams of contributing to medical science are no longer. My dream caused chaos and destruction, and I didn’t want to be attached to it anymore. If I wasn’t so focused to listening to this song on repeat and copying my data I’d have known my husband was sitting outside of the room wondering where he went wrong, and if it was even possible to get me back. Had I known this I would have told him he holds no fault here, this is all on me, and that I just needed a little more time.