FIFTY-NINE

FIFTY-NINE

KYLE PULLS HIS CRUISER right up to the entrance of the emergency department. I'm out the door of his car before I realize it, feeling my feet running toward the double doors.

People everywhere, a busy night, but Kyle takes my arm and badges his way past a door and security. I feel underwater now, unable to comprehend, unable to process, Kyle's voice to some doctor, and then he pulls me along some more, lots of shouting and bumping, twisting and turning, and then my feet are planted and I'm in front of a doctor.

"Mrs. Bowers, I'm Dr. Grant." Bald, like David, with wild bushy gray eyebrows and a long face, the man who is going to tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me —

"The bullet nicked the femoral artery," he says, pointing to his inner leg. "He's lost a lot of blood. We've managed to stabilize him, but he's going into surgery immediately."

"Is he … what are … what are his … can you save him?"

"That's exactly what we'll try to do, Mrs. Bowers." He touches my arm. "It could be hours before —"

It could be hours before the surgery will be done. Hours before I talk to him. If I ever talk to him —

I snap out of my trance, bat and scratch and claw my way through the cobwebs.

"I want to see him." I look at the doctor, then at Kyle. "I want to see him."

"Mrs. Bowers, I'm afraid —"

"I might never talk to him again. Please."

The doctor's expression relents. "Thirty seconds," he says. "Room 4."

My focus suddenly razor-sharp, I race to the door and look in. Blood everywhere, doctors and nurses and assistants, already turning the gurney toward the door. All I see of David is a heavy bandage over his exposed left leg.

"Stop!" I shout.

"She needs thirty seconds with him!" Kyle says. "The doctor said okay. Everyone out! Thirty seconds."

God bless Kyle. A cop says it, they do it.

I part the sea of white coats and surgical scrubs as they leave us alone in the room. I see David. My David. Not my David.

Not my David at all.

He looks twenty years older, withered and weak. He's been intubated, a thick tube in his mouth, an IV in his neck. His eyelids flutter, struggling to open.

When his eyes focus, when he sees me, he grimaces with pain. I put my face close to his. "I know who you are," I say.

I put my lips against his ear, whispering the name so quietly that only he could hear it. No matter the privacy we've been given, nobody else can hear this name.

Then I lean back again, look at him square. "Blink once if I'm right, twice if I'm wrong."

I already know, but I need his confirmation. I need to see him acknowledge the truth once and for all.

He blinks once.

"It was all a lie," I whisper.

His eyes water up.

"Was I … was I a lie?"

He blinks twice. A tear rolls down his face into his ear. He even manages to move his head side to side.

"Okay." I believe him. I do believe that much. He loves me. He loves our kids. He loves our family, what we've created. That is the only thing allowing my voice to stay strong and steady, my legs to stay functional, my brain to stay focused and alert, even now.

"The detention center?" I ask. "That's when you first saw me?"

He blinks once.

I reach into my pocket, remove the ring of safe-deposit keys. "This is where it is?" I whisper.

He blinks once.

I lean down and press my lips against his forehead. "I love you. The kids love you. Don't leave us. Stay alive, mister, for us ."

He blinks away another tear.

"Mrs. Bowers, we really have to go."

I put out my hand, a stop sign. But he's right. My time with David is up.

"Don't worry about anything else," I whisper to him. "I'll take it from here."