Heidi and Celeste shook their heads, but Lucia said Scott texted.
“Foster placed Scott at the doors to the surgical unit and Declan on the OR doors. Foster is going to the observation room.”
I nodded. From that point forward, we played a waiting game.
Waiting for Katie’s results to come back.
Waiting for word about Jackson.
Waiting for Katie to move to another room.
Waiting for her to wake up.
Waiting for the family to arrive from Seattle and Texas.
I fucking hated waiting. It irked me. While still in the Marines in a Recon unit, I could sit on a target forever. It was only after the accident that sitting still for any length of time made me twitchy. The VA docs all said it probably had to do with the fear of being paralyzed, or it could be due to the head injury.
Whatever it was, it had my skin crawling as I stood guard outside Katie’s room. I’d texted with Marcie and Declan several times, but then Declan went fucking silent. When he didn’t respond to either Marcie or me, or me alone, I stuck my head in the room to ask the women sitting with Katie, but they didn’t know anything more than I did.
Just as I contemplated offering to get us all some coffee and snacks so I could check on him, I got a text.
Declan
I’m okay. I’ll explain later.
I breathed a sigh of relief. He was taking this hard, but I trusted him to do what he needed to do to deal with it. I couldn’t second-guess or undermine his strength.
I went back to my leaning and guarding, only to be jolted out of my fucking skin when Katie screamed bloody fucking murder. I burst into the room to find Katie losing her fucking shit. She thrashed and screamed, tearing at the tubes and wires the staff had her hooked up to.
Heidi climbed onto the bed and wrapped her arms around Katie from behind, all the while talking to her and trying her damnedest to keep Katie from hurting herself. A nurse stuck her head in the room and came back with the doctor who’d been working on Jackson as they rushed him to the ER.
The doctor jabbed Katie in the arm with the syringe he held as he said, “It’s a low dose. It shouldn’t knock her out, just mellow her some.”
We all watched her continue to scream and jerk in the bed for another few minutes. But with every tick of the clock on the wall in the room, she settled more and more until she finally took a deep breath.
And so did we.
A few minutes more passed before her tear-filled eyes opened, and she asked the question we didn’t have an answer for.
“Jackson?”
“He’s alive, Katie,” Heidi said.
Celeste sat on the other side of the bed from her sister, both of them staring at Katie. Celeste gripped Katie’s hand and said, “He’s alive, Katie. Understand? That’s what you need to focus on right now.”
“He was shot?”
Celeste sighed. “Yes. He was super lucky.”
Lucky?
Celeste continued, “The bullet entered his back, missing all the nerves and major arteries. It exited his chest, missing his heart. It did go through one of his lungs, though. He’s in surgery. Last I heard from Declan, things were going well, but the surgery could take a while.”
“Can I see him?” Katie asked.
“After surgery, they will take him to recovery and then to ICU. He’s going to be out of it for a bit, but they might let you back there once he’s in ICU,” Celeste explained.
With Katie settled and no longer freaking out, I stepped back out into the hallway. She didn’t need me in there while they talked. They needed me out here being the muscle.
