The double doors open and a doctor finally comes through. She’s small, dark-haired, wearing blue scrubs. She scans the room.
“Family of Officer Weaver?”
Tex is across the room before she finishes the sentence. Sheila is right behind him. Stormy stands up next to me. I stand, but don’t move forward.
The doctor talks to them. They’re too far away to hear the words and I’m reading faces, fast and desperate, searching for information. Tex’s shoulders drop half an inch. Sheila puts her hand over her mouth.
Tex turns and walks back across to me and Stormy. His stride is the same steady stride he’s had all night but there’s a hitch in it now, a half-second stutter between steps. He stands over me. His eyes are red and wet and the controlled composure he’s been wearing all night has a crack in it now that wasn’t there before the doctor spoke.
“He’s alive,” he says. “He’s out of surgery. The bullet hit his lower back. It missed the major organs but there’s damage to the spinal cord. There’s swelling. They don’t know the extent of it yet. They’re saying until the swelling goes down, they can’t tell...”
His voice stops. Whatever they told him is bad. His mouth is open and the next word is right there and it won’t come out. His hand goes to his face, thumb and forefinger pressing the bridge of his nose, and he holds that position for three seconds while we watch the biggest man in the building try to finish a sentence.
He drops his hand and clears his throat. “They can’t tell what’s temporary and what’s not until the swelling goes down.” He says the last part fast, all in one breath. The word he choked on is the one that means Mickey might not walk again.
Paralysis.
My brain fills in the rest. Spinal cord damage means nerves. Nerves mean function. Function means walking, feeling.
Officer Mickey Weaver is paralyzed because of me and my stupid mouth.
“They’re going to transfer him soon,” he says. “To a hospital in Tallahassee. They’ve got a spinal injury unit there.He’ll be moved once he’s stable enough for transport. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”
Tallahassee is at least two hours away. I drove through it on my way here from Miami. On my way to plan a luxury wedding at a beach house.
“Does he have family?” I ask.
“His mom’s here in Panama City,” Tex says. “I called her. His dad’s not well. He has dementia. She can’t leave him alone at night. She’ll try to come first thing in the morning if she can find a sitter for him.”
His eyes are red but dry now. He’s not going to cry in this room. He’s going to hold every piece of this together. Tex and Sheila and Stormy are a family. And Mickey is part of it.
“Can I...” I start. “Do you think they will let me see him? Before the transfer?”
Tex studies me closely. “I’ll ask,” he says. “I doubt it, but I’ll ask.”
He goes back to Sheila. They stand together by the window, talking low. Stormy is still next to me. He hasn’t moved. He’s watching Tex, taking everything in.
Tallahassee is two hours from here. I have a massive wedding to put on that I’m mentally not capable of doing. There’s a suitcase at my rental condo I could pack in twenty minutes. I have a best friend in Miami who begged me to come home.
I have every reason to leave and no reason to stay that makes any sense to anyone, including me.
All I know is that there’s no way in hell I’m leaving.
Chapter 5: Mickey
The light above me is wrong. Not home. Not right.
Hospital. Bed. IV in my left arm, tape pulling on the hair. A smell that isn’t home. Antiseptic.
I try to move and my lower back explodes, a white-hot bolt of pain that shoots from my spine to my hips and then stops. Just stops. Everything above the line is screaming. Everything below it is... wrong.
I can’t feel my legs. Or I think I can’t.
That thought arrives and I let it sit there. The drugs keep it at arm’s length.
My body is too heavy. I try to move my right foot. Nothing. Left. Nothing. I try to bend a knee and there’s no response. Not pain. Not tingling. Nothing. Like the bottom half of my body has been unplugged.
The fog is holding. If I were clear, the panic would be overwhelming. The drugs are the only thing holding it back.
