The mom looked like she’d been punched in the gut.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s scared.”
She nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks.
I pulled her into my arms, hugging her tight.
I wasn’t the best man in the world.
Hell, I wasn’t even close.
But I knew when a woman could use a hug, and this mom looked like she could desperately use one. The mom caught onto my Kevlar vest straps and buried herself into my throat, sobs racking her small frame.
I patted her back as the dad’s eyes met mine, pure relief and thanks in his.
I nodded once in understanding.
“A woman was the one to find him,” Dempsey said softly to the couple, though I wasn’t sure the mom was hearing much of anything. “She tried to help him, but any time she got close, he ran and screamed bloody murder. The woman’s husband tried, and he was perfectly okay. He was checked over at the hospital already, but the same thing happened with the female nurses. Only male doctors and nurses were able to approach him.”
“Son of a bitch,” James, the dad, said shakily. “What happened to my boy?”
I wished I had the fucking answers, because there were six more boys just like him missing, too.
If one was able to get free, and was okay, there had to be more out there waiting to be saved.
Twenty-One
Don’t give up. You’re allowed to cuss the entire time. Just don’t give up.
—Gentry to Sage
Sage
The three of us sat in the break room staring at a bunch of nothing as we decompressed from the day we’d just had.
Bernice had her hair up in a messy bun, having thrown it up that way halfway through the day in her haste to free herself of the overstimulation.
Odin had lost his button-down shirt, and was now only in a pair of jeans and a white tee that he’d had under that button-down. He had a backward-facing ball cap on his head, and he was leaning said head against the wall where he was leaning back in the chair.
I, probably the most unkempt of us all, stared at the two of them.
“Why do y’all look like y’all are contemplating your life choices?” I wondered.
Odin’s eyes flicked to me.
Bernice kept staring at the table, likely lost in her head and not having heard the question at all.
“I’m wondering if it’ll always be like that, and if I should’ve never agreed to take over,” he admitted.
“Surely it can’t be that hard all the time,” Bernice mused, having heard us after all.
“At least y’all didn’t get puked on,” I pointed out.
Somewhere beyond where we were at, the door jingled again.
“We forgot to lock the door after the last patient,” Bernice mused.
“It’s just me,” Gentry called out.
