Chapter Twenty–Eight
Ashton
With the picnic cleaned up, I walked toward the bedroom to get undressed and ready for my new fiancée. I laughed as I thought about the expression on her face when she first saw the ring.
Getting into the bedroom, I thought I would open up a window to let in a little fresh air. And as I did, I could hear the sounds of sirens filtering through from the street below.
Looking down, I could see that things didn’t look right. People were moving oddly. Running or stumbling in every direction. And then my eyes went to something that just shouldn’t have been there. An armored truck was up on the sidewalk.
My heart stopped as I saw police cars stopped on every side of the vehicle. Officers got out with guns drawn, aiming them at the vehicle. Then a loud voice came up to me as one of the officers used a bullhorn, “Get out of the car with your hands up.”
Pulling my cell out of my pocket, I found my hands were shaking as I swiped Nina’s name. The phone rang, and I could hear it in the apartment. She’d left her phone on the nightstand. “Fuck!”
Hauling ass, I ran to get to the elevator. I had to get to Nina. I couldn’t sit there and wait.
But I wasn’t the only one rushing out to check on someone they cared about on the outside of that building. It took no time at all for the elevator to be filled with people, all trying to get to the ground floor.
The doorway became jammed as everyone tried to get out at the same time. “Everyone, just calm down,” some man called out. “One at a time, people.”
Panic had set in, and everyone was out for their own self. Finally, I made it out and moved in the direction I knew Nina had gone. Then everyone froze when the sound of a gunshot rang out.
I climbed up on a pole to see what I could. The police were moving fast toward the armored truck. Then I saw an officer waving, and more came in. An ambulance pulled up, and the officers took the person, who had obviously shot himself, to the back of it.
It was only then that I saw the people lying on the sidewalk. I couldn’t make any one of them out. I looked around at the people around me in the crowd, searching desperately for Nina’s face.
When I didn’t find it, I got off the pole and tried my best to get to that truck. Praying the whole time that she was safe inside the store, I pushed my way through the mass of people.
When I got close to where I wanted to go, a strong arm stopped me. “No one can go any further than this.” An office had stopped me.
“My wife is down here. I need to find her,” I implored him.
“There are lots of wives and husbands down here, mister. You’ll have to wait, just like everyone else.” He gave me a slight push to get back, and it only made me mad.
“Listen to me,” I said through gritted teeth.
The sound of more ambulances made me look up. Three stopped, and the paramedics got out. They swarmed through the people who were standing around. “Clear this entire area,” one of them said. “We’ve got to be able to see to the wounded.”
My heart stopped when someone called out, “We’ve got an unresponsive civilian over here.”
Another called out, “No pulse here.”
“Get them on the trucks,” someone else shouted.
I watched as people were placed on stretchers, strapped down then taken to the backs of the waiting ambulances. Those three drove away, and three more came in right behind them.
The same thing followed. The paramedics searched, found, and took away. But this time I saw dark blonde hair falling across the top of the stretcher. “Hey, wait!”
The cop turned to give me a frown. “I thought I told you …”
“I think that’s her.” I pointed at the moving stretcher that was about to be put into the ambulance. “Please just let me see if it’s her.”
He moved his arm then jerked his head. “Hurry up.”
I ran toward the stretcher and every step I took made my blood drop a degree colder. When I got all the way to them, I finally saw her face. Blood ran in tiny rivers from her forehead and nose. “Oh, God!” I felt my knees buckle.
“Do you know her?” one of the paramedics asked.
“She’s my wife.” I knew that they wouldn’t let me see her if I told them anything else—I had learned that the hard way once before.
“Come on,” the man said as he and the other paramedic put her inside the ambulance.
I climbed in to sit on the other side of her as one of them went to work putting in an IV, and the other closed the doors and rushed to the driver’s seat to take us to a hospital.
“Is she …” I couldn’t make myself say the word.
The paramedic knew what I wanted to hear. “Her heart is beating, and she is breathing on her own. So, yes, she’s alive. For now, anyway.” He moved his hand in a circle over her stomach. That’s when I noticed that blood was seeping onto the blanket that covered her. “She’s going to need to go straight into surgery. She has wounds on her stomach, and from the bloating, I would guess internal hemorrhaging as well.”
“That truck hit her?” I asked.
He nodded. “She seems to be the last person he hit before he stopped. She made it out better than some. A few are still trapped under the vehicle and won’t be helped until they can get it moved. With the crowd, it slows everything down.”
“Fucking New York,” I muttered. “I’m getting her the hell out of here.”
The way he looked down had me worried. I stared at him until he looked at me. “I hope you get that chance.” He looked at the ring I had just put on her finger. “Look, she’ll be going straight into surgery. You should take her ring, so it doesn’t get lost or something. What’s her name, by the way?”
He pulled the engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into my palm. “It’s Nina Kramer.”
He wrote that down on the paper he had on a clipboard. “You should call her family. They should be here.”
I knew it was serious, but I had no idea it was that serious. “I will. I’ll call them.” I took her hand as it fell out from under the blanket. “Nina, you have to pull through this for me. You know you’ve got to do it, baby. You can’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me here. I can’t be alone again. I can’t.” I broke down then. I couldn’t hold it in. I begged her and begged her to stay with me.
When we got to the hospital, I walked as far as they would let me, holding her hand and telling her not to leave me, all the way down the long hall.
When we got to the double doors, where family could no longer go, I fell to my knees. Turning my head up to God, I prayed for him to please not take her yet. Please, let her stay with me.
Someone put his hands on my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get you to a waiting room.”
Some big man wearing white scrubs picked up me and let me lean on him as he took me to a quiet, empty room. He helped me sit down, then handed me a box of tissues. “Thank you.” I pulled one out and blew my nose.
“Hey, I’ve been there.” He patted me on the shoulder.
“This is my second time being here.” I wiped my eyes, but I had no idea why I’d done that. It wasn’t like the tears had stopped flowing.
“Second time?” he asked with concern. “Man, that’s rough. All you can do is pray now, mister. Pray hard, and don’t stop until she’s better. You hear me?”
I nodded. “Pray until she’s better. I hear you.” The only thing he didn’t know was that I had done that before too. It hadn’t worked then. Why should it work now?
When my cell rang, I didn’t even jump, that’s how numb I was. I saw it was Artimus. “She’s hurt,” I answered his call, cutting off his immediate question about the attack and whether we’d been home when it happened.
“Shit,” came his quick reply. “We’ll come to you, Ashton. I’ll get Julia to call her family.”
“Thank you.” I gasped to catch my breath. “I’m losing it. I really am. I’ve never felt so helpless and lost. Not ever. This is worse than last time. I can’t do it alone. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to. We’re on our way. Just hang tight. We’ve got you, buddy.” He ended the call, and I fell back in the chair.
My life was falling apart once again. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. How I could possibly go on if she left me.
I put her ring on my pinky finger. It only fit partially. Holding it to my lips, I kissed it as I prayed, “Please don’t take her too, God. I’ll do anything if you just don’t take her away from me.”
It felt as if an eternity had passed before anyone I knew showed up. Duke and Lila rushed to me. Lila got to me first, hugging me tightly. “She’s going to be okay, Ashton. Don’t worry.”
I pushed her back, hoping like hell she’d been able to talk to someone who had told her that. “Did you get to talk to someone about how she’s doing in surgery?”
Her blue eyes went blank. “She’s in surgery?”
“You didn’t know?” I asked in surprise.
She shook her head then Duke got to us. “What the hell happened, Ashton?”
“There was some kind of attack. This armored truck hit her. She’s got internal injuries, they said, and her head was bleeding too.” I gulped as I sat back down. “They took her straight into surgery as soon as she got here.”
“Was she talking?” Lila asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “She was knocked out.”
“By the drugs they gave her to help with the pain?” Duke asked hopefully.
“No.” I tried to put logical words together but found it was hard to do. “Unconscious. That’s how they found her.”
Lila put her hand on mine as she sat on one side of me and Duke sat on the other. “Was she breathing?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” My hands moved over my face. “Blood was running like this over her face. Her nose was bleeding.” My hand went to my stomach. “There was blood on the blanket around her stomach.”
The color ran out of Lila’s face. “I see.”
Duke ran his arm behind me to put it on Lila’s shoulder. “We’ve got to have faith here, you guys. We can’t lose hope now. She’s a fighter. She was breathing when she came in. That’s better than nothing.”
It was barely better than nothing. But he was right. It was something. Natalia hadn’t fared so well after the accident. Nina wasn’t as bad off as she’d been.
I closed my eyes and begged God to give Nina a chance. I knew I couldn’t go on without her. I had no idea what would happen to me if she didn’t make it.
I looked at Duke. He was a great friend to me. And the only one I knew who could stand up to Artimus. Artimus wouldn’t let me go, but Duke might. “Duke, if she dies, just let me go, okay?”