Chapter 3 – Camilla
I was getting off work for the day when I saw the lights flashing outside of the building. It had been a long and confusing day, but I shouldn’t have been so out of it that catastrophe could happen outside of my workplace without my noticing it.
“What is going on here?”
“Get back, ma’am.”
I tried to talk to the paramedic, but he brushed me off. Just then I realized who they were carting off on the stretcher. What had happened to Tyler? There was blood everywhere, and I wasn’t going to be put off by the EMT anymore.
“This is one of my patients! What happened to him?”
The young, overweight man finally really looked and me and then motioned to Tyler. “He was shot on the side of the building. A passerby saw him bleeding out in the street and called us. Lucky that they did or I don’t know if this man would still be alive.”
It was too much information to process. The EMT asked me if I wanted to go with him. I hadn’t known it was an option, and it might have looked wrong, but I didn’t care. I was torn up about how I’d talked to him during our session. The idea that it would be the last time I talked to him occurred to me then, and I would have done anything to have another chance. I would say something better, tell him what his kiss and arms around me had actually meant to me.
“Yes, I’ll ride with you if I can.”
“Come on, then. We need to get him to the hospital right now. He’s losing a lot of blood, and I don’t know how much longer he can hold out.”
He didn’t have to say anything else. I was climbing into the back of the van. I crouched down next to him as the man worked. I finally had to move away, but I hated the fact that I had to let go of his hand. It was like my lifeline to him, to knowing that he was going to be okay. I couldn’t imagine a scenario that ended any differently. It was the first time I’d prayed since I was a kid. I’d never wanted anything more than how badly I wanted Tyler to just be okay.
My phone rang several times. Finally I had to answer it, just to get it to stop ringing.
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“I’m a little busy right now, Zane. You’re just going to have to wait on our meeting.”
“You know what happens if you don’t do what I want.”
I was too frustrated to deal with him, and at the moment I didn’t care about my career. I didn’t care that I was being blackmailed. All I had energy to worry about was the fact that Tyler was bleeding out in front of me. That was all that I was concerned with, and before I could get any more abuse from Zane, I hung up the phone and turned it off. I had enough to worry about without having to worry about him as well.
While the call shook me up a little bit, I didn’t let it bother me too much. I would worry about Zane later. Everything that I’d been feeling for Tyler was coming to a head, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if something happened to him. It reminded me of how dangerous the city was becoming and how uncertain life was in general.
“Is he going to be okay?”
The young EMT just kind of shook his head like he wasn’t sure one way or another. I wanted to shake him and make him give me details, but I knew that I couldn’t. “Just do what you can to help him. He’s important to a lot of people.” I didn’t say out loud that he was important to me and the very thought of being without him made it hard to breathe.
***
“Doc?”
I looked over at Tyler and was more than a little surprised to see his dark blue eyes looking back at me. I had wondered if I would ever see those eyes again. I wanted to cry, and as my vision blurred and I rubbed away the moisture, I knew that I wasn’t even able to stop myself. I was just so happy to see that he was okay.
“What’s the matter, Doc?”
He tried to get up and I stopped him. “Don’t get up. You’re going to rip the stitches. If having money wasn’t enough, I hear that a lot of women like scars. They are going to think that you’re bad ass.”
Tyler moved his head to the side and looked at me kind of strangely. “You know, I think that’s the first time that I’ve ever heard you curse, Doc.”
I kind of shrugged, not caring if I sounded like a sailor or not. There was nothing that I cared about more than making sure that Tyler was going to be okay. I’d gone through a whole range of emotions during the several hours that he was in surgery, but now I was able to relax. “Let me call the nurse to make sure that everything is okay.”
“I wake up to you beside me. To me, that’s better than okay.”
I sighed and leaned over his body to push the call button. I didn’t care how good he was feeling, they had just taken a bullet out of his chest. There was no answer on his wife’s cell. I’d been trying to call her for hours, but she never answered, so I was the one that had to talk to the doctor when he was finished with surgery. It had all depended on if he woke up and how coherent he was. They hadn’t given any promises, but Tyler was strong and he was going to pull through it.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because you were shot, Tyler, and I want to make sure that you’re okay. You can’t be moving around. There was a lot of damage and the doctor said that you were going to need some time to let it heal. If you don’t, you can hurt yourself worse.”
He kind of scoffed at me, and again I had to push him gently back down to the bed.
“I know that you aren’t going to believe me, so I’ll let the doctor tell you the same thing if it makes you feel any better.”
The nurse wasn’t in the room but a minute before she was confirming what I’d already told him. Tyler was still cynical, but the doctor wasn’t far behind the nurse.
“Well, it’s good to see you up.”
“I’m not up. I want to get up, but I’m being told that I can’t.”
“You sustained some serious injuries, Mr. Hudson. You don’t want to mess up what took me hours to put back together, do you?”
Tyler shook his head and put it down a little like he was being properly admonished. I’d never seen him like that before, and once the nurse gave him something for the pain it wasn’t long before he was out again. The excitement had my heart racing, but when he was back to sleep, I was able to breathe again. The doctor told me that he was going to rest through the night. I told him I would be back in the morning.
Getting out of there, I looked up at the dark sky and said a prayer of thanks. It could have ended so differently. I was thankful that everything had worked out, but there was a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach as I made my way to the bench on the corner to call a cab. Was anyone safe in this city anymore?
Almost the moment that thought went through my mind, I heard a sound behind me. I wasn’t able to see who put their hand over my mouth from behind, but I could swear that I knew the smell that entered my nostrils right before I felt the prick of a needle on my neck.
“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”