Chapter 5
It was Hanna who was there when James came to. They’d all agreed to take things in shifts, watching James for periods of timing, getting each other coffee, tapping out after a few hours and someone else taking their place. Hanna, naturally, volunteered for virtually every shift she could on that front. Rick often tried to cut her shifts short, showing up early to force her to get some sleep or bring her coffee and food, at the very least. But she was terrified hers wouldn’t be the first face her uncle would see when he woke up.
So when he opened his eyes the beep of his heart monitor went off in a faster pace, she was so overjoyed that she was there that tears pooled in her eyes without her consent and spilled over just as easily.
“Don’t tell me I finally got you to cry,” he said, wheezing out a small laugh that sounded painful, despite how he smiled through it. “Schindler’s List, My Girl, Sophie’s Choice, Titanic, and you finally cry for an old man who was too dumb to see this coming?”
“No one suspected they’d go after you,” Hanna said.
“I did. I knew they were following me. Here I thought I was being careful. That’s the scary part, isn’t it? That I thought I was doing a good job. That’s when you know you’re reaching the end of your peak,” he said.
“You can’t seriously be talking about retiring,” Hanna said. “You’re too young.”
“Well I won’t be doing much of anything for quite a while, will I?”
She didn’t laugh, despite his toothy grin and his wheezing. She had nightmares as a child about losing him, waking up to find him gone, getting a phone call that he’d been fatally shot. It didn’t take a shrink to tell her she had abandonment issues, separation anxiety. She couldn’t blame herself, after what her parents put her through and all the garbage she had to deal with emotionally thereafter.
It was all her late childhood nightmares coming to life. He was alive and it seemed like he would stay that way. The hardest, most dangerous nights were always the first ones. He’d survived that fine with no sign of infection in any of the lacerations or the broken bones, there was no swelling in his brain, no internal bleeding to speak of. He was in pain, uncomfortable, probably quite miserable, but he was okay. That was the weird thing about love though, someone could get a papercut and you’d want to take that pain away from them.
“What’s wrong Laura?” he asked, in a low voice. They were the only ones in the room but his eyes shifted, using that name that she hadn’t associated with herself in so many months now she almost forgot it was hers.
“I’m pregnant,” she said before she lost the nerve. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best way or the best place to go about spilling those beans, but where better to have a heart attack than in a hospital?
He didn’t go into shock or cardiac arrest, however. He looked at her with sad eyes and that was almost worse. It was like the time she hid a F on her report card from him because she was afraid he’d be angry and then he said the one phrase she dreaded to hear: I’m disappointed in you. That was all over his face now. She couldn’t blame him. She was disappointed in her too. She’d been careless, continually, in more ways than one. He didn’t ask who the father was before he spoke next, and that made her heart ache even more.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, calmly, taking her hand in his scabbed, rough one.
“I want to leave Texas when this is over,” she said, sighing. “I want to take this child out of this hellhole, try for law work in a quieter town, or maybe just head into a city in the northeast and work for the DA’s office.”
“You behind a desk?”
“It would be safer.”
“Safer doesn’t mean better.”
“I almost did something incredibly stupid that put this kid’s life in danger before it was even born. What do you think will happen when the baby is born and we’re still running around the streets? You think the Caracals are going to let this kid live a happy, normal life? You think Isabelle isn’t going to be waiting around every corner possible like some wicked aunt in a fucked up version of Hamlet?” Hanna said, taking to her feet and pacing back and forth across the hospital room.
“I don’t disagree,” he said, quietly, calmly. “I just don’t want you making decisions when you’re not in the right space for it. Right now things are dangerous and scary, but if it all gets resolved tomorrow and we move on, would you still want to leave? You need to think about more than just tomorrow. This is an entire life.”
She stopped her pacing and stared at the wall, glaring into the oblivion hiding there. She wanted to just disappear into the air, forget it ever happened, wake up from this dream. She wanted to go back several months and stop herself from volunteering for this undercover assignment. She wasn’t ready for it, she didn’t have the ability to separate things anymore. Hanna couldn’t stop thinking about Roarke, Hanna was pregnant with Roarke’s child. But it was Laura who was going to be facing those consequences. It was Laura who seemed to be disappearing with the more days this went on.
“I think you need sleep,” her uncle said. “I imagine you’ve been here day and night.”
“They’ve tried to get me out a few times,” she said, rubbing her eyes and smudging the leftover makeup there.
“Well, call for a tap out and get some sleep. I won’t be going away again any time soon. We can talk another time. Just know that I’m here for you, no matter what kiddo.”