by Ml Rodriguez
My world stops.
Rylee’s in the hospital.
I can’t lose her. Please, God, let her be okay.
Everything else is forgotten and I start to pray.
Zane comes to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. He forces me to look at him.
“It’s gonna be okay, Faith. I’m here with you. Now, I need you to go get ready to go while I get the Jeep out of the garage.”
I look at him and see the sincerity in his eyes. I blink and gather myself. I take a deep breath and nod my head in understanding. Nothing matters right now but my daughter.
I move faster than I thought possible as I get dressed. I grab my purse and run out to get our little peanut, but Zane beats me to her. He picks up a sleepy Skylar, murmuring calming words, and we rush out of the house.
We get to the hospital in record time and I run to the front desk.
“My daughter was brought in. Her name is Rylee Duval. Is—is she okay? ” I ask. My throat closes up.
The nurse types something into the computer and then looks up into my terrified face, then at Zane, who is holding a sleeping Skylar.
Her eyes are full of sympathy. “Just a second, ma’am, the doctor wants to see you and then we’ll take you to see your daughter.”
“Is she alive?” I ask in a whisper, afraid that she might say no.
“Yes, ma’am.” At her words I let out a sigh of relief, and I hear Zane do the same. “The doctor needs to speak with you first. She’ll be here in just a minute.”
Zane and I step away from the desk and I turn to him. He takes me in one arm and I let him. Regardless of what is going on with us, Rylee comes first and I’m glad he’s here with me.
“It’s okay, baby. She’s alive and that’s all that matters. Let’s wait to hear what the doctor has to say,” he says to me.
“The parents of Rylee Duval?” I hear behind me. I turn and see a female doctor standing in a doorway.
“I’m her mother,” I say. “How is my daughter, Doctor?”
She looks at me. “I’m Dr. Smith. Could you follow me, please? I need to speak with you.”
Before I can say anything, Zane says, “You’ll be speakin’ with me as well, Doctor.”
Dr. Smith looks at me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s not about him or me, it’s about Rylee. I nod in confirmation. I need him with me.
“Very well. Please follow me,” she says, leading us to the back.
We go into a small office and she closes the door. This scares me because she didn’t take me directly to Rylee.
“Doctor, I need to see my daughter,” I tell her.
“I know you do,” she tells me. “There are just some things I need to let you know before you do. Your daughter was brought in about an hour ago. She was conscious, but I’m sorry to inform you that she was badly beaten. She managed to tell us that she wasn’t raped before she became unconscious due to the pain. However, there were signs of a rape attempt. The police were informed about the situation, but because she’s a minor and unconscious, they have to wait to begin their questioning. I’m informing you so you’re prepared.” Looking at Skylar, she asks, “Is there anyone you can call to help with your little one? I don’t think it would be wise to have her see her sister right this moment.”
I can’t breathe.
“Badly beaten” and “attempted rape” were all I heard.
Rylee was hurt to the point she had to pass out to escape the pain. Oh, God! How could this happen? I feel arms come around me. I turn to him, seeing he has put Skylar down, who’s still sleeping, and I let myself fall into him.
“My baby girl was hurt, Zane,” I tell him, crying. “My Rylee. My baby. Oh, God …”
I feel his chin on my head and some wetness. I look up and see tears. Zane is crying for my daughter. My poor innocent baby girl. This just makes me cry harder.
After several minutes, he says, “Faith, do you want to call Julia to come get Skylar? The doctor is right, she shouldn’t see Rylee right now.” I nod and move numbly to my purse to get my phone.
“My phone is dead, Zane.”
“Here’s mine, baby.”
I call Julia and ask her to come get Skylar. She tells me she’ll be here in about ten minutes. I hang up and turn to Doctor Smith.
“Why wasn’t I notified sooner?” I ask.
“As soon as she arrived to the hospital, we treated her and waited until she became conscious to gather her contact information. We tried the first number she gave us and when we received no answer, we dialed the second number.”
I nod and close my eyes.
A few minutes later, Julia messages Zane to let him know she’s here. We meet her in the waiting area and explain the situation. She hugs me and we both start crying. Zane separates us, after giving us some time together, and hands Skylar to her. We explain that Rylee’s been given pain medication and is sleeping, but we want to get to her as soon as possible. We didn’t think it was the time to let Skylar see her in her current state.
Right now, I just want to hold my little girl. Regardless of her age, she’ll always be the little girl that I fell in love with so many years ago. Oh God! Just thinking of what she must have endured makes me tear up again.
Julia leaves with Skylar and Zane and I are left alone.
“Faith, regardless of what is goin’ on with us, Rylee comes first. I love you and I love the girls. Y’all are my world and whatever I kept from you was for a reason. Please, let me take care of y’all—let me be here for you. We need to go help her and then you and I can work out our problem. Like we agreed before, the girls come first. Let me be here for you and for Rylee. She needs us now, more than ever.”
“I just want to see my little girl, Zane. I want to see her and I want to hold her and let her know that I’m so sorry. I should’ve protected her more. While you and I were together, she was being hurt,” I say, flooded with guilt. “I just want to see her, please.”
“We’re in this together. Forever, Faith.”
He takes me in his arms and kisses my head. He holds me tight before releasing me and turning me towards the door. He takes my hand in his and together, we make our way to see Rylee.
I don’t know what to expect when I walk through the door to her room, but the sight of her lying in the hospital bed almost brings me to my knees. Her face—her eyes are swollen shut, she has cuts and bruises all over her face from blows she received. Bruises cover her arms; one arm is in a cast. She has a cut above her left eye that will leave a scar after healing.
I’m suddenly filled with an anger so great, it starts to consume me. I want to hurt whoever hurt my daughter. I literally want to kill that person with my bare hands. I want that person to hurt as much as they hurt my daughter.
Beside me, I feel waves of emotion radiating from Zane’s body. If his anger is anywhere close to mine, whoever did this in a lot of trouble. Knowing the type of man Zane is, he’ll want to do something about this situation. It’s going to be up to me to keep him out of trouble. Regardless of our problem, though, Zane is right—we’re in this together.
I pull up a chair next to the bed, sit, and hold Rylee’s hand. I feel Zane’s hand on my shoulder. I want to lean on him for strength and after a couple of seconds, I do.
“Baby,” he whispers. “I’m here for her and you. I love this girl like she was my own. I want to know what happened and find whoever did this. I want to fuckin’ kill them.”
I wipe my tears. “You know what’s seriously wrong with this?” I ask him.
He looks at me, waiting for an answer. He still doesn’t know everything I do for a living. I never got around to telling him. Not many people really know. All people know is that I work for the company my husband built. Many assume I’m a receptionist or secretary, and I let them.
“Rylee should’ve had at least one bodyguard on her for a while now. After the company started getting a reputation and … with the money that Jake left us, my daughter should’ve bee
n protected. Every time I brought up the subject, she said it would cramp her style,” I say with a chuckle at my daughter’s words. “I didn’t push the subject. I didn’t think we needed it in the town we live in. The city, yes, but this town, no. This is on me. I know how dangerous the world can be and I didn’t protect her like I should have. If I’d done what I knew needed to be done, she never would’ve been hurt.”
“Faith, this isn’t on you. It’s on whoever did this to her—not you,” he tells me. “Now, it’s up to us to help her.”
“She’s going to need us, but are you going to be around?” I ask him. “You lied to me, Zane. You betrayed me by keeping something important from me. I need to know why. Was this a game to you? You never mentioned knowing Jake. You’ve had plenty of opportunity, but never said anything. Why?”
“Do you really want to do this now?” He asks me.
“Yes. I need to focus. Right now, I’m waitin’ on my daughter to wake up. My mind is all over the place and I need to focus on something other than the unknowns of Rylee’s situation. I’ll take care of my daughter after she wakes and tells us what happened and who did this. Right now, I want you to explain to me everything, and don’t leave anything out. This will determine if you’re gonna stay in our lives. After Rylee wakes, helping her will be my main priority. My daughters always come first, Zane, and if I feel you’re a threat, you’ll be gone.”
“Okay… where do I start?” He asks, running his fingers through his hair.
“Start from the beginnin,’” I tell him.
“Well … you might not remember, but you and I—we’ve seen each other twice before that fateful day at the stoplight,” he tells me. He sees that I’m about to interrupt. “Yes, we have, babe; you just don’t remember. Back then, I wasn’t even a blip on your radar. Like Gunner said, you only had eyes for Jake. I’m gonna tell you the whole story, but wait until the end before you say anything, please.”
I nod in agreement, but I’m not sure if I can keep that promise.
As we wait for our Rylee to wake, Zane begins to tell me his story. A story of two men meeting and of a special promise that was made. A story some might find strange and unexplainable.
Zane (26 April 2013)
“Okay, here’s how it was,” I begin my story. “I met Jake in 2007 during his last deployment to Afghanistan. I was in a mentally fucked-up place—I’d found out a few days prior that Eliza was cheating on me when she called to tell me she was pregnant.
“‘How the fuck did that happen?’ I asked her. ‘I’ve been away for almost a year.’
“Then it hit me. She’d been fuckin’ around on me.
“‘It’s okay,’ she tells me. ‘It’s Troy’s’—Troy was my best friend at the time—‘so you’ll grow to love the baby and we can go on as before.’
“She said she’d been careful, but it had failed. She wasn’t even sorry for cheatin’ on me. She figured I’d get over it.
“Fuck. That. Shit. I threw her ass to the curb. I thought, let that motherfucker own up and claim that bitch and her poor unfortunate unborn baby because with a mother like her, I felt sorry for that child, but not enough to stay with her cheatin’ ass.
“Anyway, so I wasn’t in a good place and I thought that all women, aside from those in my family, were deceitful bitches with no sense of morals or loyalty. I’d lost faith—I was fightin’ for my country and here my almost-fiancée—because I thought I’d marry her one day—was fuckin’ around on me.
“Then I met Jake. He sure was somethin’ else. He was well respected and admired by his men. He had plenty of confidence but he didn’t come off as arrogant. There was somethin’ about him that made me want to talk to him. And, he had somethin’ I didn’t think existed anymore. To tell you the truth, he didn’t know what I looked like until much later.”
“What do you mean?” Faith asks. “How could he not know what you looked like when you first met him?”
“Babe, you promised not to interrupt,” I remind her, chuckling. I knew full well she wouldn’t be able to resist—that’s just how my Faith is.
“To answer your question, my job in the Army was very different than that of the traditional soldier. I was one of those soldiers that you’d read about in books, the guys that you see but you really don’t. My uniform required me to be covered from head to toe. I was one of those soldiers—the ones many only whisper about. But like I said before, there was somethin’ about him that made me break protocol. We were in the aircraft, minutes away from jumpin,’ when I see this soldier take out a picture and kiss it. I remember seein’ him say somethin’ to the picture. You have to remember, I’d recently found out about Eliza and I was kinda messed up. So I broke protocol—I spoke to him, and I discovered the true meaning of love and loyalty.”
10 May 2007, Southern Afghanistan
What the fuck is that guy doing?
“Did you just kiss that picture and speak to it?” I ask him, shocking the hell out of him and myself.
I just broke protocol.
Well, fuck.
I’ve never done that before, but I really need to know why the hell this shmuck did that. Was it a girlfriend’s picture? I hope not because he’ll be in for a fucking rude awakening when she cheats on him while he’s away on missions. Shit, she’s probably fucking his best friend right this second, as he’s about to jump in a war zone—that’s what that bitch Eliza did to me. Knowing that women are fickle bitches that can’t keep their legs closed, I wouldn’t put it past her.
Yeah, I’m fucking jaded, but that’s what happens when your girlfriend of two years—the woman you think you might marry—calls you and lets you know that she’s pregnant by your best friend.
“You talkin’ to me?” The guy asks me. “What the hell, man? You ain’t supposed to do this shit.”
“I saw you doin’ that and figured I’d save you a heartache by lettin’ you know that women aren’t meant to be trusted. They’ll cheat on your ass and expect you to take it layin’ down. Your girl’s probably with your best friend right this second. Your ass is here in a fuckin’ war zone and she’s back home doin’ whatever the hell she wants.”
He laughs at me. “You’re fuckin’ delusional and paranoid. If I wasn’t afraid you’d kill me with your bare hands, I’d call you a stupid fuck.”
“Nah, man,” I say. “That shit really does happen because it happened to me. Now, I know that the only women you can trust are your mother and your sisters—only family.”
“First off,” he says, “the person in the photo isn’t my girlfriend.” He sees my shock. “What?”
“I didn’t know you rolled that way. I won’t tell anyone you like guys,” I assure him. “I’ll keep your secret if you don’t tell I spoke to you. Oh, and I’m not hittin’ on you or anything.”
“You’re fuckin’ hilarious, you know that?” He says. “If you’d let me finish, I’d have told you that I just kissed my wife’s picture. Yeah, I know; I look way too young to be married and a father, but I’m old enough. Trust me. Faith’s my wife and the reason I love goin’ home. She’s the one that holds our family together. She took me on with a little girl and all.” He laughs and continues, “She was only seventeen when I met her. She came up to me and told me I was gonna be hers. She’s my everything—my queen, my treasure.”
I just look at him. “You’re fuckin’ pussy-whipped.”
“Damn straight I am, and fuckin’ proud. You ever meet my wife and you’ll understand. She’s fuckin’ beautiful and a badass on the soccer field—a damn good player. She’s on the US Women’s National Soccer Team,” he tells me proudly. “I’m hopin’ to get out of here in time to see her at least play one game this World Cup, but you know how deployments are—sometimes they get extended. You know, instead of bein’ pissed that I’ll probably miss seein’ her play, she understands this is my job. She says I go out and do this job so she has the freedom to play the sport she loves so much. She tells me I’m her hero. I’m sorry that shit happ
ened to you, but try to keep that shit away from these guys. Some of them aren’t as lucky as me and it’d fuck with their minds.”
“Sorry man,” I say ashamed of my behavior. “I’m kinda fucked up right now. More pissed than anything, really. It just pisses me off that I’ve kept my dick in my pants for almost a year and that bitch so easily spread her legs. That was a dick move on my part and I apologize. Your woman sounds like a good woman—a rare breed.”
“She is a good woman—the best. And in the bedroom, she’s fuckin’ amazin,’” he says. “I’m countin’ down the days till I get back to her. She’s the best wife and the best mother. She’s not my little girl’s biological mother, but she’s her mother in every other sense. She’s the true hero.”
“He was so fuckin’ proud of you, Faith. You and Rylee were his whole world. His faith and love in you made me curious to meet you. I figured I never would since he’d never see my face, but days later all that changed.
“We went out on a mission. His team was to get me in and let me take care of my target, but our information was fucked. We walked into a fuckin’ ambush. There were so fuckin’ many of them. We were gettin’ shot at from every direction. Instead of panickin,’ Jake was calm, collected, and hard. He took control of the situation as best he could and he kept his men alive. He kept me alive. I was so busy coverin’ my front that I made a rookie mistake—I didn’t guard my back. I was fuckin’ lucky he was there because he saved my life. He took out the guy comin’ at me and we pushed forward. It was a cluster-fuck and I don’t know how the hell we made it through, but we did. Even with all the shit, I managed to get my target and we made it out of there. We were bloodied as hell but we were alive. We thought we were in the clear, but we were wrong.
“We started back to the pick-up point. Out of nowhere this little girl comes out. She looked about ten years or so; didn’t look dangerous but back then, kids were being used as soldiers and weapons. This kid, though, we didn’t see anything on her. Jake said maybe she was walkin’ home and we wanted to believe that. Jake stepped forward and that’s when the kid shot him. She had a weapon underneath her clothes. Shocked the shit out of all of us. We’d heard of kids doin’ this, but this was just a little girl! Jake reacted to save his men and took her out before she could do any more harm. When we checked her, we found more guns. She was sent to take us out and Jake neutralized her before she could kill us all.
