“Please, I love you so much, wake up,” I begged, never letting my hand leave the bloody wound in his gut. He was breathing—and I clung to that. “They’re here, hang on to him honey, okay?” Dan said as he walked to the window, pulling the sash from around his neck and tucking it back into his pocket. I nodded, praying for help and soon. Gunshots rang out, and Dan ran to the door with his rifle aimed down the hallway. The house was silent as heavy boots marched up the stairs—I didn’t know if the good guys or the bad guys were upon us. “Yeah, yeah, hurry, he’s in here—he’s been hit…bad,” Dan said to a man coming through the door. Three more men filed in behind him, all in body armor and carrying rifles just like Dan’s.
“Okay, get Colonel Renton to the hospital—yeah, the big one in Bogotá, Chaplain Bowen and the chick there can stay with him,” the first guy said to others. “We’ll handle the rest,” he said, nodding to Dan. “You got Nate out?” I asked looking to the armored man. “Yes, they already got him out—I think they took him to the same hospital we’re taking Colonel Renton to.” I sighed a small breath of relief. “Don’t let go of that wound until a doctor gets to him okay? I’ll stay with you two,” Dan said. Three of the men came over to lift Rex’s body, and despite their assurances that they could care for his wound, I refused to let go and ended up walking next to Rex all the way down to a large armored van parked in front of the sprawling mansion.
Dan came in and sat across from me right before the van began to move. He pulled water from a compartment in the wall and offered me a bottle, but I shook my head. I was parched beyond belief, but didn’t want to let go of Rex’s wound. Dan stood up and walked over next to where Rex was lying across the bench seat in the rear of the van. He reached up and flicked an overhead light on before examining Rex’s shoulder injury. “This one has stopped bleeding, it’s not going to be worrisome. But, honey, that abdominal shot was…” I grimaced, “I don’t care, he’s not dying!” Dan nodded and shot me a look of pity. “I’m Penny,” I added. “Are there medical supplies here? Should I rewrap the wound?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “No, I wouldn’t. We’re not far from the hospital. I think you have the blood completely stopped—keep doing what you’re doing, Penny.” I looked down at my hand—he was right, the blood flow had stopped. “I’ve known Rex for a very long time,” Dan said as he sat back down on the seat across from me. “We…I haven’t known him long but—he’s everything to me. He can’t die—I love him too much,” I said, fighting the tears that threatened to fall. “He’s a good man—I’m honored to have worked with him. I can’t believe Evelyn shot him,” he exhaled as he looked down at the floor. “Penny, listen, I’m going to tell you something important—Rex would want me to. Don’t say anything about what happened tonight—not a word. I doubt they’ll question you—the local authorities—but if they do, you don’t remember anything after you were taken.” I nodded, the legal implications of the fact that I’d shot someone slowly dawning on me.
The van slowed to a stop, and two of our rescuers slid the heavy door open. A gurney was raised into the van, followed by several Spanish speakers in medical uniforms. They spoke to me, but I didn’t move my hand as they lifted Rex onto the gurney. “Penny, you have to let go—they’ve got him now,” Dan’s soothing voice said in my ear. His hand was on top of mine, gently urging me to release Rex. I let him pull my hand off, and was relieved that blood didn’t flow from the wound. “Can I stay with him?” I begged the medics taking Rex into the hospital as I jogged next to them. “No, we’re taking him into surgery. Please wait in the family waiting room,” answered a nurse in perfect English. “Thank you,” I muttered as they wheeled him into a swinging door, Dan pulling me by the arm to keep me from trying to follow. I was terrified I’d never see Rex alive again as I crumpled against Dan.
We sat waiting for what seemed like forever until one of the body armored men poked his head in the waiting room. “I’m sorry, Major Bowen, we need to get you back…” He glanced over at me apologetically. Dan gathered his few things and stood up from the plastic chair. “I’m sorry, Penny, they don’t want me hanging around a public place for long. I have to go.” He grasped my hand one more time and said, “I’ll be praying for Rex, and for you. I’m sure we’ll meet again some day.” As quickly as they’d come, the Americans were gone. I was left alone in the stark waiting room with fluorescent flickering lights and a vending machine that I had no money to use.
Two hours later, the English speaking nurse came in and pulled her mask down. “Is he okay?” I stood up nervously, waiting for her reply. “He’s alive,” she began, “and seems to be doing fairly well in surgery. The bullet is close to his spine, so the surgeons are being very careful.” I exhaled in relief. “Oh thank God,” I said. “How much longer?” She glanced back toward the door she’d come in from. “I can’t say, Miss. I need to get some information from you. The people who brought you two to the hospital seem to have disappeared. Are you his next of kin?” She pulled a small pad of paper from her pocket, and unlatched a pen from a chain around her neck. “I-I… No, I’m his girlfriend. I live with him, and our...friend Nate is here, too. He was brought in with a broken arm earlier I think.” She nodded and jotted a few things down before asking, “Your name?” I paused—I wasn’t sure if I was still in danger, or how to answer, so I settled on the truth. “Penelope Sedgewick.” She wrote the information down and looked up from her pad. “I’ll check on your friend. Nate?”
“Yes, Nathaniel Slater. They said he broke his arm.”
“Oh, well, they probably wouldn’t have kept him for a broken bone. I’ll see what I can find out.” She turned and left as I slumped into the hard plastic chair. It’d been forever since I’d eaten or had anything to drink, and the injuries from my capture were throbbing. I stood and the room spun for a few moments before I felt well enough to explore the main hospital in search of a water fountain. However, as I walked toward the door, a doctor in scrubs entered the waiting room. “How is Rex?” I blurted out. He shot me a confused glance, and raised his hands in a questioning gesture. He doesn’t speak English, great, I thought. The man gestured for me to sit, so I sat back down in the plastic chair.
“I don’t know who Rex is…the man you’re here with has identification that he’s Roger Renton?” I nodded excitedly, “Yeah, Roger. How is he?” The doctor pulled a plastic chair in front of me and sat down. “Miss, he’s very strong and pulled through surgery better than expected. However, the bullet that I removed from his torso was quite close to his spine. He will live, but he may not walk again. We won’t know until he comes to and begins to heal. I’m sorry.” My heart pounded and I was sure I was going to be sick. I remembered Rex telling Dan that he couldn’t feel his legs… At least he’s alive, I reassured myself. “Can I see him?” The doctor stood. “Yes, you can sit with him. He probably won’t be awake for several more hours, though.”
It took another half an hour for them to lead me in to a regular hospital room where Rex was lying in a bed hooked up to machines and devices. Even in a pale blue hospital gown, his skin ashen and a beeping machine monitoring his vitals, I could feel the strength emanating from Rex. I sat down in a comfortable chair next to his bed and reached for his hand. “I love you—keep fighting,” I whispered in his ear.
I dozed off in the chair, never letting go of his hand. “Miss Sedgewick?” I was awakened by a dark haired man with a local accent walking into the room. He wore a light blue suit—ill fitting and cheap looking. He was clearly not cartel—I’d been around long enough to realize they dressed to the nines. “Yes?” I answered. “I’m Second Sergeant Marco Reyes with the Colombian National Police. I just have a few speedy questions about the occurrence last night?” I stared at him—his English was choppy, the words not quite smooth as if he had to give a lot of thought to what he was saying. “Do I need to have an attorney present?” I asked. “Americans,” he said under his breath. “You must tell me what you recollect about what you p
erceived with your vision last night?” Perceived with my vision? This guy clearly learned English from some book. “Well, I was taken from my boyfriend’s house with some sort of zap and a blow to the head. After that, I don’t remember anything.” The man nodded, as if he expected that to be my answer. “It is the same thing your friend spoke to me.” As the police officer said the word friend Rex squeezed my hand. I instinctively looked over at him—he was still unconscious.
“Friend? Nate’s here?” The man nodded and looked up from his notes. “It is true. I spoke to Nathaniel Slater before arriving to this room.”
“In the hospital?” The man stared at me as if I were being obtuse.
“Affirmative, Miss. The man you speak of is in a room in the T section.”
“What is the T section?”
“Head trauma,” he answered slowly. He stood to leave, reaching into his pocket and producing a business card. “If you should happen to remember, you may call me if you feel. Otherwise, I bid you good day.” In a flash, the man was gone.
“Mother fuck, I hope I handled that right…” I said aloud.
“You shouldn’t swear in a fucking hospital, baby, certainly not around your comatose boyfriend.” Oh my God, he’s awake!
“Rex!” His eyelids fluttered open. “You handled that fine. That douchebag doesn’t give a shit what happened—he wants to clear it off his busy schedule. If the local police really wanted to be involved in that mess, they wouldn’t have sent a low-ranking, barely English speaking beat detective over to ask questions.” He looked around the room before asking with a smirk, “I’m your boyfriend?”
“What did you want me to call you?”
“I can think of a lot of titles I’d like to be to you, Princess. Boyfriend just sounded high-school, that’s all.”
I exhaled, relieved he was awake and speaking to me. “How do you feel?” I asked, my fingertips flitting over his cheek. “I’ve been better,” he chuckled. “What was that shit about Nate? Head trauma?”
“I haven’t been able to see him, but your peeps said it was only a broken arm.”
“My peeps,” he repeated, making fun of me. At least he was acting like my Rex.
“I’ll go find Nate. But Rex,” I thought about what the doctor had said… Was he paralyzed?
He looked over at me, waiting. “The doctor said… The bullet was near your spine. After you were shot you couldn’t feel your legs. He said that you might not be able to…” I couldn’t finish. I choked back tears as he took my hand again.
“Penny—I’m not going to be paralyzed.”
“I-I know, it’s just… I’m afraid.”
“Sweetheart, look,” he said, gesturing toward his feet. They were moving.
“Oh thank God.” I felt a wave of relief wash over me.
“Loss of blood, pressure on the spinal cord—that caused the numbness. Luckily for me I got a surgeon with decent hands. My gut feels like a truck drove over it, but I can move just fine. Hand me my chart, Princess.”
“What?” He pointed to the end of his bed where an old-school metal covered clipboard with a stack of papers hung. “It’s not like the States…they are still keeping paper patient charts.”
I glanced at the chart, but argued, “Um, I don’t think you’re allowed to mess with that, they…”
“Give me my damn chart, baby girl.”
I handed it to him, my eyes on the door. I was a rule follower type, and Rex for sure was not. He flipped through the pages as I waited impatiently, eventually closing it and pointing to a hanging plastic bag at the end of the bed. “Is that my shit?” I looked over at the black plastic bag. “Oh… I don’t know…” I replaced the chart and looked through the plastic bag—Rex’s bloody clothes, his wallet, belt, shoes, and a small zipper bag of his jewelry floated around the bag. “What did the chart say?” I finally asked. He shrugged, “Nothing major. They got both bullets out, no apparent nerve damage, release as soon as I’m stable.” I didn’t believe him—the night prior I thought he was about to die, and now he made it sound fairly routine. “Maybe I’ll read it myself,” I argued. “It’s in Spanish, but knock yourself out,” he teased.
“I’m just worried, Rex. I mean, last night I was holding your insides in with my hand!”
His face softened. “I know, baby, I’m sorry. There’s nothing bad in the chart, I swear, but the wound is major. It’s going to take a long time to heal.”
We sat in silence for a long time until he asked, “Hey, is my wedding ring in there?”
“Seriously?” I snapped.
He looked confused. “What? I’ve worn that ring for over twenty years, it’s special to me.”
“The ring from a woman who tried to kill you!”
“Penny, I’m tired. Can we argue about this later? Will you please go check on Nate? And be careful. If anything happened to either of you, I would die. I love you—more than anything or anyone.”
“It’s hard to be mad at you when you say stuff like that,” I said, kissing him before heading toward the door.
“Tell the nurses I’m awake on your way out. I’m sure they’ll want to poke me with needles.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I murdered her. I killed your ex-wife!” I was inconsolable, the guilt enveloping me. Rex had been in the hospital several days—and he wouldn’t allow me to leave, so I slept in the empty bed next to him each night. The security staff from the compound brought me a suitcase with clothes, but I was going stir crazy in the hospital day after day. Nate was being held while they evaluated the bump on his head, but each day brought a new promise that he’d be released at any moment. Until then, Rex made a sizable donation to the hospital to ensure I’d be allowed to stay under his direct supervision.
After lunch that day, the weight of what I’d done—of shooting another human being—crashed down on me. I was inconsolable, becoming more and more upset as I relived the night in my head.
“Penelope! Stop it,” he snapped, reaching down to grasp his aching wound as he stilled. In a calmer voice, he said, “You didn’t murder anyone. She tried to kill me, and then went for you—you defended yourself and me, there’s nothing else you could do. You did well. I fucked up—I let arrogance and over-confidence cloud my judgment and it almost got both of us killed. But you—you saved my life, Penny.”
“You really didn’t think she’d do it?”
“No, I let past feelings interfere with my instincts. The Evelyn I loved was dead long ago. I guess she really didn’t ever love me.”
“Oh, she loved you Rex! She never stopped.”
He thought for a second and asked, “What makes you say that?”
“The passion—underneath that drug-addicted zombie façade, there was a woman scorned who would rather see you dead than not with her. The thing is—she wanted you the way she wanted you, not the way you are.”
He thought for a moment. “Not the way I am now. I changed a lot once I started doing the special ops shit—it was hard to go back to helping with the dishes and going out to a movie after all that. We grew so far apart, the path back was just too convoluted. It’s sad all around.”
“Do you ever want to have kids? Or was losing one just too hard?” I couldn’t help but ask; the question haunted me as I thought of Noah, his dead infant.
“Sure, I’d love to have babies. You feeling like breeding an army of mini Rexes and Nates?” It was nice to see him teasing me again. I smiled and answered, “Someday, I’d be honored to. But not yet!”
“It’s a deal, Princess.”
We sat in silence. I thought he’d dozed off to sleep when he asked, “How is Nate? Is it really just a broken bone, or is everyone bullshitting me?”
“It’s a broken arm, his left luckily. He has a bump on the head they want to evaluate, but other than that, he seems okay.”
“Why haven’t I been able to see him then?”
“Uh, he’s…I really don’t know. I think he feels like he let you down because I was tak
en. But, there’s no way he could have stopped those goons.”
“He needs to let that shit go. We all know he’d die for you. Is he letting them treat the pain?”
“No,” I answered honestly.
“Stubborn ass,” Rex shook his head in irritation, but his face betrayed a proud glow. Nate denying opiates showed his commitment to recovery from drug addiction.
“You heal better when pain is managed,” he said. “Have them give him this,” he added as he reached for a paper and pen from the bedside table. “It won’t trigger his addiction, but it’ll give him just enough pain relief that he won’t go reaching for something stronger.”
I took the paper—it looked like a prescription, scribbled and confusing.
“They don’t already know that?” I asked, not meaning to question him.
“No, Penny—this isn’t exactly The Mayo Clinic. They try, but…just take the paper to his doc, okay?” I nodded and headed for the door. “And I want to see him—now,” he commanded. “Uh huh,” I answered, knowing full well that Nate would have to be dragged to see Rex.
“But why?” I whined as I sat beside Nate’s bed. His arm was in a cast, but other than that he looked good.
“I was supposed to protect you, and I failed miserably—yet again.”
“He’s anxious to see you, Nate—in a good way. I think it hurts him that you haven’t been to see him.”
“No, he has you.”
“Stop that shit—it sounds like jealousy talking, and we’re beyond that. Get up and come with me or I’m wheeling your ass down there.” I stood up and walked to the door, ready to commandeer a wheelchair if needed. No way my two men were staying apart for one more minute.
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