Page 77 of No Sweet Goodbyes

“You know she’s going to be okay, right?”

I look down to see Nox staring at me, the cards momentarily forgotten in his hand. “What?”

“Bee.” He slaps a pair down and breaks eye contact so that he can grin at Linc. “She has to be okay, because I promised that I’d marry her one day. You know I don’t break my promises. So she’s going to be okay.”

Linc and I share a look over his head, and my brother shrugs. “Hey, man. I’m not the one to question him. He knows way more than he should for his age. Plus…” He drops his voice to a loud whisper. “He’s been buried alive and is now a zombie, so you never know. He could be psychic too.”

“I’m not a zombie, Uncle Linc.” Nox points at him. “You’re a zombie.”

They go back to their game like Nox hasn’t just announced that he is going to marry Bee one day, and I close my eyes to try and picture Bee on her wedding day. Instead, all I can see is her lying there in her pajamas, covered in blood.

Linc, however, doesn’t share my hesitancy to ask.

“When did you decide that you’re gonna marry Bee?” He folds his cards and we both turn our attention to him.

Nox cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

Linc and I share a look. “Well,” I say. “You just said that you promised to marry Bee one day. We were wondering when that happened.”

“Yeah,” Linc agrees. “I just want to make sure that I have all the information so that in twenty years if it happens, I can tell everyone about the story.”

Nox huffs, collecting all the cards and arranging them into a neat pile before he says anything. And when he does, something tells me that I should have taken my phone out to record it.

“There are some things that you just know. Like… I knew that I was gonna have a little sister before Mom knew. Or like, how when you have a really perfect cup of ice cream. When I met Bee, I just knew that she was gonna marry me one day. So, when she was afraid that moving in with her uncle would mean that she wasn’t part of our family anymore, I told her that wasn’t true. One day, we’re gonna get married and she’s gonna be stuck with all you guys then.”

“Technically, my man, that means that she’s gonna be stuck with you.” Linc pats him on the shoulder in a commiserating way.

“If Kennedy heard you saying that you’re stuck with her, she’d beat you with a stick,” Nox informs his uncle. Then he turns to me with that intense stare we’ve all come to know and expect from him. “You’ll see. Bee has to be fine, because I don’t break my promises.”

With that air of finality, I have to hope my nephew’s right. After all, our family has already lost so much. It wouldn’t be right for fate to take her from us.

When I hear the doors open on the other side of the room, I almost don’t look up. Every time someone walks out, I get my hopes up, and every single time, it isn’t Bee’s doctor. But I’m a sucker for punishment and I’m so full of hope that I can’t help it.

My eyes track the doctor until he’s standing right in front of us.

“For Bianca Hart?”

I’m up and out of my chair in an instant, knocking Dom onto the floor with a thud, and then he’s up and standing at my side, along with everyone else in the waiting room.

“Is she okay?”

One heartbeat, and then two, before the doctor finally says anything.

“Your daughter is alive. But she’s not out of the woods.”

I don’t correct him about Bee as my world is falling apart at the seams, but Dom is there holding me up. Reminding me that I’m not doing this alone. That Bee isn’t alone.

The older man in scrubs keeps going, and I try not to burst into tears. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it isn’t for Bee to suffer. She deserves so much out of this life, and she’s almost been robbed of it.

“I’m Dr. Shaw. I operated on Bianca. She’s got a lot of swelling in her head and around her brain from the bullet. We were able to remove it, but it’s too soon to tell about any lasting damage. Because of her age, I’ve got to keep her sedated. Bianca is going to be in the PICU for the foreseeable future.”

“I’m not her mother,” I correct him belatedly. “Her parents died. We’re all she has.”

Dr. Shaw looks around and offers me a sad smile. “It seems to me that she’s got an army out here.”

Bria steps forward, wrapping her arm through mine. “I’m Bria Keller, her social worker. Can you take the two of us to see her, please?” When he hesitates, she clears her throat. “I’ll need to see and document her injuries myself, since she’s a ward of the state. And there’s nothing in any of your policies that would prevent me bringing Emma along.”

That gets us through the door, and Bria wipes tears from her eyes when Dr. Shaw escorts us into the room where Bee is unconscious, but alive. White and sanitized, there’s a machine beeping in the corner, and tubes are connected to almost every part of her body.

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