Page 58 of Lies He Told Me

I get to my feet. “What … what hap —”

“Marcie, listen to me. David’s been shot. He’s in an ambulance on his way to St. Benedict’s.”

“He …” I search for words. “Is he —”

“He’s lost a lot of blood. That’s all I know. Officer Risely will stay at your house with the kids. I’m almost to you.”

“I …” Through the window, I see the reflections of sirens flashing. On automatic pilot, I grab a coat and head to thefront door. A female police officer rushes up the front walkway.

“Two kids,” I say.

“Grace and Lincoln — I know,” she says. “If they wake up, I’ll have them call you first thing. Now go. We’ll be fine here.”

I race to the car and hop in the front seat.

“Is he alive?” I say to Kyle.

“I don’t know. Buckle up,” he says before he floors the accelerator.

FIFTY-NINE

KYLE PULLS HIS CRUISER right up to the entrance of the emergency department. I’m out the door of his car before I realize it, feeling my feet running toward the double doors.

People everywhere, a busy night, but Kyle takes my arm and badges his way past a door and security. I feel underwater now, unable to comprehend, unable to process, Kyle’s voice to some doctor, and then he pulls me along some more, lots of shouting and bumping, twisting and turning, and then my feet are planted and I’m in front of a doctor.

“Mrs. Bowers, I’m Dr. Grant.” Bald, like David, with wild bushy gray eyebrows and a long face, the man who is going to tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me,tell me—

“The bullet nicked the femoral artery,” he says, pointing to his inner leg. “He’s lost a lot of blood. We’ve managed to stabilize him, but he’s going into surgery immediately.”

“Is he … what are … what are his … can you save him?”

“That’s exactly what we’ll try to do, Mrs. Bowers.” He touches my arm. “It could be hours before —”

It could be hours before the surgery will be done. Hours before I talk to him. If Ievertalk to him —

I snap out of my trance, bat and scratch and claw my way through the cobwebs.

“I want to see him.” I look at the doctor, then at Kyle. “I want to see him.”

“Mrs. Bowers, I’m afraid —”

“I might never talk to him again. Please.”

The doctor’s expression relents. “Thirty seconds,” he says. “Room 4.”

My focus suddenly razor-sharp, I race to the door and look in. Blood everywhere, doctors and nurses and assistants, already turning the gurney toward the door. All I see of David is a heavy bandage over his exposed left leg.

“Stop!” I shout.

“She needs thirty seconds with him!” Kyle says. “The doctor said okay. Everyone out! Thirty seconds.”

God bless Kyle. A cop says it, they do it.

I part the sea of white coats and surgical scrubs as they leave us alone in the room. I see David. My David. Not my David.

Not my David at all.

He looks twenty years older, withered and weak. He’s been intubated, a thick tube in his mouth, an IV in his neck. His eyelids flutter, struggling to open.

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