Page 190 of Finding Hope

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Uncle Jack.”

Tears I can’t stop stream along my cheeks and dribble into her hair. I look at the watermarked ceiling and work to blink them away. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” I can’t breathe through my nose. I can’t breathe at all. “The doctors will help her. They’ll make her all better.”

“I take it back. I take what I said back.”

“I know you do.” I kiss her hair. “I know.”

Aiden skids into the waiting room and stops. “Evie!” With an angryvein almost bursting in his forehead, he clutches at Tina’s hand and drags her across the tiled floor at a sprint.

Jimmy and Iz follow barely two seconds behind, and when the girls see their parents sprinting across the room, they dissolve into breathless sobbing.

Tall for her age, Evie’s only a couple inches shorter than her mom, but Tina whips her daughter from my arms and hugs her like she’s still three. Jim does the same with Bean, and I’m left empty handed and all alone.

Sitting forward as my siblings are reunited with their daughters, I rest my head in my hand and count my breaths.

Bambie will be okay. She has to be okay.

“Hey.” A familiar voice comes closer, then a gentle hand takes mine and squeezes gently. “What happened, Jack?”

Like a fly swimming through jelly, my movements are slow. Lethargically, I look up into my sister’s blazing eyes.

When did she get here?

Who called her?

Who called Tina and Iz?

Swallowing around the painful lump in my throat as it threatens to choke me, a dark haze washes over my eyes. “She got hurt.”

Sitting in the chair to my right, she links her fingers with mine. My left arm lies limp in my lap, lifeless and useless. I can’t pinch my fingers together.

I can’t do anything with it.

“Who?Who hurt her, Jack?”

“Brad.”

Sitting forward in the chair on my left, Bobby’s intense eyes wait for me to focus.

Am I stoned? Did she already die?

“Brad the Bore?”

Nodding, I study the dirty grout between each tile. “Brad the Bore. Yep.”

“What happened to your hand?”

I allow my gaze to slowly drift from the off-white tile, to my sister, to my arm. My fist is shredded. There are actual teeth marks broken through the surface.

“I killed him.”

Like I hit her, she rears back. “You killed him?”

“Dunno.”Don’t care. I hope so.

The motion-activated front doors slide open, and several more familiarfaces rush through. Laine’s already here, already somewhere else in this hospital with Bambie.

Alex, too.

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