Page 14 of Baring All
“Let me ask you this first. Do you know what day it is?”
I think about it for a second. “No,” I say, shaking my head for emphasis.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” The sorrow in Captain Rivera’s eyes sends a jolt of unease down my spine.
Licking my lips, I contemplate my answer. “Coming on duty …” I close my eyes and think about it. Something’s tickling my memory, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. “Jackson excitedly telling me he’s bought a ring – he’s going to ask Beth to marry him this weekend.”
I look over at Captain Rivera, and I’m shaken to see tears pool in her eyes. “Anything else?” Her question sounds as if it was painful to ask.
“Um … yeah, we got a call out.” I search my memory but draw a blank. For the life of me I can’t remember past walking out of the precinct. “Nothing after that. I don’t – why can’t I remember anything else? What’s going on here?”
I try to sit up, but pain rips viciously through me. Struggling to catch my breath, I fall back against my pillows. “What the …”
“Hang tight,” my captain says. “I’ll be right back.”
I nod, unable to do much else as I lay panting, my mind scrambling to put the pieces together.
It isn’t long before she returns, another lady in tow – clearly a doctor given her outfit. “Good morning, Ms. Mason. It’s good to see you awake.”
“Hi,” I mumbled, inexplicably frightened of whatever she’s going to tell me.
“I’m Doctor Sinclair. I’m the surgeon who worked on you yesterday. And I have to say, you had us very concerned about you. Your injuries were quite –”
“She doesn’t remember anything about the incident or the resulting injuries. I was just asking her about it and thought you’d be the best person to explain,” Captain Rivera interjects.
“Aaah, I see. That makes sense.” The doctor studies me for a long, awkward moment before heaving a huge sigh. “Well, Ms. Mason, it seems yesterday was an eventful day for you. I can’t go into the details of what precipitated your wounds, since I don’t have very many. However, during a call-out you and your partner were shot. Your partner is a very lucky man. His injuries were clean, in-and-out – easily repaired.
“Yours, I’m afraid, are far more complex. When you were brought in, you were nonresponsive, suffered huge blood loss – a very messy abdominal wound caused by a gunshot. In order to stem the bleeding and save your life, we had to –
“Well, we had to do a hysterectomy. And even then, it was touch and go. More than once we thought we’d lose you.” Dr. Sinclair clears her throat, looking away. When she looks up at me again, I see the same look in her eyes I saw in the captain’s mere minutes ago. “I’m so very sorry, Ms. Mason. It literally was the only option we had.
“Your uterus was damaged beyond repair and was a major contributor to the severe blood loss. We were unable to stem the flow.” She reaches out a hand and clasps mine, and it seems inordinately warm. Or maybe it’s just that mine is so cold. “We’ve organized for you to see a counsellor when you’re ready. In the meantime, we need to focus on getting you back to health.”
A searing pain in the region of my heart, unlike anything I’ve ever felt has me panting all over again. The doctor’s words echo in my head like a buzzer I can’t shut off. It takes long moments for awareness to filter into my brain that the sound I hear in my head is, in fact, my alarm alerting me to it being time to get up for work.
That agony in my chest still lingers as I turn my alarm off and swing my feet over the edge of the bed. Covered in perspiration and grief, I dash for the shower, desperate to wash the ickiness from my body. By the time I’m ready to head out the door, the aftereffects of my bad dream have loosened their grasp on me, but I’m still a little off-kilter.
I’m just locking my door when my phone rings. “Hey, I’m downstairs when you’re ready,” Hunter says.
Thankful I don’t have to drive myself to work today, I reply, “On my way.”
I need to get my head back in the game. It’s distractions like this that get us injured, or worse. We survived once; I would prefer not to tempt fate a second time.
“Shake a tail, Officer. Time to roll. We have chaos and mayhem to spread – oh, wait, sorry, that’s not us. We’re meant to be restoring order. My bad,” Hunter greets as I hop in the car.
I can’t help but laugh at him. We’ve been through hell together and come out on the other side. Together. Things didn’t start on the best foot between us, but there’s nothing like this job to force you to figure your shit out. If you can’t rely on one another, there’s a strong likelihood you, or both of you, could wind up dead. Sometimes it happens anyway.
We got our issues sorted early on in our working relationship, and now I simply couldn’t imagine working with anyone else. Our near-death experience has only strengthened our bond. I’m just grateful Hunter’s wife understands the dynamics of our relationship.
“Gosh dang it. That’s disappointing. And here I was looking forward to all the shenanigans.”
“Oh, have no fear. There’ll be plenty of those.” Hunter gives me a cheesy grin while waggling his eyebrows.
Our banter has my mood lifting and, shaking off the remnants of my sucky dream, I settle back in my seat as we talk smack on the ride to work.
“Sooo, tell Uncle Hunter, how did yesterday go?”
“As expected. Same old, same old. The ‘when are you going to find a nice boy, get married, and churn out a passel of babies’ interrogation. It got a bit nasty. I said shit I shouldn’t have. Then I left, got trashed, got laid. And here we are – a bright and shiny new day. How was your day?”
