Page 118 of Life To My Flight

I turned and looked over Cord’s shoulder to see a slight Hispanic woman with pitch black hair that hung down to her hip in a tight braid, standing at the door. She was wearing scrubs.

Navy blue with lime green piping.

The only thing off was the puffiness of her eyes.

Then it hit me.

She’d looked so familiar.

That was because I’d seen her around at a couple Dixie Wardens functions.

It was Tunnel’s wife, Mina.

“He knew, just as I did, what was at risk, but he wasn’t doing it for anybody here. He was doing it for his sister,” Mina’s voice cracked.

Sebastian walked towards the door and wrapped her in his arms.

She looked so tiny and frail in his arms.

Tunnel and Sebastian had been roughly the same size.

Which meant she’d have been dwarfed in Tunnel’s arms as well.

We all watched in silence as the tiny woman broke down and cried, and I silently wondered why she was wearing her scrubs.

She wasn’t working was she?

How many days had it been?

Had I been asleep long enough for her grieving process to end?

“You should go home, sweets. Get some rest,” Sebastian murmured into her hair as he kissed the top of her head.

Tears ran freely down my face as I listened to the two speak.

“I can’t go home. Not to our bed. Not again. Not without him. It’s too big. You know the last thing he said to me in that bed? That he wanted another baby. I told him he was out of his damn mind.” A sob caught in her throat. “I should’ve taken him up on it. I should’ve relented a few months ago when he’d first brought it up, because maybe if I had, I would be carrying him around with me,” she wept.

The room was silent except the erratic beat of my heart as long moments passed by.

Finally, Mina lifted her head from Sebastian’s chest. “I’ll sit here and wait for Cleo to get back. I’ve already requested that they let Torren come in here for a little while so we can make the arrangements.”

Sebastian nodded and led Mina to the vacated chair near the corner of the room.

And there we waited, nobody able…or willing…to break the silence.

***

Cleo

“I can walk, dammit,” I snapped at Baylee.

Baylee was the vice president of the Dixie Wardens, Sebastian’s, wife.

“I damn well know you can walk, but your ass is hanging out, and you’re showing the entire hospital,” she snapped back.

Chastised, I let her tie up the ties in the back so my ass wasn’t on exhibit, and then shuffled stiffly to the door of Rue’s room.

It’d been a long twenty one hours, but she’d made it.

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