American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (40 page)

Elliot was trying very hard to be
brave. She turned to him, their eyes meeting, and she put her arms around his
neck, kissing him tenderly.

“Be safe,” she whispered against
his lips.

He returned her kiss. “I’ll call
you when I can. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Elliot climbed out of the car,
waving at him as he pulled around and headed back out the driveway. Turning for
the front door, she made her way up on to the porch, congratulating herself for
not bursting into tears in front of him. At least she waited this time until he
pulled back down the driveway.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was well after midnight when
Elliot heard the intercom for the front gates buzz. She had been in her writing
room, working away on the
Knight of the Vampire
novel, when she heard
the buzz go off. There were three points of contact for the intercom – one in the
kitchen, one in the man cave/library, and one in the master bedroom. Setting aside
the vampire blood orgy scene she had been working on, she went down the
backstairs and into the kitchen about the time the intercom buzzed again. She
hit the reply button.

“Who is it?”

The intercom crackled back at
her. “Ms. Ellie, it’s Ken Havereau. Can you please open the gate?”

As Elliot pushed the button to
activate the gates, she began to wonder why Deputy Havereau had come. Nash had
called about an hour before to say that everything was fine and he would
probably be home very late, so she wasn’t really thinking doom and gloom when
Havereau’s unit pulled up in front of the house.

Dressed in one of her favored
velour jog suits, she crossed the dark and silent central hall on her way to
the front door.  She opened the big panel about the time Ken was mounting the
stairs to the porch.

“Hi,” she said.  “You’re up
late.”

Ken smiled wanly at her and it
was then that Elliot noticed Steve Pitot pulling up behind Ken’s car in another
unit. Ken didn’t wait until Steve got out of the car before he started speaking.

“Ma’am, we’ve been sent to bring
you to Nash,” he said.

Oddly, and given her history with
men in uniform, Elliot still wasn’t anxious.  She cocked her head curiously.
“Why in the world did he send you?” she was genuinely baffled. “Did his car
break down? Do I need to drive over and get him?”

Ken sighed, glancing at Steve as
the man joined him on the porch. Nash had warned them that Elliot would not
take the news well so he tried to couch it carefully.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Nash is at
St. Elizabeth Hospital. He got in a little scrape tonight and he wanted us to
bring you over to the hospital.”

Now, the real reason for their
appearance was starting to sink in. Elliot had no idea why she hadn’t figured
it out before, but given that Nash had called her not long ago, she just didn’t
think anything was wrong. 

Now, it was evident that
something was wrong, wrong enough that Nash was at the hospital and he had sent
deputies to escort her there.

 “Oh, my God,” she breathed.
“What happened to Nash?”

Ken was sincerely trying to be
gentle. “He got shot, ma’am, but….”

That was all Elliot needed to
hear. She stumbled backwards, hands over her ears, sobs bubbling up from her
throat. There was nothing she could feel, see or hear at the moment other than
blind horror. 

It’s happening again
, she thought,
oh, God, not
again, not Nash!
  The room started spinning and she tried to look for
something to hold on to. She took about three steps into the entry hall before
collapsing in a heap on the new rug that had just been shipped from New
Orleans.

The world had gone black.

***

Nash was lying in a private
operatory room just off of the main emergency room floor.  He had two I.V.’s
dripping fluids and meds into his right arm while a tube drained fluid from a
hole in his chest into a bag secured to the gurney.

He could breathe much better now
than he could less than an hour before, the moment a bullet from the barricaded
suspect happened to pierce him precisely in the left shoulder in a spot where
his vest didn’t cover, sending the bullet tearing down into his chest and
lodging by his left shoulder blade. It had nicked his left lung, collapsing it,
and they’d had to put a tube in his chest to equalize the pressure until they
could repair it.

All in all, it wasn’t as bad as
it could have been. The doctor didn’t seem to think he’d be in the hospital
more than a couple of days once the bullet was removed. No bones were broken,
no vital veins or arteries nicked. 

The doctor had called him
extremely lucky and Nash was forced to agree, but he wondered how Elliot was
going to view his stroke of luck. He’d sent Ken and Steve for her almost the
moment he’d been hit, knowing it was bad enough that they were going to
evacuate him to St. Elizabeth. 

Nash told his deputies to be
gentle with her given what had happened to her first husband, but he knew that
no matter how gentle they were, it wouldn’t be gentle enough.

So he lay on the gurney and
worried about her, staring up at the ceiling as a nurse prepped his shoulder
wound for surgery.  By his time estimation, Elliot should be walking through
the E.R. doors any minute and he very much wanted to see her before he went
into surgery to assure her that he was fine. This wasn’t a repeat of Rob
Jentry; even so, he was deeply concerned for her, much more than he was for
himself.

As he counted the dots on the
ceiling tiles while the nurse carefully shaved his shoulder, he caught movement
out of the corner of his eye and looked over to see Penelope, Alec and Shane in
the doorway. The kids looked terrified and he smiled, waving them over.

“Come on in,” he told them. “It’s
okay. I’m going to be fine.”

Shane and Alec entered.  Shane
went right to his father and held his hand, looking sick and worried.  Alec
just stood next to the bed, looking at all of the medical paraphernalia and not
quite sure how he felt about anything. The last time he saw someone like this,
it was his father on life support.

Penelope, however, was slower
than the boys. It took her a few seconds to make her way into the room. She
paused by the head of the bed.

“Are you sure you’re going to be
all right?” she whispered tightly.

Nash looked up at the young lady
who had lost her father in not dissimilar circumstances a couple of years ago.
He reached up with his good arm and gently cupped her cheek.

“I’m going to be fine, honey,” he
assured her. “Please don’t worry. It just passed through my chest without
really hitting anything vital so they just need to go in and remove the
bullet.”

Penelope nodded, tears of fear
and relief streaming down her cheeks.  Nash wiped away the tears. “Don’t cry,
darlin’,” he begged softly. “I promise I’ll be fine. Where’s your mother?”

Penelope wiped at the tears that
wouldn’t stop falling. “They ambulance brought her in,” she told him. “She
passed out when the deputies told her what happened.”

“What?” Nash was seized with
concern. “Where is she?”

Penelope sniffled, pointing out
of the door to the general emergency room beyond. “Out there.”

Nash was trying to get out of bed
and the nurse who had been carefully shaving his shoulder threw her arm across
him to prevent him from moving.

“Sheriff Aury,” she snapped.
“You’re not going anywhere.”

He was livid, like a madman. “Get
me out to see my fiancée or bring her in here to see me,” he ordered in a tone
that left no room for doubt. “One way or the other, I’m going to see her so
you’d better figure it out.”

The nurse was aghast, already
buzzing the nurse’s station for help.  Several nurses rushed in, followed by a
couple of doctors, and Alec, Shane and Penelope were pushed aside as they all
tried to calm Nash down. He had already pulled his chest tube out and was
starting to have trouble breathing again, and when the surgical nurse explained
what had happened, the on-call doctor could see they were going to have trouble
unless they did something.

As the group was trying to figure
out what to do and Nash was arguing strongly, Ken and Steve entered the room.
They had followed the ambulance in, bringing Alec and Shane with them as
Penelope rode with her mother. What they were met with was chaos, looking with
shock to Alec, Shane and Penelope huddled against the wall.  Ken went to the
young people.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Penelope was weeping again. “Nash
wants to see my mom but they won’t let him.”

Ken could see the struggle going
on.  He made his way over towards the gurney, trying to position himself so
Nash could see him.

“Sheriff?” he called above the
noise. “Nash?”

Nash heard the voice, looking up
to see Ken standing back behind the herd of doctors and nurses. He waved him
over.

“Ken,” he sounded very glad to
see him. “What happened? Where’s Ellie?”

“Sheriff, she’s fine,” Ken
assured him. “She just got a little upset, that’s all.  She passed out when we
told her what happened so we called the ambulance just to make sure she was
taken care of. We thought it was what you would want.  The doctor gave her a
tranquilizer and she’s lying right outside your door. I promise, she’s fine.”

Nash seemed to calm dramatically
and the nurses started reattaching tubes and I.V.’s.  He motioned to Ken, who
came close enough for Nash to grab him. He pulled the man down to his level so
he wouldn’t have to shout.

“You go tell her doctor that he
has to be careful what medications he gives her,” he whispered. “She’s
pregnant. The kids don’t know yet, so keep it to yourself, okay?”

Ken nodded and fled the room. 
Nash lay there as the nurses and doctors finished with him, weakened after his
outburst. He looked up at the doctor by his right arm.

“Please,” he asked softly, “I
just want to see her before you take me into surgery. Please?”

The doctor lifted an eyebrow at
him. “Only if you promise to stay calm.”

“I will, I promise.”

The doctor sent a nurse out to
where Elliot was as Nash turned to look at the kids, still huddled over by the
wall.  He held out a hand to them.

“Come over here, y’all,” he said.
“I’m sorry I got upset.”

The kids came away from the wall,
gravitating back in his direction.  Shane went back to holding his father’s
hand, still very frightened for the man.

“Dad, what happened?” he asked.

Nash took a deep breath as they
re-secured the chest tube. “I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “We had a
barricaded suspect and I was in a vest, back behind the Special Weapons van.
All I did was step out a bit to get a look at what our lookouts were talking
about, you know, how well the suspect was embedded, and suddenly I felt this
blow to my shoulder. It hit me so hard that it knocked me to the ground and as
I lay there with this searing pain in my shoulder, it occurred to me that I’d been
shot. It further occurred to me that Ellie was going to kill me when she found
out.”

The boys grinned but Penelope
remained deeply distressed.  Nash let go of Shane’s hand to grasp hers.

“Can you go outside and tell your
mama that I love her?” he asked softly. “Tell her I’ll be fine.”

Penelope shook her head, wiping
at her nose. “She’s still unconscious.”

Nash’s smile vanished and he
started to get worked up again, but Penelope put her hands on his chest to
still him.

“If you don’t stop freaking out
every time I tell you something, I’m just not going to tell you anything at
all,” she threatened. “We’re already worried about you, Nash. You need to stay
calm so the doctors can help you. My mother is fine; she’s just sleeping now.
They gave her a sedative.”

Nash forced himself to calm,
seeing how upset she was becoming. “I’m sorry,” he told her sincerely. “I’m not
trying to upset you. I just want to see your mom.”

Before Penelope could reply, they
heard a noise at the door and saw that two orderlies were bringing in a second
gurney. The kids could see that it was Elliot, curled up in a drug-induced
sleep on her left side. They cleared the room as the orderlies positioned the
gurney next to Nash’s bed. They bumped it right up against him and lowered the
sides so Nash could touch her.

As the orderlies vacated the
room, Nash took a good, long look at Elliot. It was like medicine to him, the
calming effect unfathomable. She was sleeping peacefully, dressed in the comfy
pink jog suit he’d seen her in so many times. She looked so fragile and sweet.
He couldn’t help the tears coming to his eyes as he reached out and gently
grasped the hand that was near her head, clutching her fingers.

“Ellie?” he said softly. “Honey,
can you hear me?”