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I held Celia tight and tried to stave off the blood that flowed from her right shoulder. She was breathing, but didn’t seem conscious as her body quaked in my arms.
I’d most certainly lose my job over this, but if I lost Celia, I wasn’t sure I’d want to continue to live.
The arrow of time became meaningless to me. If choices I made twenty years ago, could affect my life now, I wanted to go back in time and do it all again, with only one outcome in mind, Keep Celia alive. Keep her forever close to me.
Chapter 10
CELIA
It had been two days since I’d talked to Emery and two days since I’d been released from my overnight stay at the hospital.
It had been a graze wound. Emery didn’t leave my side. Lou had even come in to see me and Annalisa had sent flowers. When I got home, she insisted that I sleep on her couch because she didn’t want me to walk up the stairs.
“Annalisa, it was in my shoulder,” I’d explained.
“Still, dear, they told you to take it easy.”
To Annalisa I’d acquiesced, to Lawson, I stood my ground. He’d practically demanded I come home with him, but independence was still something I was struggling to figure out. I didn’t want to go from one enabler to another, and as much as I loved Emery, I knew I needed to know myself first. I wasn’t ready for him to take care of me, to see to my every need. Not to mention the confusion I still felt over the past and Lawson’s relationship with my dad.
The strangest part about my wound wasn’t that my father had caused it, but rather that it might affect my ability to box. Boxing had gotten me through my teen years of virtual imprisonment in the compound. Boxing had made me feel strong when I felt abandoned by the world. Without that outlet, I didn’t know how I’d express myself.
My dad who’d run, who’d not even called to ask after my condition, ran back to his guru instead who could solve all of his problems for him. I didn’t ever want to be like that, beholden to someone else for my every thought.
Lawson had been calling nonstop, but I didn't feel like dealing with any of it. After that confrontation between him and my father, I didn't know how I felt about being together with my father’s one mortal enemy. Would I be betraying my family?
It took me a couple of hours to get a phone number to call Joplin. They screened my call and eventually passed the phone to my mom. For my own safety, I told them I was still in the hospital recovering from the gunshot wound.
Mom was relieved I was okay, but the distance in her voice told me that she’d already written me off and didn’t even want me coming back again. My parents were more loyal to Joplin than they were their own offspring. I felt badly for my siblings and missed them profoundly.
“Dad?”
“I’m sorry, CeCe. I never meant to hurt you. It’s your life, you can live it the way you want to.”
“Why’d you run, Dad? Would you have left me there to die?”
“No, CeCe. I was scared. I realized out there, that where I belong is in here. I can do God’s work in here, and out there, all I do is attract the devil. Evil is all over me when I leave Joplin.”
“And Lawson’s part of that, Dad? Is that what you truly believe?”
“Emery was like a brother to me, CeCe. I can’t forgive him for letting me take the fall, but I know deep down that he’s a good man. He won’t let harm come to you.”
Still, I knew that my relationship with Emery hurt him. He wouldn't tell me their whole history, he didn’t like to rehash his past before Joplin, but I knew there was more to the story than either of them was letting on.
I was deep in my thoughts and spaced out on pain meds when I heard taps on the window. At first, a few came intermittently, and then it sounded like a hailstorm was hitting Annalisa’s air conditioner. I rushed to the window, worried the glass would shatter on the floor if I didn't do something. When I looked out, I saw Professor Emery Lawson standing below in Annalisa’s yard looking up at me.
I pushed the other window open and yelled out, "What the hell are you doing here, Professor?"
"You didn't answer my call or texts, and when I rang the bell, Annalisa told me you were resting and told me to go away," he said. I covered my mouth so he wouldn’t see my smile. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked utterly defeated. I’d never seen him look like that. Usually, he was so well put together and confident.
