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Sobbing silently, I watch as they work on my brother. The electric jolts make his body jerk and tense. But the steady beep of the heart monitor tells me the truth.
Ben’s gone.
Still, they don’t stop trying to revive him until we pull up to the hospital. And then his body is quickly unloaded and rushed through the doors, the paramedics moving with urgency, indicating they think he still has a chance.
My brain knows the truth as I step numbly down from the back of the ambulance, but my heart still clings to the sliver of hope. They wouldn’t continue to force his heart to pump if he were truly gone. Right?
Entering the hospital, I look around, bewildered. I see my brother’s bloody tennis shoes disappearing behind a door marked Employees Only. Stopping, I stare after him, wide-eyed. Slowly, my eyes drop to my hands.
Staring at my bloody palms, I try to process the reality of what just happened.
My brother got shot.
In the stomach.
His heart stopped on the way to the hospital.
Deep, terrible loss blasts a hole through my chest as I find I’m too devastated to cry even. My strength fails, and my knees buckle as I fall to the ground. But I can’t stop staring at my brother’s blood coloring my palms.
“Miss, are you alright?” someone asks, their voice distant, though gentle hands clasp my elbows, and I can feel the shoulder pressing against my back. “Let me help you to a chair,” the person says.
I nod numbly. Rising from the ground with their assistance, I follow their lead and sink into a hard plastic chair a moment later. A young, curly-haired brunette kneels before me, her brown eyes wide with concern as she asks me if I’m hurt.
I shake my head because I know she’s not asking about the giant wound in my chest. The hole that feels as though it’s bleeding the life from me without mercy. “It’s my brother’s,” I hear myself say as if the words were spoken by someone else.
She says something indistinct, then rises from her crouch, leaving me alone. And as the silence surrounds me, I try to process the devastating fear that grips me. Is Ben alive? Did we make it in time? I can’t bear to think of the other possibility.
Somewhere along the line, the nurse returns with a wet towel and helps clean the blood from my hands and arms. And then, my parents arrive.
“Dani, are you okay? Are you hurt?” my dad asks, his hands searching my face and arms as he looks for any obvious injury. Then he pulls me into his embrace.
“What happened?” Mom asks, stroking my hair as she meets my gaze.
“Ben got sh-shot….” I start. And then it hits me with full force, the immensity of my grief. I fall apart, sobbing as I cling to my dad, and bury my face in his chest.
He holds me tight, soothing me as my mom continues to stroke my hair. Eventually, I’m able to rein in my tears enough that we can sit down.
The doctor steps out from behind the emergency room doors a short time later, and when I see the solemn look on his face, I silently plead for him to be here to speak with another family. It can’t be ours he’s about to deliver news to.
“Mr. and Mrs. Richelieu?” he asks gravely, his eyes soft behind his glasses.
We rise together, though I’m shaking so hard it’s a wonder I’m still able to stand.
“I’m so sorry. We did everything we could, but the bullet hit a major artery… He just lost too much blood…”
My ears ring, blocking out the words I desperately don’t want to hear. But from my mother’s devastated wail, I know. Ben’s dead.
Pulling us both into his arms, Dad holds Mom and me close, soothing us even as he falls apart himself.
“It’s that damn Bratva,” my father growls, his conviction so filled with hate that it jars me from my grief.
Pulling back, I look up at him with a question in my eyes. He knows?
“The Veles,” he states flatly, his lips curled into a snarl of fury. “I know about their bloody conflict with Ben’s new friends.”
Too distraught to think straight, I don’t ask where he got his information. Because it all makes sense. Ben clearly picked his side. So why wouldn’t the Veles come after him? I know from the stress Efrem’s been suffering and his resistance to talk about the conflict that things aren’t going well between the two factions.
Then it hits me out of the blue, the realization that perhaps Efrem knew about the hit out on Ben. That would explain why he said what he said the other night—how it’s best I don’t know everything when it comes to Veles business.
