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She releases a crack and her entire body slumps. I reach an arm around her, gently lowering her to the ground. The heatfrom the shower soaks my scrub top, and once she’s safely on the floor I tug the top off and throw it behind me. Slamming the shower handle off, I throw a thick, dry towel over her as the sobs start to wrack her body.
With caution, I pull her out of the shower, leaning myself against the corner where the wall meets the open shower, cradling her in my lap. With her head pressed to the center of my chest, she cries.
Violent, vulnerable sobs echo throughout the small bathroom. I do my best to hold on, to give my strength to her as she releases her pain.
“You’re safe now, baby. I got you.” I repeat that mantra, to both her and me, sending up a silent prayer that I can make good on my promise. As long as I’m alive, I’ll spend my days wielding an invisible shield to protect her. And if something manages to make it past, I’ll be there to pick up the broken pieces.
Once her sobs have settled, and her breaths have hiccupped out, she sits up in my lap. With a small adjustment of the towel, she uses a free corner to wipe her eyes before looking up and settling on my face.
“I love you, Lainey.”
She sucks in a breath. Not how I had expected to tell her how I felt, but tonight proved how fleeting life is. Because of my petty attitude over the weekend, there was the real possibility that she could have left this world not knowing how I felt.
“I knew it before all this happened. I realized it that night I came to your place because I couldn’t sleep without you, but I held onto it. That’s what I wanted to tell you earlier when I came to find you. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry and that I love you and I’d do anything to make this work between us.
“I’ve never had anything in my life that’s meant this much, that I’ve been scared to lose. When I saw that asshole with his hands around your neck,” my voice breaks at the words, “for asplit second I thought I was going to lose you, and I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
Her hands come up to frame the sides of my face, and I reach around to tug the towel up over her shoulders.
“It happened so fast, Ryan. He was on me in a second, a murderous look in his eyes. I thought that the life I had escaped somehow weirdly came back to haunt me and that it was it. I wasn’t fighting him like I should have, at first. I thought … I thought I wouldn’t get to see you again, that I wouldn’t get to tell you that I love you and thank you for helping me find my voice. I went limp. Accepted my fate until I heard you. Through all the breaking wood and beeping and screaming, I heard your deep voice through it all, and it gave me the courage to fight back. And when I saw your face through the slit of the door, I knew. I knew that no matter what happened, I’d be okay because you would have done anything to make it to me in time.”
“I would have,” I tell her, my voice cracking. “As long as I’m alive, you’re safe.”
She presses her mouth to mine, wincing at the cut in her lip, and adjusting herself. I tilt her head, focusing on the side of her mouth, kissing down the bruises on her neck, wishing to heal each one with my lips. “I love you, firecracker.”
“Ryan,” she whispers, “get me out of here.”
I stand, cradling her in my arms and then setting her on the sink as I use part of the towel to dry her hair. “Your place or mine?”
“I don’t care,” she says, pulling me to her to capture my lips with hers. “As long as I’m with you, I don’t care where we go.”
Epilogue
Three Months Later
Ryan
My feet drag along the steps as I make the final trek up the stairs toward my condo.
The winter season is always shitty. The hospital has been at maximum capacity for the last few months. Pneumonia, an unpredicted influenza strain, frostbite, and accidents from icy roads have kept us on our toes. That, plus the general influx of regular hospitalizations, my days are stretched.
I volunteered for overtime and picked up a seven pm to seven am shift last night. I flip my wrist to check my watch and see it’s just after one o’clock. Eighteen hours. Eighteen hours on my feet with no sleep and only coffee to keep me going.
But I know that I’ll be fine the second I walk in the door. Because on the other side is the woman of my dreams, waiting for me.
After Lainey’s attack, we made immediate plans to move in with each other. I would have been fine sharing her cozy, one-bedroom apartment, or hauling her things into my condo, butshe wanted somewhere new, somewhere that would be a fresh start for both of us.
We lucked out and found a gorgeous three-bedroom condo that was close to the hospital, but close enough to the bus station that Lainey could hop on the train for her classes. A smile crosses my face at the thought of my girl. I’m so proud of her. After her experience at the hospital, many people wouldn’t have been able to return to work. Some may have even left the profession altogether for something that’s deemed to be safer.
Not Lainey.
That next day, she marched into the board room with me by her side and demanded a change in practice where people who are responsible for direct patient care make the decisions about where a patient is placed, and if the supervisor needs to get involved, it’s a collaboration, not an overruling.
The hospital had wanted to take punitive action against me. Unfortunately, the story had gained some local media attention. They felt it was necessary to place blame on someone, and the blame never falls on management. But when Lainey stood up, threatening to press charges against the patient, threatening the hospital with increased media attention and a lawsuit if they dared to take any action against me, they backed off.
I would have taken whatever punishment they doled out and found myself somewhere else to work, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t proud of her for fighting for me.
The second my key hits the lock and the door cracks, the smell of homemade cookies wafting through the condo hits me, followed by a squeal as Lainey runs around the corner and jumps up into my arms.
