“Did I… did I embarrass you, Emily?” he gasped.
“No,” I wept, pressing harder as the medics swarmed the fence. “No, Ryan. You were magnificent.”
His eyes rolled back, and he went limp in my arms.
Chapter 5: Aftermath and Ashes
The hospital waiting room smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee. It was a sterile purgatory where minutes stretched into hours, and every time the double doors swung open, the air was sucked from the room.
I sat in a hard plastic chair, my left arm immobilized in a heavy sling, the shoulder heavily bandaged and throbbing with a dull, relentless ache. I was wearing borrowed scrubs, my black dress sitting in an evidence bag somewhere in federal custody.
My mother sat three chairs away. She hadn’t spoken in six hours. Her pearls were gone. Her perfectly coiffed hair hung in limp, exhausted strands. She looked like a woman who had woken up to find her entire reality was a stage set, and the walls had just collapsed.
