Love Realized

by Melanie Codina

  “Logan is going to feel what it’s like to be alone, to feel pain.” Recognition sparked in her head. Okay, so mental stability and strong morals did not run in that family. First, she had to deal with his wife, now him? Panic started to rise, but was quickly overpowered when her motherly instincts kicked in. She needed to get the boys the hell out of there, and figure out where the hell everyone else was because the corridor was strangely empty.

  This really is the kind of shit that happens in movies. What do they do in the damn movies? Oh yeah, the guy comes in and rescues the damsel in distress, takes out the bad guy, and they all live happily ever after. Well, that doesn’t seem likely at the moment. Think, Gillian, think. Irritation and anger started to well up as she tried absorbing what was going on. She swore to herself as she once again damned Logan and his affair. She had refused to let his affair take one more thing away from her. This was not happening to her. Just the fact that she was in this position pissed her off more.

  Trying to focus on what she needed to do, she knew she needed to talk to him. That’s something they do in the movies—distract him by talking while you figure a way out of this. Or at least ‘til you get the kids out of there. Kids. Well, she may not be able to protect all of them, considering the newest one wasn’t going anywhere since she was the intended victim here. Trying to stop her thoughts from drifting to her unborn child she was possibly carrying, she had to make sure her boys were safe, so she steeled her spine and started talking to him.

  “Adam, what’s this all about?” she asked while cautiously looking from side to side, hoping not to draw too much attention to what she was doing. Her eyes landed on the fire alarm perched on the wall next to the doorway she was standing in front of. Fire alarms brought the cavalry in, lights and sirens blazing. It was a direct link to 911. She desperately tried remembering the procedure of what happens in the building when the fire alarm goes off. It was a state of the art system and was designed to prevent fire from spreading. The doors were secured by giant magnets that released their hold when the system was activated.

  These doors and giant magnets were at the entrance to every corridor and every waiting room. As impressive as the system was, it could be annoying as hell sometimes because when there were false alarms, the magnets would release the heavy doors, and all you could do is hope you weren’t standing in the doorway when it did release. The flashing lights and those damn heavy doors had made some days frustrating, but she was grateful for them now since it gave her the hope to get out of this.

  If she could pull the fire alarm, the fire doors would then seal off this area in order to prevent the spread of a supposed fire and also call the fire department. It was the only way she could think of to get help. With another quick glance to her left she realized that there was a set of fire doors between her and the elevator—between the crazy man with the gun and her two favorite little boys. If she pulled the alarm, the doors would close off the boys from this scene playing out right now, but would the elevators work?

  She once again tried her hardest to recall what happens to the elevators when the fire alarm goes off. They always say that if there was a fire, you should never take the elevator. But what happened to the elevators? Did they just stay there? She was having trouble focusing. Not like the gun pointed directly at her was going to help her figure it out any faster.

  She was pretty sure that the elevators closed off and then got automatically called back down to the bottom floor to prevent people from using during a fire and risk being trapped. Perfect. If that’s what they did, then that would be perfect. That would be enough to get the boys to safety. Besides, it’s not like there really was a fire that could harm the boys. No, just a psychotic disgruntled husband seeking revenge. All of this sounded easy enough to make happen if she could just pull the damn alarm. She wanted to cross her fingers and hope there wasn’t a delay once the alarm was triggered; she needed it to happen immediately.

  Adam interrupted her thoughts with his response to her question. She had to try and remember what her question was. “I don’t have a wife or a family anymore, and it’s all your husband’s fault! So it’s only fair that he loses his wife, too!” Wait, didn’t he know that she left Logan months ago? And did he just say that Jody left him? She needed to play into that, which could distract him.

  “I'm so sorry Jody left you, Adam. I didn’t know. But I'm not married to Logan anymore. I left him, and we’ve filed for divorce. He’s already alone.” Trying to inch a tiny bit closer to the doorframe to reach the alarm, she continued, actually feeling sorry for the bastard, “But I know how you feel. How betrayed you must feel right now.” And the truth of the matter was that she did. She knew exactly what it felt like for your whole world to be pulled out from underneath you—like a rug being yanked away—leaving you with only one place to go and that was crashing downward. But she also knew what it felt like to stand back up again. To find that solid footing and recover from the pain. She knew what it felt like to move on and live again.

  She took another step closer, which put her in arms reach of the alarm as she said, “But I also know what it feels like to get past that pain. I know what it feels like to realize that it’s not the end of the world …”

  He interrupted her, “I'm sure I’ll get over this as soon as I know he’s suffering, too!” That’s when she realized that there was no way to get through to him; he was too full of hurt and vengeance. The crazed look in his eyes solidified it for her. Adam was going to do what he set out to do. And based on the gun he held aimed at her chest, it was going to be very effective at doing damage.

  This was real, and this was happening. Strangely, the tears were only just now threatening to breach the wells of her eyes. She felt them start to fall when she squared her shoulders and realized there was nothing she could do except get the boys out of there. She turned her gaze to them and saw that they were watching her. She mouthed the words ‘I love you’ to them, then turned and practically lunged for the alarm.

  Her only thoughts were to make sure the boys were safe and send them down to Jake. He would find them. She only wished that she could protect the baby. Their baby. Jake’s baby. Her unexpected miracle. The miracle that she would have never anticipated and nobody even knew about yet. Well, Allie did, but Jake was the important one. She wasn’t going to be able to tell him about their baby. Regret was a like a punch to her gut when she remembered how she could have told him in the last two days. There was nothing she could do about it now.

  As she felt her hand latch onto the alarm handle, she yanked it down, hard. While she knew it took only a second or two to do so, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. She saw the elevator doors close, and the boys disappeared just before the fire doors released and started to swing shut. She vaguely heard Adam curse as he jumped out of the path the door to his x-ray room was swinging in. This also happened to be in the direction of his fully-extended-gun-holding-arm. At the same time, she had to jump out of the way of the door that separated the main corridor from the hallway that contained the elevators and stairway exits. She apparently didn’t move quickly enough because she felt the door slam into her shoulder just as she heard the sound of a gunshot echoing loudly in the confined area. She quickly threw herself to floor and covered her head with her hands just like people tell you to do, but thinking to herself how ridiculous it was to do, since it was highly unlikely that her hands were going to deter a bullet. She could hear the sounds of all the other large doors positioned throughout the facility slamming shut beyond where she was. Everything started to sound a little hollow—almost like she was underwater—and there was a ringing in her ears, most likely from the proximity of the gun going off.

  “Fuck!” she heard Adam yell over the ringing in her ears. “Fuck!” he yelled again as she felt his feet connect with her side while she was lying on the ground. It wasn’t an intentional kick to her side, more like he slipped on something. Then, a few seconds later, she heard the sound of the stai
rwell door close behind her. And then she was alone. A quick swell of relief washed over her as she realized her plan kind of worked. She smiled to herself as she lay there on the ground, face to the floor. She cursed inwardly as her shoulder began to hurt like hell. She knew those doors were heavy and since one of them nailed her hard, she figured the pain was going to increase.

  Deciding that she needed to make sure that Adam was really gone, she slowly removed her hands from over her head and glanced to her right. Nothing. Then to the left. Again nothing. Assessing it was all clear, she started to push off the ground when she felt the wetness on the floor beneath her left hand, causing her hand to slip forward and a sharp pain to make itself known in her left shoulder. Then she saw it—the deep crimson puddle on the floor that had a distinct impression of her hand in it. She turned her hand over to see it covered from wrist to fingertip in blood. Her blood. Well fuck! So much for thinking her plan worked.

  It hadn’t been the damn door that hit her shoulder; it was the gunshot that got her. All of her strength and courage that built up in her seconds before quickly evaporated when she realized that she was bleeding here on the floor, and there was nobody around to help her. Then the pain seized her, sharp and fierce as it took her breath away. She didn’t really feel the severity of the pain ‘til she realized what had happened. This changed things, and she had to do something fast.

  She wondered how quickly the firemen swept the floors to clear it for fire? She was on the second floor, so they only had to methodically sweep the first floor, and then they would get to her. Thinking that wouldn’t take too long was comforting, but how much blood could she lose before it affected the baby.

  “Shit!” she declared as she rolled to her right side, putting her left shoulder higher and above her heart in an attempt to stop, or at least slow, the bleeding. The movement caused pain to shoot through her shoulder and down her left arm, once again taking her breath away with its severity. Come on Gillian, you need to get up, and sit your ass up against the wall! You need to get the wound above your heart to slow the bleeding.

  Her mental pep talk had her moving. Using her right hand, she pushed on the floor. This allowed her to get herself up onto her hands and knees, which only helped her see how much blood she had lost. Just the site of the amount of blood she had lost zapped a little more of her energy.

  “This isn’t good,” she said out loud to herself as if hearing herself talk was going to help. But strangely it did. She began to talk out loud to herself, encouraging herself to move, to get up, to survive. “Just get your ass against that wall, Gillian!” she growled to herself as she plopped her butt down on the ground. She couldn’t risk trying to stand up because if she moved too quickly, with her blood pressure likely being very low, she would be at risk for passing out completely, and then she would definitely bleed out.

  In this upward position, she felt a bit lightheaded and knew she needed to get to the wall for support. The only way to accomplish this was to push herself with her feet toward the wall, scooting on her bottom. The first push had her sliding across the puddle of her own blood. The wetness was still warm and gave her a disturbing feeling as she accepted the fact that there was a lot of blood on the floor.

  “Good, this will work.” Once again cheering herself along, she repeated the movement with her feet over and over, which brought her closer and closer to the wall. All the while she tried to assess what she needed to do next. As she continued to push herself across the floor, she noticed the warm wetness of blood trailing down her back from the exertion. There was blood on both her front and her back. She had expected this on the front, but hadn’t expected it on the back. “The bullet must have gone straight through then,” she mused out loud as she paused for a moment before pushing again. This was good because there was no bullet just hanging out inside her body causing trouble. And it was bad because that meant she had to try and apply pressure to both wounds. “Fuck!”

  The wall. She really needed to get to that wall. If she could lean against it, and apply pressure from the front, that should be sufficient to stop the bleeding. She pushed with her feet one last time when she felt her back hit the wall. She made a straining and painful attempt to move her left shoulder against the wall, which in turn, took her breath away. Trying to slow her breathing down because she was getting even more lightheaded, she made an attempt to apply pressure to the front of her shoulder and push it back into the wall. “Fuck!” she yelled again into the empty corridor.

  She could feel the wetness of her scrubs and the sting of the wound itself as she pressed her shoulder completely back. Raising her right hand again to the wound in the front of her shoulder, she pushed it back in to the wall as hard as she possibly could. It was certainly becoming more of a challenge since her limbs were starting to get heavy and take on a resemblance to gelatin.

  “Now what do I do?” she again asked herself out loud. Maybe the firemen weren’t too far from where she was. “Help! Is anyone there?” she called out in hopes that maybe someone would be nearby. Could tell which fire alarm was pulled? If they knew which one was pulled, they could just go directly to it. Logic would tell you that if an alarm was pulled, the fire had to be in sight of that particular alarm, didn’t it? All she could do now was wait. With her right hand applying pressure to her left shoulder, she made the painful attempt to get her left hand into her lap. Crying out loud as the pain once again shot through her shoulder and down her arm, she got her left hand up and cradled it around her stomach. This helped take some of the strain off of her shoulder.

  Gillian looked down at her left arm across her lap and noticed how it was cradling her abdomen from one side to the other. It looked like the position an arm would be in to hold a baby. As the tears began to well up in her eyes, she thought to herself that she was holding a baby. She was holding her and Jake’s baby. The tears started to overflow from her eyes, and she whispered, “I'm sorry, little one... I'm so sorry.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall to wait, holding her abdomen as tightly as she possibly could with her weak useless arm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Jake was sitting on the bench outside the entrance to the hospital waiting for the boys to come down with Gillian. He hated that she seemed upset or distracted by something last night. He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure what was the cause of it, but he only hoped that it wasn’t him. Being around a woman like Gillian could be equal parts funny and frustrating as he tried to figure out what was wrong with his girl and attempt to not be the cause of it. Clearly, Gillian was upset about something and while he didn’t know what it was, he was going to do whatever he could to make her happy until he could figure it out. He had thought about asking Allie about it since he knew she was over yesterday, but he felt that was almost like cheating. It was his job to make her happy, and he wasn’t about to take a short cut. Not yet at least.

  The thought of that little blue bag, which contained that infamous little blue box with the ribbon around it that was stuffed inside his sock drawer made him smile. Maybe he should just propose sooner rather than later. No, he wanted to plan it out, and he wanted to wait and do it in a memorable way. It would mean more to the both of them that way. He wanted to propose, was going to propose, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, but he wanted the memory of it to be a powerful one. A big smile spread across his face as he thought about Gillian as his wife.

  His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of the fire alarm going off. He reflexively jumped to his feet and was met by the crowds of people making their way out of the building to escape whatever it was that set the alarm off. Jake knew for a fact that these alarms go off frequently, but a sinking feeling overtook him, sending him on high alert. He could hear the sirens of the trucks coming and was slightly relieved they were close by. He started to move, trying to make his way in through the doors that everyone was filing out of to see if he could help. Fortunately, the crowds of people appeared to be
well controlled, and the scene didn’t present itself as one of chaos like you might think—probably because this was routine for them. Hospital personnel, medical professionals, and patients who were mobile made their way out of the building, guided by those who were instructed on evacuation procedures.

  The boys crossed his mind, but he was comforted by the fact that they were with Gillian, and she would make sure they got out safe if there really was a fire. He heard the fire truck pull up, but then he heard the police cruisers pull up, as well. He turned to see Gillian’s brother Sean get out of a car with a radio to his mouth talking as he took in the scene around him. Well, that many officers showing up for a fire alarm wasn’t normal procedure. He was turning to go talk to Sean when he heard Ryan call out to him, “Dad! Dad!” Both boys suddenly accosted him, looking a little on edge by what was going on around them. Of course they were freaked out. They may think it cool later, but at the moment, it was a lot to take in.

  Right about that time he heard Sean call out to him, “Jake! Get the boys out of there now!”

  Jake immediately concluded that there was more going on in there. He ushered the boys over to where Sean was standing and asked, “What the hell is going on, Sean?” The boys were trying to talk to him, but he was looking at Sean when he heard him say, “We got a report of shots fired in the building just when the fire alarm went off! Now get the boys out of here!”

  Then it hit him—the boys were here, but Gillian was not. He looked at the boys and demanded, “Where is your mom, Dylan? Did you see her?”

  Dylan nodded and said, “Yes! We were on the second floor, holding the elevator doors for her, and waiting.” He had to come up for air because he was breathing so fast. He continued, “She said I love you, and then she pulled the fire alarm thing on the wall. Then the elevator doors closed and brought us down here.”