Ryan flung the door open as Jace lead into the room, surveying from side to side before stopping. Bringing his rifle up he aimed his sights on the Hispanic man that stood above Abbi’s lifeless body, his pistol aimed directly at her head. Ryan’s heart stopped beating. It took everything in him to keep from reacting when he saw Abbi lying lifeless on the cold wet floor. Blood splattered across her arms and legs. He couldn’t see her face through the bag covering it but he knew it was her. He positioned himself down on one knee with his rifle sighted in on the man’s head.
“Ah, I see I have company tonight.” Jose Hernandez said from the middle of the room.
“Sir, take a step back from the woman and you can walk away from this.” Ryan heard the lieutenant say from behind him.
“You see I can’t do that. I have some debts that need to be repaid.”
“You don’t want to do that sir.”
“Oh, but I do.” Jose smirked.
Ryan’s body sang out, his ears ringing barely able to hear what was being said. He needed to protect Abbi at all costs. He didn’t think about what he did next, he only reacted. It wasn’t thought. It was pure instinct. He stood taking a step towards the Hispanic man.
“I don’t think you want to do that.” The man looked up at Ryan and then brought his pistol up towards Ryan’s chest, just as Ryan had hoped.
It wasn’t thought, it was instinct. Ryan threw up his rifle and fired, directly between the man’s eyes, but not before he returned a shot. Ryan felt the force of the bullet hit his chest biting away at his skin. It felt like he had been kicked directly in the chest by a horse. The force so hard his body flew back against the wall.
“No! Shit!” He heard Jace cry out.
“Target has been acquired. I repeat. Target has been acquired.”
A flurry of movement happened around the room as other officers from the department came flooding in. One of the men from the team grabbed Abbi’s lifeless body and ran her down towards the awaiting ambulance. Ryan’s head spun in circles, the room blurred in and out around him as distant gun fire rang out throughout the building.
“Boss! Hey, look at me boss.” Jace came up grabbing his hand.
“Where is Abbi?” The room snapped back into view.
“Bluebird main, this is Assault two be advised. All threats are neutralized. I repeat. All threats are neutralized. Officer down. Requesting medical attention.” Ryan heard the words coming through the headset.
“Help me up.” He reached up towards Jace’s hand.
As he sat up he saw three other officers around him. He looked down and saw the bullet lodged into the front of his Kevlar vest.
“You have always been a stupid son of a bitch, haven’t you?” Jace asked as Ryan picked the round out from the vest.
“Where is Abbi?” Ryan stood shakily as Jace and the other officer’s caught him, helping him up the rest of the way.
“They are taking her to Cedars-Sinai, she didn’t look good. Come on, we’ll go now. Are you good?” Jace took Ryan’s arm around his neck as he helped him out of the room down to the awaiting police car.
“Yeah, just get me to Abbi.” Ryan fought back the pain that pierced through his chest, not just from the bullet, but from his heart ripping into a thousand pieces. They had hurt her.
Chapter Nineteen
It was black and her body felt light, like a snowflake drifting along with the breeze. She would go down and then get blown back up. She had the urge to open her eyes but she couldn’t, just like she couldn’t seem to move her hands. Frustration settled in as she tried to get her body to respond. Is this what it’s like to die? This must be what it’s like, wanting to open your eyes and tell everyone you’re ok but you can’t. She focused on the faint sound in the back of her mind. Breathe, just breathe. Abbi, you have to breathe. Slowly the room began to light up, spinning above her as people came in and out of focus.
“Abbi, breathe for me! Please Baby!” She could hear Ryan screaming from the other side of the room.
She wanted to scream out to him and tell him she was ok but she couldn’t.
“Sir, she’s crashing! We are going to need you to wait outside.” An unfamiliar voice came from the side of her bed. No! She didn’t want him to leave. Please let him stay!
“Abbi, please baby! Don’t leave me!” There was a crash and chaos before the room was filled with unfamiliar voices and faces.
Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeep. She was trying desperately to hold onto the rope she was dangling from but she was slowly slipping. Her fingers losing grip as the darkness spread back through her vision, as everything became peaceful again. Pictures of Ryan flittered through her mind. The time at the ball park when they had gone to watch a game, he had to explain everything to Abbi since she didn’t know anything about baseball. The night he had proposed. The look in his eye, he had been the first person in her life to never leave and vow to stay. She had to fight to do the same for him. She couldn’t leave him this way.
It felt like days, coming in and out of the darkness. She could hear distant noises but could never seem to get close enough to the light to comprehend them. But with each time she became aware that she could hear what was going on in the room she felt herself pushing closer.
“Sir, she is stable but…” The voice trailed off.
“The what?” She could hear Ryan, he was here with her. She willed herself to open her eyes.
Open damnit! Open up! Nothing. She tried again to move her hand but no response came from her body. She felt tired, like her body had been overworked and in return just wanted to sleep.
“Looks like a little over six weeks.”
“Are you serious?” She could hear Ryan gasp.
What? What were they talking about? Please, body. Please work! She could feel her heart beating a few beats faster as she pushed and pushed towards the light.
“Abbi, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me baby.” Ryan was close, his voice deep with concern.
Nothing. Sadness crept into her veins chilling her body. She had never experienced this before. As she started to relax her body drifted back off into the darkness, she accepted it allowing it to take her over. For now she would give into the darkness and hope this nightmare would all be over soon.
Abbi, you have to wake up. I can’t do this without you. Please, if you can hear me baby wake up. She became overly aware of her body, almost as if all of her veins had suddenly been re-inflated, snapping back to life. She tried first to wiggle her toes, they moved. Without another thought she opened her eyes, blinking back the light coming from the large TV screen at the foot of her bed. She looked to her right, no one. She scanned the room until she saw a black shape to her left. Ryan’s head was resting on the bed, sitting on the top of her hand. He looked asleep, as she gently squeezed his hand. She jumped as his head shot up, his eyes red and bloodshot. Dark bags under each eye as if he hadn’t slept in days. He blinked rapidly, as if to make sure he was in reality and not just a dream.
“Baby, it’s ok. You’re in the hospital.” Tears glistening at the corners of his eyes as he pushed the call button for the nurse’s station.
All she could do was nod. Her throat felt so dry that she could barely swallow let alone speak. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the swelling on her face. Slowly she opened her mouth and grimaced at the pain coming from her right jaw.
“Easy baby. You got hit pretty hard. Your jaw is fractured so it may be hard to open your mouth all the way.” He stared back at her as if afraid to touch her and hurt her any more than she already had been. He reached up taking her hand and brought it up to his lips. She could feel the warmth on her skin as he kissed her hand. Slowly he reached into his pocket and pulled out her ring, slipping it back onto her finger. “They had to take it off because they thought they were going to have to do surgery. I have kept it with me ever since.”
The lump in her throat was growing bigger. She could feel the burning in her eyes but had no tear
s to fall. She felt so thirsty like a sponge that had been wrung out to much.
“Oh baby, I prayed and prayed that you would wake up. It has been the longest four days of my entire life. I knew somehow that you would hear me and come back to me.” He held her hand back up to his lips. Breathing in her scent and kissing her skin.
“Well good evening, Ms. Hastings.” A lady dressed in a long white coat with bright pink scrubs underneath stood at the door. “I hoped that the call was because you had awoken.”
“Hello.” Abbi’s voice was scratchy.
“Sounds like you could use some water. I have your nurse coming in to bring you some.” She flipped the dim lights on above Abbi’s head. “I am Doctor Carol Miller, I’d like to do a quick assessment of how you’re feeling and check a few things before I leave you to rest.”
Abbi blinked away from the lights, trying to keep the pounding in her head from erupting.
“I am sure that your fiancé has probably been able to tell you a little about your condition. You have a fractured jaw, so for the next couple of weeks you are going to be on a soft food diet. Foods like pudding, jello, yogurt, and nothing harder than cooked pasta. You will be drinking through a straw, just try not to suck to hard. Your spleen was ruptured, however it was able to repair itself without us having to do surgery.” The doctor scanned her body up and down, flashing a bright light in each eye. “Tell me if you hear this.” She snapped in Abbi’s left ear, Abbi nodded. She snapped in her right ear, and again she acknowledged the doctor. “You look like you’re responding well. You are healing remarkably well, as a lot of the swelling around your face has gone down.” The doctor took a step back looking her over before stopping on her stomach. “There is just one other thing we need to talk about.” A brilliant smile formed across her face. “Mr. Dixon, would you like to take the honor or should I?”
Abbi looked at the doctor confused before she turned her gaze to Ryan. What on earth were they talking about?
“Baby, you’re pregnant. The doctors found out after they did some blood work.” She could see caution in his eyes. He didn’t want to upset her, given her condition.
Abbi was stunned. She looked down at her stomach as Ryan’s hand reached up and gently rubbed circles around it. Holy shit, they were having a baby! Her eyes wide she looked back up at Ryan’s face. The look now of a man whose world had just been completed. She was healthy, she was back to him and they were having a baby. Fright shot through Abbi as she wondered if anything had happened to the baby throughout the ordeal. She couldn’t remember much but from the way her body felt she had received quite a beating.
“Is the baby ok?” She managed to get out past her burning throat.
“Yes, luckily the baby sustained no injuries during the altercation. Your blood pressure has been a little high so we will need to monitor that to make sure it goes back down, but I believe we are in the clear going forward. You are around six weeks now so you should be able to hear the heartbeat in a few weeks.” She smiled again at the both of them.
“How is that possible though? I am on birth control. Oh God, could the birth control have hurt the baby?”
“Birth control isn’t one hundred percent effective and medicines, especially antibiotics, even taking your pill at a different time everyday could reduce its effectiveness. But no, as far as we can tell, you have a perfectly healthy baby until you get far enough along to do further blood work. But I feel confident in saying everyone should be ok.” The doctor explained.
“Thanksgiving.” It hit her as she looked over at Ryan smiling. “I was on antibiotics after I had gotten sick over Thanksgiving. I had no idea.”
“Well, I’d say you got a good reason to be thankful. I will be back to check on you in a bit. Try and get some rest and I will have the nurse bring you in some soup.”
Abbi’s hand met Ryan’s at the center of her stomach as she relaxed back into her bed. They were going to be a family. She didn’t know what to say. A baby had been the last thing she had thought about happening in their lives. Hell apart of her wanted to wait for this part, to give them both a chance to have the wedding and get settled. Aside from the scariness of a new situation, she couldn’t be more thrilled. It all felt so right, like they were now complete. As the doctor left, the nurse entered in with a pitcher of water and a cup of ice with a blue and white striped straw hanging out the side.
She took a few sips of the water as the iciness calmed her throat. She could feel it making its way down into her stomach, chilling her body with each sip. She saw Ryan flinch as he attempted to stand from the chair. She watched him as he struggled to stand upright, before she placed the cup back down onto the small table beside her bed.
“Ryan, what’s wrong?” She spoke out between her slightly parted lips.
“Nothing, I’m fine baby.” He smiled down at her. “I’ll be right back.” She watched him hobble over into the bathroom.
What had happened, had he been involved in any of the stuff that had gone down? At that thought her stomach dropped. Spinning into a ball as bile rose into her throat. Judy! Judy had been shot! She might not remember what had happened after she was shoved into that van, but she remembered seeing Judy get shot. She grimaced as the images of Judy’s lifeless body came into her mind. She could feel the blood draining from her face as the tears began to well up in her eyes.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” Ryan tried rushing over to her bed after coming out of the door to the private restroom.
“Judy.” It was all she could get out. She didn’t even think she wanted to know the answer.
“Oh baby, Judy is ok. She had to have surgery, but they were able to remove the bullet and repair the muscle that was damaged.”
Relief flooded through her body. “Can I see her?”
“I will ask the nurse, but I am sure we can arrange for you to see her in the morning.” He smiled.
“Ok.” She paused taking Ryan by the hand as he managed to sit down in the chair next to her. “Ryan, what happened to you?”
“Babe, the last thing I need for you to do is worry about me.”
“I want to know, please.”
“Since we have been together you know I haven’t always been open about my past and what I did in the military. It’s something that has haunted me for many years. I have talked to professionals and gotten all the appropriate clearances from them, but it’s something that never really goes away. That was the main reason I tried to steer clear of us in the beginning. I didn’t think that you would want to be with someone who had… had killed.” She could see the color leaving from his face before he continued. “After everything that happened in the beginning I knew that I didn’t need to protect you from me, but that I myself needed to be the one to protect you from everything else in this damn world. I worked with the SWAT team that found you. Jace was with us too. For the first time in my life, when I came into that room and saw your body lying on the floor, nothing from my past mattered anymore. In an instant you took all of that away for me. You gave me the clarity that I have been searching for since the first time I pulled a trigger in action.” She winced, he didn’t have to say it out loud she knew what he had been through and what he’d had to do. “My whole life I spent worrying about my past and whether it made me a bad person for what I’d done, but I realized that it wasn’t about my past any longer. That it was about my future, with you.”
“Did you get hurt? Did someone hurt you?” She couldn’t hide the concern in her voice.
“I had to make a decision. When I saw him pointing his gun at your head I had to make a decision.” His head hung low as if remembering the image of what he had seen.
“Hey, it’s alright. I’m ok. We’re ok.” She said placing her hand onto her belly.
“I didn’t think twice about it. I stepped towards him knowing he would take aim at me and I did what I had to do to make sure you were safe.” He lifted his head back up, a lone tear rolling down his cheek.
“Oh baby. I
have always known the things you have done in the past without you having to tell me. I never pressed it because it didn’t matter to me. You know that you can always talk to me when you need to and I will never judge you.” The words came out mumbled through her swollen lips.
“You are the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Both of you.” He stood leaning over her belly, bending down and placing a light kiss against her naval.
She couldn’t imagine her life any other way. Most people who had been through all of the shit she had gone through over the years would have called it quits. Hell, what she had gone through over the past few months would have been enough to break someone. Yet somehow she knew that everything would be ok. Call if fate or coincidence, but she knew there was a reason she had been brought to this town and as crazy of an idea it seemed at the time, it had been the best decision she had ever made.
Three weeks later
“Go faster, Ryan! Go faster!” Abbi giggled as Jace raced Judy’s wheelchair faster than her own up the ramp on the front of their house.
“You know, you two didn’t really need wheelchairs. The doctor said just to take it easy.” Ryan smirked down at her as he leaned down towards her ear. “I don’t want to take any chances with Biggie Smalls in there so you’re going to have to enjoy the scenic stroll.” He smiled before kissing her neck just below the slight swollen bruise on her jaw.
“Mmmm I can think of a scene I would like to take in.” She flashed her eyes up at him. She hadn’t felt his hands on her body in what felt like months, she was pretty sure that she was about to dry up and waste away down there.
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