Love Realized (The Real Love Series)

chapter TWENTY-FOUR

After sitting at her station completely spaced out while she waited for her lab results to post in the system, she realized she needed to stop obsessing about them. She was pretty confident she knew what the results would say, but seeing them confirmed would just cement it all in place. Part of her anxiety was that it had been two days since she suspected it was possible, and she hadn’t yet mentioned it to Jake. She felt a little bad about keeping that from him, but justified it by saying it wasn’t confirmed yet … so why say anything?

Shaking her head at her own internal debate, she had just finished updating her last patient chart for the morning when she heard one of her coworkers say something about ‘two good-looking young men heading her way.’ Of course her reflex reaction was to look up in anticipation of what the older nurse had spied. A giant smile spread across her face when she realized the two good-looking young men were hers.

Two of her favorite little people were strolling toward her like they owned the world with a gleam in their eyes. They were certainly on a mission and had some sort of agenda. This was just what she needed today—two doses of her favorite tranquilizers—Dylan and Ryan. Her kids just calmed her down and relieved her anxiety. And it didn’t matter what anyone said—Ryan was as much hers as her own were, and he had the same effect that the other three did. A visit from her boys would help take her mind of the blood test results she was waiting for.

“Hey Mom Dylan called, followed by Ryan saying, “Hi Aunt Gilly!” Both of their smiles got bigger, only confirming her suspicions that there was some sort of plan-in-action going on here. She bent forward to hug each one and got a kiss on each cheek from them.

“Well hey there, you two. To what do I owe this honor? And why don’t I see an adult with you?” she asked while she cocked one hip to the side and placed her hands on both hips. She attempted a serious questioning-mom-glare but must have failed because both boys giggled.

Dylan turned to Ryan and said, “See I told you that she would say something like that. Now you have to let me borrow your new Nintendo game for one whole day.”

Ryan turned to Gillian and whined, “Aw man! Come on Aunt Gillian, you made me lose the bet.”

Laughing slightly, she bent over and whispered in Ryan’s ear, so Dylan couldn’t hear her, “Well, next time you have to let me in on the bet, so we can beat Dylan at his own game.” She winked at him before kissing his cheek and standing back up.

“Okay, so back to my question … spill it. What and who brings you here?”

Dylan, always the spokesman between the two boys, spoke up and said, “We are here to take you to lunch. We wanna go have some pizza, and I know you can’t say no to pizza, Mom.”

Ryan chimed in, “My dad is downstairs and said that we need to take our favorite lady out to lunch because we need to make sure we keep you happy.”

“Oh, he did, did he? And you both think pizza is the way to do it?” she asked.

Ryan smiled and said, “Plus we want to play at the arcade. I’ve been saving up so I can get tons of tokens.”

Laughing out loud at Ryan’s blatant honesty she said, “There it is! I knew there was some motive there.”

Standing up she took a look at her patient board, which appeared to be under control, then gave a questioning glance at her co-worker, Marsha. She was the shift leader and honorary grandmother figure around there, and she was apparently enjoying the scene in front of her. Marsha obviously knew what her question was before Gillian even had to ask because she smiled down at the boys then looked up to Gillian and said, “Go ahead girl, I’ve got the board. Besides, you gotta eat sometime. Take a few extra minutes if you want.”

Marsha’s emphasis on the word gotta reminded her that Marsha was going to be watching over her. If her test confirmed she was in a delicate condition, she was sure the woman would be all over her in the coming months. She was both equally worried and thankful for the older woman’s motherly qualities. Gillian smiled at her as she stood up and walked over to her desk to grab her things. “Thanks Marsha.”

While picking up her stuff, she saw the message light blinking on her screen. Thinking it was possibly her test results, she took a deep breath and clicked on the icon. She let it out slowly when she saw that it wasn’t what she was hoping for, but then groaned when she saw it was a message from Adam. She had managed to safely avoid him since the infamous pool party at her house, but she knew it was bound to happen sooner or later.

The message stated that he needed her sign off on a verbal x-ray order for one of her patients from yesterday. She could’ve sworn she had already done that and sent it down to him via interoffice envelope. Even though medical records were electronic, there was the occasional piece of paper that needed to be submitted. She decided now would be the perfect time to pop in there and do it because she could use the boys as an excuse to avoid conversation with him, so she responded to his message saying she was on her way down.

She made her way back over to the boys, who were happily regaling the other nurses with the details of their most recent trip to Disneyland, even though it was almost two months ago. She was sure her co-workers knew all there was to know about the place, but the smiles on their faces as they enjoyed the animated details from Dylan about how they rode Space Mountain four times was great to see. Just like her boys made her feel better, they did it for others. She thought to herself that this was just further confirmation that her son had actual magical powers.

“Okay boys, we just have to make a stop on the second floor, and then we can go spend as much of Ryan’s money as possible in one hour.” Ryan turned to say something in protest at her declaration, but then she winked at him, and he realized that she was only joking. As they headed toward the elevator, the boys were engaged in a debate over who got to hit the button. It probably could have gone on forever if she hadn’t jumped in with a suggestion. “How about one of you hits the button to go down, and the other hits the button inside the elevator?”

Seemingly satisfied with her solution, Dylan took it upon himself to hit the down button, and the doors promptly opened. Scooting inside with them she said, “Go ahead and hit the button for the second floor Ryan. I need to stop in x-ray to sign something.”

When they got to the second floor, she didn’t want to get sucked into having to talk with Adam. Thinking that she could hold the elevator to further her cause, she said, “Hey boys, I will only be a second, so how ‘bout you wait here, and hold the doors for me? I would prefer that you weren’t around the x-ray equipment.” Since they would be in her direct sight for those few seconds, it didn’t bother her that she was asking them to wait there. “But I need both of you to hold the button for me.”

Both boys enthusiastically agreed to her plan, so she took each of their fingers and pressed them against the button to hold the doors. She smiled at them and said, “Hold it tight, I’ll be right back.” You would have thought that they were performing a mission that was a matter of life or death the way they held that button—almost like holding the clip of a grenade, and if they let go it would explode. It was definitely comical to see. Walking backward toward the entrance to the radiology control room so she could see them, a laugh bubbled up, and she smiled at those boys she loved so much. She was still smiling as she turned to the door of the radiology department and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight before her.

She was standing there, just outside the door in the hallway, in sight of Dylan and Ryan, face to face with the barrel of a gun. Ohmygod! Ohmygod! There was a gun … pointed directly at her! Was this a joke? Who was holding it? She could barely tear her eyes off of the giant hole at the end of the gun to see the person who was pointing it at her. It looked like a f*cking cannon! Forcing herself to attempt moving her eyes from the cannon, she saw Adam. Was Adam really pointing a gun at her? This had to be a joke, because seriously this kind of shit only happens in the movies. She hoped.

Trying to actually get her tongue to move in order to allow the words to come out was one of the hardest things she had ever done. She mentally coached herself, Come on Gillian, that’s it, bring in the oxygen, and let the sound come out. “Hey Adam,” she managed to squeak out before needing to swallow again, “W-what’s going on? Is this some kind of prank? ‘Cause you got me, I think I peed my pants.” She gave him a weak smile while trying to sound like she had a sense of humor in a situation that she could only hope was a joke. A f*cking sick joke at that.

She glanced to her left to see that the boys were still standing there in the elevator waiting for her. They didn’t look scared in any way, just devoted to holding that damn button down. Okay, so they must not be able to see the gun. Good. That was a good thing … a very good thing.

Adam’s growling response brought her back to face him when he said, “I have to make him suffer. Make him feel the pain.” Just the sound of his voice confirmed her fear that this was in fact happening. Holy shit, this was really happening! Wait, what? Him who? What the hell was he talking about? In the span of a few seconds she tried to process all that was going on.

“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.

“F*ck!” she heard Adam yell over the ringing in her ears. “F*ck!” 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 stairwell 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 f*ck! 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. “F*ck!”

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. “F*ck!” 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.