“Your grandma’s a real trouper.” The surgeon was a thickset man with dark, feminine eyelashes. “She’s lucky. The knife nicked her vena cava, but it missed the aorta. If it had nicked that, well, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.”
Through the room’s windows, nighttime lights illuminated the buildings below—the squat brick library and a lofty brick church. Everything in Osborne was made out of brick. St. Francis Memorial Hospital was on the opposite side of Main Street, not quite a mile from her grandmother’s house. It wasn’t big, but it was the county’s only hospital, and Makani was grateful that it was so close. Grandma Young had gone into surgery within emergency medicine’s golden hour. The rapid intervention had saved her life.
“There was an injury to her intestines, which requires a long antibiotic therapy, and there was a cut to her right ureter,” the surgeon said. “I’ve placed temporary drains, but when she’s more stable, the ureter will need reconstructive surgery.”
His words were a fog. Her grandmother was still in another part of the hospital, and Makani wasn’t allowed to see her yet. She touched her bandaged arm for self-support. It was wrapped from elbow to wrist. “When can she come home?”
“She’ll need significant rehabilitation here in the hospital. Three weeks, at least.”
“Three weeks?”
“After that, we’ll transfer her to a rehabilitation center . . .”
He was still talking as Makani, stupefied, lowered herself back onto the bed where she’d received the stitches. Three weeks . . . and then more rehabilitation . . .
The surgeon removed a pen from the shirt pocket of his green scrubs. He clicked it, and the finality of the sound made her look up. “Do you have any other family that you can stay with while she recovers?”
Her parents flitted in, and then straight back out of, Makani’s mind as she shook her head. “It’s just the two of us.”
“That’s okay.” The nurse placed a steady hand on Makani’s uninjured arm. “Your grandmother will be awake soon, and we’ll ask her where she’d like you to stay. I’m sure she has some friends who’d be happy to take you in for a while.”
Makani’s chest constricted. Grandma Young’s church friends were nosy. They would ask so many questions. Maybe she could stay with Darby or Alex instead.
As the surgeon detailed the recovery process, he spoke with a brisk authority that Makani found difficult to follow. When he left, the nurse outlined it in simpler terms and reminded her where the call button was to ring for help. Makani glanced at her laminated ID badge—DONNA KURTZMAN, RN—and thanked her by name.
For the second time in a year, almost to the day, Makani was trapped inside a waking nightmare. Grandma Young had thrown herself at a serial killer to save her. The selflessness of this act was almost too big to comprehend. But equally astounding was that she’d made it home in time to do it. Makani should be the one in the operating room, not her grandmother. Her grandmother had done nothing to deserve this.
Two more excruciating hours passed alone with her thoughts.
At last, Donna led her to the ICU where Grandma Young was coming around from the anesthesia. Her enfeebled body was strung up with wire monitors and IVs and catheter tubes, and Makani had no idea what else. A reclining chair sat beside the bed. Makani perched on its cushioned edge and took her grandmother’s hand. Her skin felt thin, her bones fragile. “Hi, Grandma.”
Grandma Young’s eyelids fluttered open. She tried to speak, but her voice came out as a whispered croak. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost eleven. Do you know where you are?”
Her eyes closed again, groggily. She nodded.
“You had emergency surgery, but you’re okay. Do you remember what happened?” There was a twenty-second pause. “Grandma?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven at night,” Makani said. Donna had explained that the anesthesia would make her grandmother disoriented for a while.
Grandma Young gave another frail nod. “Are you all right?”
Makani had held it in since the attack. But this question, coming from this person, unlocked the dam. Warm tears spilled over, no longer containable. “I’m fine.”
“Oliver?”
“Ollie’s fine, too.” Makani used her right sleeve to dry her cheeks. The left sleeve had been cut off. The rest of her sweater was encrusted with dried blood, and her jeans were stained with rust-colored pools. “We’re all okay.”
There was a knock on the door, which had been left ajar. Chris nudged it open. He was in his blue uniform and holding a small bundle of Mylar balloons. And beside him, as if summoned by their thoughts, stood Ollie.
Makani’s heart cracked down the middle. But it was a good feeling.
Ollie looked pale—his skin tone even paler than its natural state—and weary. No, she corrected herself. Bleary. As if he’d been answering the same questions, over and over, for the last six hours. He glanced at her, skittish and apprehensive.
“I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Young,” Chris said. “May we come in?”
If her grandmother had been anyone else, Makani guessed that he would have called her ma’am. This was the habitual Mrs. Young of a former student.
Grandma Young’s eyes reopened, and her posture straightened the teensiest bit. She gained a modicum of strength as she regained the role of the adult. “Christopher. Officer Larsson,” she corrected hoarsely. “Come in.”
He grinned. “Christopher is still fine.”
The brothers entered, and Chris presented Makani’s grandmother with three balloons—a Get Well Soon, a blushing emoji, and an emoji wearing sunglasses. “There weren’t many options at the hospital’s gift shop,” he said apologetically. “We bought flowers, but then they told us we couldn’t bring them into the ICU.” He turned to Makani. “They’re in my car. One of the bouquets is for you, of course.”
Grandma Young thanked Chris as he tied the balloons in a place where she could see them. Apart from the occasional lei and an orchid corsage at her ex-boyfriend’s junior prom, Makani had never been given flowers. She smiled at Ollie, perhaps even glowed, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her expression faltered.
He knows. The police had opened her record, and now Chris and Ollie knew. Her heart withered. The muscle blackened into soot.
“I owe you the thank-you.” Chris walked to her grandmother’s bedside. “If you hadn’t come home when you did . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought out loud.
Grandma Young shook her head, barely. “They saved themselves. I only got in the way.”
He smiled with a gentle laugh. “That’s not what my brother said.”