the opportunity to save his life—maybe if I was lucky. Or I could give April what she wanted more than anything in the world. Peace.
If he didn’t make it, the court case was over. He’d never bother her or injure their daughter again. They’d be free to become my family and none of us would ever have to worry about the piece of shit again.
I could save Adi from a possibly protracted court battle, countless hours of therapists, and court-mandated lackeys trying to get into her head. She wouldn’t have to go to sleep wondering why her mom was crying or wake up terrified of having to spend the weekend with a father she didn’t even really know.
We would be free to live our lives without ever really thinking about him again. All of that, and all I had to do to get it was be a little slower than normal.
“I’m not saying you have to do anything,” she murmured before looking up and catching my gaze. “Just don’t be too hard on yourself if this patient doesn’t pull through.”
April turned on her heels, marching out with her head held high and shoulders squared. My brows lifted as Hunter walked back to the gurney. “Did you hear all that?”
“Yep,” he said. “Can’t say I blame her. Hell, I’ve been itching to put him in a state like this myself. I know you have too.”
“It’s been a dream for a while now.” I motioned to Rhonda to close the curtain when she came back to us after saying goodbye to Adi.
“What can I do?” she asked.
I barked orders at her and Hunter for God only knew how long after that. With every injury we found and got temporarily sorted out, something else would come out of the woodwork.
“He’s going to need brain surgery,” I said eventually after shaving half of his head clean to get a good look at what was going on inside it. “There’s a decent bleed. Heart’s still thready, too.”
The next moment, his monitor went completely haywire. I snapped my gaze up to see his blood pressure spiking again. Rhonda jumped into action instantly, filling a syringe and passing it to me.
Hunter arched an eyebrow at me. “What’re you going to do, boss?”
I rolled my eyes and inserted the plunger into Craig’s IV line. Almost immediately, the monitors started slowing down and Rhonda let out a relieved breath. “That was a close one. Let me call up to surgery and find out if they’ve got an operating room available for him. He won’t be with us much longer if he keeps misbehaving.”
It was a phrase I knew many people had thought about him in his life—Hunter, myself, and April being prime examples of such people—but it was quite literal now. There wasn’t much time if something kept going wrong every time we got another issue fixed.
Rhonda drew the curtain aside and disappeared from the room just as Craig started seizing. Once again, the monitors blared, and this time, the built-in alarms went off too.
Hunter and I made eye contact over the man crashing on the gurney between us. He lifted a ginger brow at me again.
“It’s now or never. Maybe. Maybe you’ll get a second chance to make your decision in a few minutes either way, but you never know. What’s it going to be?”
I dragged in a breath. It was like time slowed down in our little corner of the ER. So much depended on this moment.
My earlier thoughts about the peace of mind April would have if Craig wasn’t around to bug her came rushing back. But I also tried to envision a future in which I had to look Adi in the eye on a daily basis and live with the knowledge that I hadn’t done everything in my power to save her father.
I just didn’t know if I could live that way. Unfortunately, I also didn’t know if April could live with the constant threat of having him looming over every move she made.
The wild beeping continued while I stood there trying to decide what to do. Hunter waited for me to act with no judgment in his eyes or demeanor. He knew the possible implications of this decision, and he trusted me to make the call.
Whatever that call might end up being, I knew he would have my back.
The next thing we knew, the erratic beeping suddenly ceased and was replaced with one flat noise. For all intents and purposes, right in that