could live again.
But then I gave myself a mental bitch slap. As much as threatening to kill someone was fairly common, I didn’t think many people meant it seriously. If he’d died, sure, I wouldn’t have killed him, but feeling relieved that he might not walk out of the hospital felt like very much the same thing.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same thing, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling an intense sense of guilt about it. Moving off to the side to take a minute to breathe, I shoved my fingers into my hair and covered my eyes with my palms.
Adi and I had walked out shortly after the crash cart had arrived. By a stroke of pure luck, Katie had been finishing up a meeting with a photographer nearby, so she’d been able to get here within minutes of my text.
I didn’t know what had happened after we’d left obviously, but there was every possibility he hadn’t made it. Right now, my ex-husband and the father of my child could be lying lifeless inside my workplace.
Now there’s a lovely thought.
What would I tell Adi if that was true? How would I explain to her what had happened? Would I ever be able to go inside again without replaying the events of this day?
I didn’t have the answers to any of my questions. Least of which what I would do if he had made it. The court date was still looming, and so were all the worries about it.
Would Craig try to put a spin on his near-death experience? Would he try to use it as a way to win sympathy from a judge or to mitigate his past behavior?
The what-ifs were awful, but at least some of the answers were waiting for me just a few yards away. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready to face the truth of whichever way Chris’s attempts at saving his life had gone.
Then there was the fact that I’d all but asked him not to save Craig’s life. It had been a spur of the moment comment that had just slipped out of my damn filterless mouth—an errant thought that should never have wormed its way past my tongue.
Chris and I were still settling into a relationship. It was entirely possible that he would now think I was a murderous witch while he’d taken an oath to preserve human life at all costs. We might not have put a label on this thing between us, but somewhere along the line, it had gotten a lot more serious than I’d initially planned for. Losing him now would suck balls.
But if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that the only way to the other side was to push through. Which meant it was time to buck up and start making my way to whatever was waiting for me just inside those doors.
Tipping my head back toward the hazy sunlight of the late afternoon, I let it wash over my face while I tried to get my racing thoughts under control. Horns honked, people milled around, and in the office buildings all around me, people were going about their normal daily lives. None of them even had any clue of the moral and emotional dilemma I was having, nor would they care.
Sad, but true.
I filled my lungs with smoggy, thick air several times before I finally plucked up the courage to do what needed to be done. Tucking my hair behind my ears, I marched past several co-workers and couldn’t find the strength to give any of them much more than a forced smile.
Chris stood at the nurses’ station filling out paperwork, but he looked up as soon as I started down the corridor toward him. The apprehension in his expression and the grim set of his jaw weren’t promising, but I’d made it this far.
Either way, I was about to find out several things that would change the course of my life. We locked eyes as I walked up to him and stopped only about a foot away. The hand that wasn’t holding the pen shifted at his side like he’d wanted to reach for me, but he stuck it into the pocket of his coat instead.
“What happened?” I asked, glancing toward the empty bay where Craig’s gurney had been earlier.
The muscles in his throat worked and I couldn’t quite decipher the look that came into his eyes. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, a clear indication