“Why are you so willing to help my man when he hurt the governor?” I wondered aloud.
The doctor’s eyes flashed. “I’m a professional. I work on everyone.”
That was totally a lie.
I made eye contact with my dad, who understood instantly. “Angel, can you run and fetch me a water or something?”
Angel sighed loudly. “Sure.”
That ‘sure’ was enough to have me laughing under my breath as he all but stomped from the room, knowing why he was sent away.
“Y’all are the ones that found the children, right?” he asked the moment that Angel had the door firmly shut behind him.
“Yes,” Lynn answered simply.
“My nephew was taken a year ago from my sister in the grocery parking lot. We’ve searched everywhere and haven’t been able to find him. Hired every single private detective that’s supposedly ‘the best’ with no luck.” He looked green for a second. “I’m really fucking pissed that the governor played a part in this. He may not be related to my nephew being stolen, but he may be. And to know that all of those children were locked up in cages with plans to ship them out of here… I’m fucking pissed. And I wanted to do what I could for the man that tried to stop the person responsible.”
Lynn sat forward, resting his hands on his knees. “How do you know that the governor is responsible?”
The doctor walked toward the door. “I’ve had feelings about people before that are always spot on. And the governor was always one of those men that made me feel like he was shady. The promises. The lies. The deceit. I read the news report put out by his campaign. And I don’t feel like it was genuine at all. His brother being in it? He was in it. No doubt about it.”
Without another word, the doctor left.
“If anything else, the suspicion is there,” Zach said the moment the door closed. “It won’t help Bruno, but I think that it’ll help get the governor what he deserves in the long run.”
“Agreed.”
But my thoughts were still on ‘it won’t help Bruno.’
• • •
Three weeks later
He had a brain bleed. It was very severe. We don’t know if he’ll make it. Or if he’ll have any cognitive deficits in his brain. When I say it was bad, I mean it was very bad. He’s lucky to even be alive right now. I’ve seen some with brain bleeds much less severe die right there in the field. That he made it to us, alive, is a signature of his strength but…
“You don’t have to wait for me.”
I looked at the man that had done something illegal, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be getting out of it. Knowing that, if he did what he did, he wouldn’t be able to tell them it was an accident, or it wasn’t him, or some excuse that wouldn’t have him going where he’s going. Yet he’d done it anyway.
He’d taken himself away from me.
I didn’t know whether I was extremely mad at him for doing what he’d done and leaving me behind, or proud of him for making sure that the man doing the ugly things to all those kids was exposed for the disgusting person he was.
“I’ll wait,” I told him.
I was mad. Not stupid.
Somehow, I would find a way out for him.
Somehow, some way, I would see him in the interim.
The last few weeks, with him in the hospital recovering from a brain bleed, had been the happiest of my life.
Though we all knew that it would end, I just hadn’t wanted it to.
Now he was being taken away in handcuffs, able to stand on his own two feet finally, and I felt my heart leaving right along with him.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and I physically ached with each and every step he took farther away from me.