Page 52 of Vicious Titan

33

Elliot

Sitting in the stiff chair, I look over to my mom. Machines are hooked up to every inch of her body. I haven’t taken my eyes off her as I wait for her to wake up. The doctor said she made it through surgery good, so that was an encouraging sign, but it will be touch and go for the next twenty-four hours. The rhythmic beep tells me her heart is still beating, that’s what I’d needed when I’d walked into the room. Now I need her to look at me and tell me she isn’t going anywhere. I want her to tell me she didn’t try to leave me the first time, not by her own doing.

“Here, I grabbed you some coffee.” My dad holds out a paper cup.

I don’t make a move to accept it because I only want to throw it in his face. He gives up, setting it on the cabinet next to her bed, and resumes his seat across the room. It took us hours to get to this point, just to be able to be in the same room together. The only thing that stopped me from going after him again was the officer saying he’d take me to jail, away from my mom, so I calmed down enough to stay with her. She didn’t leave me, I’m not leaving her.

An unfamiliar officer walks into the room, motioning to speak with my dad but I stand too. Stepping to the door, the officer gives us a strained look. “Heidi has been located. I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but she died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

“The baby?” I ask.

The officer shakes his head as he looks to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No.” My dad shakes his head, his hand covering his face.

I don’t feel any sympathy for him, I can only manage to feel remorse for the child that will never be born. “Are you sure it was self-inflicted?”

My dad’s head lifts up, his pained eyes looking to me.

“Yes. It happened while she was evading capture, as officers approached her.” He tells my father a few more things before leaving us in the room with my mom. The broken family he didn’t want.

“Why would you ask that?”

“Mom thought you tried to kill her. She wasn’t that far off, was she? You did this. All of it, without any concern for anyone but yourself.”

“I’m not perfect,” he says.

I can’t help the dark laugh that escapes me. “‘Not perfect.’ That’s a stretch.”

“I would never kill someone. I might be a lousy father, but I would never take someone’s life.”

“You already have.”

His face tightens and he walks out of the room. I pray he never comes back because he leaves more pain in his wake than I do. And that’s hard to beat.