by: Kristy Duke
A heavy and thick silence continues to linger above us as the FBI agent quietly follow’s Cooter’s instructions as he drives us to the local hospital where the ambulance had taken my nephews several minutes ago. Sighing heavily, I slowly glance away from my closed backseat passenger window to look over at my niece who rests her head against the door window, her red and swollen eyes stare blankly down at her feet below her. Her eyes red and swollen from the tears she has cried in fear and in horror of what she had just lived through, of all that she had seen, and tears for her cousin who rests in between life and death; struggling for his life. Fighting back tears of my own for my youngest nephew, I slowly reach over to place a caring hand upon her bare shoulder and she slowly looks up at me and the look of sadness and horror that remains frozen across her pretty face sends more sadness rippling through me. “It’ll be OK, Daisy,” I try to comfort her, hoping that I’m right, “Bo’s tough and stubborn. He’ll be OK.”
She gives me a questionable look before she blinks back more tears and nods at me before she unbuckles her seatbelt to scoot over to the middle seat. She refastens herself as she leans her head upon my shoulder and I briefly bend down to kiss her on top of her head, smelling her shampoo and sweat, before sitting back up. “I hope so,” she states as she hugs onto my arm.
I glance up at the front seat as Cooter gives the agent another instruction and the agent nods before he flips on his blinker before he turns left. I glance up as the old hospital quickly comes into sight to send my memory rewinding through the past of all the times I had rushed here; either to visit Bo or to rush Bo into the hospital room. Luke and Daisy has been here and in the ER a time or two due to an accident or a fight, but Bo had been in and out of here throughout his first few years of his life due to his asthma. As he had aged, his lungs had gotten stronger, but even so, throughout his childhood and into being an adult, he had been rushed to the ER due to an attack several times. Just not as often as he had been throughout the first few years of his life. And also like Luke and Daisy, he had a time or two been rushed to the ER from an accident or from a fight.
But looking up at the agent who is driving us, my flashback vividly falls upon a year and a half ago when Bo and Luke had been kidnapped, Luke had been shot while Bo was forced to help the gang rob and things the gang wanted in order to keep Luke alive. Of the horror and fear that they both had lived through and the several days they both had been kept in the hospital after they were rescued from their captors. Luke had kept it mainly to himself, seeming to put it behind him, while Bo clammed up and had been too afraid to talk about it at first. Of the harsh nightmares that had kept him up at night for weeks after being released of the hospital. Nightmares that he still yells himself awake from on occasion yet. Now to be added onto by this.
Continue reading →
