Catherine Coulter - Blindside

She was breathing light shallow breaths, obviously hurting even though it was just a graze. Jesus, a bullet had gone through her. He just couldn’t take it in. And she hadn’t said a word.

Katie appreciated that Miles was really careful when he fastened the seat belt.

“Hang in there, Katie, the hospital’s only about ten minutes away.” It was hard not to floor the accelerator, but he didn’t want her flying forward.

At a red light, he smacked his hands on the steering wheel. She saw the pulse pounding in his neck. He was angry, very understandable. “Okay, I can’t stand it any longer. Give me one good reason, Katie, just one good reason why you didn’t tell me.” His voice was low and perfectly cold, not a bit of inflection. She wondered if he ever yelled.

She felt a sharp stab of pain that held her quiet until it eased.

“Well, are you going to say anything?” Now, she thought, that was close to a yell. She nearly smiled, but couldn’t.

She got hold of herself and said, “The children. I just couldn’t let Sam and Keely see that I’d been shot. They’ve been through so much, particularly Sam, I just couldn’t do that to them. If I’d been shot bad, Miles, I would have hollered, but it’s just not that bad. I figured it could wait until we took care of the kids. I know it was unfair of me to spring this on you.”

“Yeah, right, real unfair.”

Sarcasm was good, she supposed. She said, “I went to the women’s room in the park, tore off some of my sweatshirt, pulled down my jeans and wrapped it tight around my hip. Really, it looked to me like a flesh wound, the bullet went right through me. I’m not going to die, Miles.”

“You’d better not or I’ll really be pissed. So would Sam. So would Keely.”

“I don’t want them to know about this.”

He gunned the Mercedes into the hospital parking lot, and swerved into the circular turnabout in front of the emergency room, figuring they’d get instant attention, and so they did.

He held her hand when the nurse pulled down her jeans and untied the strips of sweatshirt she’d wrapped around herself. The piece of sweatshirt that was directly over the wound was soaked with blood. She didn’t touch it. Miles was ready to yell when Dr. Pierce came barreling into the cubicle in the next instant, out of breath. “Hey, I hear we got a gunshot wound,” he said, and looked down at Katie’s hip. “Would you look at that. I heard about the shooting, Mr. Kettering, but they said it had to do with the FBI. They didn’t say anyone was injured. I don’t understand why she didn’t see a doctor right away.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Dr. Pierce,” Katie said. “Please, just clean me up.”

“This is going to hurt a bit, Mrs. Kettering.” He managed to get the rest of the sweatshirt off the wound, but of course it had stuck and Katie almost yelled at the pain.

But she hung in there, squeezing Miles’s hand really hard when the nurse used alcohol to clean off all the dried blood.

“The bullet appears to have gone through the fleshy part of the side of your hip, Mrs. Kettering. You two know, of course, that I’ll have to report this.”

“Yes, of course,” Miles said. “You wondered why we didn’t come to the ER immediately. Well, my wife didn’t want our children to know she’d been shot and that’s why we’re here now.”

“Not very bright of you, Mrs. Kettering.”

“Yeah, yeah, I just bet you’d choose to let your kids see you dripping blood if you had a choice.”

Dr. Pierce paused a moment, then slowly nodded. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“A sheriff. I know when a wound is bad and when it can wait awhile. Nothing to hit here in my hip except fat, and that always grows back without a problem.”

Miles said, “Call Detective Raven at DC Metro. He’ll tell you all about it. I’ll bet he’ll also want to smack my wife around a bit.”

“Okay. Mrs. Kettering, I can see this hurts. We’re going to start an IV, give you some morphine. You’ll want to go to sleep on the examination table in just a minute or two. Then I can clean up this wound and stitch you together. I don’t think you’ll be needing any X rays. Hold on to your husband’s hand real tight. That’s it.”

She sucked in her breath, and it was done. He left her for a moment; undoubtedly he was going to call Detective Raven.

An hour later, Katie was walking slowly out of the hospital, supported by Miles.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said, more for himself than for her, Katie thought, as he very carefully fastened her seat belt. “The doctor said you were lucky. Now, don’t move.”

“I won’t.”

When he was driving out of the parking lot, Katie said, “Thank you, Miles. I know this was a pain in your butt as well as mine, but, well, thank you.”

“You’re my damned wife. You think I’d dab some iodine on your hip and go to sleep?”

He was angry again. If she hadn’t felt so dopey, her brain cotton, she would have laughed. “Where are we going?”

He turned to face her for a moment. “To the all-night pharmacy to get the Vicodin prescription filled. You’re to take a couple every four hours for a day or so.”

“I really feel fine.”

“That’s the morphine talking.”

“I understand how you would get really upset what with all that dried blood on my hip.”

“Don’t even start with me, Katie. I am so pissed at you-”

“That’s all right, just so long as we keep this from the children.”

Miles sucked in a deep breath. “Tomorrow, after I’m sure you’re up to it, we’re going to discuss who might have shot at us. I’ll bet that’s what Detective Raven is wondering. Count on him coming by tomorrow, along with half the FBI.”

“Bring them on, Miles.” She closed her eyes and drifted off. She wasn’t aware that he’d stopped at the all-night pharmacy. She hadn’t awakened when he’d undressed her and tucked her into bed.

She wasn’t aware that he held her hand until he woke her up at two o’clock and fed her two Vicodin. He held her hand the rest of that long night.

The next morning, the lovely morphine was a hazy memory, the pain in her hip all too present. When Miles held out two big pills to her, she took them without a fuss.

“Oh, no,” she said, “where are the kids?”

“I’ll take care of the kids. It’s still early. When they’re up, I’ll tell them that you’ve got a bit of a stomach bug and to leave you alone until you decide to appear. Okay?”

“I can tell you’re a parent. You’re good. Thank you, Miles.”

He paced the room in front of her, then turned back to face her. “Katie, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. I think you did the right thing. We don’t know how Sam and Keely are going to be this morning, how yesterday’s trauma will affect them, but I do know that if they knew you’d been shot, it would be much worse. So thank you. Now see that you heal while I think about how I’m going to keep the police away from you as long as possible.”

“I’ll be just fine. Say early afternoon?”

She fell asleep ten minutes later with just a pinch of pain in her hip.

Miles stood a moment in the doorway, then looked down at his watch. It was only six-thirty in the morning. The kids would be up any time now. He hated lying to them, but not this time. He hoped they could carry it off. He didn’t want to see any more blank pain in Sam’s eyes for as long as he lived.

A t eight o’clock that evening, only three hours after leaving Detective Raven down at Metro Headquarters in the Daley building, Savich came to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching Sherlock wipe spaghetti sauce off Sean’s mouth. Sean quickly replaced it with the next spoonful. What with all the excitement, they’d gotten home very late, and Sean was hungry, tired, and really hyped up. As for Sean’s parents, they both hoped some of Savich’s spaghetti would put him out. Savich said to Sherlock, not taking his eyes off his boy, “Are you ready for something you’re not going to believe?”