Chapter 37

Patrick practically leapt out of Tazer’s truck before it even came to a complete stop. Even so, Tazer was hot on his heels as he ran into the hospital. He’d called Quentin Monahan back on his way here to find out what room Gabrielle was in. Now he was weaving through people to the elevator that would take him to her floor.

He and Tazer both stood impatiently as the elevator seemed to stop on every floor on the way up. When they’d finally reached the floor they both ran out and headed straight to where Patrick could see Quentin standing outside of a room. Quentin glanced up at the commotion in surprise only to hold his hands out to slow the two of them as they approached.

“Where is she?” Patrick asked in a panic.

“In the room behind me. Whoa, hold on. We need to talk,” Quentin said, holding out a hand to stop him from rushing in.

“Let me just see her!” he insisted, desperate to know if Gabrielle was okay or not.

“Sharpie,” he heard Tazer whisper as he placed a hand on his shoulder. Patrick let out a deep breath but then nodded.

“What was Gabrielle doing at her apartment?” Quentin asked. Patrick’s eyes widened in surprise. Her apartment? Gabrielle wouldn’t have gone to her apartment.

“What do you mean? She was there?” he asked. Quentin narrowed his eyes a little and nodded.

“You didn’t know that she’d go back there?” Patrick shook his head.

“We got into a fight. She moved out of my place a week ago. She told me she was staying with a friend. I have no idea why she’d go back there. She knew it was the one place Vince could get to her.”

“You two had a fight?” Quentin questioned. Patrick suddenly understood what was going on and held his hands up in self defense.

“Hey, am I a suspect here? I was out all night. I was with Tazer here,” he said pointing over at him. Quentin sighed.

“No, you’re not. These are just standard questions I have to ask. We talked to the neighbors. Apparently Gabrielle had been living in her apartment for the past week,” Quentin told him.

Patrick felt sick. She’d lied to him. She’d lied right to his face about where she’d be staying when she walked out. It was part of the reason he’d let her go, because he thought she’d be safe. To think that she’d rather be alone in her apartment while Vince was out there and could easily get to her instead of be with him hurt more than anything else had ever hurt him before.

“A neighbor heard crashing coming from Gabrielle’s apartment and knowing what had happened before called the police. Whoever was there was gone when they arrived, but another neighbor had seen a man with a ponytail and facial hair that he’d never seen in the building before walking down the hallway just before police arrived,” Quentin continued.

“I can’t believe she’d do that. I don’t understand. Is she going to be okay?”

That moment was just like a bad TV show. It was like how just as someone happens to mentions something, something related to that statement miraculously seems to happen at that exact moment. Suddenly there was a sort of alarm going off from the room Gabrielle was in and nurses and doctors began to rush in, pushing them all out of the way. Patrick watched from the window as Gabrielle was surrounded by them.

He couldn’t see what they were doing to her. He had no idea what was even wrong. All he knew was that Gabrielle was in the hospital and something was happening to her right now. He watched in horror as the doctors yanked the bed away from the wall and pushed it out of the room. He watched helplessly as they pushed her unconscious body past him and down the hall towards the OR.

“No. Gabby, no,” he managed to choke out, covering his face with his hands.

Tazer helped him to a chair in a waiting area where he sat and stared at the floor, rocking, shaking, and wringing his hands nervously. He couldn’t lose her. If anything, this had shown him that he needed her in his life. He didn’t know how he’d go on if she was gone. He waited in silence, even as a few of his other teammates showed up to wait with him.

A doctor walked out and immediately made his way over to Quentin, who had stuck around as well. Patrick figured there’d at least be one cop here at all times to look out for Vince in case he’d decided he hadn’t had enough. It didn’t occur to him until this moment that maybe they were waiting to see if they were going to charge Vince when they caught him with battery or murder.

“What’s going on? Is she okay?” Patrick questioned, making his way over to the doctor and Quentin.

“She’s stable. Her brain was swelling and she wasn’t getting enough oxygen so we had to remove a piece of her skull and relieve the pressure. It seems to be under control. We’ll have to wait and see on the rest until she wakes up,” the surgeon explained. It all sounded horrible to Patrick, but there had been two words he hadn’t missed.

“She will wake up?” he questioned.

“We can’t know for sure. There was a lot of trauma to the head, but she seems to be a fighter. I’m optimistic that she will, but the longer she’s unconscious the less likely it will become.” Patrick nodded and let out a deep breath.

“Can I see her?” he asked.

The surgeon led him and the group of his teammates who were here with him to another room. They were informed only one person was allowed inside at a time, but that wasn’t an issue. Only Patrick was going to go in, the rest of the guys were just there as support. He was told what to expect to see when he went in, but it didn’t take any of the shock away.

Gabrielle was lying there with a bandage wrapped all the way around her head. Her face was swollen and all different shades of black, red, and purple. There were stitches in her left eyebrow and cheek, and her lip was split. If they hadn’t told him it was Gabby, he might have had a difficult time recognizing her. He sat down in the chair next to her and grabbed her hand.

“Gabby, it’s Patrick. I’m here, Babe. I’m going to be right here until you wake up. I don’t care what happened with us a week ago. I just need you to wake up. I need to see those beautiful eyes again. Do me that one favor and please wake up soon,” he begged. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he talked to her anyway.

“Excuse me, Mr. Sharp?” a woman’s voice called to him from the door. He turned to see a nurse standing there motioning for him to follow her into the hallway. He gave Gabrielle’s hand a kiss before doing just that. “There is no contact information for Miss Tunney and I was wondering if you knew about any family we should inform.”

“No. There’s no family. I mean, she has them, but they don’t speak and haven’t in 10 years.” The nurse nodded and made a note. Patrick suddenly remembered something then. “Wait, there is someone. Olivia. She took Gabrielle in when her family kicked her out. She’s like a mother to her. I have her number.”

Patrick pulled the number up on his phone and gave it to the nurse to copy down. Once she had he went back into Gabrielle’s room to wait. He wasn’t going to leave this room again until she woke up. It didn’t matter how long it took, he wasn’t leaving, because he just knew that eventually Gabrielle was going to wake up.










I could faintly make out a beeping sound that seemed to get louder each beep. I couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be. Then the foggy feeling struck me. It was a strange feeling, one I couldn’t figure out either. The throbbing came last. It wasn’t necessarily painful, just unpleasant, and it seemed to me that it might hurt if I didn’t feel like I was so out of it.

I struggled to figure out why the hell I felt like this and what the hell was beeping as I began to open my eyes. My first instinct was to close them again as soon as the light hit them, but I had to figure out what was going on. I forced my eyes to open, batting my eyelids a few times to try to help the process.

“Gabby?” I heard a voice say. I felt someone squeeze my hand and I turned my head slightly to see who was there. The pain that shot through me at the movement told me what a bad idea that had been.

“Patrick?” I asked, the voice suddenly recognizable.

“Oh, god, you’re okay.” Okay was relative at this point in time, I thought.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” I asked, his face coming into view.

“You’re in the hospital,” he told me.

Before I had a chance to ask him what had happened there was a flurry of movement and I saw more people enter the room. Patrick backed away as the doctor and nurse approached me. I was asked a few questions about how I felt and I answered them the best I could. Finally I had my unspoken question answered.

“You were attacked last night,” Patrick told me as I looked up at him. I could see Quentin standing beside him.

“I was what?” Someone had attacked me?

“Do you remember anything?” Quentin asked. I closed my eyes and tried to think, to remember. My mind drew a blank and I opened my eyes to tell them.

“No, I don’t…..” Suddenly I had a flash of memory. “Oh, Jesus, it was Vince.”

“Are you sure?” Quentin asked. Was I sure? Was what I was remembering from last night or from the time he’d attacked me before?

“Yeah, I think so.” I pictured Vince in my mind and tried to figure it out. That’s when I realized I was picturing Vince with a ponytail and facial hair, neither of which he had when he’d first attacked me. “Yes, it was Vince.”

“Can you tell me what happened? Anything you remember?” Quentin prodded.

I closed my eyes again and struggled to remember what had actually happened. I told him what I could remember, and some of his questions prodded new pieces to pop into my mind. I watched as Patrick’s face twisted into shock and anger as I talked. He looked ready to kill somebody.

After I finished telling Quentin all that I could remember I began to feel tired. I knew from my previous experiences in the hospital that it was probably from the drugs. Quentin left the room and Patrick sat down in a chair next to the bed. I looked over at him and our eyes connected. I could see the worry in them.

“You’re here,” I finally managed to choke out, tears filling my eyes.

“Of course I am. I couldn’t be anywhere else right now,” he told me.

I did my best to smile over at him as he gave my hand a squeeze. I wanted to stay awake, to talk to him, but my body had other ideas. The last thing I remembered thinking was how happy I was that he was there by my side.