“Sam?” Dylan spoke his name again.
Sam let the gun dangle in his hand at his side. “Tell me, Dylan. Just tell me the truth.”
Dylan stared at him. “It’s over this time, Sam. It’s really over. I’m with Mick.”
Sad, Sam swallowed heavily. “Do you love him?”
Mick watched. He kept his eyes on Sam who still had his finger on the trigger. How long Mick had waited to hear Dylan admit her love, not only to him, but to Sam and anyone else who asked. Never would she own up to it. Of all the times he wished she would come clean about her feelings, he had to admit, the current moment—enraged spouse with a shotgun—was not one of them.
“Yes,” Dylan replied.
Mick cringed.
Sam nodded. “I see.” He tossed the strap of the shotgun over his shoulder. “I’m sorry I did this. I’m… I’m really sorry.” He stepped back.
“Sam.” Dylan reached to him.
“No.” With partially closed eyes, Sam shook his head. “I’m going home. I’m sorry.” He looked at Mick then Dylan, and finally turned and walked away.
Dylan let out a soft ‘whew’ of relief then noticed Mick rushing to the phone. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the station for backup. He’s armed. I’m grabbing his ass before he reaches the end of the street.”
“Can you call the boys first?” Dylan asked. “Dustin seemed a bit upset.”
“Dylan!” Mick snapped. “You are failing to see the seriousness of this—”
“Dylan!” Sam was calling her name from outside.
Dylan, curious, headed to the window. She parted the curtain and peered out. “Oh, shit.”
Sam stood in the front lawn, shotgun aimed under his chin. He looked at her. “I love you.”
Bang.
The phone dropped from Mick’s hand, and in the midst of Dylan’s scream, he flew out of his bedroom and from his house.
Mick paused slightly after the screen door slammed and his foot thumped onto the porch. He hesitated when he saw Sam’s body lying in the front yard. Mick pulled his shirt off as he lunged off the porch; he had to get to him, because clearly, despite what Sam had done, he was not dead.
His throat was tight with emotion and his voice husky when Mick called out as he reached Sam. “Dylan! Call emergency services! Hurry!” Mick dropped into the damp grass saturated with Sam’s blood. He sighed, his hand still holding the shirt, “Oh, Sam…”
Sam was alive, his eyes wide open and slightly rolled back. His arms were extended, rigid. His entire body spasmed.
Mick slipped his arms under Sam’s body, lifting him up in order to do his best to stop the bleeding. Though he pressed the shirt against Sam, he knew it was useless. Mick was stopping nothing. He was merely holding back the section of face and side of Sam’s head that was still attached by only a fragment of skin.
“Goddamn it, Sam, what did you do?” he asked with passion. “Why’d ya’ go and do this?” Mick stayed focused on Sam, hearing Dylan faintly as she cried hysterically behind him. She sounded far off, as if in a tunnel, but she was close, Mick knew. His jaw tensed and his teeth ground together as he held back a combination of feelings that all fought to surface. Anger, sadness, confusion.
Sam’s eyes shifted, connected with Mick’s. Huffs, short gasps of labored breath emanated from him. His lips parted, and he stuttered barely-heard words. “Dust… Dust…”
“Dustin?” Mick asked.
“Love… love…”
“I’ll tell him.” Mick swallowed emotionally. “I’ll… I’ll tell him, Sam.”
Sam’s eyes closed.
Mick held him tighter, closing his own eyes when he heard the sirens of the approaching ambulance.
Dylan watched through the small window as they worked on Sam. The small thirty-bed clinic was not only ill-equipped to handle Sam’s injuries, but Dylan knew they were ill-experienced as well. She folded her arms tighter against her blood-covered body as her mind said silent, strong prayers, wanting desperately to turn her eyes from the awful sight but unable to pull herself from it. How long did those few minutes seem? How many times since they dropped Sam onto that emergency room cart did she wish Mick, who stood right behind her, would pull her away from looking at the tragedy she knew that she had caused?
“BP sixty over forty.” Alice, the attending ER nurse, looked at the monitor then back to the IV she was inserting.
Dr. Evans let out a short frustrated breath. He, too, looked at the monitor, heard it as he reached over Sam’s heavily bandaged head to gently and quickly reach into his mouth. “Hold on, Sam. Hold on. He’s tightening up,” Dr. Evans spoke as he held a tube. “I can’t intubate him. Damn it!”
“Forty over twenty. Pulse thirty.”
“I know.” Dr. Evans tried diligently, his eyes moving rapidly from the monitor, to Sam, to the tube. His finger forced open Sam’s mouth as he struggled to insert the breathing tube. “Come on, Sam. Let me in.”
“Dropping fast.”
“I know!” he said frustrated.
“We’re losing him, Doctor.”
“Damn it,” he snapped, “I know.” He exhaled loudly as the tube slipped through. “I’m in.”
Flatline.
The beeping of the heart monitor froze them both as it rang out in the room.
Alice moved quickly, pulling the crash cart forward. She rushed it to Dr. Evans, and yanked forth a tray. “Twenty milligrams epinephrine?” she asked.
Dr. Evans lifted his trembling hands.
“Doctor?” she questioned.
Dr. Evans peered over his shoulder. He looked at Dylan on the other side of the window, then back down at Sam, his open eyes, head bandaged and bloodied. With a long, slow blink and a shake of his head, Dr. Evans reached up and shut off the screaming monitor. Silence filled the room.
“Doctor?” Alice whispered curiously.
“Time it.” Stepping back, Dr. Evans looked back at Dylan and watched sadly as her head dropped forward and her hand slid down the glass leaving a bloody trail of defeat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lodi, Ohio
August 27th
Scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes. Basically anything that could be reheated without being ruined was what Mick sought. “And just toss them in separate containers.” Mick said to Cook, who stood behind the counter at Jean’s Diner in the extremely early hours of the day. “You know, eggs in one, so on. I just wanna toss it on the table.”
“Got it.” Cook nodded and said he’d get right on it, despite the fact that he was short a waitress.
“Thanks.”
Tired. Mick was tired and he lowered himself down to the stool at the counter. He looked up with a sad smile when Belinda set a cup of coffee in front of him before she darted off to her customers. Mick pulled it forward and sipped. Setting down the cup, he rubbed the corners of his eyes. And in closing them to do so, all he saw was Sam.
Mick thought it was a nightmare seeing what Sam did to himself, watching him die. But it was nothing compared to the nightmare of facing Sam’s three boys and telling them their father was gone.
Mick still felt it in his stomach, a malignant pain that gnawed at him. The night didn’t get better. Not one bit. There were tears, but not a lot; they would come in profusion when the shock wore off. The abundance of hurt in the Hughes’ home this morning was only a scratch on the surface of things to come.
Mick was all too aware of what would occur. He had been there. The look on Dylan’s face and the quiet pain she expressed, Mick had seen before on his own mother. He remembered all too well the feelings of denial and disbelief when he was a child and his own father walked out the door, never to return. Not that Mick’s father deliberately took his own life, but in a way, he did.