“THIS IS GOING to hurt,” Nico tells me before he grips my arm, pulls and effectively pops my shoulder back into place.
I cry out before gritting my teeth. It definitely feels better than what it did, but it still throbs painfully. Tenderly, my brother wraps a makeshift sling around my arm as I sit in stunned silence. We’re in a blacked-out SUV cruising down the highway at a high rate of speed, trees and houses blurring in my peripheral vision, on our way to the nearest hospital, according to Nico.
“We’re just going to get you checked out,” he had told me earlier.
But I know what’s really going to happen there. They’re going run a bunch of tests on me, both physically and mentally. They’re going to think I’m traumatized from being held captive. I saw the look on my brother’s face when I first got in the SUV. He thinks I’m broken, damaged psychologically.
Maybe I am.
I’m still trying to process everything that just happened.
I’m safe. My brother is here with me. I’m free.
But I don’t feel free. I feel like a thousand-pound weight is sitting on top of my chest, threatening to suffocate me at any given moment. I should be happy. I should be thankful. But I can’t feel any of those things; because every time I close my eyes, I see Mateo lying on the floor of his uncle’s dining room, bleeding and dying.
My eyes snap open, and a shuddering breath escapes my lungs as I slowly come back to reality. Nico’s brows furrow as he stares at me with a concerned look on his face.
“Is Mateo okay? Did they call an ambulance for him?” I ask, but he refuses to answer, just like the twenty times before when I asked the same exact questions.
“I’m glad you’re safe, Aria,” he says instead. “Everyone has been worried sick about you.”
I stare down at my knotted fingers, anxiety tightening my ribcage. “I missed everybody,” I confess. The only downside to being with Mateo was that I couldn’t see or speak to my family. Maybe someday we could have remedied that, but now I’ll never know how or if that would have even worked. “Where’s mom and dad?” I ask.
“They’re waiting at the airport with Selina. After we’re done at the hospital, we’ll all fly back home.”
Home.
I was supposed to be returning home with Mateo. Tears fill my eyes, and I angrily blink them away. This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to choose between my family and the man I love. My hands tremble as I glance over at my brother. He’s the spitting image of our father with dark hair and gray eyes. And they both share the same expressions when they’re upset or worried, like right now. “Nico, you have to understand that when I called you months ago, things were very different then. Everything changed. Mateo and I…” My voice trails off as I swallow hard past the lump forming in my throat.
Nico reaches over and places his hand over mine, squeezing it gently. “Hey, let’s not talk about what happened just yet. Okay?” he offers with a kind smile on his face. “I think it might be better for you to speak with a psychiatrist before anyone else.”
He’s been down this road before with his girlfriend. When he rescued Selina from human trafficking, she wasn’t in the right state of mind for a while. I’m sure he’s thinking I’m in the same boat, needing to talk to professionals first.
Instead of fighting him on it, I stay quiet for the rest of the ride to the hospital. He helps me out of the car. And when we enter through the emergency room entrance, we have to pass through an archway metal detector. When I walk through and it beeps, I stare at the security guard in surprise.
He doesn’t look impressed; however, sighing heavily before asking, “Do you have anything in your pockets, ma’am?”
Staring down at my sundress, I realize I have two tiny pockets in the front that I didn’t even know were there. “No,” I tell him before I reach into one of the pockets. And when my fingers touch the edge of something metal, I gasp. I pull out a coin and stare at it, recognizing it immediately. Mateo’s lucky coin. He must have slipped it into my pocket earlier right before I was taken away from him.
“What is that?” my brother questions, and I can hear the apprehension in his voice.
“Just a coin,” I lie.
“You have to put it in the basket, ma’am, and walk through again,” the guard instructs.
Reluctantly, I place the coin in the small, black, plastic bin and then stroll through the archway again. This time, the sensor doesn’t go off.
As soon as the security guard pushes the bin towards me, I snatch up the coin, holding on to it like a lifeline. It’s the only connection I have to Mateo, and it somehow makes me feel minutely better.
I’m led to a room shortly thereafter where I sit and wait by myself. Nico wanted to come with me, but I told him it’s probably better if he stayed in the waiting room. My emotions are all over the place, and I don’t need him seeing me in this current state that I’m in. My mind is completely obsessed with wondering if Mateo will survive his gunshot wounds. Every time I hear the police scanner going off at the nurses’ desk, I wonder if it will be a call about him. But I don’t hear anything about trauma or gunshot wounds; and eventually, what little hope I had of seeing him here dies inside of me.
Of course they wouldn’t take my captor to the same hospital. It’s probably protocol or some shit.
Sighing heavily, I open my palm and stare down at the coin. It’s scratched and worn but still beautiful. Carefully, I run my fingers over the edges. I know Mateo treasured this more than anything, treating it like a talisman; the very last connection he had with his father. And the fact that he gave it to me makes my chest hurt. He loves me. Even though he never uttered the words, I know he does. Just as much as I love him.
As I sit there waiting for the doctor, all the dark doubts begin to creep back into my mind.
What if Mateo doesn’t make it?
No. I shake that bad thought right out of my head. He’s going to make it. He will make it. He vowed to come find me, and I’m holding him to that promise. Squeezing the coin in my hand, the realization dawns on me as to why Mateo gave me his most treasured possession. It’s because he’s going to come for me as soon as he can.
While that should scare me, it doesn’t. It gives me hope and fills me with an overwhelming sense of peace.
I make a silent vow right then and there that I won’t let him go to prison because of me. If I can help his fate in any way whatsoever, I will do just that. And then I’ll figure out a way for us to be together. I refuse to give up on him, because I know he would never, ever give up on me.
