It was probably good that I was here in the emergency room wing, since I still hadn’t removed the glass from my leg. We could take care of that in due time. Right now, I needed to see Christie.

Both my wife and stepdaughter were seated on an exam bed with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They’d changed out of whatever clothes they’d been wearing and had on scrubs.

Before I could even greet her, Christie pointed to my leg.

“Pat,” she said with amazing calm, “there’s glass sticking out of you.”

“I know. I’ll be alright.”

“That’s seriously gross,” Tessa said. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

I turned to the side so she wouldn’t have to look at the glass.

“You need to get that taken care of,” Christie urged me.

“I will in a second. I just wanted to make sure you two are okay.”

They told me the story of what’d happened with Timothy Sabian and his father, who, in truth, really had been Assistant Director DeYoung.

It was hard to wrap my mind around, but all that would get sorted out eventually.

Christie was proud of her daughter for leaping into the car to save her, and Tessa was proud of her mom for shooting her way out of the sinking vehicle. I was proud of them both.

When they were done giving me the details, Christie asked Tessa if she could wait in the next room over for a few minutes. “I need to talk with Pat alone.”

“Yeah, okay.” Then Tessa said to me, “I’ll tell the doctors to bring in a bone saw.”

“I don’t think they’ll need to amputate, Raven.”

“Whatever.”

Once she was gone, Christie said, “She likes it when you call her that.”

“When I call her . . . ?”

“Raven.”

“Oh. Right.”

An awkward silence.

Christie asked me to have a seat, and I pulled up the rolling chair, positioning myself with my injured leg straightened out to keep the pressure off where it was hurting.

“You had something you needed to tell me?” I asked without even trying to hide how anxious I was feeling.

“Pat, remember when I visited the doctor last week?”

“Sure.” I felt a deep tremor of worry. “What is it?”

“What I have to say, it’s about the test results.”

“Go on.”

“They were positive.”

“What kind of tests, Christie? What does that mean? What’s going on?”

“I love you, Pat.”

Under these circumstances, those four words did not reassure me at all. “Christie, what tests? What did the doctor tell you?”

“I have breast cancer. It’s serious. It’s aggressive.” A pause, and then she added, “The prognosis. It isn’t good.”

I felt like I was caught on a dizzy, spinning midway ride and there was no place to get my footing, nothing solid to stand on or hold on to.