Jack and Angie

Chapter 9 part 2


Jack started gasping for breath just as the ambulance and a couple of police cars rolled up. Angie refused to let Jack go as the EMT’s worked as she cried frantically. Bobby pulled her away as they transferred Jack from the cold ground and onto a stretcher. One paramedic tried to stop her from getting into the ambulance with Jack, but Bobby shouted at him, getting into the guys face, “This is his fiancée and the mother of his son! She’s going with you!” he turned to Angie and said soothingly, “We’ll be right behind you.”

Angie couldn’t stop the tears from falling as she got into the vehicle and sat down so that she could whisper in Jack’s ear as they kept working on him as the ambulance took off. She just kept telling him how much she loved him. She also told him about Sebastian. How much his son reminded her of him every day and how he loved Tom and Jerry cartoons and Sesame Street and Elmo. How he hated tomatoes, and loved music, just like his daddy, and how sorry she was that she didn’t tell him sooner.

Jacks heart stopped once on the way to the hospital and Angie screamed that she wanted to die too, but he came right back when they shocked him. One of the three paramedics finally noticed that she was only wearing Jack’s favorite black lacy bra and her jeans and flung his jacket over her shoulders asking her if she had been shot anywhere. She couldn’t blame him for asking. She was covered in Jack’s blood. She shook her head without even looking at the guy. She bent back down and whispered in Jack’s ear that he had to come back to spank her ass because she let the medic see her in her bra.

They arrived at the emergency entrance with a jolt and a squeal of tires. They immediately rushed Jack inside and the doctors went to work getting him stable enough for surgery. A nurse calmly asked her some questions like who she was and if Jack was taking any medications for anything and if he had any medical issues or allergies that they should know about. She answered all the woman’s questions without taking her eyes off of the love of her life as he fought for his.

They rushed Jack up to surgery, Angie by his side all the way. Another nurse in the surgical area brought the stricken young woman a cup of coffee and asked her if there was anyone she could call for her. She called Jerry’s cell and told them that Jack was being operated on and Jerry assured her that they were on their way to the hospital. She gave them the floor number and sat down to wait, never taking her eyes off the door that they had taken Jack through.

Bobby, Angel, Jerry and Sofie all rushed into the waiting room and started asking questions. She told them what she knew and they all sat down to wait for the doctor. Sofie sat on one side of her, holding her hand in comfort and support and Bobby sat on the other, telling her that Jack was going to be okay and that he had too much to live for now that he knew he had her and Sebastian here waiting for him.

It broke her calm shell when he said that and she started sobbing uncontrollably, “What if it’s not enough Bobby? What if I waited until it was too late to tell him?” she looked at him pleadingly with her eyes as she said in a choked whisper, “I don’t even know if he heard me when I told him Sebastian was his, that he had a son.”

Bobby drew her head down onto his shoulder and said, his own voice testifying to the tears he wanted to let go of, “He heard you Ang. You just have to have faith. That’s what Ma used to say.”

He held her until Camille and the girls arrived at the hospital with Sebastian. Angie took her baby into her arms and hugged him like she would never let go.

“Mommy?” Sebastian asked in his sweet little baby voice as he put a sticky hand on her cheek, “Why awe you cwying? Do you have a boo-boo?” He looked for signs of any band-aid’s, “Do you want me to kiss it and make it bettaw?”

She smiled at him as Bobby told him with a gentleness that she would never have known Bobby had in him, “Yeah little man. Your mommy has a boo-boo, but it’s in her heart because she is worried about your Uncle Cracker Jack. He got a boo-boo too and the doctor is trying to make it all better.”

“Unca Jack has a boo-boo? What did he do?” Sebastian asked as he climbed into Bobby’s lap, “Did he fall off his tricycle like I did when I had the boo-boo right here?” he held up an elbow to demonstrate. All the adults in the room smiled at him lovingly.

“Something like that little man.” Bobby had no clue how to explain a shoot-out to a three year old.

Seeing Bobby starting to flounder in the depths of maturity, Angie asked her son softly, “Sweetie, do you like Jack?”

Sebastian nodded his head and said enthusiastically, “Um-hmm. He made me booberry pancakes and watched Tom and Jewwy with me.” She shook her head as she wondered why he could say his r’s correctly when he said his Uncle Jerry’s name, but not when he said the name of one of his favorite cartoon characters, or anything else for that matter. “Bastian, do you remember asking me where your Daddy was?”

EVERYONE was paying attention now. Angie was sure that the nurses at the desk were even waiting with bated breath.

“Um-hmm.” Sebastian nodded. He suddenly turned back to Bobby and asked out of the blue, “You’re not my daddy awe you Unca Bobby?” he said with all the honesty of a child, “I like you, but you’re kinda scawy.”

“No little man, I’m not your daddy.” Bobby guffawed, “And you never have to be scared of me. I would never do anything to hurt you baby.”

“Oh, okay. Even though I pwayed with your cars and I bwoke one?” he tattled on himself.

“What cars little man?” he asked baffled.

“The ones in the room I was sweeping in at your house.” Sebastian said simply.

Bobby cringed as he realized what cars Sebastian was talking about. The models of the classic cars that Bobby had spent countless hours painstakingly glueing together when he was younger. Taking a deep breath so as to resist the impulse to either yell or cry, Bobby finally answered, “Even though you played with my cars and broke one.” Making a mental note to find out which one he broke as soon as Jack was okay and they got back to the house.

“Sweetie, Bobby isn’t your daddy. Jack is.” Angie told her son, ignoring Bobby’s dramatics.

Sebastian stared at her for a minute before asking, “Weally? My honestly-twue-weal daddy?” with so much hope and excitement in his voice that it made tears well up in the eyes of all the women there, and the men, even though they tried to cover it with macho toughness.

Angie nodded as she looked at the small face so much like Jack’s. Sebastian looked at the floor downcast for another minute before saying in a trace of hurt, “If daddy is my daddy, why didn’t he want me?”

Angie’s heart broke. Pulling Sebastian into a hug she choked out, “Aww, honey. That was mommy’s fault. See, mommy was silly and forgot to tell daddy that she had you in her tummy. He didn’t know he was your daddy.”

“Did you tell daddy? Does he know now?” Sebastian asked looking more cheerful.

Angie nodded as she said, “Yes. I told him just today, right before he got the boo-boo that the doctor is fixing.”

“Yay!” Sebastian cheered as he bounced up and down in Bobby’s lap, making Bobby grunt and flinch as his nephew seemed to try to put an end to any chance that Bobby might become a daddy himself. He picked Sebastian up and deposited him in his mother’s lap as he tried to discretely adjust himself into a more comfortable position.

Camille came over and asked Sebastian if he wanted to go with her and the girls to get a Coke and the little boy ran out of the room being chased by his giggling cousins. Camille gave Angie a warm smile as she trailed after the kids and Jerry took a seat next to Bobby and told him in amusement, “Yeah, you gotta watch that when having a kid in your lap. They always try to use your crotch for a trampoline.”

Bobby winced in mock pain as he covered himself protectively, “Yeah, well thanks for telling me now that NO ONE is gonna be bouncing around down there for a while Jer!” It proved to lighten the mood considerably, but when the doctor came out of the operating room, everyone was tense and anxious again as they tried to read the news in the doctor’s expression. He came over to them and didn’t waste words for the people in front of him, “He made it through the surgery and we removed all the bullets. We removed a total of five. One from his shoulder, which collapsed a lung and caused him to bleed from his mouth and four from his legs. Most of those were in the backs of his thighs, and luckily, none hit any major arteries or veins.” He smile tiredly as he added, “He will be fine.”

They all breathed a collective sigh of relief and Angie stared crying again. She would have collapsed back into the chair behind her if it wasn’t for Bobby holding her up with an arm around her waist. He pushed her face into his chest and rubbed her back as he asked, “Can we see him doc?”

The doctor shook his head as he told them, “Your brother lost a lot of blood and right now, he is unconscious. We have every reason to believe that once we get his blood levels back up, he will wake up. He is in what we call a low-grade coma. It’s more like a really deep sleep than an actual coma, so there is no need to worry.” He reassured them quickly at their horrified faces, “But combined with the painkillers and the anesthesia, it might take him a day or two to wake up. You can see him for a few minutes, but then I suggest that you all get some rest and come back in the morning.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Angie stated stubbornly. The doctor looked like he was going to argue with her, but Jerry took him aside and had a whispered conversation with him for a few minutes, no doubt explaining that she was Jack’s fiancée and they had been separated from each other until very recently. The doctor looked at her and gave her a nod before turning to tell one of the nurses to show them to Jack’s room.