Suddenly Royal

Chapter 11:

I WAS SO scared of what they would say that I stood there trembling. Grandma Becky wasted no time though in wrapping me in the biggest hug she could. "Oh Allie, I'm so sorry..." she told me.

I cried for a long while in her arms before looking up at Grandpa fearfully of what he would say. I needn't worry though, because he just wrapped me in a big hug too and picked me up off of the floor. Unlike my mom, Grandma Becky, and myself, he wasn't a short guy. He was nearly six and a half feet tall, and picked me up like a little kid.

When everyone had kind of settled down Grandma Becky asked, "What do you know?"

"She was shot twice, they've got both bullets out, but they're still working on some internal bleeding," my other grandmother said.

"Oh my God..." Grandma Becky dissolved into her own tears then.

At some point Ellie had dragged me to the bathroom and helped me clean off my face and go to the bathroom, before I came back and rejoined everyone. I had a grandmother on either side of me and alternated between tears and shaking for what seemed forever before a doctor came in.

"Nelson family?"

"This is her daughter, we're her parents," My grandfather said. "How is she?"

"I'm glad to say she is doing okay. We've got her stitched up at this point and stabilized. The wounds were about as bad as they could be without killing her, so she's going to have a long road to heal – but the good news is she should make a full recovery."

"Can I see her?" I asked him.

"I'm sorry, but you have to be at least thirteen to go into the ICU?"

"I'm fifteen," I told him. "Can I see her now?"

He looked startled, "You can't be fifteen...?"

"She is," both grandmothers said in stereo behind me.

"Well then, give us about an hour and we'll have her setup in the ICU. You can have thirty minutes, but we need to let her rest more than anything. She probably won't wake up until at least tomorrow morning."

"Thank you," I told him.

I was exhausted then, and so glad to hear that Mom would make it, that I ended up curling up on Grandpa's large lap and falling asleep.

"ALLIE? THEY'RE READY for you to see your mom," I heard.

I sat up and realized I wasn't just having a nightmare before – I was living one.

My three grandparents and Ellie walked up to the ICU together. When we entered the ICU wing a nurse stopped us. "Who are you here to see?"

"My mom, Karen Nelson," I told her.

"Oh sweetie, I'm sorry, but we can't let anyone under thirteen in with her..."

"I'm fifteen," I told her with a sigh. I looked at Ellie, "The one time I want to have people actually believe my age?"

"She's really fifteen?" she looked at my grandparents.

"Yes, she is," Grandpa said.

"In that case I'll let her see her for up to thirty minutes. You all can have ten minutes each afterwards, then we're going to close down visitors until tomorrow."

"Thank you," I told her.

She walked me to a room and I looked at Mom through a glass window and felt the tears begin streaming again. Mom was hooked up to a ton of IVs and a ventilator. As she led me inside, she told me, "The ventilator is just a precaution at this point. The doctor expects to take her off of it tomorrow morning."