Family Comes First

Chapter 58: The End

 A bright light burned my eyes. I opened my mouth and took in a raspy breath. A vile taste filled my mouth. Each breath was tiring. Pain was throbbing in my thigh and my hand.

"Miss Miller?"

I turned my head and pain rushed up the side of my temple. A woman was sitting in the chair next to me. She was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Her dark hair was twisted into a bun. Her vest said Police across it.

Miss Miller.

No one had called me that in a long time.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. "My name is Officer Hernandez. Do you remember what happened to you?"

"Where am I?" I asked.

"You're in the hospital," she said. "We got an anonymous call from a gas station that you were hurt."

"Where's Hunter?" I asked. I tried to lift my head off of the pillow. "Where is my baby?"

"He's okay," she said. "When did you have him? We could not find a birth certificate. Were you forced to have him with your kidnapper?"

"My kidnapper?"

"Do you know their names?"

I raised my good hand and touched the oxygen tube that was hooked around my nose.

"You were reported as a missing person, Juliet," Andrea said.

Somebody noticed that I was gone. Lina must have worried when I never came home or Donovan worried when I did not come into work.

"I wasn't kidnapped," I said.

"There was footage outside of the strip club," she said. "We saw a middle-aged man drag you into a truck."

"I wasn't kidnapped," I repeated.

"What happened to you then?"

A nurse walked into the room. He was short and had on a pair of dark blue scrubs. He held a clipboard in his hands and had a pen tucked behind his ear.

"Juliet Miller," he said. "You have gone through quite a lot. Dr. Peters wants me to explain what happened to you. Do you remember what happened to you?"

"A bit," I said.

"You sustained two stab wounds," he said. "There's minor tendon damage in your leg and hand. We were able to repair it during surgery. The rehab process will be long, but we believe that you will be back to normal."

"The girl you were with is going to be okay too," Hernandez said.

"Carrie?" I asked.

"Yes, Carrie Bishop," she said. "She told me that she was kidnapped by those men. Are you saying that is not what happened to you?"

I shook my head. Hernandez let out a deep breath. She shook her head.

"Thank you, nurse," Andrea said.

"My name is Kenny," he said. "Just ring the call bell if you need anything. Trust me, bed rest is probably not so bad right now. The girl you were with told the police everything that happened to her and it somehow got leaked. You two are all over the news. It's a media frenzy out there."

All over the news? They must be looking everywhere for Jimmy and Tommy. They probably tore apart that house and found Tommy's disturbing souvenirs. They'll assume the worst about our family.

"Thank you," I said.

Kenny walked out of the room. The officer continued to talk, but I was not listening to her. I rolled my head to the side and looked out of the window. It was odd to see such large windows not covered by bars.

I wasn't in the house anymore.

I wasn't with Jimmy anymore.

"Juliet." Hernandez saying my name brought me back to reality. "Did you hear what I said?"

"I'm really tired," I said.

"Do you know anything about brainwashing?"

I raised an eyebrow in confusion. She shook her head and held out her hand.

"Forget I said anything," she said. "The detectives will talk to you tomorrow about it."

"I don't want to talk to anyone," I said.

She let out a deep breath. She got out of the chair and strolled over to the window. She stared out for a minute before turning back around to face me. Her radio on her chest crackled and a voice said something that I could not understand.

"Your emergency contact is Carolina Davies," she said. "We've contacted her and she has just arrived."

Lina.

I remembered that she was the one who told me about Charles. I didn't know that when I sat down to talk to him that I would be discovering my true family. I hadn't had a family since the car crash that took away my birth family. Once again, I am lying in a hospital bed and someone was telling me that my family was taken away.

"Nurse, where is she?" I heard a woman call out.

A familiar face showed up in the doorway. Her hair was a mess and she was wearing sweats, but I recognized it was Lina. She ran over to the side of the bed. She leaned over me. Her cold fingers wrapped around my good hand.

"Oh my god, Julie," Lina said. "These last two years have been hell. You have no idea how much I have worried about you."

She reached up to my face and wiped the tears off my cheeks. Her eyes began to water.

"You're safe now," she said. Her voice cracked. She ran her fingers through my hair.

I wanted to scream out in frustration. I didn't want to be here. I wanted to be home. It was the happiest that I have ever been. All I had to do was worry about cooking, cleaning, and keeping Jimmy happy.

"You don't need to worry about those psychos anymore," Lina said, starting to cry even harder.

"Psychos?" I raised a brow.

She was never going to understand. No one was going to understand how much I loved Jimmy. 

The End.