Damian's POV
Once ESU cleared the house, they called me in because June wouldn't move. She curled into a corner and screamed so loud that the coms picked it up. From her scream, she was alive, but I still didn't know if she was okay. That scream through the first contact swelled my heart with hope and fucking killed me.
Going off com activity, Luca was arrested near the entrance with no resistance. Cuffed and read his rights, he was escorted to a waiting cruiser with his head dipped down, but I recognized him from his AMC profile.
Two assholes, Luiz Amaya and Ramon Samantiego, along with an unidentified suspect, were arrested onsite and breathed air they didn't deserve. All three were lucky they'd already been transported off the property when I entered. My feet stepped past the two front door security guards' bodies, peppered with ESU's bullets.
At this moment, I couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for them.
My mind had more than enough horrific notions of what had happened to June, ranging from starvation to gang-banging. Hernandez refused to let me see the videos the perps sent to the 34th, addressed to me.
It was for the best because I was hanging on by a thread.
Jason was right. I clung to June's ring, physically and the idea that I slipped it on her finger. I threaded it through one of her mother's necklaces, hung it down over my heart, and never took it off. Clutching it at night was the only relief I got from nightmares.
One look at the bones pronounced in June's frail fingers and my teeth clenched.
Except now it's too fucking big.
I bristled at the details zooming into focus as I rushed to June's bedside, a fucking dirty mattress on the floor. Dirt, cuts, and bruises littered her skin. Her hair was two shades darker, greasy, and matted into knots. A raspy wheeze whistled when she breathed.
With a few slow, deep breaths, I pushed aside my discomfort at June's appearance, coupled with the idea that I broke into the perps' holding cells and cracked their skulls with my knuckles. Heaving slow breaths, I focused on the facts. She was here, alive and in front of me.
She looked like a fucking skeleton.
Her skin draped over her protruding bones and her sunken-in eyes rolled back, dull and lifeless. After so many days apart, I couldn't look away. By the dull, gray haze over her eyes, she was physically right in front of me, but mentally millions of miles away.
Despite June's silence, her muted movements, limp limbs, and dulled haze in her eyes, her fingers trembled as I lifted them to my shoulder. Her stench of body odor and filth burned my nose as I carried her out. With one arm sweep, I was beyond grateful I carried her. Selfishly, I needed her in my arms. She was my world and I wanted to protect her against the rest of the world.
I wasn't sure how the press vultures found us, but I would've broken any camera that blocked our path to the ambulance. Fortunately, one screamed out, "Get back!" and the reporters parted for us.
She fell into a deep sleep on the ride to the hospital. The paramedic set a saline IV, which she drained in twelve minutes. His eyes met mine as he switched bags.
"No obvious damage," he muttered and checked her over.
I used the time to decompress, slumping in the claustrophobic interior. My fingers trembled where my hand palmed my forehead. The back of my head banged against a stainless-steel medical cabinet with each bump the ambulance took.
In no time at all, we lurched to a stop. The doors opened with a click, drawing my eyes to the hospital's entrance. June's eyes flipped open while paramedics rushed her down the hall. Her body was stiffer than the gurney.
My hand cupped her cold cheek. Flashes of overhead lights highlighted her skin. It was so pale, with a sickly cast of gray as if she'd never seen sunlight. Her lashes were clumped, and her eyes were hidden behind swollen lids.
Hands swept her away before I blinked and identified who'd taken her. My badge and a whole lotta 'NYPD security' bullshit granted me enough access to be shoved into the corner of her exam room. A small team of scrub-clad bodies moved and yelled around her, taking vitals like 'low oxygen' and 'bradycardia.'
A sharp piercing sound struck not past my ears, straight into my brain. It blurred my thoughts, dissolving the chaotic activity around me into random shapes and muffled sounds. Once the ring faded, June's eyes closed behind an oxygen mask. I was shoved out of the room.
Silence surrounded me. The smell of alcohol, plastic, and sanitizer twitched my nose, but it was better than the oily grime that coated my hands, my coat, and my face. The hallway surrounded me in a whitewash of nothing, absent from the warmth that slipped through my fingers without June.
My heart broke every time it beat hard in my chest. I had no words for the unbearable feelings that rose up inside me when I saw her, huddled and scared in the corner of a closet-sized room.
A doctor and nurse entered her exam room, to the sound of hushed conversations and squeaking shoe soles. Since they ignored me, I slipped in behind them, my hand cupped around my badge. They inspected every inch of June, ran alcohol wipes over her in a makeshift wipe down, tapped and prodded her injuries, and muttered notes between each other.
I tensed when they asked her if she wanted me to leave the room for her rape test, and she blinked twice. They interpreted it as a no. My teeth grinded against each other when they gently lifted her heels into stirrups. I drew in a ragged breath at the bruises littering her inner thighs, intermixed with red, half-moon cut marks. An especially large one on her right thigh narrowed my eyes.
Her head rolled sideways when the nurse gently parted them further open, then gestured for me to turn away.
June never said a single word, not that they asked as the rustling of her sheets pricked my ears. I breathed easier once her rape and blood tests were done and my eyes were on her again.
"She needs a CT scan to check for broken ribs," the doctor announced.
They pushed her bed out, making me stay behind. Her eyes rounded. Refusing to be separated from her, I waited in the hallway outside the X-ray room. In the stillness of the hallway, the same four words that haunted me for ten days struck with a different tone.
It's my fucking fault.
Police who can't protect their own have no cred with the public, deservedly.
The evidence was subtle but all of it pointed to the obvious fact that the closest person I'd ever known, fuck the only person who'd somehow loved me, had become a victim from within my own nightmares.
The dirt on her cheeks.
The limpness of her fingers.
The dry, white cracks on her lips.
My chest crumbled inside itself. I slammed my fist into the center of it because, fuck, it was my fault. Under my shirt, June's ring indented my skin.
My buzzing phone brought my attention to Jenks' update. Luca's full confession admitted they took June to coerce me off the Bronx case. Hernandez spared me from seeing the videos sent as a final threat to back off our investigation.
His argument, other than how no one's eyes should see them, was that they were a message to all of Vice, not me.
"Damian," a quiet voice, steady and low toned, accompanied the warm hand clamped onto my shoulder.
The contact jostled me back into reality. I slammed my fist into the cement wall holding me up. Pain erupted in between my first and middle knuckles.
Jason cleared his throat. "The front desk said you were here - Damian, stop."
I ignored him. The slight indentation lines of the cement blocks blurred as I slammed the side of both fists into the thick, unforgiving wall of rough cement smoothed over by layers of paint.
"It's my fucking fault!" My throat burned at the admission, the first time I'd spoken the words out loud to another person. "They did this because of me. They did that -" I pointed to the closed door. "- to June because of me."
That's just the part I can see. Fuck, what if they...
Nausea rolled around in my stomach. The acidic sting of bile rose up my throat in a dry cough. It coated my tongue and choked my gag reflex into a round of violent coughs.
My mind had wandered into too many dark corners and my hands had combed through too much evidence, yet I put up a mental barrier against what wasn't visible. Previous experience guided me to the questions I wasn't allowed to be present for June's answers.
Not June.
Not my June. Please no.
"They did it because they're evil pieces of shit who prey on people's kind hearts," Jason mumbled, although his reminder offered absolutely no comfort. "And you, none of you, buckled under their pressure. They didn't win, Damian."
Defeat pushed out my hoarse whisper, "It's not about winning... It's about what it cost us in the process. What they've taken..."
Weakness struck the back of my knees and I collapsed onto the floor. The cool tile pricked my hands as I caught myself, but pain still burst through my kneecaps as my resolve broke. I swung my knees around and curled myself up like a reprimanded child. My hands trembled as I cupped the back of my neck, and my forehead met my knees.
The weight of all my mistakes pressed my chin into my chest as my head lowered. I'd seen my father shift from life to lifeless and June's last image was seared into my brain.
Jason sat down next to me, close enough that his knee and shoulder bumped mine. "She's safe, Damian."
What he didn't say, which I appreciated, was the same thought that broke my heart.
But is she okay?
June was sick.
The hospital wouldn't release her because she had ketoacidosis. After ten days, her stomach wouldn't accept food. Her throat struggled to swallow. Seeing the bruises bobbing and the tears springing from her eyes whenever she choked on her liquid diet made my blood boil.
Her IV bag, which contained a cocktail of phosphate, magnesium, and potassium, was changed every two hours. For precautions, she received a tetanus shot, antibiotics, and another IV bag of vitamins and Zofran.
One piece of good news was that her rape kit was negative, and a CT scan showed her ribs were bruised.
Where she sat upright on her pillow, she breathed quietly. The bones in her chest tightened into definition and receded with each raspy breath. I sat at her bedside, as close as the chair and June allowed me. My forearm rested on her bed, near hers for when she was ready to hold it.
Another soft wheeze hit my ears. More tears shone in her eyes. Her weak fingers pushed away a Jello cup on the bed tray over her lap. It was the midnight nurse's idea. My brave girl attempted two bites.
The sight of her tears tugged at my chest. I wanted nothing more than to assure her that she was fine, and I was going to take her home, but I had no fucking idea if that was true.
Not that we have a home to go to.
The reminder choked my throat with dryness. I coughed, the hot breath tickling my throat. The sound jolted her, and I cursed, "Fuck, sorry."
Emotionally supportive were the last two words anyone ever described me as being but, at this moment, I want nothing more than to be that for June. She hadn't spoken a single word and barely moved since I pulled her out of the abandoned apartment, through a sea of nosy reporters and police tape lines.
Staring at her up close, the white cracks in her lower lip trembled. Her teeth chattered behind it. But, otherwise, she was frozen in shock.
Now that we were alone, the two of us, I had no way to improve her situation. Helplessness sank deep into my bones. She was the comforting one and the cuddler. I wanted nothing more than to touch her, wrap my body around hers, feel her close and have her take my strength. But her lack of reaction screamed that she needed her own space.
I had so much to tell her, so many words fought my brain for which one I should say first. Her lifeless state held me back. For example, I wasn't sure she was ready to know that we were homeless or how relieved all our friends and family were that she was rescued.
"Bullet's okay," I mumbled in an attempt to break the silence. "He had to get surgery and a blood transfusion. He's got a little limp but he's fine. He was in the hospital for a week and is staying with Jason and Celia right now."
She lifted her eyes to mine but there was no life in them. The same bruises around the base of her neck that taunted me from a distance now sat smack in front of my face. I struggled to accept this version of June in front of me. They turned the most beautifully expressive and emotional person into a silent, shut down shell of her former self.
I want to kill them for that. Strangulation with my bare hands.
"Your aunt and uncle are on their way," I croaked out. "Ma and Emma want to visit when you're ready. I told them not yet. Maybe they'll actually listen to me for once."
Not even a flinch of a smile passed on June's face. I waited two hours after June arrived at the hospital before informing her aunt and uncle and Ma that June had been rescued. As I assumed, June's relatives rushed up here from where they lived an hour away in Clinton.
Numbness on June was painful as fuck. It was wrong not to see her warm love glowing from her skin. Her entire body wore a mask. Her inner light flickered dim, like a candle on its last wick before fading out.
I rubbed my chin. "Do you... want to take a shower? There isn't a tub, but I think there's a bench. I can wait here or out in the hallway if -"
My words were stopped by her eyes widening and her head shaking. I drew my eyebrows together. "No shower?"
Crinkles scrunched on either side of her nose, at the corners of her eyes. Her lips pursed and I played a horrible guessing game. Remembering her eye blinks, I prompted, "Blink once for yes, shower."
She blinked once.
"Okay..." I exhaled. "Do you want me to step out?"
She blinked twice.
My heart thudded. "Do you want... me in there?"
She blinked twice.
Well, fuck.
Her answer slumped my shoulders. I shouldn't have expected her to expose herself in front of me but I... wanted to help. Hernandez put me on four weeks of admin leave but no amount of money in Manhattan would have lured me from her side.
I scrubbed the back of my neck with my hand. "Do you... want me to help you in there and wait outside the door while you wash?"
She blinked once, with a slight head nod. I pushed her food tray off her bed and waited for her to draw back her blankets. After June's rape test, the nurse exchanged her clothes for a hospital gown while my nose faced a corner.
As she pushed her hips to the edge of the bed and dropped her feet over, I averted my eyes from her bruised thighs. The question of the red marks burned on my tongue, but I clamped my teeth. She pulled her gown over her knees.
"Here, if you need it." I offered my palm to June as her feet touched the floor.
My heart clenched when her fingers hovered over mine, the tips shaking. Her other hand's fingers curled into her sheets. To keep my hand still, I tensed my arm muscles. A loud exhale left me when her cold, bony fingers fell between mine.
With slow, labored steps, June made it halfway to the bathroom before her knees weakened. On instinct, I grabbed around her, clasping her right ribs. Her mouth parted, and she winced like my touch burned her.
"I'm sorry." I steadied her. "I want to carry you, if that's alright. I will set you on the shower bench."
She steadied her hands on my forearm, parting her lips. A flicker appeared in her eyes, lighting up her dull pupils. A bob of her head was all I needed.
"I'm picking you up now." I wasn't sure if talking through my actions helped her but did it anyway. Hinged over at my hips, I swept one arm behind her knees. "I won't drop you. I've got you."
At the urge to kiss her forehead, I rolled my lips inward. Instead, I stood up with her lighter frame in my arms. Her feet sagged as I passed them into the bathroom and kicked down the shower bench with my foot. We both jolted at its loud bang.
"Sorry, I didn't think that through. Down you go." I sat her down, leaning over until her hands dropped to her lap.
Reaching up, I cursed myself for not turning the shower earlier. Pulling down the head sprayer, I caught the shadowed bumps of her spine and the slants of her ribs as she removed her gown.
My eyes dropped before she caught them staring at her grossly pronounced shoulder blades and clavicle bones. I closed the curtain and handed her the shower head. "I'll be right outside."
Taking the clothes she offered through the curtain crack, unsure if she wanted me to wash her, I lingered outside the shower until she turned it on. Her garbled, "Thank you," hit my ears between the shower spray sounds, so I stepped out.
My fingers wrenched her gown into a ball, which I tossed into the dirty linens bin. Paging a nurse, I requested fresh clothes, extra shampoo, and June's bed linens changed while she showered.
Least I can do.
In ten minutes, the nurse entered with a fresh saline bag and two breathless figures behind her. A short, squat woman shuffled in with quick steps, her round cheeks and nose ruddy. Next to her, a tall, overweight man's bald head gleamed under the lights. Worry lines painted both their faces, aging them twenty years older.
"Damian!" June's Aunt Margaret hugged her arms around me. "Thank fuck. This girl, I swear, has the absolute worst luck."
If it weren't for her shoulders compressing my lungs, I would have said that luck had nothing to do with June's situation. Before I accepted the blame -
"Damian." Uncle Joseph's mouth stayed drawn down as he patted my back. His other hand lifted a rolled-over brown takeout bag. "We brought some food since hospital shit is awful, no offense, nurse. Where is she?"
"Shower." I pointed at the door, tapped out of Margaret's hug, and ran my hand through my hair.
This isn't going to be well received.
Their intentions were kind-hearted, but I wasn't sure if June was ready to receive visitors. She hadn't said more than a few whispered phrases to me, but it was June's call who visited her.
The innocence in their question made my response that much harsher, and ruder, "June's... Can you wait in the lobby?"
Both blinked at me with round eyes and slacked jaws. "What? But she's -"
"She's in rough shape." I hated the need to be blunt. "Let me make sure she's comfortable seeing you."
"Absolutely not," Margaret's chest puffed up and she removed her coat, a silent hint she wasn't going anywhere.
I must have worn a pleading look in my eyes. Fuck, my entire body sagged from mental fatigue. While I knew the answer was no, since June's phone was mailed to the precinct office, I asked, "Did she contact you?"
"Well, she... no." Margaret's eyebrows drew together. "But it doesn't matter to us what she looks like. We're just glad -"
I stifled a groan. While kind, their intentions misdirected the room away from what June needed. "It might matter to her. She's been through some real bad shit. I want to ask her what, or who, she's comfortable with."
Their eyes met in a silent conversation.
"Look." I cleared my dry throat. "There's no easy way to say this. It wasn't an accident. They broke into our place and took her. She hasn't eaten in ten days."
Their collective gasp drew all the air in the room, making the atmosphere heavier and somber. Margaret's eyes filled with tears, which tipped down her cheeks when she closed them. Her hands cupped her chin. "Juneau... I..."
"Maggie." Uncle Joseph patted her shoulder. His brown eyes darkened as my words sank in. The paper bag crinkled in his grasp. "Come find us when June's ready, Damian."
"Absolutely," I muttered and leaned against the wall. As Margaret's protests faded behind the door, I remembered they couldn't stay with us and searched for hotels on my phone.
The nurse, who I forgot was here, dragged June's saline bag next to her bed. The squeaking of wheels drew my eyes off my screen. Her light blue scrubs, accented by her dark skin, reminded me of the ones June wore the day she was taken. They were two shades darker, covered with filth stains -
A gloved hand squeezed my upper arm, kindness warming the nurse's dark brown eyes. "You're doing the right thing."
My own tears rose up in a blink, with my muttered admission, "I'm the reason she got into the mess."
Increased pressure on my arm brought my eyes to hers. Where I expected judgment, I found warm compassion and her other hand lifting up a towel. "And now she needs you to help her fight her way out."
Before I asked for details, fuck any help at this point, she turned her gaze to the door. Muffled sobs erupted behind it. As the nurse scooted out, I knocked. "June? Can I come in?"
Her sobs quieted, but didn't stop, so I stepped into the room. Each one stabbed deeper into me, as June choked back hoarse barks. "June, I'm coming in to check on you."
Pulling back the curtain, June's curled up state brought me to my knees. She shook from her shoulders to her hips, her hands cradling her face. The shower head hung abandoned, pointed at the wall. I knelt onto the tiled shower floor, ignoring the wetness soaking into my pants.
"June," I whispered, reaching up and shutting off the water. "Shh... Sweetheart, I'm here."
Wrapping her shivering body as gently as my hands moved, I scooped her up and brought her to bed. With gasping breaths, she curled into my chest, so I sat with her in my lap. Leaning back, I locked my arms around her.
"Breathe." Tears trickled out of my eyes as her shivers bumped her against me. I tucked my chin over her head, so her forehead bumped my throat. "I'll sit as long as you want me to. I'm sorry, June... I'm so sorry."