Love Gone by Elizabeth Nelson Read Free Book Online Page A

just below the edge
of the hallway where she stood.
    With a cry she dropped to her hands
and knees, screaming for Bill to call an ambulance. She saw the
light come on in the stairway, Bill must have hit the switch, and
suddenly her husband’s inert form was bathed with yellow
light.
    He lay crumbled on the stairs like a
fallen giant. His head lay on his outstretched arm as if he had
been crawling back up the stairs, trying to reach her and Liam,
when he’d passed out. She reached toward him and grasped his arms
and shoulders to pull him toward her. Bill put a hand on her
shoulder.
    “Stop it Faith, don’t move him. The
paramedics are on their way.” He told her roughly, ripping her
hands away from his wrist.
    “God dammit Bill, help me!” she
screamed vainly, but he was right. He shouldn’t be moved, she might
hurt him worse.
    Instead of bringing his broken body to
her, she went to him. Crawling carefully around him she laid her
hands and head on his back and shoulders and whispered to
him.
    “Don’t leave me baby, don’t leave me,
don’t leave me…” she repeated it over and over again like a
mantra.
    If she stopped saying it he would slip
away. She knew it was illogical, but it felt that way. She didn’t
know the extent of his injuries, but she was certain that Mac would
only stop protecting her if he was completely gone. Only death
would be able to stop him. Now it was up to her to stop death. If
such a thing was possible.

CHAPTER 7

    From the hall behind her she could
hear footsteps running; the sound of labored breathing, a shocked
in and out of breath that she recognized as her child’s. It was
Liam.
    Before she could think to stop him he
was on her. Staring down at the sight of his father’s motionless
body and his mother draped across him, in a manner that said only
one thing: death.
    Looking up at him she didn’t know if
she could care. She didn’t want her son to see Mac like this or her
so vulnerable. She knew it would hurt him. Scar him, but she
couldn’t leave Mac. Couldn’t bring herself to walk away from him
and protect her son. It seemed in this instant that if a choice had
to be made she was making it in favor of the love of her life and
she would deal with the consequences of that later. It was a choice
that would change her life. She knew it as she made it, but in the
way of desperate choices she didn’t care. Couldn’t make a different
one.
    She locked eyes with Liam. In that
moment she saw in his eyes that he knew what choice she had made
and she saw it cut him, deep into his soul. Helplessly she called
for Bill to help once again. Needed him to take Liam away, too late
now, but still she couldn’t handle the accusing stare in her son’s
eyes as she leaned over her husband. She needed to be alone with
Mac right now.
    Bill came at a run from his post
outside the open front door where he waited to flag down the
emergency crew when they arrived. He gently took Liam’s shoulders
and turned him away from the tableau. She could feel tears running
down her face. She didn’t even know when she’d started crying.
Slowly they fell onto Mac’s cheek and hair. Even when the
paramedics and police came rushing in in a huge confused crowd of
yelling orders and barking questions she couldn’t move.
    “Ma’am, we can take it from here.
We’re here to help ma’am.” Nameless, faceless rescue workers lifted
her off of Mac and passed her from arm to arm to replace her at his
side with a stretcher and IV’s.
    She watched helplessly from the edges
of the crowd, her body held tightly by some neighbor, she didn’t
even know who. She couldn’t turn her head to look for her son.
Couldn’t spare a thought to the fate of the child she carried
inside her. All her attention was focused on Mac and the medical
personnel buzzing around him.
    A team of concerned looking young men
and women loaded Mac onto a stretcher and secured his head and body
onto the lift with thick, black bands. He looked so