Chapter 30

                                        

                                              
The emergency department at Berkshire Medical Center was quiet—we were definitely not in Boston. The makeshift room separated Macy from other patients with surrounding curtains. When Caden and I had entered the hospital, looking for her with Detective Morrison, my stomach was in knots. Still trapped in the whirlwind of the night, it was too hard to even unpack everything that had happened so quickly.
When we found Macy, she was lying back on a hospital bed that would be small for me, but looked like it was ready to engulf her little body. She looked over at us and her eyes lit up. Caden broke down into a blubbering mess of emotions. He ran to her bed and pulled himself up short, stopping before he might hurt her if he embraced her. He ran his hands lightly over her arms, shoulders, and head.
The hospital had called to get verbal consent to treat her when we were on the way, so we knew what her injuries were already. But seeing it in real life is so very different. It's hard to even describe. She had a bandage on the side of her head, bruising that ran down her temple close to her eye. Her arm was in a cast, from fingers almost to her elbow. She had an IV in the other arm—the nurse explained that Macy was somewhat dehydrated so they were giving her fluids. 
Caden leaned forward and kissed his daughter's forehead. "I am so sorry, honey. I'm so sorry for everything you have been through." He laid his head on top of hers, I could tell he was trying to be careful of all her injuries. "We love you so much. Everything is going to be okay."
We sat quietly as the nurse came in and took her vitals again. Once we were alone, I asked, "does it still hurt, sweetheart?" adjusting the blanket around her for the third time in ten minutes.
"Not really—not anymore, that is. The medicine they gave me helped. It was so bad before, Felicity." She looked up at me with droopy eyes that were fighting to stay open. She whispered, "but it's much better now."
"That's good, honey. You tell us if that changes, okay?"
"Okay. Felicity?"
"Yes honey?" I leaned closer.
"Are you and Dad still fighting?"
Caden and I exchanged glances over her bed. The question took me aback for a minute, though it shouldn't have.
"We're working on things," I said carefully. "But right now, we're just focused on you."
"Good. Because I was scared you might not want to be my family anymore."
My throat tightened, and I tried, and failed, to blink back tears. "Oh, honey. Nothing can change that. You're stuck with us, whether you like it or not."
She smiled sleepily, the first real smile I'd seen from her since we'd arrived at the hospital. "Even if my mom did bad things?"
"Especially then," Caden said firmly, his voice thick with emotion. "What your mom did wasn't about you—and it has nothing to do with how much we love you."
"Did she really take a lot of money, Dad?"
Caden's jaw tightened, but his voice stayed gentle. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to share and how. He looked to me, I nodded in response—at this point, with all she has been through, it didn't seem right not to tell her at least something. "Yes, she did. But that's not something for you to worry about, okay? The grown-ups will figure all that out."
"Is that why she was acting so weird? Because she was scared about money?"
I looked at Caden, both of us struggling with how much to explain. "We don't know everything yet, honey. I think we have a long way ahead of us before we understand all the things that happened and why your mom was acting the way she was. What we do know, is that your mom was taking medicine that wasn't good for her," I said finally. "The doctors said that the types of medicines and the amounts she had been taking probably made her confused and scared, and she made some bad choices because of it."