“I got you, little girl,” he said in a voice as rough and deep as any monster’s, while he held me as if he were a guardian angel. “I got you.”
I clutched a tiny fist into his blood-soaked shirt and stared into the eyes of my guardian monster until I lost consciousness.
Sometimes now, I wonder if I would have done anything differently even if I had known how that bullet would tear through my small body, breaking bones and tender young flesh, irrevocably changing the course of my life forever.
Always, the answer is no.
Because it brought me to him.
Or rather, him to me.
“He’s going to prison for this,” my daddy yelled from the hallway.
We were in the hospital. I knew this because I woke up in a white bed in a room with white walls and white floors and there were white tubes stuck into my arm. There were no loud noises, no blood or bodies or biker men around so I knew that everything had calmed down and I was safe.
At least, everything had calmed down except for my daddy. I’d never seen him so mad because Lafayettes weren’t supposed to let anyone else know what they were thinking or feeling.
Everyone in the kids ward of Saint Katherine’s Hospital knew what my daddy was thinking and feeling right now. I woke up to a foggy head, a dull pain in my shoulder and the sound of him saying a lot of really bad words. That was five minutes ago and he still hadn’t stopped.
“Benjamin, you are making a scene,” my mum said.
“I mean it, Phillipa,” he shouted just outside my slightly open door. “That piece of scum is going away for this!”
“I understand your sentiments, Mr. Lafayette, and I can assure you that Zeus Garro will go to jail for his crimes.” The staff sergeant hesitated. “But he has a solid shot at a reduced sentence and early parole for saving your daughter—”
“HE DID NO SUCH THING,” Daddy bellowed. “He is the reason that my daughter is drugged up and lying damaged in a fucking hospital bed. He is the reason that Entrance is known as the hometown to a violent, drug-trafficking motorcycle gang. We are fucking lucky that water real estate is at a premium in the province and our education ranking is so high or else no one would ever live here. And do you know why that is, Harold? Because of fucking Zeus Garro.”
Oh no.
No way.
My daddy was so not going to send my biker man to jail. I didn’t really know what he was talking about except that drugs were bad and so was violence, but I did know that my biker saviour was not a bad man. Bad men just didn’t throw themselves in front of seven-year-old girls to take a bullet for them.
I was young but I wasn’t dumb.
“Daddy,” I cried out, but my voice was weak in my dry throat.
“If you would listen to what I’m telling you, Benjamin,” staff sergeant Danner tried again. “I’m telling you, Garro is going away for this. He killed a man in front of my fucking officers, shot him right in the goddamn head before we could even take stock of the situation. He’s going away. What I’m also telling you is that the man he shot in the head was the man who put a bullet in your daughter, the same bullet that went through Garro’s own chest before it landed in hers. You want to talk about the damage that bullet could’ve done if it hadn’t lost speed going through that barrel of a man first?”
My daddy was silent after that.
“Benjamin,” my mum said in her special soft voice that made him listen to her. “He deserves to go to prison but think of the silver lining. If Louise wasn’t hurt like this we wouldn’t know there was something wrong with her.”
My ears stung to hear it, but I wasn’t surprised. I’d been sick for a long time now even though no one believed me when I said I felt bad because I didn’t have a runny nose or anything.
“We don’t know anything yet, Phillipa,” my daddy told her sternly.
“We do. The doctors are concerned, honey. It took her too long to stop bleeding, she lost consciousness for two days. That is not normal. And then there’s the fact that she has been complaining about pain for a few months now—”
“She’s looking for attention, Phillipa, that’s all.”
“Whether or not that may be the case, the doctors are running tests and it is not looking good.”
“Being stubborn again, are we, son?” The wheezy old voice of my grandpa came through my door and I straightened automatically in my bed. Grandpa was stern, but he was also super nice to me and he always gave me lollipops if I recited Bible passages correctly.
“Even you can’t find absolution for Zeus Garro, Dad,” my daddy said.
“Maybe not, but I can find it for him in this situation. Without this incident, how long would it have taken you to realize that Louise is seriously ill. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it one hundred times, just because someone is not who you want them to be, it does not mean they are incapable of good.”
My daddy snorted. “I will not thank a felon for saving my daughter, not least of all because he did not even save her! She’s laying in a hospital bed with a bullet wound through her shoulder! How am I the only rational person here who sees what a monster that man is? He shouldn’t even be allowed to rest in the same hospital as my daughter after what he and his gang have done.”
“Benjamin, that is enough,” my mum said. “People can hear you. Think what they might say?”
“No, you’re right. We need to spin this just right and I’m too furious to think with a level head right now. We’ll go home and talk about what to tell the press. Harold, I don’t want any of those vultures in here trying to get to my daughter. Lord knows what she’ll say to them.”
“Benjamin.” My grandpa tsked. “She’s just a girl.”
“A girl who needs to grow up. What in the world she was doing running away from her parents and into the fray, is beyond me.”
Their voices faded as they walked down the hall away from my room. I lay stiff even though it hurt my arm, because whenever my parents made me want to cry, I told myself to be still and be calm. Crying was for babies like my little sister, Bea. Not for me. I was a Lafayette and Lafayettes didn’t cry. Not even when they got shot, not even when they got sick and not even when their family left them all alone in the hospital. I lay there for a long time until Nanny came in with Bea to check on me. They both smiled and laughed when they put cartoons on the little TV on the wall but I didn’t feel like smiling. The only thing that made me feel better was the Snickers bar that a super nice nurse named Betsy snuck in for me.
Later, Nanny was somewhere talking to the doctors because they never did that kind of stuff in front of me. Our neighbor, Mrs. Brock, already picked up Bea and took her home. I was alone but I was happy because I was mad at Daddy for hating my guardian monster and Nanny wouldn’t stop touching me and saying stuff in French that was supposed to be nice, but I didn’t understand.
I was supposed to stay in the kid part of the hospital because they were keeping me overnight but I didn’t like it there. There were a lot of kids and a lot of them cried. It was sad and it was even sadder that the nurses and staff tried to cover it up with bright colours and lots of toys. It wasn’t a happy place and it kind of freaked me out.