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A woman standing beside her grabbed her by the arm.
“Honey? Are you okay?” she asked.
Millie couldn’t answer without crying, so she nodded instead.
When the door opened on her floor, all but two of the riders exited with her, dispersing in different directions, while Millie headed to the nurses’ station.
A nurse glanced up as she stopped.
“Yes, ma’am...how can I help you?”
“I’m Millie Chriss, Rachel Dean’s sister. Rachel was just taken into surgery. I was told there was a waiting room on this floor.”
The nurse nodded and made a note of the info.
“Down the hall and to your left,” the nurse said.
“Thank you,” Millie said, but all the way there she kept flashing on images from their childhood.
Remembering when Rachel was six and had climbed too high in a tree and was afraid to come down. Millie didn’t know what to do because their parents were gone, and she was supposed to be watching Rachel, but when Rachel saw her sister’s panic, she faced her fears and came down on her own.
Remembering Rachel at fifteen, being stood up on a first date, and instead of feeling defeated, went to school the next day, laughing about it. She wound up making a fool of the boy, instead of looking like one herself.
Remembering the day they’d gotten the news about their parents’ deaths, and how they’d faced the grief together. Despite her small stature, Rachel had always been a fighter. Millie suspected she was still fighting, or she wouldn’t have survived.
As soon as she reached the waiting room, she found a seat near a window, then sent Ray another text, telling him where she was and that Rachel was in surgery.
Now that she knew he was on the way, she couldn’t wait to see his face, to feel his arms around her again. She needed to hear someone say it was all going to be okay because, until Charlie Dodge’s last call, she’d come close to losing faith in a good outcome.
It was after 8 p.m. The place had emptied out, and all of the others who’d been in the waiting room were gone.
Millie was alone, and the more time passed, the more worried she had become. When she finally heard footsteps and looked up, a young man in scrubs had walked into the room and was coming toward her.
“Rachel Dean’s family?” he asked.
Millie jumped to her feet. “Yes. How is she?”
“Please, have a seat,” he said, then sat down beside her. “I’m Doctor Howard, Rachel’s surgeon. She came through surgery, but she’s not out of the woods.”
Millie started crying again, but they were tears of relief.
“Thank God she’s still alive,” she said. “Please, tell me everything and don’t hold back. I need the truth.”
He nodded. “I don’t want to give you false hope. She’s in pretty bad shape. She was fighting infections when they brought her in, so her fever is still high, but we’re working on that. She had broken ribs and a nearly ruptured spleen. We removed the spleen and reset the ribs. It was a miracle it hadn’t already ruptured. She would have bled out before she was found. She was raped. Multiple times, and we repaired some tearing. There were fragments of broken glass in her hands, her knees and the bottom of one foot. It took a while to clean that up. She has a fracture in one eye socket, but her eye seems okay and the fracture was hairline. We’re going to have to watch for pneumonia as she heals.”
“Did she ever regain consciousness?” Millie asked.
“No, she did not,” he said.
“If the law doesn’t find this man, I will find him and kill him myself,” Millie said.
Doctor Howard understood her rage. “I’m so sorry, but take heart. Your sister is a fighter, or she wouldn’t still be here.”
“Yes, that’s what I keep thinking,” Millie said. “I’m afraid to ask, but what are her chances?”
“You asked for the truth, so just know that the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours are crucial. After that, we’ll reassess.”
Millie nodded. “Thank you. Thank you for saving her life.”