Note to readers: The following chapter contains violent scenes which may be disturbing and triggering to survivors of abuse. PLEASE proceed with caution. Thank you.
Chapter Twelve
Joseph
When Clarisse and I heard Mia crying out in her suite tonight, which was directly across the hall from ours, we both sat straight up in bed.
"Oh, no," Clarisse gasped. "She's having a nightmare. Come on, Joseph. Let's go."
"I'm right behind you, darling," I assured her as we both got out of bed and rushed across the hall into Mia's suite. It had been a pretty long time since Mia had struggled with terrifying nightmares in which she relived the events of November 29, 2007, but she did still have them occasionally, and when she did, it was an absolutely awful experience. As a daddy, I gladly would have given anything if I could take Mia's nightmares and pain and hellish experiences for her. As we hurried out of our suite and into Mia's, I began to vividly recall what happened in the wee hours of that morning.
It was about three in the morning on that terrible day when Clarisse and I were awakened by the sound of Shades knocking on the doors of our suite. I got out of bed and let Shades in, while Clarisse put on her robe and slippers and turned on the lights.
"Shades, what on earth is going on?" I rather snapped at him. Neither Clarisse nor I were exactly thrilled at being woke up at that hour.
"Hello, Joseph. Your Majesty. Joseph, I'm terribly sorry. I know how late it is. Please believe me that I would not be getting you up at this hour if it weren't urgent. It's the Queen."
"Mia?" said Clarisse. "What could possibly be wrong with Mia? Isn't she in bed, asleep?"
"No, Your Majesty, she isn't. I'm afraid that she might be in terrible danger right now."
"Hold on," I told him. "If the Queen isn't in her suite at this hour, then where is she?"
"For a long time now, Her Majesty has been sneaking out of the palace in the middle of the night, wearing a disguise, without telling anybody. She's been going to the Pyrus Women's Shelter three nights a week to do volunteer work there, and you know what's been going on at women's shelters in this country over the past year or so ever since the new regulations of the Protection Act came into force."
"Yes, all their volunteers keep getting attacked," I said gravely as my mind began putting two and two together.
"Abusers have been striking back, and with a terrible vengeance. When one of Her Majesty's friends at the Pyrus Women's Shelter was beaten to death a few weeks ago, she confided in Lionel about what she was doing. She was very afraid for her safety, but at the same time, she was determined to continue in her work there, although Lionel did try to talk her out of it, unsuccessfully. However, he did manage to convince her to let him accompany her, and he disobeyed her direct orders and came to me and told me about what she was doing. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night at about ten o'clock, after most everyone else in the palace has gone to bed, Her Majesty and Lionel have been sneaking out of the palace and going to the Pyrus Women's Shelter together, and they've always, always been back no later than ten, maybe fifteen minutes after two. They would never be gone this long unless something's gone wrong. They could both be in grave danger right now, especially if the Queen somehow lost her disguise and it's discovered who she really is."
"Oh, God," Clarisse gasped.
"Shades, for heaven's sake, you're the Royal Head of Security now! How could you let something like this happen on your watch?! Do we not have security cameras all over this palace?! How could your men be careless enough to let the Queen sneak off in the middle of the night all by herself for so long?! And why didn't you try to talk her out of this?! And why didn't you tell me what was going on?!"
"You're right. Ever since Lionel came and talked to me about this whole thing, I've realized that palace security has gotten pretty lax lately."
"That's an understatement! Let me guess. All your men on the night shift have been paying more attention to their chess games than they have been to what's happening on the cameras!"
"Yes, that's basically true, but you have to understand that nothing like this ever happened when you, Queen Clarisse, and your first husband King Rupert, may he rest in peace, were on the throne. Neither one of you ever did anything so rash as to sneak away from the palace in the middle of the night on your own, wearing a disguise, so my men on the night watch had no reason to believe Queen Mia would ever do anything like this, either. It's true that she did sneak away from the palace once before as a young princess, but you both know as well as I do how much growing up she did when she ascended the throne. We all believed she'd outgrown this kind of behavior," Shades rationalized as I put on my robe and slippers.
"Clarisse, I'm going downstairs with Shades," I told her then as we walked out of our suite together to his office.
"Very well. I'll get dressed," she replied while we walked out the door.
"So what you're telling me is, it's the Queen's fault that your men were getting careless on the job?" I said to Shades, calling him out on his rationalizing and his obvious blame-shifting, as we descended the stairs.
"Of course not. I was merely trying to explain it to you why my men do the things they do sometimes. It's just habit. Nobody believed for an instant that the Queen could be putting herself in any kind of danger, not in such a tiny, innocent little country like Genovia."
"Well given these beatings and deaths of volunteers that have been occurring, it seems that while Genovia may be tiny, it is not innocent any more so than any other country in the world. Shades, why, why didn't you tell me about all of this? Why as Queen Mia's Royal Head of Security did you fail to look out for her best interests?! Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is your job, isn't it?!"
When we reached his office, Shades looked me in the eye and told me, "You're absolutely right, Joseph. It is my job to look out for the Queen, and in my own way, I honestly thought I was. I mean, come on. You married Queen Clarisse, and you loved her for many years before you were finally able to make your relationship official. You've seen it yourself firsthand what royals go through. Nobody knows better than you do how they're never given one second of real privacy in their lives. Her Majesty has been doing this ever since three months after she first ascended the throne, and with the exception of Lionel, she's never once told another soul about it, not even you or Queen Clarisse. You know what that tells me? That tells me that this is something that in her heart, she's made a real commitment to. And it also tells me that for whatever reason, it's something that she feels is way too private and personal to really discuss with anyone. The way Queen Clarisse and now Queen Mia have constantly had their entire lives examined under a microscope all these years, I couldn't help but feel that Queen Mia deserved some privacy. There are things in my life I personally feel are too private to be shared with my bodyguard, if I had one, and I know you feel the same way. Is Queen Mia not a citizen of this country? Does she not have the same rights to privacy as any other woman or man in Genovia?"
I let out a sigh of frustration. Shades had a very real point, and I knew it, but as I told him, "However important privacy may be, the Queen's safety always trumps privacy, and you know that. You should have done everything within your power to stop the Queen from endangering herself, and you know that, too."
"Come on, Joseph. You know how things are around here. We get pretty relaxed around here because nothing ever happens in Genovia, and especially not to a Genovian royal. And as I recall, you've felt free to join in a game or two of chess in your time when you were on the night shift."
"That was during my first year here, before I lost my first wife and baby and fully grew up to the harshness of the real world and the responsibilities of real life. I think it's high time that your men do the same. When it comes to the safety of the Queen, we can do better than this! We must do better than this!"
"You're right," Shades admitted quietly. "I know you're right. The truth of the matter is, you're obviously a lot better at being the Royal Head of Security than I am. That's why I got you up. I'm in over my head on this one, Joseph. The Pyrus Women's Shelter, like all similar shelters in Genovia, keeps its location a big secret. An abused woman is simply given the number of their hotline to call, and one of the volunteers who works there picks her up and brings her to the shelter. As you can understand, it's the safest possible way to go about it."
I quickly put the rest of the pieces of the puzzle together for Shades, telling him, "But now, the Queen and one of her royal bodyguards are missing from the palace, and it's clear that something's gone very wrong at that women's shelter. And you need me to basically come out of retirement for the moment so I can use all my resources and contacts and track the shelter's location down, and hopefully, the location of the Queen."
"Exactly. If I temporarily step down as Royal Head of Security and Queen Clarisse uses her authority as a member of the Genovian Royal Family to reinstate you in my place, you can use whatever resources you need to find the shelter, and hopefully, the Queen. And if, when we go to the shelter to find her and we discover that she's in danger, you can use whatever physical force necessary to protect her without any legal repercussions. You would still have immunity."
"Consider it done," said Clarisse, who had gotten dressed and stepped into the office. "Do whatever you have to do, Joseph," she told me, looking me squarely in the eye. "Just find Mia. Now."
"Of course," I answered my wife, and then I immediately got to work. I knew that Shades asked me to step in because I had a lot of contacts that he didn't, and fortunately, it didn't take me long to track the shelter's location down.
When Shades and all the other guards and I arrived at the Pyrus Women's Shelter at about a quarter 'til four that morning, we found things to really be in a state of chaos. We quickly searched the first floor and found Lionel and the other volunteers tied up to chairs, but there was no sign of Mia.
The moment we ran inside, Lionel said, "Joseph! Thank God! You guys have got to help Mia now!"
"The Queen saved us," Sarah Sanchez told us. "Those scumbags were looking for someone to get revenge on because their abused wives and children left them, and the Queen revealed herself to them and got them to release all the other people they were holding hostage. Then she told them to take their anger out on her and to leave us alone," she explained while the other men and I untied them.
"They took her upstairs," Lionel continued to explain. "They've been beating her ever since. She's been crying out from the pain for hours, but for the past ten or twenty minutes or so, she's stopped crying out. Joseph, you have to get to her immediately!"
Obviously, when Lionel told me that, I took off running. Shades and the other men and I searched every bedroom and bathroom on the second and third floor until I finally found the scumbags Sarah had talked about. They were in one of the adjoining bathrooms of one of the bedrooms on the third floor, drowning Mia in the bathtub. When I came into that bathroom and saw them holding her underwater, I pulled out my gun and I shot and killed those evil thugs right on the spot, without giving it a second thought. Then I pulled Mia's limp, lifeless body out of the tub, and to my horror, I quickly realized that she had stopped breathing.
When it really began to hit me what Mia had done, how she'd sacrificed her life for the sake of others, like the queen that she was, my heart just broke. She was so young and so sweet and beautiful. If I could possibly help it, I wasn't about to let this happen. Evil had won too many battles that day already with the hostage situation. It was not going to win now and claim this wonderful young life so full of promise.
"Oh, God," I gasped, and then I started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "Come on, honey," I whispered in her ear. "Come on. Breathe, please!" Then for the next minute or so, I performed C.P.R. while Lionel, Shades, and the other guards stood by in shock. Then finally, Mia took a breath and opened her eyes, and all the other men exhaled in relief. "Yes," I sighed, and in that next moment, I cradled Mia in my arms. It was only then that I was able to take the time to evaluate her other injuries. I could clearly see the bruises all over her face, and I also saw it that all the fingers of her right hand had been broken, as well as her right knee. We would later learn that those scumbags had also broken her nose and several of her ribs, in addition to psychologically torturing her with their guns, holding them to her temple and pulling the trigger, with their safeties being on the entire time.
"Joe," Mia gasped.
"Shh," I whispered. "Don't talk. Don't try to speak now." I didn't want her talking because it was obvious how difficult it was for her to merely breathe, much less speak. I tried so hard in those moments to be as strong as I possibly could, to keep it together for Mia's sake, but as we were staring into each other's faces, realizing how serious the situation was and that those could be our last moments with each other, we couldn't help but cry. "I love you so much, sweetheart," I told her through my tears. "I love you so much, and so does your grandma. Everything's going to be alright, love. Everything's going to be alright. Just hold on. Help's coming. Grandma and I are going to be right here with you every step of the way. We're going to help you get better. You just have to hang in there and hold on for us."
"Joe…promise me…you'll get Grandma through this…after it's all over," she choked out.
"I'm going to help both of you get through this, darling. Both of you. This is not either/or," I assured her as more tears fell from my eyes. I could see it in her eyes that she was in unbelievable agony, and I knew that she wanted me to promise her that her grandma was going to be alright so that she could let go. I didn't want to keep her in a world of agony, of course, but I just couldn't let her go. She was too sweet, too precious, too loving, and this world direly needed people like her in it. I knew Jesus had known exactly what He was doing when He put her on the Genovian throne, and I couldn't believe for a minute that her life was over now, at a mere twenty-three years of age.
"Please, Joe...I need to let go. I did…what I was…supposed to do. I…protected everybody. I was…the strong queen…I was supposed to be. But now…I'm a little girl again and…I need my mom and dad. Please, Joe…just get Grandma through this…so I can go to Jesus…and to mom and dad…in peace." Needless to say, when she made that plea to me, I died inside.
"No, no, listen to me, baby girl," I whispered as I fought off more tears. "You do not have to die and go to Heaven in order to be with your mommy and daddy because your mommy and daddy are right here with you, baby. Grandma and I, we are Mommy and Daddy, sweetheart. We are Mommy and Daddy. Daddy's right here, and Mommy's going to be here with you soon. We're going to take care of you, sweetie. We're all going to get you through this. I promise you."
"Thank you," Mia gasped, and once again, tears flooded my eyes. Here she was, lying in my arms, in sheer agony and dying, and yet, she was actually thanking me. It was just beyond words. "Thank you…for always being there...for showing me…what it could be like…to have a father in my life."
"We've always belonged to each other," I said with raw emotion. "You've always been my little girl, sweetheart. Always. I love you so much. I've always loved you. Daddy's here, love. Daddy's right here. Help is coming, baby girl. Help is coming. Just hold on."
But even though she tried her hardest to stay with me, she couldn't. Mia lost consciousness again a moment later, and then she stopped breathing and once again, I performed C.P.R. I kept it up until the paramedics arrived, and when they finally got there, they intubated her and kept trying to resuscitate her. In the meantime, the other guards and I floored it to the hospital.
Soon after I arrived there, I met up with Clarisse again, who understandably, was pretty frantic with worry over Mia.
"Joseph, what on earth is going on?" she asked me in the waiting area of one of the hospital's top floors that were reserved for royalty, dignitaries, and other V.I.P.s. "What's happened to Mia? Is it really as bad as some of the guards are saying?"
I didn't want to frighten or upset my wife, but I didn't want to lie to her, either. As painful as it was, I know she needed and deserved to hear the truth, so after we sat down together, I told her, "I'm sorry, darling, but I'm afraid it is very bad. She's been severely beaten and drowned in the bathtub of one of the bathrooms in the shelter. From what all I could tell, all the fingers in her right hand and her right knee were broken. She had bruises all over her body, especially her face. And when I first found her, I had to perform C.P.R. to resuscitate her because she wasn't breathing."
"Oh, God," Clarisse gasped. "How, Joseph? How does something like this happen, to the Queen of Genovia of all people?! And why didn't God warn me about this?! Why would He give me the gift of prophecy if I couldn't use it to prevent these kinds of disasters?! I've already lost one child! Does He want me to go through that kind of hell all over again by losing my only grandchild?!"
"Of course not. You know the way things in this world work, Clarisse. It's not God's will for the earth to be the way it is now. Terrible things like death and disasters and accidents and beatings and illness happen because this world is an imperfect place, and it's imperfect because we're simply inheriting the consequences of what happened when the first man and woman chose to sin by disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. God never wanted things to be like this, but He didn't force His will on Adam and Eve and He doesn't force His will on any of us because to do so would be spiritual rape. It wasn't His will for those terrible thugs to torture Mia. They chose to do that to her with their own free will, which broke God's heart.
"As for your gift, I can't answer the question of why you didn't receive a warning about this. I know that God has shown you some very important things about what could happen in the future before. God used your gift on one occasion to warn you about a plot to assassinate King Rupert, and you warned me and I was able to put a stop to it. I know that just before Philippe was killed, you had a vision of him getting drunk and getting behind the wheel and dying in the ensuing car wreck, and I know how you warned him and pleaded with him to change the careless way he was living, but he very foolishly didn't heed your warning. I don't understand why God didn't give you any visions or warnings about this happening to Mia. But if what Lionel and some of the others have been saying is true, about there being some kind of invisible network of abusers in Genovia made up of influential people, doctors, lawyers, preachers, priests, police officers, etc., who use their power to help protect their fellow abusers from the consequences of their actions, then maybe the good Lord actually intends to use what Mia's done to shake Genovia by the shoulders and make this country wake up to what's been happening right here under our noses."
"I never thought that abuse was a very big problem in Genovia. I thought that because we've always been such a small, close-knit, supposedly God-fearing country, things like abuse didn't happen here, or if they did, they were rare, isolated occurrences."
"Until tonight, I believed that as well. But now, I think that we may have simply hit the snooze button when it comes to abuse. And now the Almighty is using the evil that's occurred tonight to start waking you and me and every Genovian, and especially everyone who claims to be a Christian, up."
"Why would Mia do something like this? I mean, I can certainly understand her wanting to sneak away from all the palace guards and just be on her own for a little while. Even though it is a palace, with there being so little freedom to come and go as you please, it can sometimes feel like more of a prison than a home. And with Mia being so young, I can understand her wanting to break free every once in a while. But why do volunteer work at an abused women's shelter? Why volunteer at a place where all the women and children staying there have abusive, violent, dangerous husbands and fathers looking for them? Why on earth would Mia do something so dangerous?"
"Clarisse, you make it sound as though Mia was doing something wrong by helping out there. Can't you see it, what an enormous, generous, loving heart your granddaughter has? I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that if helping abuse victims and survivors is such an important cause for Mia, she should have contributed to places like the Pyrus Women's Shelter financially, instead of getting so personally involved and putting herself in danger. Now I'm not at all glad that any of this has happened, but the fact of the matter is, it's Mia's willingness to roll up her sleeves and get involved in person and get down in the trenches with everyday Genovians that makes her such an exceptional queen."
Clarisse turned to me with tears in her eyes then and told me, "It'll hardly be worth it for her to be such an exceptional queen if she dies."
I immediately pulled my wife into my arms and held her, and I said, "I know, my dear. I know. I know the hell you went through, losing Philippe like you did seven years ago. And I can only imagine what this must be doing to you inside right now. I'm here, sweetheart. I'm here, and I love you and Mia so much, and we are going to make sure she gets through this, Clarisse. She is going to be alright. I know it."
A couple of hours later, Mia's doctors explained to us the severity of her condition. She had the obvious scrapes and bruises from the beating, as well as a few broken ribs, a broken nose, a broken knee, and five broken fingers. Naturally, the nose, the knee, and the fingers required orthopedic surgery to be fixed, and those were the least of her problems. Because of the drowning, all of Mia's key organs, her heart, her lungs, her kidneys, and her liver, had all suffered severe oxygen deprivation and as a result, were failing. It was an utter miracle that Mia hadn't also suffered brain damage, and it was certainly a miracle that she'd managed to hold onto consciousness long enough to have that heart-wrenching conversation with me earlier. The oxygen deprivation to Mia's heart had in fact caused her to suffer a heart attack, and damage was done to the muscle of her heart. To put it mildly, things did not look good for Mia at all.
A little while before Mia was moved into the ICU where Clarisse and I could visit her, I really needed to stretch my legs a little so I went for a walk, leaving Clarisse in the waiting room with Shades for a couple of minutes. As I made my way through the first floor of the hospital, where the emergency room and waiting room and hospital rooms for everyday people were, I quickly noticed that the frenzy of the news media had already begun in earnest. Elsie Kentworthy was already there in full force with her cameras, and I just rolled my eyes at the absurdity of it all. Maybe Mia was the reigning Queen of Genovia, but Shades was right. She was every bit as much a citizen of Genovia as everybody else in our country, and she and Clarisse had the same rights to basic human privacy as anybody else. Of course the country was interested in what happened in the life of their Queen, but now was not the time for flashing lights and cameras. Now was the time for Mia's and Clarisse's privacy and basic human rights to be respected.
But while the hospital was practically bursting at the seams with curious spectators, the waiting room of the first floor was, in fact, filled with people who really did care about Mia and were worried about what was happening with her. Sarah Sanchez and Mia's friends from the Pyrus Women's Shelter, Ben, Terri, Jennifer, and Danielle were sitting in that waiting room because they sincerely wanted to know how Mia was doing.
"I'm still in shock," Terri said. "I still can't believe it."
"Take a number," Ben responded. Of the five of them, his bruises and injuries had been the worst, but like all the others, he'd been properly treated in the emergency room. He had suffered a bit of a concussion and the doctor on call had told him to go home and take it easy for a while, but like the others, he couldn't leave because of how worried he was about Mia. "Everybody's in a state of shock right now. The entire country of Genovia is in a state of shock. I know I certainly am."
"You know, being a doctor, you see all kinds of terrible things," said Jennifer. "And some of the things I see on a daily basis at our shelter can leave me reeling inside. There have been quite a few times over the past couple of years that it all just got to me so much, and I really needed a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on in those times, and Angie's always done that for me."
"Me, too," said Danielle. "You know, you think that royals are these special, magical kind of people who are larger than life. You never imagine a princess or a queen being the kind of person you can just sit down with and talk to, one human being to another. But that's how Angela – or rather, Queen Mia – has always acted. She's always acted like she was just an ordinary person, like everybody else."
"Ain't that the truth," Sarah agreed. "Angie's always been so gentle, you know? So shy and sweet. There was nothing she wasn't willing to do to help us out. Unlike some of you, Ben," she teased, "she always did everything I ever asked of her without complaint. And I'll never forget when I gathered all of you together and told you about Evelyn's death a few weeks ago, how I asked how many of you would still be willing to keep working at the shelter, despite the risk involved. Queen Mia was the first person to raise her hand."
"It still boggles my mind," Ben said. "You're right, Sarah. I don't mind doing what I can to help out. That's what I signed on for. But I've never been thrilled about cleaning the bathrooms, especially the toilets," he joked and the others laughed. "I know how bad I've been about that. Usually when the bathrooms needed cleaning, Angie, or Queen Mia, stepped in and did that job when a lot of us wouldn't, including me. The Queen of Genovia. And she cleaned toilets, man."
"She always had those bathrooms sparkling," said Terri.
It was in that moment that I came into the waiting room and introduced myself, although they already knew who I was since, after marrying Clarisse a couple of years ago, I had actually become rather famous in Genovia. Then I basically told them everything Mia's doctors had just told Clarisse and me about her condition. We had a long conversation then about everything that had happened that night and all that Mia had done to protect them, and after we all marveled at what a kindhearted, humble, down-to-earth, sensitive young lady our Queen was, I rejoined Clarisse and Shades upstairs.
A little while later, Clarisse and I were allowed to go into Mia's ICU room to visit her, and when Clarisse first saw Mia, lying lifeless on that hospital bed, hooked up to a ventilator and monitors and I.V.s, she nearly collapsed and I had to support her so she wouldn't fall. After I helped her to a chair, I just held her for the longest time while she wept.
"You're right, Joseph. Genovia has got to start waking up. We have got to start waking up. This invisible network of abusers you the guards have been talking about? It ends here. It ends right now. Maybe I was asleep before, but now, I am wide awake." I simply nodded in agreement, and then I sat down in another chair next to Clarisse and held her hand. "What have they done to her, Joseph?" Clarisse gasped in horror. "What have they done? How could anybody do something like this?"
"I don't know, Clarisse," I sighed. "I'll never understand it."
"Her little hand," Clarisse said through her tears. Mia had had pins and screws put in during the orthopedic surgery of the fingers of her right hand, and her poor broken, bruised hand was wrapped in bandages and propped up on a pillow. To say the least, Mia's condition was heartbreaking.
"I know," I whispered as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. "I know."
Over the next several weeks, Clarisse and I sat together like that, holding a vigil over Mia in her hospital room. During that time, she was given very expensive, highly experimental drugs to try and help her badly broken body recover – at the expense of her reproductive system – but in the end, it all came down to an entire nation praying for their Queen, as well as millions of prayers from others all over the world. The experimental medications did help some, but Mia's doctors told us that they hadn't helped her enough, and they were officially out of options. Yet one day, out of the blue, Mia's condition somehow started to improve, seemingly all on its own. Although such miracles were hardly everyday occurrences, they did still happen in this world, and Clarisse and I, and the entire country of Genovia, couldn't thank the good Lord enough. The Lord, for whatever reason, did not heal Mia completely, but He did heal her enough to give her a fighting chance at making a recovery, which she did.
And what I'd told Clarisse did turn out to be true. As all the details of her hellish experience became public, including the fact that those pieces of scum had actually broken Mia's fingers because they'd wanted to break every finger of the hand that had signed the Protection Act into law, Genovians really did wake up to the way abusers in our country were shamelessly being enabled. Not every Genovian chose to stop being comfortably ignorant about the issue, but thankfully, many did. And Genovia's invisible network of abusers and enablers didn't go away overnight, but thanks to Christ and to Mia, the entire system became severely weakened because other people in powerful positions stopped closing their eyes to it, and many more abused women and children in Genovia started finding freedom. What those thugs meant for evil, the Lord turned around and used for good, striking a crippling blow to the deadly system that had enabled them for so long. Similar things began happening in a lot of other countries as well.
As Clarisse and I entered Mia's suite just now, I only wished that Mia could find full freedom from the nightmares of that unspeakable night that still haunted her all these years later. When we walked inside, Mia had begun to calm down somewhat, but she was still crying as she clung to Lionel, who was rocking her.
"I'm alright, guys," Mia said through her tears. "I'm alright. I just need a minute."
"Oh honey, you just take all the time you need," Clarisse told her as she sat down on the side of Mia's bed and held her hands. "If you need to have a good, long cry, you just go right ahead. It's perfectly alright to cry if you need to. We're all right here with you, little one."
"And speaking of little ones, if you'll all excuse me for a minute, I want to go check on Claire and Rosie. I want to make sure I didn't accidentally wake them up."
"I'll do that, baby," Lionel said as he started getting out of bed.
"Okay, Lionel. Thank you."
"Of course."
After Lionel left, Clarisse and I sat down on either side of Mia, and we held her together, and I told her, "We're here, mija. Mommy and Daddy are right here. No one is ever going to hurt you like that again. I promise you that."
"I know," Mia whispered. "It's just so hard to relive it."
"I know it is, baby," said Clarisse. "I know it is. Let me help you."
Mia knew Clarisse was talking about using her gift, and she looked into her eyes and nodded without any hesitation. Very soon, as Clarisse started pouring her love into Mia, Mia was able to relax once again. Lionel came back in a few moments later and told us that the girls were still sound asleep, and Mia had actually fallen asleep once again in Clarisse's arms. Clarisse held her for a short while, and then she and I got up from the bed and Lionel laid back down and started holding Mia again. Afterwards, we went back to our own suite and prayed that Mia would be able to sleep peacefully through the rest of the night.