Starting Over
Luka rushed into the hospital through the ER doors. He wasn't used to using the regular entrance and had decided not to. He swiftly strode to the elevator and pressed the button. Abby passed him with an armful of supplies and stopped.
"Where are you going?" Abby asked him.
"To Mariana's room. I'm going to see how she is and take Alexandria to school before I come to work." Luka answered looking at her.
Abby looked down at the ground, "So, are they yours now?"
Luka nodded, smiling. "Yes."
"Congratulations." Abby smiled back.
"Thank you." The doors opened and Luka stepped into the elevator. "I'll see you in a little while."
"Yeah." Abby said before walking off. The doors closed, shutting off Luka's view of Abby.
He pressed the floor button. Within moments the doors opened and he walked over to the desk. "Did you get the paperwork from court?" he asked the nurse on desk. "I'm Luka Kovac."
The nurse nodded her head. "Yes, Dr. Kovac. You are now the twin's father. Congratulations."
Luka smiled again, "Thanks."
He walked over to the door and knocked lightly. A minute later Alexandria opened and poked her head out. "Oh, hi!"
She pulled back and let him enter the room before softly shutting the door.
"The social worker called last night. The courts approved the papers. You two are now my daughters." Luka told Alexandria.
A big smile lit up her face and she quickly leaned over and gave him a hug before putting some books in her bag. "It feels good to have some clean clothes on. I can't believe I stayed in those other clothes as long as I did." Alexandria muttered as she stuffed the dirty clothes in a duffel bag. "Do you mind if I leave the bag in your car instead of bringing it into school with me?"
"No." Luka said. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Alexandria shook her head. "No. There's not much here. Thanks."
"Yeah." Luka said and walked over to Mariana. He bent down by her bed and stroked her forehead. "How is she?"
Alexandria walked over to the other side of the bed. "Fine. The nurses took her off the respirator and said she should be able to come home soon."
Luka smiled. "That's exciting."
He bent down and kissed her forehead before standing up. Alexandria was smiling as she watched a man, their new father, treat her sister kindly, not harshly. She quickly turned her gaze away and pulled the bedside drawer open.
"I'm going to leave her a note." Alexandria said.
She picked up the pencil and notebook that were sitting inside and opened them. Alexandria laughed a little.
"What?" Luka asked her.
"She wrote me a note. It says, 'Alexandria, don't worry about me. Go. Love, Ana.'" Alexandria said as she flipped to the next page laughing some more. "Go. It's all in caps too."
Luka smiled. "I don't think you need to leave her a note."
Alexandria looked down at her sleeping sister and then looked back at Luka. "Yeah. Will you come back up later to tell her that the papers were approved?"
"Yeah."
Alexandria smiled, put on her coat and picked up her bag. Luka put his arm around her shoulder as they walked towards his car.
~*~*~*~*~
Alexandria put her coat on the hook in her locker and then knelt down to take some books from her backpack. As she set them down in the bottom of her locker by the others she heard, "Alexandria!"
She looked up and saw Mitchell jogging towards her. "Hi, Alexandria. How are you?"
"I'm fine. I'm tired." Alexandria replied. "How are you?"
"I'm okay. You look stressed." Mitchell observed before quickly adding, "I mean, it's understandable!"
Alexandria laughed a little, "Yeah. Well, I don't look as bad as Ana."
"How is she? I would've come in again but we had a family thing and then no one answered the phone when I called. I was worried." Mitchell said.
"Oh! We were probably at the apartment packing up our stuff to get ready to move it." Alexandria explained. "She's doing all right. Her respirator was removed last night and the nurse said she should be going home soon. She's still in a lot of pain, though, and extremely tired."
Mitchell nodded. "Do you think I could come see her tonight?"
Alexandria smiled and nodded, "Yeah. I think it would be great for her to see someone besides Luka, the doctors and nurses and I."
Mitchell gave her a puzzled glance. "Luka?"
"Dr. Kovac. Have you met him?" Alexandria asked.
"Yeah. You guys call him Luka now?" Mitchell asked her.
Alexandria nodded. "Yeah. He adopted us. It was confirmed last night."
"Really? That's great!" Mitchell exclaimed.
"Yeah." Alexandria said as the warning bell rang. She quickly put her bag on the hook and grabbed the books for her next class.
"Well, we should both get going. See you at lunch." Mitchell said as he walked off.
"Yep. Bye!" Alexandria called out as she walked in the other direction.
Alexandria made it to the class with thirty seconds to spare. She sat down as the final bell rang. She looked at the desk to see a sub sitting in the spot of her teacher. Warner Gardner walked in. When he saw Alexandria he quickly said, "Alexandria! How's Mariana?"
"She's all right." Alexandria assured him.
"Will she be coming back soon?" he asked.
"She should be released from the hospital soon. But we're not sure how long it'll take before she can come back to school. She's still in a lot of pain." Alexandria told him.
The sub got up and looked at the seating chart. "Alexandria Watkins." She muttered. "Are you Mariana Watkin's sister?"
"Yes." Alexandria looked up. "How do you know about her?"
"It's in the news. The police are asking people to keep a lookout for your father. He's going to be charged with the attempted murder of your sister." The sub said.
"Serves him right!" a bunch of kids, including Warner, yelled.
Alexandria shook her head, "He's not our father anymore. And it wasn't attempted murder. He never planned to kill her."
The sub stared Alexandria strangely. "You forgive your father for almost killing your twin?"
"My twin seems to have forgiven him. Why shouldn't I?" Alexandria countered. "And he's not our father anymore."
"Mariana could not have forgiven him. He almost killed her." The sub replied icily. "Besides, if you two had forgiven him you wouldn't be denying the fact that he is your father."
"Mariana loves him a lot. She always has. I believe that my sister has forgiven him." Alexandria glared at the woman. "And we are not denying the fact that he is our father. When I took some papers that would release us from his custody, he signed them."
"How could he love you two if he hurt your sister that way?" the sub asked.
"He gave us up so that we could have a better life." Alexandria whispered.
~*~*~*~*~
"Do you want to have lunch?" Abby asked Luka as they both took a break from work.
"Yeah. But, I need to go do one thing. I promised Alexandria that I'd tell Mariana that the papers cleared." Luka told her, hoping she wouldn't get upset.
Abby smiled. "Can I come with you? I assume I'll be seeing a lot of the girls now."
Luka smiled back. "Yeah, you can come."
He reached out and grabbed her hand as they walked from the lounge to the elevator. All the way up to the floor she had been moved from ICU to, they stood in silence, hands clasped together.
They stepped out and he walked to the door, knocking.
"Come in!" Mariana called out after a moment.
He opened the door and walked in, still holding Abby's hand. He pulled two chairs up by her bed as she turned off the television.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her.
"It hurts. But it feels really good not to be hooked up to that respirator." Mariana replied.
Luka smiled and said, "That's good." He pointed at Abby and said, "Mariana, I don't know if you know Abby. She knows you though. She's the nurse that worked with me when you were brought in."
Mariana smiled and told Abby, "I thought you looked familiar."
Abby smiled and said, "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."
"Thanks."
Luka focused his attention on Mariana again and said, "Ana. Alexandria already knows this and I promised her that I'd tell you. The courts cleared the papers. You two are now my daughters. Alexandria's decided that she'll start sleeping at the apartment tonight."
Mariana smiled, "That's great! I'm glad she's getting off that squeaky old cot."
Luka smiled back and looked at the tray in front of her. "Eating lunch?"
Mariana scowled, "No. I'm waiting for them to take it away. It smells disgusting and looks just as gross."
Abby pulled the chart off the end of the bed and glanced at it. Looking at Mariana she said, "Do you like hamburgers and french fries?" Mariana nodded. Looking at Luka, Abby said, "I think I'll quickly run over to Doc Magoos and get some food for us. She has no restrictions."
"Great!" Luka said.
As Abby walked towards the door Mariana said, "Don't get too much for me. I don't know what I could eat anyway."
Ten minutes later Abby came back with drinks and food. Mariana didn't eat all of her meal and insisted that the other two eat what was left. They were talking and laughing when sets of beeps sounded. Luka and Abby both pulled out their pagers.
"I'm gonna use the phone quickly," Abby said.
She picked up the phone and dialed an extension.
"County General Hospital emergency. This is Randi. How may I help you?" Randi answered.
"Hi Randi. Its Abby. Dr. Kovac and I both got a page." Abby said.
"Yeah. A woman investigated her neighbors when no one left the house. She called 911. There were five GSW's, three critical, one minor, one DOA. ETA five minutes." Randi told her.
"Okay. Kovac and I'll be right down." Abby said and then hung up turning around to face Luka. "Four GSW's. ETA five minutes."
Luka turned to Mariana. "All right, we have to go. I'll be picking Alexandria up from school and bringing her here before we go home."
Mariana nodded. "Okay."
"See you later honey." Luka said as he left the room, Abby right behind him.
When they were in the elevator on their way back to the ER he looked at Abby and said, "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For eating with us. For getting us food so we could eat."
Abby smiled and grabbed his hand, "No problem."
~*~*~*~*~
Luka was standing at the desk with Frank, Randi and Abby when Kerry left the exam room she was in.
"Luka, did the mother make it?" Kerry asked wearily.
"Yes." Luka answered.
"Do you know about the other two kids?" Kerry asked.
"Both are awake in the exam rooms." Luka answered again.
"All right. The son didn't survive." Kerry looked around. "I'll go tell her."
"Would you like me to?" Luka asked Kerry.
"If you don't mind." Kerry sighed. "He was shot through the heart."
Luka nodded and walked to his patient's room. Knocking on the door he walked in and pulled a stool closer to her bed.
"Mrs. Patterson. Ally and Melissa are fine. You will be able to see them later tonight. Ben had been shot through the heart. The doctors tried, but there was no way they could repair the damage." Luka said slowly and softly. He looked into the woman's tear-filled eyes and said, "I'm sorry. Ben died."
Tears began flowing down the woman's cheeks. She pressed her hands against her face until she was finally able to control her sobbing. Then she brought her hands down and looked at Luka. "My husband. He had been ch- cheating on me." The woman stammered with grief. "I confronted him earlier today after I got home from the grocery store and had seen them. He yelled at me for accusing him of something like that and then he…he pulled out a gun and pointed it at me! Ally, Melissa and Ben came in and when they saw him they all started yelling. He turned to them and shot them all, shooting Ben first, and then he turned back to me. He shot me and then when he saw what he had done he knelt beside and whispered, 'I'm sorry' and then he pointed the gun at his head and shot himself."
Luka listened quietly to the sad story and then looked into her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"My husband. Did he die?" the woman asked.
Luka nodded. "He was DOA."
Mrs. Patterson sighed and leaned her head back against the bed. "Someone should tell his little…thing!" she said angrily spitting out the last word.
"Do you know who she is?" Luka asked her.
Mrs. Patterson nodded. "My sister."
Mrs. Patterson gave Luka a number of where he could reach her sister and told him to call her right away and let her know that he had died.
~*~*~*~*~
Luka walked into the ER with Alexandria at his side when a woman emerged from Mrs. Patterson's room.
"He never loved you! You stole him away from me! You never loved him either! You just wanted to take him away from me! So you got yourself pregnant with his child! Too bad all your children weren't killed! This way you will never truly suffer for what you did to me, to us, to him!"
With that the woman stalked out of the ER, her face red and tear-stained. Luka patted Alexandria's shoulder and said, "I'll be right back."
Alexandria watched him run into the room the woman had just come out of. She was trying to figure out what had just happened when she spotted a little girl standing down the hall, tears streaming down her face.
Alexandria walked over to her and set her bag on the floor. She sat on a chair and leaned forward placing her elbows on her knees.
"What's your name?" Alexandria asked softly.
"Ally." The little girl whispered.
"Are you okay?" Alexandria asked, wondering if she was sick.
Ally shook her head.
"What's wrong?"
"I was shot in the leg by my daddy." The girl said. "And my mommy and sister and brother were shot too. My brother died. So did my daddy cause he shot himself."
Alexandria whispered, "I'm sorry. Do you want to sit in my lap for awhile?"
Ally nodded and Alexandria helped her climb into her lap. She slowly rocked Ally and said, "Why were you just standing in the hall?"
"I was going to see my mommy. The nurse said I could. When I was walking over there my aunt came out of her room yelling at her. My aunt wishes I was dead." Ally said causing more sobs. "She was blaming my mommy for it, but its not mommy's fault! Daddy was always mean. He hurt her and my sister Melissa. He'd hit them hard even if they didn't do anything wrong."
As the little girl sobbed in her arms Alexandria closed her eyes remembering all the times her father would hit her mother for no reason. And then, after her mother's death, hit her sister.
"It's going to be all right." Alexandria whispered.
"How do you know?" the little girl asked.
"Because, my daddy hit my mommy and my sister too. He almost killed my sister a couple days ago, but she's all right. And now we don't have to go back to him again." Alexandria explained.
Ally's tense body relaxed in her arms and her sobs decreased. Alexandria rocked Ally for a while longer. Luka walked out of the room and smiled at the sight before him. "Is that Ally or Melissa?"
Alexandria nodded and said, "It's Ally."
Luka knelt down before them and said, "Hi Ally. I'm Dr. Kovac. Would you like to go see your mommy?"
Ally nodded and Alexandria lightly pushed her off her lap, stood up, and then picked her up. They walked into Ally's mother's room.
"Mommy!" Ally yelled happily. The woman's face was as red as the face of Ally's but she was smiling.
"Hi Ally." She said.
Alexandria put Ally on the floor and she ran forward into her mother's open arms.
"Guess what?" Ally asked.
"What?"
"Everything will be okay." Ally said.
"How do you know that?" Mrs. Patterson asked blinking back some more tears.
"Because Alexandria said so. And her daddy was mean just like mine. She said that he almost killed her sister and now things are turning out to be better." Ally told her mother.
Mrs. Patterson smiled and said, "I suppose you're right. Now that he's not here we don't have to worry about being hurt, do we?"
Ally nodded and Mrs. Patterson looked up at Alexandria. "Thanks for talking to her. I wouldn't have known what to say."
Alexandria smiled. "You're welcome."
Luka smiled again and said, "Well, I'm going to get Alexandria upstairs to see that sister she was talking about. I'll see you later Mrs. Patterson."
"Thanks Dr. Kovac." Mrs. Patterson said as they left the room.
When Alexandria and Luka got upstairs Alexandria walked into Mariana's room and gave her surprised sister a hug.
~*~*~*~*~
Three days later Luka and Alexandria walked upstairs after he picked her up from school. Alexandria walked over to the door to Mariana's room and opened it up. The bed was empty. Re-made for someone else to use.
"Luka! Where's Mariana?" Alexandria asked as panic took hold of her.
Luka rushed into the hospital through the ER doors. He wasn't used to using the regular entrance and had decided not to. He swiftly strode to the elevator and pressed the button. Abby passed him with an armful of supplies and stopped.
"Where are you going?" Abby asked him.
"To Mariana's room. I'm going to see how she is and take Alexandria to school before I come to work." Luka answered looking at her.
Abby looked down at the ground, "So, are they yours now?"
Luka nodded, smiling. "Yes."
"Congratulations." Abby smiled back.
"Thank you." The doors opened and Luka stepped into the elevator. "I'll see you in a little while."
"Yeah." Abby said before walking off. The doors closed, shutting off Luka's view of Abby.
He pressed the floor button. Within moments the doors opened and he walked over to the desk. "Did you get the paperwork from court?" he asked the nurse on desk. "I'm Luka Kovac."
The nurse nodded her head. "Yes, Dr. Kovac. You are now the twin's father. Congratulations."
Luka smiled again, "Thanks."
He walked over to the door and knocked lightly. A minute later Alexandria opened and poked her head out. "Oh, hi!"
She pulled back and let him enter the room before softly shutting the door.
"The social worker called last night. The courts approved the papers. You two are now my daughters." Luka told Alexandria.
A big smile lit up her face and she quickly leaned over and gave him a hug before putting some books in her bag. "It feels good to have some clean clothes on. I can't believe I stayed in those other clothes as long as I did." Alexandria muttered as she stuffed the dirty clothes in a duffel bag. "Do you mind if I leave the bag in your car instead of bringing it into school with me?"
"No." Luka said. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Alexandria shook her head. "No. There's not much here. Thanks."
"Yeah." Luka said and walked over to Mariana. He bent down by her bed and stroked her forehead. "How is she?"
Alexandria walked over to the other side of the bed. "Fine. The nurses took her off the respirator and said she should be able to come home soon."
Luka smiled. "That's exciting."
He bent down and kissed her forehead before standing up. Alexandria was smiling as she watched a man, their new father, treat her sister kindly, not harshly. She quickly turned her gaze away and pulled the bedside drawer open.
"I'm going to leave her a note." Alexandria said.
She picked up the pencil and notebook that were sitting inside and opened them. Alexandria laughed a little.
"What?" Luka asked her.
"She wrote me a note. It says, 'Alexandria, don't worry about me. Go. Love, Ana.'" Alexandria said as she flipped to the next page laughing some more. "Go. It's all in caps too."
Luka smiled. "I don't think you need to leave her a note."
Alexandria looked down at her sleeping sister and then looked back at Luka. "Yeah. Will you come back up later to tell her that the papers were approved?"
"Yeah."
Alexandria smiled, put on her coat and picked up her bag. Luka put his arm around her shoulder as they walked towards his car.
~*~*~*~*~
Alexandria put her coat on the hook in her locker and then knelt down to take some books from her backpack. As she set them down in the bottom of her locker by the others she heard, "Alexandria!"
She looked up and saw Mitchell jogging towards her. "Hi, Alexandria. How are you?"
"I'm fine. I'm tired." Alexandria replied. "How are you?"
"I'm okay. You look stressed." Mitchell observed before quickly adding, "I mean, it's understandable!"
Alexandria laughed a little, "Yeah. Well, I don't look as bad as Ana."
"How is she? I would've come in again but we had a family thing and then no one answered the phone when I called. I was worried." Mitchell said.
"Oh! We were probably at the apartment packing up our stuff to get ready to move it." Alexandria explained. "She's doing all right. Her respirator was removed last night and the nurse said she should be going home soon. She's still in a lot of pain, though, and extremely tired."
Mitchell nodded. "Do you think I could come see her tonight?"
Alexandria smiled and nodded, "Yeah. I think it would be great for her to see someone besides Luka, the doctors and nurses and I."
Mitchell gave her a puzzled glance. "Luka?"
"Dr. Kovac. Have you met him?" Alexandria asked.
"Yeah. You guys call him Luka now?" Mitchell asked her.
Alexandria nodded. "Yeah. He adopted us. It was confirmed last night."
"Really? That's great!" Mitchell exclaimed.
"Yeah." Alexandria said as the warning bell rang. She quickly put her bag on the hook and grabbed the books for her next class.
"Well, we should both get going. See you at lunch." Mitchell said as he walked off.
"Yep. Bye!" Alexandria called out as she walked in the other direction.
Alexandria made it to the class with thirty seconds to spare. She sat down as the final bell rang. She looked at the desk to see a sub sitting in the spot of her teacher. Warner Gardner walked in. When he saw Alexandria he quickly said, "Alexandria! How's Mariana?"
"She's all right." Alexandria assured him.
"Will she be coming back soon?" he asked.
"She should be released from the hospital soon. But we're not sure how long it'll take before she can come back to school. She's still in a lot of pain." Alexandria told him.
The sub got up and looked at the seating chart. "Alexandria Watkins." She muttered. "Are you Mariana Watkin's sister?"
"Yes." Alexandria looked up. "How do you know about her?"
"It's in the news. The police are asking people to keep a lookout for your father. He's going to be charged with the attempted murder of your sister." The sub said.
"Serves him right!" a bunch of kids, including Warner, yelled.
Alexandria shook her head, "He's not our father anymore. And it wasn't attempted murder. He never planned to kill her."
The sub stared Alexandria strangely. "You forgive your father for almost killing your twin?"
"My twin seems to have forgiven him. Why shouldn't I?" Alexandria countered. "And he's not our father anymore."
"Mariana could not have forgiven him. He almost killed her." The sub replied icily. "Besides, if you two had forgiven him you wouldn't be denying the fact that he is your father."
"Mariana loves him a lot. She always has. I believe that my sister has forgiven him." Alexandria glared at the woman. "And we are not denying the fact that he is our father. When I took some papers that would release us from his custody, he signed them."
"How could he love you two if he hurt your sister that way?" the sub asked.
"He gave us up so that we could have a better life." Alexandria whispered.
~*~*~*~*~
"Do you want to have lunch?" Abby asked Luka as they both took a break from work.
"Yeah. But, I need to go do one thing. I promised Alexandria that I'd tell Mariana that the papers cleared." Luka told her, hoping she wouldn't get upset.
Abby smiled. "Can I come with you? I assume I'll be seeing a lot of the girls now."
Luka smiled back. "Yeah, you can come."
He reached out and grabbed her hand as they walked from the lounge to the elevator. All the way up to the floor she had been moved from ICU to, they stood in silence, hands clasped together.
They stepped out and he walked to the door, knocking.
"Come in!" Mariana called out after a moment.
He opened the door and walked in, still holding Abby's hand. He pulled two chairs up by her bed as she turned off the television.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her.
"It hurts. But it feels really good not to be hooked up to that respirator." Mariana replied.
Luka smiled and said, "That's good." He pointed at Abby and said, "Mariana, I don't know if you know Abby. She knows you though. She's the nurse that worked with me when you were brought in."
Mariana smiled and told Abby, "I thought you looked familiar."
Abby smiled and said, "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."
"Thanks."
Luka focused his attention on Mariana again and said, "Ana. Alexandria already knows this and I promised her that I'd tell you. The courts cleared the papers. You two are now my daughters. Alexandria's decided that she'll start sleeping at the apartment tonight."
Mariana smiled, "That's great! I'm glad she's getting off that squeaky old cot."
Luka smiled back and looked at the tray in front of her. "Eating lunch?"
Mariana scowled, "No. I'm waiting for them to take it away. It smells disgusting and looks just as gross."
Abby pulled the chart off the end of the bed and glanced at it. Looking at Mariana she said, "Do you like hamburgers and french fries?" Mariana nodded. Looking at Luka, Abby said, "I think I'll quickly run over to Doc Magoos and get some food for us. She has no restrictions."
"Great!" Luka said.
As Abby walked towards the door Mariana said, "Don't get too much for me. I don't know what I could eat anyway."
Ten minutes later Abby came back with drinks and food. Mariana didn't eat all of her meal and insisted that the other two eat what was left. They were talking and laughing when sets of beeps sounded. Luka and Abby both pulled out their pagers.
"I'm gonna use the phone quickly," Abby said.
She picked up the phone and dialed an extension.
"County General Hospital emergency. This is Randi. How may I help you?" Randi answered.
"Hi Randi. Its Abby. Dr. Kovac and I both got a page." Abby said.
"Yeah. A woman investigated her neighbors when no one left the house. She called 911. There were five GSW's, three critical, one minor, one DOA. ETA five minutes." Randi told her.
"Okay. Kovac and I'll be right down." Abby said and then hung up turning around to face Luka. "Four GSW's. ETA five minutes."
Luka turned to Mariana. "All right, we have to go. I'll be picking Alexandria up from school and bringing her here before we go home."
Mariana nodded. "Okay."
"See you later honey." Luka said as he left the room, Abby right behind him.
When they were in the elevator on their way back to the ER he looked at Abby and said, "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For eating with us. For getting us food so we could eat."
Abby smiled and grabbed his hand, "No problem."
~*~*~*~*~
Luka was standing at the desk with Frank, Randi and Abby when Kerry left the exam room she was in.
"Luka, did the mother make it?" Kerry asked wearily.
"Yes." Luka answered.
"Do you know about the other two kids?" Kerry asked.
"Both are awake in the exam rooms." Luka answered again.
"All right. The son didn't survive." Kerry looked around. "I'll go tell her."
"Would you like me to?" Luka asked Kerry.
"If you don't mind." Kerry sighed. "He was shot through the heart."
Luka nodded and walked to his patient's room. Knocking on the door he walked in and pulled a stool closer to her bed.
"Mrs. Patterson. Ally and Melissa are fine. You will be able to see them later tonight. Ben had been shot through the heart. The doctors tried, but there was no way they could repair the damage." Luka said slowly and softly. He looked into the woman's tear-filled eyes and said, "I'm sorry. Ben died."
Tears began flowing down the woman's cheeks. She pressed her hands against her face until she was finally able to control her sobbing. Then she brought her hands down and looked at Luka. "My husband. He had been ch- cheating on me." The woman stammered with grief. "I confronted him earlier today after I got home from the grocery store and had seen them. He yelled at me for accusing him of something like that and then he…he pulled out a gun and pointed it at me! Ally, Melissa and Ben came in and when they saw him they all started yelling. He turned to them and shot them all, shooting Ben first, and then he turned back to me. He shot me and then when he saw what he had done he knelt beside and whispered, 'I'm sorry' and then he pointed the gun at his head and shot himself."
Luka listened quietly to the sad story and then looked into her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"My husband. Did he die?" the woman asked.
Luka nodded. "He was DOA."
Mrs. Patterson sighed and leaned her head back against the bed. "Someone should tell his little…thing!" she said angrily spitting out the last word.
"Do you know who she is?" Luka asked her.
Mrs. Patterson nodded. "My sister."
Mrs. Patterson gave Luka a number of where he could reach her sister and told him to call her right away and let her know that he had died.
~*~*~*~*~
Luka walked into the ER with Alexandria at his side when a woman emerged from Mrs. Patterson's room.
"He never loved you! You stole him away from me! You never loved him either! You just wanted to take him away from me! So you got yourself pregnant with his child! Too bad all your children weren't killed! This way you will never truly suffer for what you did to me, to us, to him!"
With that the woman stalked out of the ER, her face red and tear-stained. Luka patted Alexandria's shoulder and said, "I'll be right back."
Alexandria watched him run into the room the woman had just come out of. She was trying to figure out what had just happened when she spotted a little girl standing down the hall, tears streaming down her face.
Alexandria walked over to her and set her bag on the floor. She sat on a chair and leaned forward placing her elbows on her knees.
"What's your name?" Alexandria asked softly.
"Ally." The little girl whispered.
"Are you okay?" Alexandria asked, wondering if she was sick.
Ally shook her head.
"What's wrong?"
"I was shot in the leg by my daddy." The girl said. "And my mommy and sister and brother were shot too. My brother died. So did my daddy cause he shot himself."
Alexandria whispered, "I'm sorry. Do you want to sit in my lap for awhile?"
Ally nodded and Alexandria helped her climb into her lap. She slowly rocked Ally and said, "Why were you just standing in the hall?"
"I was going to see my mommy. The nurse said I could. When I was walking over there my aunt came out of her room yelling at her. My aunt wishes I was dead." Ally said causing more sobs. "She was blaming my mommy for it, but its not mommy's fault! Daddy was always mean. He hurt her and my sister Melissa. He'd hit them hard even if they didn't do anything wrong."
As the little girl sobbed in her arms Alexandria closed her eyes remembering all the times her father would hit her mother for no reason. And then, after her mother's death, hit her sister.
"It's going to be all right." Alexandria whispered.
"How do you know?" the little girl asked.
"Because, my daddy hit my mommy and my sister too. He almost killed my sister a couple days ago, but she's all right. And now we don't have to go back to him again." Alexandria explained.
Ally's tense body relaxed in her arms and her sobs decreased. Alexandria rocked Ally for a while longer. Luka walked out of the room and smiled at the sight before him. "Is that Ally or Melissa?"
Alexandria nodded and said, "It's Ally."
Luka knelt down before them and said, "Hi Ally. I'm Dr. Kovac. Would you like to go see your mommy?"
Ally nodded and Alexandria lightly pushed her off her lap, stood up, and then picked her up. They walked into Ally's mother's room.
"Mommy!" Ally yelled happily. The woman's face was as red as the face of Ally's but she was smiling.
"Hi Ally." She said.
Alexandria put Ally on the floor and she ran forward into her mother's open arms.
"Guess what?" Ally asked.
"What?"
"Everything will be okay." Ally said.
"How do you know that?" Mrs. Patterson asked blinking back some more tears.
"Because Alexandria said so. And her daddy was mean just like mine. She said that he almost killed her sister and now things are turning out to be better." Ally told her mother.
Mrs. Patterson smiled and said, "I suppose you're right. Now that he's not here we don't have to worry about being hurt, do we?"
Ally nodded and Mrs. Patterson looked up at Alexandria. "Thanks for talking to her. I wouldn't have known what to say."
Alexandria smiled. "You're welcome."
Luka smiled again and said, "Well, I'm going to get Alexandria upstairs to see that sister she was talking about. I'll see you later Mrs. Patterson."
"Thanks Dr. Kovac." Mrs. Patterson said as they left the room.
When Alexandria and Luka got upstairs Alexandria walked into Mariana's room and gave her surprised sister a hug.
~*~*~*~*~
Three days later Luka and Alexandria walked upstairs after he picked her up from school. Alexandria walked over to the door to Mariana's room and opened it up. The bed was empty. Re-made for someone else to use.
"Luka! Where's Mariana?" Alexandria asked as panic took hold of her.
