Chapter 27

"Lieutenant," a voice was calling softly and nudging Brian. "Lieutenant, can you hear me?"

Brian finally opened his eyes, looking around, seeing Captain Shields looking down at him. Where the hell was he?

"Wait…what? What the fuck happened and where am I?"

"You were shot during a robbery. You lost a good deal of blood and were brought to the emergency room."

It all came back to him then….going to meet Joey, hearing the call over a guard's radio, going to the scene…pulling his weapon…and then….nothing.

Until now.

Oh God, Joey!

"Captain, where's my daughter?" Brian asked, bordering on anxiety. Was she hurt too?

"Josephine's right outside. She was pretty upset for awhile until someone came to talk to her."

"Get her," Brian said weakly.

"You took a bad shot to the shoulder and not in the best shape," Shields countered.

"Get her," Brian repeated. "Fuck how I am, I need to see if my kid is okay."

Shields nodded, not quite fond of Joey seeing her father in his condition; Brian had lost a great deal of blood from the shoulder wound in addition to undergoing surgery to remove the bullet. On top of that, he had been a little groggy from surgery.

Joey came in a few minutes later, her face still showing signs she had been crying earlier. "Daddy," she said, her voice a mixture of joy and relief.

"There's my girl," he grinned weakly, hugging her with his good arm. "I just needed to know you weren't hurt or anything."

"I was scared, Dad…all that blood and you were out…I thought you were dead and all I could think about was who would tell Ma and how."

"I'm hard to kill, kid, didn't you know that? I'm a little druggy right now, but at least I'm still breathing. I should be out in a couple of days."

"Don't worry, I can take care of you when you come home," she smiled.

"Nothing doing, kid; you're going to school. I still have one good arm, remember?"

"You still need some help," Joey pressed, "and Ma can't do everything when she's about to have the baby."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it; I'm going to be off for awhile anyway."

"Are you going to get in trouble for helping those mall cops? You know, being off duty and all."

"Doubt it," Brian replied. "More than likely I'll probably get a sermon about calling in something when I'm off duty, but other than that, there shouldn't be a problem."

"Let's hope not. You kind of scared Captain Shields too."

"Oh I'm sure I scared a lot of people, kid. But trust me, no one is going to kill me off or get rid of me that easily."

Meanwhile:

"We just about have it," the doctor announced. "How's her vitals?"

"She's fine, Doctor," a nurse replied. "She's in the normal range on everything."

"And now we have ourselves a healthy boy in the world. Let's get this little guy cleaned up and his mother prepped to be taken to Recovery."

"Sure, Doctor," another nurse said, gently taking the baby. It would at least an hour before Lorelei woke up and would be able to see her newborn son, and they wanted him cleaned up and ready for that moment.

Several hours later:

Joey had tried calling home several times, but hadn't gotten an answer. She said nothing to Brian, figuring it may have been as something as simple as Lorelei taking a nap and shutting off the phone, and Joey didn't want to worry her dad by telling him no one was picking up the phone.

As soon as she heard Brian snoring again, she slipped out to get a soda from the vending machine down the hall, running into Eva, one of Lorelei's old co-workers.

"Oh, honey!" Eva said. "There you are. How's your dad?"

"Sleeping off whatever drugs they gave him," Joey replied.

"Oh, good. Listen, I wanted to find you and let you know that Lorelei's okay. She had the baby about two hours ago."

Joey looked at her in shock. "Huh?!!"

"When she heard about what happened to your dad, I guess the stress of it was too much and she went into labor," Eva explained. "She called me and Yvette and I brought her to the hospital. The baby was born by C-section. They're both doing very well."

"Wow," Joey breathed. "Both my folks are here. This has been some wild ass day, but at least things didn't turn out worse than they did."

Eva nodded, smiling. "Come on, let's go up to the nursery so you can meet your new baby brother."