CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a great freedom in realizing you might be about to die and couldn't do anything about it. Bobby realized this just as the drugs (from their effects Bobby thought they must be a potent combination of some opiate and oxycontin, and he wondered at the fact his brain needed to puzzle this out) took hold. He had no control over what Sebastian and Caldwell would do to him. He had no control over when Alex and the other cops would arrive. He knew they would come, and that he had a chance of living if he held on. He would hold on as long as he could because he'd promised her that. But everything else was out of his hands. He knew the strange bliss like state he fell into was likely mostly the drugs, but he also thought part of it was that he'd let go and given his life over to fate or God or whatever it was he vaguely believed. He was aware that Caldwell stood over him with a surgical scalpel and that Caldwell and Sebastian were arguing about something. The fact they were arguing struck him as very funny, and Bobby would've laughed if he had the strength.
Noise and light exploded in the room. There was shouting, a terribly loud crack, and Bobby saw the knife, bright shimmers of light reflecting off of it, fly out of Caldwell's hand, spin end over end, clang against the table, and fall to the floor. He saw Caldwell crumble, collapse, and join the knife on the floor. He heard Sebastian's cries of shock and despair. "Of course," Bobby thought. "These all could be hallucinations. I may have lost my mind." He nearly laughed again. "All my life I've been afraid of losing my mind, and maybe in the last minutes of my life I finally do."
Alex's face appeared over him, and Bobby's heart leaped. "I don't care if she's real or not," he thought. "If she's the last thing I'll ever see…I'll be grateful…So grateful." She draped his raincoat over him and began to remove the ropes and tape that bound him to the table. She was very careful, but Bobby felt distant pain as the tape and rope stuck to his bruised and battered body. The drugs made it seem as if the pain belonged to another part of him. He became aware of other hands touching him, and panic briefly seized him until he realized these hands weren't trying to hurt him. The hands gently turned him on his back, and his bloody skin slid on the table's cold steel. Someone placed something soft beneath his head, and Alex raised a bottle of water to his lips. It was clean and cold, and he gulped it rapidly until Alex urged him to slow down. He told her again how grateful and sorry he was. He thought he saw Ross, and Bobby tried to explain and apologize to his captain. As Alex gently spoke to him, Bobby became more and more convinced that she was real, that he was alive, and he was free from Sebastian and Caldwell's clutches. He suffered another moment of panic when the EMTs surrounded him and began to check him and put IVs in him; their actions were too close to some of the things Sebastian and Caldwell did to him. Alex kept talking to him, telling him that he was all right, that these people were helping him, and his panic eased as he gave himself to her soft voice and touch. She sustained him as they lifted him off the cold table and on to a gurney; as they carefully carried him up the narrow stairs and through the dark and dirty hall and finally out into the cold, grey day; and placed him in the ambulance. Alex sat near his head as they rushed to the hospital. The bright, pulsing lights and wailing sirens pounded in his head, but Alex kept her hands on his face and head as much as she could. Bobby fixed his eyes on hers, and Alex stayed with him. She stayed with him as the EMTs pulled him out of the ambulance and hurried him to the nearest trauma room. Bobby weakly cried out when a phalanx of doctors and nurses blocked Alex from his sight. She pushed through them and laid her hand on his forehead.
"I'll be right out here," she promised. "I'm not going anywhere. Just remember our deal. I'll forgive you for everything. But you gotta fight…You stay alive…" She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his curls.
Their warmth flowed through him as she disappeared from his sight.
END CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A short and possibly redundant chapter, but I wanted to give Bobby's perspective.