Days in Rodanthe Pt. 08

"Look, it's Wyatt Derp from the O Gay Corral!" my brothers began to harass me. "You forgot to duck, moron!" "I woulda shot you and saved them the trip!" "Congratulations! You won a major colostomy!"

"Hey, that's enough!" My dad cut them off. O K Corral? Bullets? Now I remembered...Holy fuck I got shot. Some of it came back to me. Beach, two dead guys on the sand, plus me. Blood everywhere.

"Oh, no. No colostomy, but we did have to do some descending colonic re-section," a gray-haired, Southern- accented doctor chuckled and announced as he walked in with a petite Asian coworker with a clipboard. Per their ID badges and the view of the shipyards outside in the distance, I was in a Norfolk hospital. "You're going to be fine, but you will be on a liquid diet for a while, however." Next it was just like a medical TV show. They asked me the usual questions and looked into my eyes with a penlight. Besides a dull ache in my lower back and left hip, I felt okay, just sleepy. The drugs were doing their job.

"You should see the other guys," I said to break the silence after the doctors left. Everyone laughed, except my mom, who was burying her red nose in a wad of tissues.

Oksana wheeled her sister up beside the bed to me so she could grab my hand.

"My hero!" she said, hopping up on her good leg and leaning in to kiss my mouth. She actually had tears in her eyes, something I had only seen once before. Oksana leaned in and kissed my cheek. Everyone clapped quietly for a moment.

"My family sends their regards and a merci beaucoup," Tatiana said, "for saving my sisters' lives...even Zamira's." There was more laughter.

As everyone talked, I learned I had apparently used a pizza box to slip guns to the two agents on the beach before the criminals could perform their intended executions, thus saving the three women. The bad guys got a couple shots off, hitting Za'ana's leg, and I because I shielded Oksana, I took a stray bullet that would have otherwise hit her.

Suddenly I thought out loud, "Um...where's Constance?" Everyone stopped talking.

The fifty-something, balding guy in the suit, as it turned out, was not a boyfriend, but another federal agent, Kenneth Kelly. He politely asked everyone except my girlfriend to leave the room for a few minutes.

Agent Constance Giselle Brewster was missing.