I will love again

Part 44 - Hope

The pain of the aching heart was almost unbearable. This damn broken heart, right underneath the right collarbone!

No wait, that wasn't the heart, there was something else.

With quite some effort Nathalie's eyes slowly fluttered open. The first thing she could see was light, blinding, cold, fluorescent light. She squinted and turned her head a little to the side. A mixture of grey and blond appeared in her sight. The without wax and hairspray softly falling, chin-long hair of Gabriel Agreste framed his pale face. Dark rings lay around his now closed eyes, and even though he seemed to be sleeping, he was making noises and was fidgeting and twitching.

The young woman wanted to smile at him, when she remembered her dream and looked down towards her stomach. With relief she noticed it still there and anxiously she looked further at her surroundings, suddenly noticing a familiar sound. Though the volume was turned down to almost being muted, she recognized the rapid heartbeat of her little girl immediately.

A scene appeared in her memory, showing two male figures of her past. One aiming for her and her unborn child's life, the other, who had made her suffer for so long and despite telling her at her wedding, that he could never make it up to her, what he had done, he had saved them both. He had thrown himself between her and the bullet and had made her fall to the ground, so that the projectile had missed its original target. It had only hit her...

Right underneath her clavicle! That's where the pain came from.

"Did the baby get hurt too?", her voice was weak, barely audible.

But the from fear and rage exhausted man hadn't been able to drift into a deep sleep anyway and opened his eyes in an instant. At first he thought, he had been hearing Nathalie's voice in his dreams, but when he raised his head to look at his unconscious wife, he saw her looking back at him, her lips torn into what was supposed to be a smile.

Gabriel just kept staring, not believing, that she had woken up so quickly, after the doctors had told him less than two hours ago, that her condition had worsened and that they would have to take her into surgery if she kept spiraling down into a worse state.

He felt something move on his palm and remembered that he had fallen asleep while holding Nathalie's hand.

"Is this a dream?", he questioned with a hoarse voice, to see the woman, he loved so dearly, shake her head.

"It's not", she whispered, not having the strength to speak louder. "What about the baby? Did she get hurt?"

"She's fine", he gulped, tears brimming his eyes, as he got on his feet and brought his face close to hers, his hands gently cupping her cheeks. "She is perfectly fine, my love, it's you I'm worried sick about!"

He softly pecked her lips, then leaned his forehead against hers. 

"I was so scared, my love. I still can't believe that you're awake", he cried.

Nathalie lifted her right hand, her left was attached to too many things, and placed it on his cheek. Instead of calming him, her touch made him sob even harder.

"Gabriel", she still could only breathe out her words, "please don't cry. You can't get rid of me that easy!", she joked.

His sobbing was mixed up with a laugh and he kissed her desperately again. Then he reached for her hand and while he kept it in his own, he sat back down on his chair.

"My father", Nathalie questioned, "is he..."

"He has immediately been arrested. And the police and social services are investigating all the things, that have been going on in that community."