Fatal Attractions

XXVIII

I know you can make this city great again.

Those words echoed through my mind over and over, and all I could think was how untrue that was. I couldn't do this. I couldn't. Nobody listened to me. He was the only one that listened. I couldn't do it, I couldn't.

"Ma'am, I need you to let go."

I looked down at the mayor's white hand I was squeezing, not budging.

"Madisyn," I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Let go." I heard Logan say.

I squeezed the hand even tighter, my own trembling the more it contracted. Maybe the tighter I squeezed, he would come back. Maybe he would know that I couldn't run this city on my own and he would come back.

Logan put his hand over mine and I released the mayor's, moving away from the gurney as the doctors rolled him out of the ambulance.

My chest heaved as tears gathered in my eyes and Logan wrapped his arms around me, making me break down.

And I cried.

I cried for the mayor who had hired me from my minimum wage job at a department store. I cried for the mayor that gave me an office and a place to be important. I cried for the mayor who trusted me to lock up his office and who stuck up for me when I spoke my mind and everyone thought I was stupid for it. I cried for the mayor who gave me social standing. I cried for the mayor that believed in me.

When I lifted my head from Logan's chest again, I saw that we had been moved from the ambulance to a bed in the ER, doctors gathered around us trying to get to me.

"I'm going to go now." He started to unwrap his arms from me but I stopped him, looking around at the doctors.

"No, please don't leave me alone." I begged, still shaking.

He looked at the antsy and intimidating doctors and shrugged, putting an arm around my shoulder for comfort.

They rushed forward and started inspecting my chest, whispering about something that was there, the word "surgery" flying around the room like it was a fruit fly.

I looked down at myself and my breath caught in my throat seeing a gold chunk of bullet lodged in my sternum. The pain from it rushed to my head and I found myself losing my breath, coughing and holding my chest.

"Madisyn, hold still." Logan said as he pulled my hands away from my chest.

"That's the bullet," I swallowed hard. "That's the bullet that killed the mayor."

He looked down at my chest then up at my face and nodded slowly, hugging my shouldeers tighter.

"How did it go straight through him?"

"That's what we're trying to find out." One of the doctors answered, inspecting the injury. Her fingers lightly touched the bullet and it fell right off with a clink into the ground.

They swarmed me, inspecting my chest and waiting for me to bleed out, but I didn't. I just felt a throbbing pain in my chest.

The doctor who had spoke before picked the bullet up, inspecting it. "Diamond tipped and solid gold from the looks of it. Whoever is our shooter is filthy rich."

Doctors laid me down and opened up my shirt, checking to see how much damage the bullet had done, but from my perspective it sounded like it lodged itself in my skin and a small part of it got stuck in the outer part of my sternum. I said it didn't hurt but they insisted on a big bandage for my chest. I was changed into a hospital gown, got an IV stuck in my arm, and next thing I knew they weren't discharging me until the end of the day.