Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
It was worse than my fears manifested.
Yes, he was on the ground.
And, yes, he was unconscious.
But not from his heart.
From someone beating the ever-loving shit out of him.
“Pop-Pop,” I cried, dropping down next to him, staring at his chest to make sure it was still rising and falling as I fumbled for my cell phone, calling the police as I reached out, wanting to touch him, to comfort him, but not wanting to touch him anywhere that might hurt.
The bruises and blood had my heart flipping over in my chest as I sat there, listening for the sirens.
“Miss… miss, you have to get out of the way,” one of the paramedics urged a few moments later when they showed up.
I moved out from behind the desk on numb legs, my body shaking as I begged whatever higher power there might be in the universe to make my grandfather pull through.
“Could this have been a robbery?” the officer at my side asked, making me look over at him, slow blinking for a second before his words sank in.
“Oh, ah, I don’t… I wasn’t…” I said, shaking my head.
“Does anything seem missing?” he pressed, likely accustomed to people in crisis situations, so he seemed unbothered by my brain fog.
Taking a deep breath, I turned, glancing around at everything close to the register.
“Nothing here,” I said, noticing the arranged table of figurines, and the shelf full of fine China.
“Everything in here is worth something, though, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. Some much more than others. But nothing looked disturbed from where I was standing.
“Is there a security system?” he asked.
“What? Oh, yeah. Yes,” I said with a nod, waving toward the cameras at the front of the store.
Were they those old-school ones that stuck out like a sore thumb? Sure. Would the images likely be grainy? Yes. Had I been begging my grandfather to let me replace them for months? Also yes. But, so far, no luck.
I had been wondering if he would even notice if I stuck up some of the newer, dome-like ones. His vision wasn’t what it used to be anyway.
“Can you give me access to them?” he asked.
I agreed, leading him to the back storage room where the computer was set up. No password, because my grandfather could never remember one.
“No,” I said, staring at the screen. “No,” I whimpered, seeing nothing but static on the camera feed.
“Think they were tampered with?” he asked.
“I think he just… didn’t set them up right,” I said. They could have been like this for years, forever, and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser.
“Don’t lose hope. Plenty of the shops ‘round here got cameras. I’m sure we’ll find something,” the officer said as we walked back out toward the front, single-file, since we wouldn’t fit otherwise.
The paramedics had my grandfather strapped to the gurney, looking older and frailer, and more swollen in the face than he had been moments before.
“I’ll be right there, Pop-Pop,” I promised him, touching his leg over the blanket draped there.
Tears, useless but uncontrollable, slid down my cheeks as I watched him get loaded into the ambulance and driven away as I stood there answering more questions with the police. They made me check the register and do a walkthrough of the store to make sure the expensive items weren’t missing.
But as far as I could tell, nothing was.
Which only made this whole thing make less sense.
Eventually, the police let me close the shop, so I could go see my grandfather, promising to be in touch if or when they got any leads, and I made my way to the hospital.
I sat there in the waiting room for what felt like years, my stomach flip-flopping, my mind racing, wondering if I should call my brother, if he would even care.
It had been so long since I’d seen him that I wasn’t even sure there was any real bond left. If he even considered us his family anymore.
Ultimately, I didn’t call.
Just sat there in my own misery.
I could have called Lauren.
She would have come in a heartbeat to sit with me, would have pressed the nurses for updates on my grandfather, would have gotten me cup after cup of coffee, and then forced me to eat as night became morning.
But I knew from our dinner conversation that she had a really important meeting in the morning, one that could mean the corner office she’d been coveting since she’d joined her company.
I couldn’t risk that for her.
So I just sat and waited.
And waited.
“Miss Whitlock?” a voice called, snapping me out of my endless cycle of ugly thoughts to find the doctor standing there, waving me over. “Your grandfather is going to be okay,” he assured me before the words burst out of me. “He has a pretty severe concussion and a broken eye socket,” he added. “As well as some bruised ribs. Unfortunate circumstances as these are, it was actually a good thing your grandfather came in tonight, though,” he said before launching into a long list of issues my grandfather was dealing with that ranged from dehydration to reduced kidney function.