Fighting Redemption(91)

“It’s Fin,” Kyle breathed.

Feeling his heart stutter, he hugged Jacob tighter.

“She’s waking up,” he told Ryan.





Seven months later…



Ryan stared out the kitchen window of the cottage and into the backyard. He’d mowed the lawn that morning, and now the sweet smell of fresh cut grass lingered in the warm afternoon sun. Pretty flowers fluttered from a light breeze that drifted across the garden Fin maintained with such care.

Fin was lying on her side in the shade of the tree, a brightly coloured blanket spread out beneath her. Her head was propped in her hand, laughter in her eyes as she watched Jacob fidget wildly as he learned how to move his little body.

He watched as Fin shifted to a sitting position and clapped her hands at a giggling Jacob. He was busy impressing his mother by displaying his new rolling technique, and she was lapping it up—encouraging him like he was the first child in the history of the world to perform the feat.

With Fin by his side, it was his chance to finally be free of his demons, but seven months later he realised they would never truly leave him. Maybe they would remain dormant, but they were buried in his soul, just like Fin was.

I can live with that, he thought, his eyes opening to fall on his family. As long as I have Fin and Jacob, I can live with anything.

Ryan closed his eyes at the sound of their muted laughter, remembering back to when he almost lost her.



“She’s waking up,” Kyle had told him, and Ryan had trembled with relief.

Twenty-four hours after Fin stirred for the first time, they’d taken the tubes out and she began breathing on her own. He wanted to weep as he watched her eyes flutter open.

“Ryan,” she rasped, her first word throaty and just a bare whisper on her lips.

“I’m here, baby,” he replied, brushing her hair off her forehead with the flat of his palm.

“Can’t see you,” she mumbled.

Ryan was hovering above Fin, looking right at her; but her eyes were blank and unfocused, staring at the ceiling like empty pools. He buzzed for the doctor immediately, fumbling the button in his panic.

“Ryan?” she called out, her voice cracking on the word.

He squeezed her hand. “Shhh, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

Her eyelids closed and she drifted back under again when the nurse came in.

“She says she can’t see,” he told her.

Frowning, the nurse left abruptly, returning ten minutes later with Doctor Lee, the man who’d been working around the clock since Ryan had arrived at the hospital. He went straight to Fin’s bedside, lifting her eyelids and waving his bright penlight back and forth.

“Why can’t she see?” Ryan demanded to know.

“How was her speech?” the doctor asked him, ignoring Ryan’s question. “Was it slurred? Did she know who you were?”

“It was fine. Scratchy, from the tube, but otherwise okay, and yes, she called me by name, why?”

Fin’s doctor moved to the end of the bed, picking up her chart. “We’re going to have to send her upstairs for testing. If you can return to the waiting room, we’ll come get you when she comes back down.”

“Tests for what?”

Dr. Lee conferred quietly with the nurse. She left the room and he looked at Ryan as he tucked the chart away. “It looks like Fin might have suffered a minor stroke while she was in a coma.”

Ryan’s brows drew together. “A stroke?”

“It’s common for this to happen,” Dr. Lee told him. “Her body’s been under a lot of stress, along with her heart. When blood flow—”

“I know what a stroke is, but her sight? Is that permanent?”

“I can’t give you any guarantees right now, but if it was a stroke, then it was only mild. Loss of vision can be one of the symptoms, but in mild cases, it usually returns within twenty-four hours.”

And it had. Fin had overcome the twenty per cent chance they’d given her of surviving. They all watched the light slowly return to her eyes every day, until four weeks later, she returned home for the first time.

After months of physiotherapy, Fin could walk without effort, but her body had suffered. The cardiac arrest had damaged her heart permanently. She would be on medication for life and was now living with twice the odds of having a heart attack later in life, or a stroke. It was something they wouldn’t think of. Whatever the odds were for their future, they would overcome them, just like they had for everything else.

Kyle stepped up beside him in the kitchen, having just arrived for their late afternoon barbecue. “You ready to do it all over again?”

Ryan shook his head. “No. Not this time.”

He was clapped hard on the back and caught Kyle’s grin. “Well, last time you came home to a baby. Who knows what you’ll come home to after the next deployment, huh?”

Ryan smiled slowly. “A wedding,” he murmured, taking satisfaction in seeing Kyle’s grin getting smacked off his face from surprise.

“No shit?” Kyle peered out through the window, looking to the ring finger on Fin’s left hand. No doubt he was catching the giant sparkler right now. It was hard to miss. Rachael adored that ring more than Fin did. Fin did love it, but she was always scratching Jacob with it, or whacking it on something. She was worried the stone was going to fall out, but it was insured for God’s sake. It was easily replaced if that happened.