The Darkest of Days

part three

The woman's voice through the phone is still monotone as she goes through some of the details she had obviously been told very briefly about. However, Amy wasn't able to concentrate on it very well, all she could hear was the bit from before, the information on Jake she had just been told, playing over and over in her head.

"I'm calling to inform you that there's been an incident..."

Her heart dropped when she heard the words, she had to clutch on to the phone to make sure it didn't fall onto the wooden floor below her feet as her breath hitched in the back of her throat.

"Your husband was shot."

There was a moment where she sat in silence, the noise coming through the speaker just as background noise as she stared into the space of the living room in front of her. The woman was going on about where he was, what had happened when he had been gunned down but Amy can barely remember it. Her mind went blank, everything went blank as she sat on the couch and stared her gaze forward, silently.

The words were repeated through her head as if moving from one side to another, each syllable echoing out into nothing.

Your husband was shot.

She reaches forward and turns off the TV, muting the sound and filling the apartment with the heavyweight silence, other than the woman's voice still talking emotionlessly in her ear, but the words were just a blur.

Everything just seems to stop as Amy just stares forward, trying to comprehend what she was being told through the voicemail, but nothing registers.

Your husband was shot.

Jake was shot.

Just then the voice went dead, all that replaced it was the ringing of static in her ear as the voicemail finished. Her phone stayed up by her ear as single words from the pile of information then began replaying quickly in her head.

Hospital.

Two.

Critical.

Surgery.

Unconcious.

All she can do is sit. Her mind wanders off and she can't control anything, her legs won't respond to her when she tries to stand up and everything begins crumbling down on her. Her eyes fill up quickly and her grip suddenly loosens on the phone, it falling and crashing into the couch cushion before bouncing on to the floor. Her hands reach up, catching the sob that escapes her mouth and muffling it only slightly.

The tears don't fall for a few blinks of her eyes, blurring her vision even more before it's all let out, the pressure that built up releasing a second sob that she's unable to muffle.

She places her hands over her face, the cries flying out into her palms as she tries to be as quiet as she can. There's this weight against her chest that doesn't go away, it feels like she can't breathe as she tries to calm herself down - she needed to get to the hospital and she couldn't drive if she couldn't see but every attempt just ends in further tears. It's like everything she tries just reminds her further of what had happened, and it causes wave after wave.

It's only the sound of Mac's subsequent cries coming from the bedroom that snap her out of the mindset. She lifts her head up quickly and stands from the couch. Her balance is off for her first few steps, which she recovers from as she goes through into the bedroom to collect the wailing two-month-old.

She feels a wad of guilt fill in the pit of her stomach, it was her noises that more than likely woke Mac up from his sleep but when she picks the infant up and holds him against her chest, everything seems to lift temporarily. She shushes him, rocking her body from side-to-side as he looks up, his dark, round brown eyes staring up at his mother in wonder before his lips turn upward to her, smiling his father's grin as he notices her face looking back down at him, her eyes meeting his with the same dark brown color.