She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [1]
Rising, Kristina joined her mother’s vigil at the door. Peering out at the silent house, the teenager saw nothing out of the ordinary, only the unrelenting lights that whipped through the darkness. Kristina’s twin sister, Jennifer, had stayed at the family lake house with friends. The only other person in the house was their adopted father, Steve Beard. An involuntary shudder ran through the teenager as she wondered who waited outside their front door and why.
“Are you sure it’s the police?” she asked.
“I think so,” Celeste said, but before Kristina realized it was happening, her mother pushed her into the hallway. “Find out what they want,” she ordered.
The frightened teenager panicked. What if the intruders weren’t police? What if someone had broken in? She darted into Jennifer’s empty bedroom and dialed 911.
“It’s EMS,” the operator said. “Your father has a medical emergency.”
“Mom, something’s wrong with Dad,” Kristina shouted, her heart racing as she ran toward the front door to unlock it for the ambulance crew, wanting them to reach her father as quickly as possible. Once there, she realized help was already inside, as a deputy emerged from the master-bedroom wing.
“Your father’s in rough shape,” he said. “We’ve called STAR Flight to transport him to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong?” Kristina asked. Steve had been her father for four years, and he’d given her and Jennifer much. More important than wealth, he offered love and stability.
“Has he had surgery recently?” the deputy asked. “His stomach is torn wide open.”
“No,” Kristina said as her mother ran into the room.
Moments earlier, Celeste had been dead calm. Now she shrieked, “What’s wrong with my husband? What’s wrong?”
The deputy did a double take. Kristina was used to his reaction. At seventy-four, Steve was nearly old enough to be her mother’s grandfather. Strangers often looked twice at the couple. “We’re helicoptering him to Brackenridge Hospital,” he said. “You’ll be taken there, too, in a squad car.”
Not waiting for the conversation to ebb, Kristina hurried to the master bedroom to see her father. Hours earlier, when she’d looked in on him before bed, he slept peacefully. Now the sight of him made her feel ill, as EMS workers struggled to bind gaping wounds in his corpulent abdomen. His intestines spilled out onto the blood-splattered sheets. Kristina couldn’t get close but she shouted, “Dad, they’re going to take you to the hospital. You’re going to be all right. We all love you. I love you.”
Pale and weak, her father nodded.
“Is your mother all right?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s fine,” Kristina said, holding back tears. “Don’t worry. Just get better.”
In great pain, he smiled and nodded again, obviously relieved.
The longer the medics worked on her father, the more Kristina worried. Even after the helicopter hovered over the house and drifted down to the road, they feared moving him. The wait felt like hours as she circulated between her sobbing mother and her critically injured father. On her third trip out of the master bedroom, she heard something that stunned her and she spun back into the room.
“I’ve found a shotgun shell,” a deputy had said. “He’s been shot.”
“What?” Kristina shouted.
Later the EMS workers and deputies would talk about Kristina, how she, of the two women, remained calm, comforting both her parents as the horror of what had happened became apparent. In the darkness, someone had entered their home, raised a shotgun, aimed and fired directly into her father’s ample belly. Then the intruder fled, leaving him for dead. Only sheer will kept him alive long enough to call for help.
The medical emergency now a potential murder investigation, Kristina and Celeste were surrounded as squads of police cars arrived. Throughout the chaos, the daughter comforted the mother, caring for her as if she were the parent. After the helicopter with Steve inside finally ascended into the darkness, an officer put the two women in the back of a squad car and sped down the hillside and onto the highway that led into the