Her Rancher, Her Protector

I rushed into the ER screaming, “Please! Help me!” A doctor ran over. “What’s wrong, ma’am?” “Please! My son!” I panicked. I rushed back out the doors as he followed. “He can’t breath! He has asthma. He is having an attack!” We got to my beat down car that was in front of the emergency doors. I opened the passenger side door as my son was slumped over as he was still struggling to breath. The doctor checked him came out. He looked at the nurse. “Get a bed ready for this boy.” He scooped up my son as he rushed him inside as I followed, worried. “Is he going to be okay?” “Ma’am. We have to stabilize him. When was the last time he took his inhaler?” He asked me as he rushed to the back with my son in his arms. “Yesterday. He, uh, he lost it and I didn’t know he did till he was having his attack. Just please, help my son.” I pleaded as a tear fell from my eye. He got him to a bed as he yelled demands. He looked over my son as he kept yelling out. I stood back as I watched them working on my son as I hugged myself as the tears kept coming. He was my everything. He was the reason I kept going or I would have given up on life a long time ago. He was the reason I was still alive and fought so hard. Now, I was worried that I might lose my reason for living, my whole world. I was now in a hospital room as my son slept. He had an oxygen mask on. I held his hand as I thought about what brought me there. How we ended up here. Since he was four we have been running. We have being moving from one city to another. I tried big cities first, thinking we could blend in. It didn’t work. After several big cities, I moved to a smaller one in Arkansas. We have been there for two years. I got a great job, a great life. For once I felt like we didn’t have to run anymore. We had a life. Than he showed up. Who, you might ask? My ex, Kurt. See, we were running from him. He was my son’s, Cory, father. And my ex husband. See he was an abusive f**k. He beat me. He hit me whenever I did something he didn’t like, which was almost everything. I got pregnant our senior of high school and he was suppose to go to college. Yeah, so much for that when our parents found out. We lived in a small town in Tennessee. My daddy was a farmer and with it being a small town we were apart of, when I got pregnant, our parents forced us to marry. Cause of this, Kurt going to college on a football scholarship was out the window. Kurt blamed me. After Cory was born, he started to beat me. I became the typical woman in the situation, I stayed, well because I had no money to go and we had our son. I dealt with this till Cory was 4. What was the breaking point, he worked for my dad and well, things at the farm were not going well that he let go of Kurt. He took it out on me. He beat me so bad, I was on the floor, bleeding from my nose, lip busted and my eye swollen shut, I swore a couple ribs were broken. Cory came in when Kurt took off, probably to drink, yeah, he was an alcoholic too. Cory kept calling for me, crying, in his toddler voice. It snapped me out of it as I looked at my son who was crying. I knew I had to get away or he would kill me, leaving Cory alone, or worse, turned it on my son. I couldn’t live like this, I couldn’t let my son live like this. I first tried to get the law to help me, but they wouldn’t. So, I just left one night when he was out drinking. We got a few states over and settled down. I thought we were safe. How wrong was I. One night, while I was sleeping, Kurt busted into my house and I was awaken to him strangling me. I feared he would kill me so I grabbed the nearest thing and hit him over the head with a lamp. I knocked him out. Without another thought, I grabbed my son and fled, to another city. But he kept finding us. So I changed our names, well, last names and we got to Bradford, Arkansas. It was a small town and a home feeling to it. For a while I waited, waited for him to find us. He usually did within a year. But a year went by and no word. I let my guard down. Another year past, I thought we were free. But the night before, he came into our house, welding a gun. Cory and I hid as he looked for us. Cory was scared. He remembered his father and remembered how scary he was. When he moved out of the room we were hiding in, I snuck us out, we got to the door when I heard two shots rings out. Two bullets went flying by us as I shielding my son as I rushed out of the house. I got him in the car and took off. Kurt was behind us but somehow I was able to shake him from my tail. I was already about thirty miles down the rode when I finally relaxed a bit. That is when I realized Cory was having an asthma attack. We rushed out of there, that I didn’t grab his inhaler. As soon as I got to the nearest town with a hospital, I rushed him in. Screaming for help, well, you know that part. So, now here I was, holding my son’s hand and trying to will him with my thoughts to wake up. I wasn’t comfortable being so close to were Kurt just tried to shoot us. I wanted my son to get better and get him an inhaler and leave town asap. So, now I was just waiting. Waiting for my son to wake up. I prayed he would. I needed us to get further away. Away from that monster.