by Kylie Walker
Samantha saw them then; Father and son, holding each other, trying to fend off the grief and anxiety and trying to call back up the hope.
“Oh no. Chloe, what is it? What did the doctor say?”
Chloe repeated what Kevin had told her and then she said, “Kevin asked me if I wanted to go with them…”
“Of course you’re going! Trevor is going to be fine and he has me here with him. Go!”
Chloe smiled and suddenly the dam broke. The tears came in big, guffawing sobs and Samantha hugged her close and just let her cry. She’d never been so afraid of losing anyone or anything in her life. What would she do without him? It hadn’t even been two months since he’d come into her life and suddenly she had no idea. The sadness flowed ebbing through her body and spread through her veins, deadening her mind like a poison. She couldn’t at this point imagine how life could go on if she lost him. It was like a black mist had settled down on top of her and was trying to suck her spirit right out of her body. The world seemed lost to her and the only thing she knew of that would bring it back into focus would be knowing that Derek would be okay. When she was able to control the sobs that had taken hold of her body long enough to get air into her lungs, she asked Samantha, “Would it be okay if I saw Trevor quickly before I go?”
“Yes,” Samantha told her with a sad smile. “He would love that.”
So, armed with Samantha’s pass, Chloe went back to see her father. She came to the glass cubicle that was marked with a 202 on the door. She could see him, lying in the bed against the white sheets. His face was badly bruised, cut and beginning to swell in places. He had his eyes closed and a cannula in each of his nostrils pumping oxygen into his body. There was an IV needle in his arm and the tubing ran up to a machine that was pumping fluids and medications into him. There were three monitors on the wall behind him that measured his vital signs. It was relieving to Chloe to be able to see him for herself and witness the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She hated to disturb him, but she couldn’t leave without letting him know that she was here.
She wiped her face one last time on her sleeve. She could hide her tears, but there was no way to hide the sadness that had engulfed her. She pulled open the heavy glass door and Trevor blinked open one eye. The other was cut and swollen so badly that she doubted he could open it at all.
“Hi,” he said, trying to smile.
That made her begin to cry all over again. Here he was in so much pain and he wanted to smile for her. She did her best to stop the tears but it was like she had a leak and no matter what she did, they wouldn’t stop falling.
“Don’t cry,” he said, “Come here.”
Chloe went over next to the bed. He looked so pale against the white of the sheets and pillow. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She opened her mouth and what came out was caught between a laugh and a cry and she choked on it. When she recovered she said, “I’m supposed to be asking you that.”
He smiled again. It was crooked and it looked like it hurt. “Didn’t you know that fathers are made out of steel? You can bend us, but we never break.”
Chloe dropped down into the plastic chair next to the bed and lay her head down next to him. “I’m so sorry for all of this,” she said.
Trevor picked up the hand that had been plundered with IV needles and stroked her hair. “It’s not your fault, Chloe. You can’t keep the world on your shoulders. Now that you have us, let us shoulder some of it for you, okay?”
She looked up at him. It was her fault and she knew it, but now was not the time to tell him. “I came to see how you were and tell you that I’m going with Kevin to be with Derek at Presbyterian.”
Trevor’s features darkened. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. How is he?”
“He’s in pretty bad shape. But Presbyterian is the best. I’m confident,” she said with her voice cracking, “I’m sure he’ll be okay. Life couldn’t possibly be that cruel, could it?”
She saw in his eyes that he knew differently. Life was most definitely a bitch. But he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that.
“No baby girl. Life would not be that cruel. You keep the faith in your heart and hold onto the hope. Derek is strong. He can fight his way back to us. Go now, be with him. I love you.”
Chloe lay her head back down for a few seconds and before she even processed the words she said, “I love you too. Please hurry and get better.”
Trevor stroked her hair again. When she pulled her head up this time she could see that her words had made an impact on him.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
With his crooked and obviously painful smile he said, “I know you will be.”
Chloe left Trevor, hugged Samantha one more time and headed up the stairwell that the nurse at the front desk directed her to. As soon as she pulled open the door at the top of the stairs she was met with a mad rush of air. The green helicopter sat atop the hospital with the city as its backdrop and its massive blades beat the air. It simply had a red cross and the words: Life flight painted on the side of it. As she studied it curiously she saw the doors of an elevator open and a gurney, surrounded by three nurses and a doctor being rushed out. The nurses were pushing machines that were attached to the man on the gurney somehow and they pushed it all up onto the ramp that lay open against the concrete. Not even considering the ramifications, Chloe ran towards them. She had to see him, even only for a second. She heard the vague sound of someone calling her name, but she didn’t stop. They were pushing the gurney in when she vaulted onto the ramp.
“What are you doing here?” One of the attendants said. “You can’t be here!”
She barely heard the words from the blood pulsing in her head. Derek’s face and head were so wounded that he was barely recognizable. A tube went into his mouth and down his throat and every few seconds it would beep and give him a breath. He looked so vulnerable, so broken and suddenly instead of feeling anxious and afraid she felt angry. Angry wasn’t even the right word for it. It was like a volcano erupted inside of her and the lava was replaced with rage that slowly, but completely consumed her.
“Miss you have to leave or we’ll have to call security.”
She still wasn’t looking at the nurse. Instead she told Derek, “I know he did this and I promise you that he will pay if I have to use my last breath to make sure of it.”
“Chloe!”
The sound of her name snapped her back and she was staring into Kevin’s eyes. He held out his hand and she took it, and then he led her back behind the colored tape and while Jake looked on, they waited.
Jesse sat in the car outside of the Emergency room waiting. He wanted so badly to go inside. He wanted to see her pain. He wanted to smell it. He’d watched her and Stark having sex on the side of a hill like savages earlier in the day. What a slut she must have turned into…or maybe she had been one all along. He’d always suspected that she’d been cheating on him. Little bitch had probably been fucking everything with legs all along. He hoped that it was worth it. She was going to pay for her sins, and soon. As a matter of fact, he had already begun to make her pay.
He smiled as he remembered watching that little red car careen down the hill towards that curve. He’d driven far behind at a distance where there was no way Stark could make out his features and he watched. He wished that he could have been close enough to hear Stark’s screams as it turned end over end. It was like watching a kaleidoscope for several seconds. There was flash after flash of color and chrome against the late afternoon sun and glass was flying in every direction. When it finally came to a stop upright, Jesse was pissed to see that Stark was still moving.
He’d begun to jog across the windy road and finish him off, but that bastard they almost hit had gotten out of his car and was on the phone with someone. Jesse's best guess would be that it was the police. He was pissed that the son of a bitch hadn’t just died like he was supposed to. He should have been killed easily, slamming into and through
that guardrail at over sixty miles an hour and dropping ten feet. Jesse’s plan was perfect but somehow Stark had the dumbest luck of anyone that he had ever seen. That didn’t matter though. If he was still alive Jesse was sure that he would be out of commission for months. Out of commission meant out of the way. He didn’t like or dislike Stark and he didn’t necessarily want to kill him. But what did he expect? Why was he going out of his way to “romance” Kelly? Stark is a multi-millionaire and could have any woman in the world that he wanted.
Jesse had driven to the hospital just after the accident and waited. What he’d seen when Kelly finally arrived shocked him, but it made a lot of things begin to add up.
She got out of the black BMW with the older woman…Samantha Whitemore. Jesse focused his binoculars on their faces. Kelly’s was streaked with tears while the other woman had her jaw set as if fighting back her emotion. None of that was what had struck Jesse however. What struck him was how much like the older woman Kelly looked. He watched them go into the hospital clutching onto each other for support and it suddenly dawned on him…Kelly told him once that she was adopted. This woman who looked so much like her had to be her birth mother and the man that was with Stark when the “accident” happened was her father. Jesse wondered how she’d found them and then he realized that was probably all Derek Stark’s doing. If these people really are her parents then that would make Stark her brother-in-law. How twisted was that? He wondered if the older people thought they were just friends, or if they knew that they were out and about, rutting like pigs on their property.
“Well, well Kelly. You found those people just in time for it to be convenient for me. The more people that you care about, the more tools I have for making you suffer” He was smiling to himself.
Everything the stupid little cunt did seemed to backfire on her. He wished he could go into that hospital and watch as she cried. He wanted so badly to see her face twisted up in anguish at the site of her lover, bloody and beaten with tubes running here and there.
But not yet.
Everything has to be perfect because the hatred that he’d felt for her before had become an all-consuming passion. Jesse didn’t just want to kill her. First he wanted her to be afraid. He wanted her very afraid and begging for her miserable life. Then he wanted her in pain. He wanted her alive while he cut on her and tore away bits of her rotten flesh. She was so good at playing the sweet innocent one. He wanted to pull back her skin and expose her for the liar she is. Then he wanted to throw her body into a pit, still living and breathing, but only minutes between her and death. Then he would shovel dirt and rocks into it and watch her eyes and listen to the sweet sounds of her crying and begging for her life. Just before he tossed the last shovel down over her and she choked to death on the dirt that filled her throat and lungs, he wanted to make sure that she knew she brought this all on herself.
If she had only behaved and done as she was told, he would be a successful attorney now and she would be an attorney’s wife. But she was too fucking stupid for that. She’d ruined his life and last night while they slept he had cut that brake line in the little red sports car, waited for the fluid to drain into a towel, thrown the towel away and then sat back in his spot to watch this all play out.
It was perfect. His plans always are.
“I’m coming Kelly.” He said out loud to himself. “Soon…very soon.”
PART FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
Chloe sat in the chair with her knees drawn up to her chest and waited. Her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails were digging into the palm of her hand…but for hours she barely noticed. Her breaths were ragged and sometimes she would forget to breathe for long periods of time, not remembering until she suddenly felt like she was suffocating and her chest hurt…then she would suck in a deep one and go on waiting…because there was nothing else to do. The only thing she’d really been aware of was the sound of her heart throbbing against the cage inside of her chest and the small but intense pain in the nerve at the top of her head.
She was in another blindingly clean room and as the early morning sun began filtering in through the baby blue blinds on the windows that surrounded them she looked at the clock and tried to remember how long they had been here. It seemed to her as if each click of the second hand lasted a full minute. She focused her attentions then on the private waiting room they had been ushered into when the helicopter arrived. Derek was already gone by the time they got there…taken somewhere into the back, hurt and alone. That thought brought about an intense stab of pain in the center of her chest and she had to force her thoughts somewhere else to keep from completely breaking down.
The room they were in now had obviously been designed to inspire calm and allay anxiety. The paintings were delicate watercolors and the glass topped coffee table was laden with magazines and a colorful vase with fresh flowers that matched the soft blue décor. There were no plastic chairs here, only soft and plush high backed chairs covered in crushed blue velvet and arranged atop plush tan carpeting. Everything was designed for comfort and for calm…but for Chloe there was no comfort to be found here. It didn’t matter where they put her she wasn’t going to relax until she knew that Derek was okay. No amount of calm and quiet could still the sensory overload inside of her head. She wouldn’t be okay again until she knew that he was. Hearing it wouldn’t even be enough. She needed to be allowed to see the rise and fall of his chest herself and place her hand against it and feel his heartbeat. It was the only possible end to this day that she could let herself imagine.
Her brain tried to race across every possible scenario but if it didn’t involve Derek’s full recovery, she would shut it down. Every so often Jesse would invade her thoughts. She knew that this was his doing. She knew it as certainly as the chair she sat in was blue. The most frightening part of it to her was that after years of preparing for him to come after her, the reality of it was a foreign place that she hadn’t been prepared for at all. She had never prepped herself for the possibility of him hurting the people that she loved. She knew that to love was to risk great pain…and when she ran, she had never had any intentions of loving again.
Her eyes rested on Jake. He still looked at her every so often with that confused, suspicious look he’d given her when he’d first seen her in the hospital. Chloe didn’t blame him. Apparently he hadn’t been told about her and how much she looked like Sarah…this was a hell of a way to find out. Right now he seemed focused on nothing but the fitful rays of the sun trying to force their way in. He sat there staring at the window with his face set in a rigid grimace and his arms folded tightly across his broad chest. His foot tapped the carpet underneath him furiously and a tiny little muscle twitched near his right eye every so often. Her heart ached for him too. Derek is his little brother and it was obvious with a look that he loved him.
Keven sat across from his oldest son. Cold sweat glistened across his furrowed brow and his hands sat tightly clasped across his stomach. His fingers wove in and out of each other trying to work through the emotional pain that flowed out of his every pore. This was agony worse than she’d ever felt. Nothing Jesse had done to her in the past rivaled the pain he’d caused by hurting the only man who had ever truly made her feel loved.
The sound of the door opening drew all of their attention. The doctor that walked in had a face like a brick and his movements were sharp and purposeful. He had a chart in his hands that he was looking down at and when he looked up a perfunctory smile flashed across his face for a brief second. The eyes behind the gun-metal gray glasses were tired and shot through with streaks of red. His pale skin gave the impression of one who rarely stepped out of doors and the deep lines around his mouth indicated that he rarely lost himself in fits of laughter. This was the man they had put all of their faith in and he stood before the three of them now without a glimmer of hope on his face.
“I’m doctor Browning. You are Derek Stark’s family?”
“Yes. I’m Kevin Star
k this is my son Jake and Derek’s fiancé Chloe Green. Chloe wasn’t surprised Kevin introduced her as the “fiancé.” Getting in to see him while he was in the ICU was not going to be easy and thus far, Kevin had afforded her every imaginable courtesy.
The gray doctor nodded and glanced back down at his chart. “Mr. Stark is stable right now. We removed his spleen and repaired an artery in his stomach that was ruptured and bleeding. We’ve also done a craniectomy…”
“What is that?” Jake interrupted.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, catching himself talking in technical terminology. “A craniectomy is where a portion of the skull is removed in order to relieve pressure against the brain. He’s suffered a severe brain injury and there is a significant amount of bleeding around the brain causing pressure and swelling. The removal of part of the skull allows the brain to swell upwards rather than down where it would put pressure on the brain stem and possibly cause brain death. The bone is kept in a bank and when the swelling is controlled it can be returned.”
Waves of nausea were now added to Chloe’s misery.
“Is he breathing on his own?”
“Currently, he is in what we call a medically induced coma. By shutting down function of the brain, we’re giving it time to heal without the body doing its normal radical “triage” and shutting off blood flow to the sections of itself which are damaged. He’s on a ventilator because as long as his brain is shut down, he’ll be unable to breathe on his own.”
“Can he breathe on his own?” Jake asked again clarifying, “If he wasn’t in the coma?”
“With a traumatic brain injury, the only indication of how severe it really is comes when the patient is brought out of the coma.”
“So we’re still waiting to see what happens?” Kevin asked. He sounded so tired and defeated. Chloe’s heart went out to him.
“Yes Mr. Stark. We’ve taken care of the issues that were imminently life threatening…now we wait.”
