"No, no blood. Are you Ok?" I wasn't sure who asked the question, but I answered just the same.
"I don't know. I think so. I'm not bleeding? Are you certain? Because if I'm bleeding...The baby..."
"Oh holy fuck, you're pregnant?" I wasn't sure who asked, but it sounded like Scott.
I reassured the voice, "It's not your fault. I know that. But who would have imagined..."
"We need to get her to the hospital." I think that was Jessica. It sounded feminine.
"I can call an ambulance." Caleb?
I made an attempt to sit up, to see who was speaking, as my breathing got easier.
It was definitely Jessica who said, "Please, no ambulance. The lights, the sirens, the attention. My club can't be in the news. Seriously, I'll do anything."
Caleb said, "The only way I'm not raining holy hell down on you tonight is if you come with us. In my car. Bring Scott or Gabe or whoever, if you want, but the four of us are going to the hospital. I heard some of what you were saying while I fought. Yes, your past has definitely caught up with you, and the only way out is to come clean. I'll do right by you, I promise."
"You won't arrest me?"
"Did you do anything illegal?"
"I don't think so."
"You will work with me?"
"Yes. I own this club, I have a life here. I'm not a scared kid any more. Yes, I'll work with you. I'm actually very ready to put this all behind me. Can we keep this from the press?"
"I highly doubt it. But we can keep the specifics, like your new name, and where you live out of it, for sure."
I could see Jessica thinking, running everything in her head. She was a pretty smart cookie, of that I was sure.
She nodded finally, saying, "I'll ride with you, but Gabe comes right behind us, in another car so I can leave with him. Deal?"
Caleb nodded, "Deal."
When I was able to walk I actually felt OK. Once I got my wind back everything else was all right. If I hadn't been pregnant, I would have gone home to recover in my own bed. But Caleb insisted, and I wanted to be sure as well, so the four of us headed out a back entrance. I stayed with Jessica and Gabe as Caleb brought the car around back. Caleb told Gabe what hospital we were going to, and he nodded, leaving us to get his own car and to follow right behind.
I had put my skirt and corset back on, and Jessica had thrown a bra and top on, but I'm sure the four of us looked very interesting as we walked into the emergency entrance of the hospital late on a Saturday night.
Gabe just looked bouncer-ish, and Caleb had buttoned all of his shirt buttons, but he was still in tight leather pants and a pirate do-rag. Then there was me in my outfit and Jessica in her boots, tiny swinging skirt, and a t-shirt. I was surprised when the triage nurse hardly blinked twice at us, but then again, I figured she had seen it all.
Caleb flashed a badge, but the triage lady still said it would be a while. A pregnancy check was far behind any shootings, stabbings or most anything else that would come in ahead of us. Thankfully though, she did say they weren't very busy yet tonight, which Caleb took to mean would be a six hour wait instead of a twelve hour wait. It put him in an even pissier mood, but there was nothing we could do, so we sat.
And as we sat, Jessica told us her story.
* * * *
"I kept up with all the news coverage," Jessica began. "I didn't mean to send the entire country on the lookout for me, it got out of control."
Caleb said, "Start from the beginning. This is the ER, we have nothing but time."
"My mom's fucking nuts, but my dad kept her pretty much under control. When he died, and she found my stepdad, well they were two peas in a pod. They fed off of each other.
At first he just encouraged her, hanging back to watch the results. My mom is not only bi-polar, although she was never diagnosed, she is also sociopathic and abusive. But everyone outside the family adored her. She ran the PTA, and was the life of the party. It wasn't until she came home that the mask would come off.
But only sometimes. I never knew who she was going to be when she came home, sometimes she was normal, like my friend's parents, but sometimes..."
She stopped, looking far away and vacant before jumping to- "She burned me with cigarettes, but not often, once she realized they scarred. No, she didn't want to leave physical reminders, even for herself to see..."
"I remember the very first time I started my period. I didn't know what it was. I peed, wiped, and saw blood there. I got so scared, I just knew somehow it was my fault, and I knew I'd be in so much trouble. I was in charge of the laundry, but laundry was on Mondays. If I ran a load any other day, she'd well...let's just say she'd wonder. So I hid my panties. I put wads of toilet paper there, in the crotch of my clean ones, because it didn't look like it was going to stop.
She found my bloody panties one day, when I was at school and she was looking for who knows what. When I came home...
Later, once I knew what a period was, I used it. Her and my stepdad would throw these parties. Drugs, drinking, I tried to stay out of the way, but this one time one of their friends found me. He pinned me up against the wall, telling me how pretty I was. He was drunk, or something. Anyway, I talked my way out of that one. I told him I had been watching him, too, and I didn't want our first time together to be like this. I said I was on my period and once I was done with it, I'd meet him, and let him take me to his place, or a motel if his wife was home. It worked. He kissed me, but it worked.
The next time he came over he was sober, and no one else was home. My parents had this habit of giving out house keys every time they went out of town, so someone could watch the house. Only when they came back they never got the key back.
He let himself in, but this time I grabbed a knife. I told him if he ever came near me again, if he ever even looked at me wrong, I'd cut his fucking balls off and hand deliver them to his wife and kids. He left me alone after that.
But my stepdad didn't, and he didn't have the same problem with leaving scars that my mom did.
Hence, the scar on my boob. People think it's a birthmark, but it isn't. I used to hate it, but I wear it proudly now, as a reminder of where I came from and how I got away.
He had taken to coming into my room some nights. At first it was just creepy, but without anything you could put a finger on.
One night though... He had fallen down drunk a few nights before, and hurt his arm. It wasn't broken, but the hospital wrapped it in one of those Ace bandages that clip with those little bowtie looking clips with the teeth.
He woke me up by sitting on me, straddling me as I slept. He was so heavy I couldn't get out from under him. I'd taken to locking my door at night, but it was just your normal push button bedroom lock, with the hole on the hall side so you could unlock it with an unbent metal clothes hanger if your kid locked themselves in accidentally or something. Anyway, he unlocked it, straddled me and slapped my face to wake me up.
He told me all the things he was finally going to do to me that night, saying my teasing ways had finally driven him over the edge. He said I could yell all I wanted, mom was passed out from something, and it wouldn't have mattered even if she wasn't, since she had given him permission, or whatever.
Anyway, he said he was going to make me his forever, and he wanted to mark me somehow first, before he took me. He hadn't quite figured that out yet though, drunk as he was before he came in, so he looked around.
He saw the metallic, butterfly-looking bowtie thing that held his Ace bandage together, and he dug a lighter out of his pocket. He held the flame to the metal until it got real hot, and then he pressed it against my flesh, marking me as his.
The smell of burning, branded flesh in my bedroom...and it hurt so much. I did scream, I screamed a lot, then and later, but no one heard me. Or if they did, no one came to help.
He raped me after that. Thank God he wasn't my first. My boyfriend and I were sexually active, so not only was I on the pill, but I knew what loving sex was li
ke. If he had been my first I think it would have been a lot worse for me mentally. Not that it was a picnic, but..."
She trailed off for a minute, then picked her story back up.
"I told my boyfriend, eventually. He wanted to kill my stepdad. I think he would have, too. I stayed with my boyfriend every weekend I could, telling my mom and stepdad I was with a girlfriend. We ran over every way it could possibly be done, killing him. Making it look like a robbery and things like that, but we had both seen shows like America's Most Wanted, and others. We knew the odds of getting away with that were bad. Going from one kind of prison to another didn't seem very smart. But if I ran away...
In some states it is illegal to run away under eighteen, and in others it was illegal to harbor a run away, but we figured if we got caught it would be way less of an offense than murder.
We also knew that if my boyfriend went with me they would hunt us as runaways, whereas if I disappeared all by myself I'd have a better chance. And with things like lie detector tests I knew my boyfriend couldn't know about it, the specifics anyway.
It had been a few months when we finally decided it was time. We planned it for a month later. I told him I would be fine until then, so the last thing my boyfriend knew when I drove away was that it would happen later, and we still had time to plan a little. He'd been giving me all the cash he had on him every time I saw him, to stow away, which was quite a bit. He kept saying he'd get me more every time he saw me between then and when I went.
He had also stolen his older brother's driver's license a few months before, to use to get into bars. It had worked well for him, and had been so long ago no one thought to mention his brother had gotten a new license, months before. He gave it to me, saying that when the time came I could cut off all my hair, wrap up my breasts, wear baggy clothes and a ball cap and run away.
I hugged him hard when I left, holding him close. I knew I was ready and could never go home, but I wanted him to have the benefit of being truly surprised when the cops came. I didn't want to get him in trouble. I drove a few towns over, to a store, and bought men's clothes, then drove a couple more towns over to a rest area that was pretty run down and only really used after dark as a meeting place for drugs and sex. I walked in the restroom a woman, and came out looking like my boyfriend's brother. Well if you didn't look real close, anyway. I called a cab from the pay phone, which they still had a few of back then, telling it to pick me up outside of some address I had notated nearby, and then I drove there, got in the cab and had it take me to the bus station.
I had no bags, just the money he had given me. I needed to make the money last as long as I could, which meant a bus instead of a plane. Plus paying cash with a name and ID as common as his brother's meant there wasn't a trace of Claudia Russell once I walked away from my car wherever it was that I left it.
I hopped from town to town and crappy motel to crappy motel for a while, watching for news of myself. I was shocked I made national news, honestly. I figured maybe something little and local, but who normally cares when an almost eighteen year old mixed race chick goes missing? Not to be cynical, but I wasn't a five year old little blonde white girl, you know?
I got a job busing tables for cash tips only, and stayed at homeless shelters and friend's houses as much as I could, to save money. A year or so later I pulled my boyfriend's trick, stealing a license and a social security card from a purse some lady left in the bathroom someplace. And that's how Jessica was born.
I started waiting tables at a strip joint, I danced a little, and met this guy that liked to save girls like me from fates like that.
He got me a real birth certificate and social, under any name I wanted, but by then I was a Jessica. I liked it. So I kept that part, giving myself a new middle and last name, and disappeared again.
I used that paperwork to get a real driver's license, with my own picture on it, and got into the escort business. I found I excelled when the clients wanted me to take charge of them, and boy did that stuff pay well.
Sometimes they wanted me to be all innocent, like I was their girlfriend. Chris was like that, but he liked to pretend I was a lesbian or bi, and just needed the right guy to help me explore those needs. That was when you two came over. That was actually my first and only time in that club.
Anyway, pretty soon I had stashed a lot of money away, living very frugally. A friend of mine mentioned Submission was for sale, and I jumped on it. I turned it into what it is now, actually. It was kind of a hole when I bought it, but it had potential.
It has living quarters attached, so that is convenient. I knew eventually my past might come back around, so some of my more trusted employees know. It is in their contract that they are never to speak of it, like in some famous actor's nanny's nondisclosure contracts. I pay very well, so..."
Chapter 43
Waiting
We heard the hospital lady call my name, letting me know they were ready for me. All four of us trekked back to an exam room. Once the nurse saw me settled and waiting for the doctor, Jessica asked if she and Gabe could go.
"Not that I don't care how this turns out," she said, turning to look at me with concern in her eyes. "It's just that we left so quickly. I need to get back to the club. When you get out of here, with news of a perfectly healthy baby, by the way, you are both welcome to come stay with me. I don't know how far you drove for tonight, but I have plenty of room, and beds, if you want to stay tonight."
I thanked her, but assured her we were fine and wouldn't need to stay with her. Caleb said he needed a written statement from her before he could release her. He mentioned that fingerprints or a swab of DNA to prove who she was, with a picture and her statement was needed first, and then he could let her go.
"I'm sure they have an office we could use, once I flash my badge again. If you write down everything you told me, I'll take a picture of you, and if you don't mind, your scar as well, on my cell phone. If they don't have any ink, I'm sure they have Q-tips and protective coverings to swab your cheek. Monday I'll type this all up, we can compare your prints or DNA to anything they have of you. I think they have your old toothbrush and hairbrush in evidence. And since we know where to find you if we need anything...you won't run, right?"
Jessica laughed. "Oh no, I'm staying put. If you need anything else, just call me. I escaped a long time ago, I love my life now. I would appreciate it if you would keep this as quiet as you can. Just close the case, with as little fanfare as possible. Seal my records or something, since I was a juvenile."
"Your stepdad, did you want to press charges?"
"No, I have a private investigator who keeps an eye on him. If I thought he would harm someone else I would, but I've been told he isn't doing well. He fell down a flight of cement stairs while drunk, and knocked himself out pretty bad. My understanding is that he isn't right in the head anymore. He is in a home, drooling on himself. My gut says my boyfriend at the time had a hand in it, but no one seems to know anything about that. I'll leave it alone, since it wouldn't do any good anyway."
"And your mom?"
"No."
Caleb nodded. He turned to me saying, "I'll be back as soon as I can. Let me get them on their way so I can concentrate on you. We need to talk."
I just nodded. When they left I found myself alone for the first time all night. I changed into the hospital gown the nurse had given me and settled on the bed to wait for a doctor and probably a sonogram.
* * * *
Since I was left alone with my thoughts for the first time all night, they started hitting me all at once. I placed my open palms on my lower abdomen, trying to somehow feel through osmosis if my baby was doing ok. I still hadn't had any bleeding, so I hoped we were both fine, but that punch to the gut had been a significant one, the way it knocked all of the air out of me like that.
I pressed into my stomach, tenderly feeling around. I was sore already, and figured I'd be even more sore tomorrow. I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly,
forcing my brain to confront the possibility that the baby wasn't ok. That was my most pressing fear, so I addressed it first.
I was shocked at the sheer amount of mental pain that rolled in when I let my mind go there. Yes, I was unmarried. No, I didn't know who the father was. I knew a lot of women in my position would be hoping the punch to the gut would solve all of their problems, but not me.
It was hard to believe but I had already bonded with this life growing inside me. I loved it deeply already and the thought of the doctor coming in, doing a sonogram, and telling me the baby had no heartbeat was my biggest fear. It brought hot tears to my eyes and I wiped them away quickly, before they could take hold and run away with my sanity.
No, you can't think that way, I told myself. You looked that fear in the eyes, but now you need to put it out of your mind. There is nothing I could about it anyway. I tucked the possibility that all was not well to the back of my mind, hoping once I had the sonogram I could put it away forever. I knew that to keep from falling apart, I had to cling to the hope that everything was fine in there.
I pulled the certainty of that around me, and turned my mind to Caleb instead. I hadn't planned on telling him about the baby, since I probably wasn't going to see him after tonight anyway, but that plan had obviously gone to hell.
Ok, so Caleb knows I'm pregnant. Now what?
Now nothing, I answered myself. Caleb has always made it very clear he didn't want kids. Yes, he said 'we need to talk' when he left the room, but I knew what he would say already. I knew a family was the last thing Caleb wanted, especially if this baby turns out to be Roger's.
I mentally crossed a future with Caleb off, yet again. If it turned out he was the dad, I knew he would pay child support, and help out that way, because he was an honorable man. My job was flexible and paid well enough, with some financial help from Caleb, I would be fine.
I'd probably have to decide between staying down here and moving north to live near my mom at some point, depending on her reaction, but I knew I'd try to stay down here. My job would take a lot of rebuilding if I left the state, state rules were very different and individual, plus either way the DNA test went, this baby's dad lives here.
Two Player Games: (Corrupted 5-8) Page 24
