“Are you a part of the party?”
He moved after her, his dark hair slicked back so forcefully Ellie imagined if she touched it, her hand would come away wet.
“I load the tables, that’s it...”
Ellie felt it necessary to make the distinction. She wasn’t one of the girls. They’d made that pretty plain but part of her was glad. She knew she could have made more money. Kelly had already been in twice and had waved around a wad of bills in Ellie’s face that would have solved her money worries for the next six months. But Ellie knew she couldn’t bring herself to don the barely-there outfits, the thought of just anyone touching her the way the men at the party touched the girls filling her with fear and revulsion.
“I haven’t seen you inside... Where’s your outfit?”
He dropped his cigarette on the patio and stubbed it out with his highly polished shoes. He moved in against Ellie, his hands automatically sliding down over her ass.
“Is it underneath this thing?”
He tugged at her dress and Ellie stepped away from him.
“No, now if you’ll excuse me I have to get back inside. I have work to do.”
He grabbed her arm and Ellie felt panic rising within her.
“I can give you some work.”
His words were a little slurred as he leaned in towards her and Ellie could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“I said, no!”
“And I said yes. It’s your job to give me whatever I want...”
He grabbed the neckline of her dress, his large hand ripping the delicate fabric as he tried to force his hand inside.
Ellie drew back and slapped him with enough force to rock him back on his feet and make her own palm sting. She took her opportunity and strode away, disgust and fear quickening her pace.
When his hand closed around her upper arm and he slammed her back against the wall, Ellie knew she was in real trouble. She fought against him as he tried to pin her hands over her head.
Stuart moved up behind him and through her tear-blurred eyes Ellie was sure she was imagining that he was coming to her rescue. The grip her drunken attacker had on her disappeared as Stuart spun him around, his fist slamming into the other man’s face.
She watched as her attacker slumped down onto his knees, blood dripping from his nose. Shock washed over her and Ellie stared up into Stuart’s rage-filled expression.
“What are you doing here?” she said, her voice trembling as he reached out and dragged her away from the wall.
“What am I doing here? I could ask you the same thing, Ellie. What the hell are you doing at something like this? What were you doing out here in the dark, with that slime ball?”
Ellie paused and jerked free of his grip.
“I’m here to work, Stuart. I got a job loading the trays from the kitchen out into the refill room.”
She watched as he pushed his hands back through his hair.
“But at something like this? You have your job at the diner. You don’t need another job.”
“And what would you know about what I need? If I don’t work and earn more money like tonight then how the hell am I supposed to pay the bills? How the hell will I pay the mortgage on the house and keep my mother at home where she wanted to be instead of in a hospice?”
Stuart stared at her, surprise etched on his face.
“Ellie, I...”
She shook her head and stalked past him. Colour flooded up her face as she suddenly became embarrassed that she had shared so much with him. She’d always been taught to keep her problems to herself so what was happening to her now that she couldn’t even keep that to herself?
Ellie’s cell phone started to buzz just as Stuart caught up to her and she pulled it from her pocket.
The home number flashed on the screen and Ellie was suddenly filled with dread. Why would Selena be calling her? The only reason she would call was if there was something wrong...
“Ellie, I...”
She cut Stuart off and pressed the call answer button, lifting the phone to her ear.
“Ellie, you need to get home...”
“Selena, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“It’s Rosalind—she had another seizure but this was far worse than anything I’ve seen... Ellie, she stopped breathing, I’ve been doing CPR on her but I can’t get a response...”
Ellie didn’t even wait to hear the rest of what Selena had to say because she was already moving for the door.
Stuart followed her as Ellie battled her way through the crowded ballroom, loud raucous laughter drowning out anything Selena was saying to her on the phone.
By the time Ellie made it out to the front her hands were shaking hard enough to make her almost drop the cell phone on the ground.
“Selena, where are you? What hospital is she going to?”
“James Memorial. Ellie, you need to get here as fast as you can. I have to go... The paramedics are...”
Selena cut off and Ellie was left holding the phone in her hands. She fumbled in her purse, her fingers refusing to cooperate with the rest of her as she struggled to find her car keys.
“Ellie, what happened? Talk to me?”
It suddenly dawned on her that Stuart had been trying to talk to her the entire time. Sound rushed in around her as he spun her around to face him.
“I have to go. It’s my mom, she’s...”
Ellie didn’t know what to say. What could she say? Her mother wasn’t dead; she wouldn’t die on her, not now. Despite the fact that Ellie spent all of her free time looking after her mother, or working to pay for her care, she knew in a way she needed her mom as much as her mom needed her.
“I don’t know what to do...” Ellie said, her hands finally closing around the keys in the bottom of her bag. She pulled them out and stared down at them.
On one hand she knew she needed to find her car, she needed to get to the hospital, and she just hoped that she arrived in time.
In time for what, exactly?
Tears filled Ellie’s eyes and she refused to finish the thought. Everything would be fine, it would all be fine.
“Ellie, you can’t drive. Give me the keys. I’ll take you.”
Stuart’s voice cut through her tumultuous thoughts as he pulled the keys from her hand and gently wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
Ellie was barely aware as he walked her to her car and helped her into the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he slid in behind the wheel that panic really set in.
“James Memorial, Stuart. We need to get to James Memorial. I should drive, I know a short cut.”
Ellie fumbled with her seatbelt in an attempt to slip it off and climb into the driver’s seat but Stuart’s hand over hers stopped her.
“I’ll get you there. I promise.”
Ellie stared into his dark eyes and found herself nodding. He would get her there on time. If anyone could do it, it was Stuart.
“I can’t be too late...”
“You won’t.”
He gunned the engine and Ellie slumped back in her seat as the car pulled down the drive.
The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever and with each minute that ticked by Ellie felt certain she would simply explode. The pressure built in her chest and in her lungs and as soon as Stuart pulled the car to a halt outside the hospital she was already moving.
Reaching the front desk, Ellie paused. This wasn’t the first time she had done this. The memory of her mother’s stroke froze the air in her lungs and Ellie struggled to force the words past her tongue.
“Dear, are you alright?”
The nurse at the desk stared at her with concern and Ellie could feel the world slowly beginning to spin around her.
“Rosalind Blair. She was brought in here tonight—we need to see her.”
Stuart appeared at Ellie’s elbow, his voice calm as he spoke to the nurse at the desk.
“Are you relatives?”
“I’m her daughter!”
&nb
sp; The words burst from Ellie and she gripped the counter as though it was the only thing holding her steady in the world.
The nurse shot her a sympathetic look and tapped away on the keyboard.
“They’re currently working on her. If you go down to emergency room four they might be able to give you some information.”
Ellie moved away from the desk and started down the hall. She knew the hospital, knew where all the emergency rooms were, and she followed the hall down to her destination.
The emergency section of the hospital was a hive of activity. Doctors and nurses coming and going, patients moved from room to room. And then every so often an emergency would burst in through the door, people shouting orders as they tried to save a life.
Ellie sat and watched it all, her body numb as she waited to hear what the doctor had to say. Was this her fault? Had she caused it? Would her mother have been better off in a care facility?
So many questions—questions that Ellie didn’t have the answers to, and it hurt to think about them.
Selena dropped down in the seat next to Ellie, taking her hand and wrapping her fingers through Ellie’s.
“I know you’re blaming yourself, I can see it on your face.”
“What else am I supposed to think, Selena? If I’d listened to you this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Ellie, you can’t think like that and you know it. Your mom was exactly where she wanted to be and this could have happened anywhere. It has nothing to do with where she was.”
“But you said she’d be better off in a care facility, Selena, and you were right. If I’d just listened... Why do I always have to be so stupid?”
Tears gathered in a lump at the back of Ellie’s throat and she struggled to breathe around it.
“Miss Blair, can I have a word, please?”
A doctor appeared at the end of the hall near the doors that led through to emergency room four.
Ellie nodded and stood, the world spinning uncomfortably as she struggled to get her bearings.
“Are you alright? Do you want me to come with you?”
Stuart was suddenly just there, his strong hands holding Ellie steady as he walked her down the hall.
Ellie knew she should say no. This was something she was supposed to do alone, something she should have been stronger about but she wasn’t.
“Yes...”
She nodded and stared up into his brown eyes, the emotions she saw there surprising her. Ellie looked away, focusing on the floor beneath her feet and each step that took her towards whatever the doctor would tell her.
They stepped through the swing doors and he gave her a pitying look.
“Is she dead? Was I too late?”
The doctor shook his head but Ellie could tell by the look in his eyes that whatever he would say wasn’t good news.
“No, we’ve stabilised her but the seizure she suffered starved your mother’s brain of oxygen for far too long. I’m afraid the damage it caused is far worse than we’d anticipated and the only thing keeping her stable at the moment is the life support.”
The world seemed to crumble away at the edges of Ellie’s vision and she imagined herself standing on the edge of a precipice. Each breath she took only seemed to make the situation more precarious, more of her reality crumbling away, tumbling into oblivion.
Ellie had watched these types of situations in films, read about them in books, but she’d never expected to be faced with it.
“Your mother is what we consider brain dead.”
“What does that mean?”
Ellie knew deep down what it meant but she needed to hear the doctor say it to her face.
“It means that if we switched the machines off, your mother’s body would be unable to function on its own. Her organs would shut down and physical death would occur.”
Ellie nodded. “Can I see her?”
“Of course you can but I’m afraid there’s a difficult decision you must make.”
“You want me to agree to switch off the life support.”
Ellie’s voice was utterly emotionless and if it wasn’t for Stuart holding her against him in that moment she might have believed that she had become completely detached from her own body.
“Yes, I know it’s a delicate matter but your mother’s insurance doesn’t cover us artificially prolonging her life.”
Ellie merely nodded.
“I’d like to see her now, please.”
The doctor studied her for a moment before opening his mouth as though he was going to continue arguing about it.
“If you say it again I’ll scream and I won’t stop screaming until someone comes in here and sedates me. And if that happens then I won’t be capable of making the difficult decision.”
Ellie couldn’t help the sarcasm that came through in her voice as she stared up at the doctor. This was her mother he was talking about, someone she loved and cared for and he was treating it as though money was the only consideration she should have.
Why did everything always come back to money? When did the world become such a cruel, hard place that valued currency above the lives of the people on the planet?
The doctor nodded, his expression hardening.
“I’ll take you through to her right now.”
Without a backwards glance the doctor turned on his heel and moved down the hall. He moved like he expected her to simply follow him and Ellie wanted to but her body didn’t want to cooperate. She fought to take a step, to move after him and failed.
Stuart, as though sensing her inability to, held onto her until she took the first tentative step forward. Once she was moving it was like being trapped on a conveyor belt, one that wouldn’t stop going forward until she was standing at the bottom of her mother’s bed.
Reaching the door, Ellie paused and stepped away from Stuart.
“I need to do this myself. Get Ricky.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded and smiled, his dimple briefly flashing in his cheek.
Stepping into the room, the constant whooshing sound gave her the chills.
Rosalind lay in the bed, her body looking even smaller and more withered than normal. But then her mother wasn’t in there anymore. The life that had belonged to her mother was now gone, the shell the only thing that remained to say she had existed.
Moving over to the bed, Ellie picked her mother’s limp hand up in her own. The skin was cold and clammy to the touch and even though Ellie knew it was her mother in the bed it didn’t feel like it, not anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Mom, I should have been there.”
Ellie’s voice cracked as she spoke.
There was nothing. No response. No flicker of her eyelids, no tensing of her fingers.
The bleeping of the monitor and the noise the mechanical lungs made Ellie’s chest hurt.
She should have stayed home. If she had been there, maybe her mother wouldn’t have felt so alone, so deserted.
After all wasn’t that exactly what had happened? Everyone had left her.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought if I made enough money I could...”
Ellie trailed off, suddenly uncertain of what she had thought. No amount of money would ever have made her mother better. There was no cure, there had never been any hope.
Anger flooded into Ellie’s chest making it difficult to breathe.
All of it, everything had been for nothing.
The despair of the situation settled down over Ellie and she started to sob. The tears poured out of her, every emotion she had kept bottled up inside for the last year slipped out in the salty tracks that dripped down her cheeks.
She sat at the side of her mother’s bed for what felt like an eternity until finally empty she stood and moved to the door.
The doctor stood in the hall and Ellie nodded.
There was a moment of hesitation in his eyes as though he expected her to change her mind. When she didn’t, he stepped forward, a clipboard held in his han
ds.
“I’ll need you to sign some things before we switch it all off.”
“I’ll sign it, if you’ll wait for my brother to come in and say goodbye.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“He’s coming.”
The doctor sighed and nodded before he tucked the clipboard back under his arm once more and disappeared down the hall, leaving Ellie alone with what was left of her mother.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Breaking the news to Ricky had been surprisingly easy, he seemed to take it far better than Stuart had expected.
“Ellie wants you to come in, so you can say goodbye.”
“I’ll get my jacket.”
Ricky’s bruises were beginning to heal and Stuart knew something would have to be done once he was fully recovered. He couldn’t continue to live in fear of retribution from Grey, but if Stuart was honest he had no idea what he would do to fix it.
Stuart waited with Ellie’s car outside the house and stared up at the night sky. It wasn’t the evening he had planned. After the party he had planned on paying Ellie a visit, telling her exactly how he felt.
Of course all of that was pointless now, he was just glad he was the one there for her when it had all gone down.
Ricky appeared on the steps, struggling with the sleeves on his jacket. He moved down the steps and climbed into the car as Stuart slid into the driver’s side.
“What happened to her?” Ricky asked, his voice low and thoughtful as Stuart drove down the winding road.
“A seizure. The doctors said her brain was starved of oxygen.”
“And how do you know all of this? How do you know more about my mother than I do?”
Ricky’s voice was tinged with anger as he stared straight ahead out through the windscreen.
“I was there when Ellie got the call.”
“What do you mean when she got the call?”
Ricky turned in the seat and Stuart could feel his cold gaze heavy upon him.
“It means she was at work when she received a phone call telling her to get to the hospital.”
“So she wasn’t even there?”
Stuart shook his head and Ricky fell silent. He could practically feel the anger rolling from the man sitting next to him.
“It wasn’t your sister’s fault, Ricky. She’s done her best...”
Curves for Him - 10 Delicious Tales Page 93
