GLASS: A Standalone Novel

by Arianne Richmonde

  “Daniel, this was what she wanted. This is what she wants.”

  Now.

  THE SCENE STRETCHES before me like a never-ending yawn, my mind frantic but my body unable to respond. I wonder now if Natasha’s death could have been avoided. I wonder now if Kristin accelerated—no, caused Natasha’s condition. I wonder now what drug Kristin administered to Natasha. Maybe what she did to me she did to her. Because all I know is that I was fine an hour ago, but now I’m paralyzed.

  This woman is a shark and I am her prey.

  2

  Janie.

  MY MIND WAS spinning. I could hardly breathe. Standing inside Daniel’s hotel, where I’d been living so happily for the last few days, I tried to evaluate what was happening. My mouth was a gaping hole as I painfully swallowed the concierge’s words: “Her first name is Kristin. I believe her name, before she married, was Jürgen.”

  “Daniel’s wife?” I asked again, as I leaned against Ethan’s front desk to support my Jell-O legs.

  His eyes softened. “Look, I’m sorry. But . . . I’ll bet you’re not the first.”

  “What? You’re saying I’m Daniel’s bit of fluff on the side?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Listen, Mr. Glass is a very wealthy man. As I say, I’ve only been working here four months so I wouldn’t know his extra-marital habits, but . . . look, this is Vegas after all.” His tone had changed from reverential and respectful to we’re-in-it-together, you-and-I, isn’t-it-terrible-to-be-treated-like-dirt-by-the-rich-and-famous?

  “You know nothing about him,” I snapped. “I’ve known Daniel for years. I’ve worked with him. I can’t believe this is happening!”

  “Have you got another place to stay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, my head in my hands as I put all my weight against the desk to stop myself falling.

  Ethan came out from behind his desk, wheeling my suitcase behind him. A reminder that I had been chucked out of Daniel’s hotel! He took me by the crook of the arm. “Take a seat. Gather yourself. I know some cheap places to stay if you haven’t got anywhere else to go. I’m sorry, my hands are tied. I simply cannot sneak you in here or I’d lose my job.”

  I felt like some sort of cheap floozy. The other woman. I let Ethan lead me to the lobby sofa. My legs were wobbling and I took baby steps in fear of collapsing to the floor.

  “I’ll get you some water. Just . . . relax, okay?”

  Tears welled in my eyes, but I didn’t even have the energy to cry. Doubt peppered my mind. Could it be true? Just because Natasha Jürgen had a lover when she and Daniel were married didn’t mean that Daniel wasn’t hopelessly in love with her. I had lapped up every word he’d said in the plane, on our way to Vegas. Believed him when he told me it was me he loved. Believed him when he told me that their marriage had been a sham. He wouldn’t be the first man to be in love with a bitch. And maybe he’d missed Natasha so much, he settled for the next best thing: her sister. No! No! What was I thinking? It was impossible, it had to be! Kristin was playing some bullshit scam! He couldn’t have tricked me like that! Then again . . .

  Daniel was a trained actor.

  How many women in the world have been fooled by men? How many divorces hinge on the fact that the guy has been unfaithful? Men are used to lying. Men are good at lying. And why should Daniel Glass be an exception?

  But then, by turn, guilt hammered in my heart. Here I was accusing the man I loved, a man who couldn’t speak for himself, nor defend himself. It wasn’t fair that I was doubting him like this, when I knew nothing of the circumstance. Maybe Ethan was lying. Then again, why would he? What had he to gain?

  “How do you know Daniel and Kristin were married?” I demanded. He handed me a glass of water. “Just taking her word for it?” I said, and then: “Anyone could pretend that she was Daniel Glass’s wife.”

  His look was one of pained sympathy. “Because I was at their wedding. Well, not at the ceremony, but you know, I organized the party afterward. They all came back here.”

  The word “wedding” took the oxygen clean out of my lungs. My heart was thumping through my chest cavity so hard, it echoed. “Wedding? What, here in Vegas?”

  He nodded. “If it makes you feel better, Mr. Glass was pretty drunk. The whole party was.”

  I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “Who else was there? When was this?”

  “Like, two months ago. The truth is though, I never saw Mrs. Glass again until today. She was in a hurry. Came by like a bat out of hell, packed up your stuff and gave me strict instructions not to let you up. I’m sorry, but you know, the jealous wife thing is pretty common around these parts.”

  Again, the intimacy of a man I hardly knew talking to me as if I were the jilted girlfriend and he my confidante. Not the Ethan of the past few days who had been treating me like royalty. Was I the jilted girlfriend? If so, what the fuck had Daniel been doing just a few hours earlier, proposing to me when he came out of his coma? But then again, he had been in a coma, hadn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t sound in the mind. Perhaps he had married Kristin and was playing the field. Maybe the rumor about him was true . . . that he had been running around fucking Natasha Jürgen lookalikes because, hey, who could look more like Natasha than her Doppelgänger sister Kristin??

  I shakily got out my cell phone and clicked on Google. I had never checked out Kristin. Whenever I had looked in the past, she had been no more for me than a passing piece of information, a mention on Natasha Jürgen’s bio on Wikipedia:

  She was raised in Springfield, Connecticut, with her older sister, Kristin, now a neurologist.

  I clicked on Kristin’s name, expecting something to come up. Not a bio as long as Natasha’s, obviously, but still . . . why had I never done this before?

  But her name wasn’t clickable on Wiki. Nothing.

  My fumbling fingers managed to type her name into the Google search bar. This was the first thing I saw:

  Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center’s neurologist Kristin Jürgen M.D, has earned an MDX Most Compassionate Doctor Award. MDX allows patients to nominate their doctors as being one of America’s Most Compassionate Doctors.

  Kristin Jürgen graduated Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. She earned her M.D. at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she completed her residency in neurology. Kristin Jürgen also finished a fellowship in neurorehabilitation at the Hospital of Joint Diseases under the auspices of New York University in New York City, N.Y. She is board certified in neurology and now practices primarily at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, and Silver State Neurology, both in Las Vegas.

  Dr. Jürgen is honored for her initial and precise follow up care, as well as her bedside manner. She has also received the 2013 American Registry MDX Patient’s Choice award and has been featured in Nevada’s Monthly “Top Doctors.”

  So she was the real thing, not some quack. Worse, she was revered as being some fucking saint with her patients. There was no way I’d convince anyone otherwise. No wonder she had been able to pull her weight at the hospital. She had obviously complained about the nurse, Barbara Mendez, and had Dr. Bellows transferred, pulled strings to make sure she was in control of looking after Daniel. Doctors in high places could do these sorts of things. Who knew? Maybe she’d fucked the right person to get what she wanted. Actresses did it all the time, why not doctors too?

  I read on, hoping for some mention of her personal life.

  Nothing.

  I thought of how Daniel was fine one minute—he’d woken up! And the next he’d regressed into a coma again. Coincidence? There was no doubt in my mind that Kristin had induced his coma after he had woken up. They could do that sort of thing with drugs, although usually it was for the benefit of the patient. I Googled for more information:

  A patient can be put in a medically induced coma with the administration of barbiturate drugs or by lowering the body temperature to 32-34° C. The purpose of an induced coma is to allow the brain to rest after a
n injury, such as those that deprive it of oxygen (a blood clot, a blow to the head that caused pressure in the brain to increase, or a chemical imbalance in the nerve cells, resulting from a drug overdose). Doctors can bring the patient out of a coma by discontinuing the treatment.

  I couldn’t think straight. I needed something to eat. My head felt light, and when I tried to stand up, I nearly blacked out from dizziness. I drained the rest of my glass, trying not to splutter water all over myself.

  “Have you got any place to go?” Ethan said. The way he asked me made me instantly suspicious. He was on Kristin’s payroll, and I didn’t trust him an inch. I needed to get Daniel out of Kristin’s clutches, but how? One thing was for sure: Kristin Jürgen had some sort of ulterior motive tucked up her sleeve. If she really was his wife, I assumed she stood to inherit his entire estate, the value of which didn’t even bear thinking about. Daniel was a billionaire. He played it down, never alluded to his wealth, nor boasted about it, but everyone knew that his father had left him a vast empire that had mushroomed from a car parts’ industry to God knows what other investments and companies. Daniel was a savvy, smart man, and I could only imagine how clever he’d been with his investments.

  “I’m fine, Ethan. If you just let me sit here for ten minutes while I gather my stuff. Please, go back to your desk, I’ll be okay.”

  “Let me know if I can do anything for you.”

  I watched Ethan as he made his way back to his desk. I lay my suitcase flat on the floor, unzipped it and rummaged through my belongings. I needed my $25,000 Bellagio chip because my bank balance was pretty low. I’d have to find a hotel to stay. Food, et cetera. Thank God Daniel had taken me gambling because, I reminded myself, the big contract for The Dark Edge of Love that I had been negotiating with my agent Cindy Specktor and the producers, was still not signed. If the job didn’t go ahead—and with the way things were with Daniel it looked as if it wasn’t going anywhere—I hardly had a penny to my name. Luckily, the chip was still tucked at the bottom of my makeup bag. I wondered if Kristin had seen it, would she have pocketed it?

  I sent a text to Star; I didn’t want Ethan to hear what I had to say about Kristin. I sent the same message to Pearl Chevalier, despite what her assistant had told me; that she and Alexandre were AWOL and would not be taking calls for two weeks during their “no contact” vacation:

  URGENT! Daniel woke up from his coma. He was fine. His sister-in-law Kristin Jürgen is his new neurologist and has kidnapped him and induced him into another coma. Please believe me, I am not imagining this. She drugged me and is dangerous. They say she is Daniel’s wife. I think she wants to kill him. Help! Please call me back.

  I pressed SEND but when I re-read the text I realized how nuts I sounded. Even Star would think I’d lost the plot. So I added another text for Pearl. Maybe this would grab her attention:

  P.S. Kristin Jürgen has stolen your pearl necklace.

  3

  Daniel.

  “YOU REMEMBER, HONEY, don’t you?” Her voice is sickly sweet as she sponges my immobile body. I am floating on a raincloud, almost as if I can see her from above. But the lump that is my torso, legs and arms like appendages that are nothing more than blocks of wood attached to my being, are immovable. The person lying here is not me.

  And yet it is. There is nothing I can do. Nobody can hear my inner screams.

  I am shaking my head, yet my head is not moving. I’m yelling “No!” Yet no sound is emanating from my lips, nor my throat. “No, I don’t remember, you bitch, because what you’re telling me is a lie!”

  “We got married, Daniel. You were very, very inebriated. You remember? You came up from New York to spend a weekend here, have some fun. We went out for dinner. You ordered the most expensive wines on the list and had the sommelier running around like a blue ass fly trying to please you. Where was it we ate? Joël Robuchon’s, wasn’t it?”

  “Stop lying!” Again, my lips sealed as I mentally shout. We had a brief dinner to discuss Natasha’s various charities, but nothing more. I went home. We parted ways.

  As if reading my mind, Kristin says: “You just can’t remember a thing, can you, you stubborn man? You blacked out after your fourth whiskey. You suggested we go to a chapel. You were coming on to me, Daniel, flirting like crazy, saying how much you missed my sister, even if she had treated you like dirt underneath your fingernails. I don’t blame you. Everyone was in love with Natasha. You think it hasn’t been challenging for me all these years having her to compete with? All my life she was the beautiful, talented one. She was smarter than me, so I had to study around the clock to get ahead. I had to have something of my own. Show Mom and Dad that I was special. She was always so goddamn blessed, so adored. You know my hair isn’t even blond? The day I was old enough to color my hair, you bet I did. Mousy brown, that’s me. I even had liposuction on my thighs and a nose job. Who wouldn’t have wanted to look like her? She was gorgeous. It was always Natasha this and Natasha that. The golden child, the pretty, talented one.”

  The sponge is hurting me as Kristin scrubs my genitals with vigor. I think of Janie, how skillfully she had my dick in her hot wet mouth, and now this lunatic attacking my private parts like I’m something to be dissected on her laboratory operating table. I miss Janie. I miss her touch, her smell, her sweetness. I try to disassociate myself from the present reality and let the memories of beautiful Janie surge through me in a blissful wave. My only solace. I inhale the scent of her soft, sensual skin, my nose pressed between her silky thighs. I have her pussy in my mouth as I taste her juices, flicker my tongue on her clit and carry her to another mind-blowing orgasm. Her hips lose control as I hold her tight ass in my hands, bringing her even closer to my mouth. Her spasms and her cries have me more turned on than I have ever been in my life with a woman.

  “Isn’t it crazy that you and I were able to get married just like that?” I hear Kristin’s fingers snap to emphasize her point. Snapping me out of my reverie. “Only in America. Vegas really does cater to the lowest denominator of human being. I mean, imagine that! That all we had to do was show up with a witness in tow, and you and I were married five minutes later! I know, honey, you can’t remember, and well, I was going to do the right thing and get this union annulled. Because we never even consummated our marriage. We were both too sozzled to have sex. We hadn’t even been in touch since our wedding—God knows, I was too busy with my research work. And then you had this accident, slipping on the floor, and I knew that I was the only person with the right skills to look after you. I didn’t want anyone interfering. So, you know, us being married is a good thing.”

  She maneuvers my body so I am now lying on my side. Her voice rattles on. “What a crazy coincidence. Two people close to me falling into comas! And both times my being in the right place at the right time. What are the odds of that? Millions to one! That’s why I know this is all meant to be. I’m becoming quite the coma specialist. Fascinating. And you really have enhanced my life. The two of you. It’s such fun being this rich! Natasha was more than generous in her will. Sorry you missed out on that. And I had no idea quite how loaded you are, Daniel. How come you don’t flash your money around more? I mean, seriously, baby, you should have been having fun with your wealth. If I had your looks as a man, I’d be lining up twenty women at a time, partying more! And there you were, hanging out with that skinny little actress with the big, brown, innocent eyes—like I can really imagine how much of a sport she must be in bed, that is, if you even got that far with her. Cute, but clueless. Not like Natasha. She was a real woman. Such a shame her life was cut so short!

  “Shut the fuck up, you nutter!” my grey matter screams.

  “Did I just see you twitch, Daniel? We can’t be having that now, can we? Got to keep you nicely tucked up in your coma until I figure out what your future holds. Because I have been toying with the idea of administering a drug to make this wiener of yours stand to attention, although right now isn’t the best time of the month for
me. And I’ll need to administer some fertility drugs for myself first. After all, I’m no spring chicken. I mean, at forty-two it isn’t easy. And I always did want a child. Or do you think having a baby would be too taxing at my age? I have to admit, the idea of being woken up to breast feed in the middle of the night is hardly appealing. Actually, it’s pretty gross. I’ll need to mull this idea over first. No, you know what? I don’t think having a baby would be a good idea after all. And I guess, when I’m in charge of your money—well, the money that the greedy trustees aren’t controlling—I don’t really need you to be around at all.”

  I can swear I hear myself groan but Kristin’s verbal diarrhea cannot be stopped.

  “You may be asking yourself why I need the extra money. You think I like just being a doctor? Okay, it is a prestigious job and the pay isn’t bad, but it’s not about that . . . I want fame, Daniel. I want to discover a cure for Alzheimer’s or muscular dystrophy. I want to be a medical star, go down in history books, in scientific journals. That’s why I need extra money, don’t you see? I need my research projects funded. It’s like God is on my side. He wants me to succeed. That’s why I inherited Natasha’s money.” She laughs. A raucous, secret-joke sort of laugh. “Shall I tell you a little dark secret? Maybe I’ll hold on a little longer until I know what to do with you. Then I can let you in on my secret. Well, okay, I’ll tell you. Why not? You might even find it funny . . .”

  She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “Wait . . . someone’s coming.”

  4

  Janie.