CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chloe sat alone in the waiting room. Samantha was with Trevor and Jake and Kevin had gone back with the doctor to talk about Derek. The white clock on the white wall ticked like the timer on a bomb. She wished that she could turn it back and that she and Derek would be transported back underneath that tree. She would be in his arms and he would be safe.

Instead, each tick dragged her forward, helpless and anxious. Her heart seemed to be trying to keep time with the clock as it pounded against the cartilage and bone in her chest. Dread sat like an invisible demon on her chest, making it almost impossible to breathe. She could feel the sweat as it trickled a path down her back and along the sides of her face. She was powerless to stop the tremor in her hands or the way her legs shook and felt as if they were molded from Jello. The nausea came and went in waves and her head felt like it was packed with thick fog. All she could do was wait and it was making her want to kill something or someone with her bare hands.

“Chloe,” she looked up to see Kevin and Jake coming out of the back. Jake’s eyes were red and swollen. Kevin looked all but stripped of his own composure.

“Is he okay?”

Kevin looked at her with the tortured eyes of a father who was being forced to say things out loud about his son that he didn’t want to be true.

“No. He’s not okay.” His voice caught then and he looked like he was on the brink of tears. Jake touched his father’s shoulder and Kevin took a deep breath.

“He’s being prepped right now for a life flight to New York Presbyterian Hospital. He’s in a coma, Chloe. They say that he has a severe concussion and there is swelling in his brain. He’s not breathing on his own because of the pressure in there. He has several broken bones and a ruptured spleen that will have to be removed. They can’t help him as well here as they can at Presbyterian where there is a trauma unit. Jake and I have the helicopter here. As soon as the life flight leaves with Derek, we’ll be picked up and going over. You’re welcome to go with us if you like.”

Chloe felt the slap of despair strike her with brutal ferocity. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to cry and scream and rail against God, but more than anything on earth, she wanted to see Derek. She was smart enough to know that if she gave in to her feelings and let them consume her, that might not be an option.

“Yes, please. I just need to make sure Samantha and Trevor are okay first.”

“You can do that now. Life flight will be landing in five minutes and then it will take my copter another ten or fifteen to get clearance to land. Ask someone to direct you to the heli-pad when you’re finished. We’ll meet you there.”

Jake still hadn’t said a single word to her. His blue eyes seemed to just be soaking up everything around them and every interaction Chloe had with his father. If she hadn’t been so worried about Derek and so disinterested in practically everything else, it might have been unnerving. But today, she just didn’t care.

“Thank you Mr. Stark,” she said. She went over to the nurses’ station and said, “My name is Chloe Green. My father is Trevor Whitemore,” she repeated again. “My mother is back there with him. I need to talk to her and it’s urgent. Can you ask her to come out as soon as she can, please?”

The nurse nodded at her and Chloe heard her call to the back and repeat Chloe’s request. She paced a four foot square around the front of the counter until she heard the swoosh of the doors and felt a wisp of cooler air on her face.

“Chloe, is everything okay? Did you talk to Kevin about Derek?”

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 had 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 had 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 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 had 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 had 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 had 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 had 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 had 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 had 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 had to be perfect because the hatred that he had 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 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 beg 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 had 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.”