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 had 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; He had been taken somewhere in 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 on 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 had 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 had ever felt. Nothing Jesse had done to her in the past rivaled the pain he had 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 Stark 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 craniotomy.”

“What is that?” Jake interrupted.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, catching himself talking in technical terminology. “A craniotomy is where a portion of the skull is removed in order to relieve pressure on 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 the 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.”

“How long?” Chloe barely recognized her own voice as she squeaked out the question.

“I wish I could give you an exact time Miss Green. The truth is that it varies a lot from one patient to the next. It will depend on how quickly he heals and what other complications might arise. Typically it’s anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before the swelling in the brain subsides enough to bring them out of the coma.”

“Can we see him?” Kevin asked.

“Yes, but one at a time,” the doctor said. He looked less clinical and more human suddenly as he said, “I’m truly sorry that I don’t have better news for you right now…but we will keep you updated with any changes.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

Chloe took a deep breath. Hearing he was “stable” was better than when he was “critical,” but the truth was she didn’t feel any better now than she had before. It still sounded like he was in trouble. She thought about Jesse again and anger boiled up inside of her. She wanted to shout…drop to her knees and have a tantrum like a toddler, kicking and screaming. She wanted to vent…let it out and make room inside of her for something besides grief and anger. She didn’t do any of those things. She stood silently and swallowed the bile that kept rising in her throat and waited again. This time, for someone to tell her that she could see him. She needed to see him.

“Go ahead Dad,” Jake told Kevin. “You can go first.” Kevin looked at Chloe. He tried to form a smile, but his lips seemed too heavy to lift and it never made it to his eyes.

“I won’t be long,” he told her. She did her best to smile back at him and nodded. She and Jake both watched him go and then Chloe walked slowly over to the window.

“You’re Sarah’s sister?” Jake’s voice carried across the quiet room and landed in Chloe’s ears like a foreign object. It took her several seconds to process his words and when she did, she turned around and said, “Yes. I’m her twin. I only found out recently.”

Jake raised an eyebrow, but thankfully let it go there, for now. He went over to the little coffee pot in the corner and poured himself a Styrofoam cupful.

“Do you want some coffee?” he asked her.

“No thank you,” she said. She didn’t think that she could keep anything down. Her stomach felt like it was full of acid and that acid was welling up in her throat and burning her chest. Chloe turned back to the window, raised the shade and stared out on the city. She watched the people and cars down on the street coming and going and she marveled at how life could just continue on while a life as precious as Derek’s hung in the balance.

When it was Chloe’s turn to see Derek, she entered the glass-walled room with trepidation. She stood near the door and looked at him. His chest moved up and down with the steady rise and fall of the oxygen being forced into his body by the tube that went into his mouth and down his throat. His head was bandaged and both of his eyes were swollen and purple. He had an IV in his right hand and a steady drip of fluids and medications ran through it. Multicolored wires came out of the white and blue gown he wore and snaked up to a machine that beeped rhythmically and displayed his heart rate. A blood pressure cuff adorned one arm and every so often it would fill with air and make clacking noises as it made its measurement and then relaxed. The numbers would show up in neon white against the green screen of the monitor above him.

Chloe sucked in a breath to steady herself, smelling the pungent scent of antiseptic in her nose as she did. On trembling legs, she went to the edge of the bed. She slid her small hand into his big one hating the fact that his was limp and cold. She took another shaky breath and said, “I’m so sorry, Derek. I’m going to make sure that he pays for doing this to you.” She could feel hot tears running silently down her cheeks. “If I could trade places with you, I would. This is my fight not yours. I never should have gotten you involved. I shouldn’t have gotten Trevor involved…and Samantha…and now your family is suffering as well…I’m so sorry. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure that he never hurts anyone I care about, ever again.” She leaned down and kissed his forehead…it was the only place on his poor beautiful face that wasn’t scraped, cut, bruised or swollen.