Billion Dollar Man

by Ali Parker

  “Honey, can you help me with something?” my mom asked, coming into the room.

  I nodded. “Sure, what?”

  “I want to paint a few rooms. Paul will be away on a business trip this week – he’s leaving in the morning. Do you think you can help me? It will take a few days, so if you need to go back sooner, it’s okay.”

  I thought about it. When I had been younger, before Paul had come into the picture, my mom and I had done all sorts of things together to bond. We had built things, rearranged the house, taken on any kind of project we could think of. It had been a distraction for both of us after Dad had left, and it had been good for us to open up to each other instead of shutting down and moving on without talking.

  “I’d love to,” I said. “I can stay a few more days, I’m sure. It will be great to do something like this together again, take my mind off everything.”

  I could really do with a distraction, and I was almost glad my mom had given me a reason to stay, a way to distract myself from everything. I could lose myself in a project like that again.

  “Is everything okay?” my mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I felt a headache coming on. “It’s just a lot of drama with the news that’s circulating now.”

  My mom sat down on the chair by the desk, turning it so that she was facing me.

  “You know, there might be some truth to this mafia business they’re involving your father in,” she said.

  I frowned and looked at her. “Mom, the media makes shit up to create an impact.”

  “No, I know that. But your father wasn’t the type to play fair. I knew that from the start. It was one of the reasons I let him go so easily. He would cheat his way through life and not think anything of it. I didn’t say any of that to you because you idolized him so much, but there might be truth to what they’re saying.”

  I shook my head, frowning. “Are you serious?” I asked. “You seemed so upset when you saw it on the news.”

  My mom nodded. “I know it’s hard to hear, sweetheart. But your father wasn’t always a great guy. After I had some time to think about it, I realized it was right up his alley.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh.

  “You do?”

  I nodded. “He did a lot of things wrong. I didn’t know about it until recently, and I’m upset about that. I feel like everything that happened with Mila is his fault.”

  I told my mom everything I had figured out with David’s help. I hadn’t realized she’d known what kind of man Dad was. I had always been upset that he had walked out, that she hadn’t fought to keep him home, that she hadn’t thought to follow him. But I was starting to understand it. I was starting to think that my mom had been a smart woman.

  Otherwise, she would have been the one that had died alongside my father, instead of my stepmom.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “About what? The company, or Mila?”

  “Both,” my mom said.

  I took a deep breath. “Until I take care of the company and this damn debt, I’m going to stay far away from Mila to keep her safe. I should go back to New York, though.”

  “You’re doing the right thing,” my mom said.

  “Really? It doesn’t feel like I am. I’ve been in over my head since I found out that the deaths weren’t accidental. I’ve been carrying this shit around for too long.”

  My mom looked like she felt bad that I was going through this, but there was nothing she could do about it. My dad had been a criminal, and the company’s success and the debt to the mafia was a direct result of that. Everything that had gone wrong since the moment he had refused to pay Brantley was because my dad had done a lot of things wrong.

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked.

  My mom nodded. “Anything.”

  “Was Uncle Dean involved in stuff like this, too? I don’t know if he was in it or not.”

  My mom thought about it. “I don’t think he would have done something like that. From what I saw the few times I met him, he was a great guy. He might have kept his mouth shut to protect your father if he knew. But he wouldn’t have done it.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I hadn’t wanted Uncle Dean to be a criminal, too. He had meant so much to me. It was already a shock that my dad had been a criminal, but in the seven years after my dad’s death, I had grown close to Uncle Dean and seen him as a lot more of a father figure than I had ever seen my dad.

  I had needed him to stay that way in my mind. And even though he might have kept these heinous crimes a secret, as long as he wasn’t the one committing them, I could forgive him.

  “I’ll figure this out,” I said.

  “I know you will,” my mom said. “I know it’s awful, but you’re going to get through this. Do you know how I know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because you’re not your father’s son. You’re mine.”

  Chapter 58

  Mila

  By Wednesday, it had been three days since I had been back at work. All I had wanted when I went back to work was to fall back into my normal routine and do what I did best – help others without thinking too much about myself.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way.

  Everyone had been worried about me. I was flattered that so many people had panicked when I had disappeared. It was great to know that I meant something to so many people. But I didn’t want to remember anything about the kidnapping or why it had happened, and it was hard to forget when everyone was asking me questions about it.

  By this time, the questions had started dwindling, but they didn’t treat me the way they always had. They were still treating me as if something might be wrong– as if I needed special treatment. They were coddling me. I hated being coddled. I didn’t like it when all the attention was on me and not on the people that really needed it. There were patients in the hospital that needed all the attention we could give them.

  I was fine – aside from a little trauma and a lot of bad memories and mixed feelings, there was nothing wrong with me. The shallow cut on my face had healed enough that no one could even see it, even without makeup. My concussion had gone away completely. Physically, there was nothing wrong with me. I had been lucky. I had heard many stories about people who had either been injured terribly or killed when they were kidnapped. None of that had happened to me. I didn’t need to be the center of attention all the time.

  All I wanted was to forget.

  That included Ben. The time we had in New York while I was there had been fantastic, but I had known all along that it couldn’t last. Ben had made his choice, and even though being with him had been exactly what I had hoped we would always be, I had known while staying with him that it had to come to an end as soon as I came back to Portland.

  Which was why it was ridiculous that I was missing him, now. What made matters worse was that he was still in town. That he hadn’t come to see me and that we hadn’t spoken at all was indicative of the status of our relationship. Nonexistent.

  Which meant that all this fuss over something that had happened because of Ben, and with Ben, was unwelcome.

  All I wanted was to move on.

  “How are you feeling?” Claire asked when she arrived at the hospital for her shift.

  “I feel great,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t a hundred percent the truth, but if I said that I wasn’t in the best mood, she would ask about it. And there was nothing I could say. What bothered me wasn’t anything that could be fixed.

  “You know, if something is wrong, I’m sure you can take a couple of days off from work.” Claire looked worried.

  I shook my head. “I can’t take any more time off. I’ve been gone for a week.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re not going to fight about it. We are not understaffed, and they know you’ve been through something difficult.”

  I stifled a groan. This was exactly what I didn’t like. I knew ev
eryone was only worried and trying to look out for me, but I wanted to be treated like everyone else.

  “We have a patient,” one of the nurses shouted at the door as a gurney was wheeled in. The patient was an elderly gentleman with skin that was paper thin and an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Blue veins showed through on his arms. He was so frail, when we lifted him onto a hospital bed, he weighed nothing at all. When I pulled the sheets over him, it was like he drowned in them.

  “What do we have?” Dr. Nash said, hurrying into the room.

  “Patient suffers from increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure with low oxygen levels,” one of the nurses said.

  Dr. Nash nodded and started barking orders. I did what I was told, administering the necessary medication, trying my best to stabilize the patient. We worked hard and fast, but no one was saying what we all knew. People as old as this gentleman didn’t easily survive pneumonia. Despite the oxygen mask, he was starting to go blue around the mouth. He wasn’t getting nearly enough oxygen.

  I hated it when we couldn’t make a difference. Very often, the elderly didn’t come in when pneumonia first set on. They believed they could handle it, and when they were younger, they probably could. I was worried that this patient wasn’t going to make it. Dr. Nash did what he could, we all did, but the odds weren’t in his favor.

  “That was a rough one,” Claire said when we went to the restroom together.

  I nodded without saying anything.

  “I hope he has family that will sit with him so that he is not alone,” Claire said again.

  If he didn’t have any family coming in to sit with him, I would do it myself. Claire was right, he needed someone to sit with him even if he wasn’t aware of it. When someone died, or when someone fought for their life, it had to make an impact on someone. Someone had to remember. Even if that someone was just the nurse. It broke my heart that some people were so alone.

  “Are you coming?” Claire asked. “I’m going to the cafeteria to get lunch.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not taking my break, yet.”

  I could have taken my break, of course. But it was difficult for me to carry on with life as usual when a man was fighting for his life and looking like he was going to lose. I couldn’t worry about the patient making it the one moment and have lunch in the cafeteria like nothing was wrong, the next. I would take my break when I could stomach the idea that sometimes we lost patients.

  Before the kidnapping, I had struggled with the concept of losing a patient, but it wasn’t this bad. Now, I felt like throwing up, like I was going to break apart if this old man didn’t make it. I had always been strong in situations like this even though it had affected me badly. What had changed? Why was I so much more emotionally involved than before?

  Maybe it was because I had been through a difficult time. When I had thought that my own death was around the corner. Maybe I wasn’t emotionally as alright as I thought I was. For the first time since the incident, I considered going to see someone about it.

  Or maybe it was because I was pregnant.

  An alarm going off interrupted my thought. I ran back to the ICU. All nurses were involved, scurrying between two gurneys that had been brought in from the emergency unit. It was a young couple, a man and a woman who had been in a horrible car accident. Lately, we had been getting more of those. It seemed to be getting more and more dangerous to own a car.

  We put the couple in the same room so that they were with each other when they woke up. The man had a broken left collarbone and several fractures on his left arm and his left leg where they had been T-boned by another car. The woman had a broken nose, fractured ribs and one of her lungs had collapsed.

  “Did the airbags deploy?” one of the nurses asked.

  “The EMTs said yes,” another answered.

  There was a lot of blood, and I felt dizzy. I didn’t usually feel anything at the sight of blood – I used to pride myself on my strong stomach. I could handle a lot of things not many other people could. But today I felt faint, nausea rolling in the pit of my stomach, and I wondered if I was going to lose my breakfast while I worked with these two. It was so unfair that bad things happened to good people.

  Why was this world such a mess?

  “Mila, why don’t you step outside?” Claire said.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” Claire put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re white as a sheet. I think you need to step outside for some air.”

  I wanted to argue with her that I was fine, but a wave of nausea washed over me. I knew she was right. If I didn’t step out of the room, I was going to throw up all over the patients. It would not only be unprofessional, but embarrassing. Maybe I wasn’t a hundred percent fine.

  There were enough nurses to take care of the couple if I walked away. I didn’t just step away from the room, I walked out of the ICU altogether, making my way to the staff garden. I sank down on a bench and covered my face with my hands. I had no idea if the couple was going to make it. They were both in critical condition. What bothered me more was that I hadn’t been able to handle it – I had had to run away like a new nurse who didn’t know anything about blood and death. I felt pathetic.

  I was traumatized, I reminded myself. And pregnant. I couldn’t forget about that. Maybe it was why I was nauseous. Or maybe everything was upside down, and I didn’t know what was going on anymore.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Claire asked. When I uncovered my face, she was sitting next to me. I wondered how long I had been sitting here like this.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “What if I lost my nerve?”

  Claire shook her head. “You’re one of the best nurses I know. A lot of the nurses in the ICU look up to you. They want to be like you. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, and you can’t get over it just like that.” She snapped her fingers to demonstrate. “Cut yourself some slack.”

  “But I’m fine. I wasn’t physically hurt. I should be able to go back to how things were.”

  Claire stroked my back in slow circles, and even though I didn’t like being treated as if something was wrong, the motion calmed me.

  “Just give yourself some time. No one can bounce back from a kidnapping without any aftermath. You’re doing really well. Allow yourself the time to recover. If you push yourself too hard, it might only get worse.”

  I nodded. Claire was right. I was sure that if I spoke to anyone else – like my parents or Skylar – they would give me the same advice. I was the only one that expected me to be able to be better than this.

  “Let’s get back inside,” I said.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  I nodded. “The only thing worse than struggling with the patients coming in is doing nothing at all.”

  Claire nodded, and we both stood and walked back to the ICU. I knew she was going to keep an eye on me, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  It wasn’t long before another patient came in. A middle-aged man, the father of five children, had fallen off a roof. His teary-eyed wife and all five children quietly hovered in the background while we stabilized him. He had cracked ribs and a broken ankle. After hearing he had fallen off three stories and not one, we all agreed he was lucky to have such minor injuries in the first place. The man could have died.

  After he had been taken care of and his family had been appeased, I finally took my lunch break. It had been a very busy day, but I preferred it that way. I had always been better at escaping into my work rather than facing what was on my mind.

  Chapter 59

  Ben

  Staying with Mom a few more days had been a good idea. I hadn’t been ready to go back to New York yet, no matter how upset my investors were. Even though it had had no direct effect on me that Mila had been kidnapped, I felt like shit about it. Going back to sit in the office and work for the company that had caused all of this was difficult to stomach.

  I wasn’t e
ven sure why I was working so hard for the investors to not pull their funding. The company may have been my father’s and Uncle Dean’s legacy, left to me in both their wills, but I just couldn’t see it as a positive thing anymore. Yes, it was an investment, but it had brought so much baggage and had hurt the person I loved most.

  What was more, I couldn’t even be with Mila because of the stupid business and everything that went wrong. I was seriously considering closing the company and paying off Victor Brantley with all the money that came out of it. Even if it ended up being more than a hundred million. I was ready to put this behind me once and for all.

  Why didn’t I do it, then? The answer was simple – I still felt like I owed Uncle Dean, if not my dad, something. The poor man may have been aware of what was going on behind the scenes, but his death had been unnecessary. I was sure that he hadn’t been involved the way my dad had been, and Penny was left behind without a husband because of all this bullshit. Anyway, I felt like I owed it to Uncle Dean to make good on what had happened, to let the company live on instead of shutting it down and getting rid of it.

  Whenever I thought about carrying on, I got a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. But whenever I thought about shutting it all down, I felt guilty. I had no idea what to do, and there was no one I could ask.

  My mom knew what was going on – she had known my father better than I had thought, and she knew what he had done. But I couldn’t ask her what to do. Whenever we spoke about it, she told me to follow my heart and that she trusted I would do the right thing.

  It would have been great if I knew what the right thing was.

  While I stayed with my mom, I helped her with the painting as I had said I would. Paul was away, and my mom and I bonded the way we used to when I was a teenager still living at home. I loved being able to spend time with her like the good old days. But I desperately need to talk to someone. Usually, I would have spoken to Jerrod. But we were still not speaking after he had found out that I was dating Mila. Even though it had been a while since we had broken up. Even though I had gone back to New York. Even though I had brought Mila back after she had been kidnapped.