by Ava Claire
I gulped. She’d just forked over 1k in cash and the nurse didn’t even bat an eye. I wondered what kind of haul she got when she had celebrity patients in the hospital.
She typed in our names and printed out our visitor badges. Her face scrunched when I said mine but she shrugged her shoulder like I couldn’t be that Leila Montgomery.
She slid the badges across the counter with two sausage sized fingers. “One person at a time. The other can wait out here.”
We put some distance between us and the warden, pressing the adhesive to our chests.
I almost asked Missy if she usually carried around that kind of cash for these types of situations, but the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. Besides, the means didn’t matter. We were gonna see Mia. That was priceless.
Missy fumbled through her clutch and pulled out a small container of hand sanitizer. “I have a feeling she’d want to see your face before mine. If she wants to see mine at all.”
I wheeled toward the secured entrance, eyeing Nurse Deadwood. She gave me a strange look before she hit the button that sent the doors swinging outward.
“Leila?”
I stopped just inside, turning back toward Missy’s voice.
She gave me a rueful smile. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Section 2
I couldn’t even recognize her.
Mia’s cheeks were drawn, gaunt like her skin was pulled too tightly over bone. Her eyes were down, staring at the hands bound beneath the restraints, but I could still see the swollen bags beneath. Her dyed blond hair looked fluorescent against her pale skin. The hospital gown clung to her frame. Swallowing her.
I tapped hesitantly on the open door. “Mia?”
She didn’t even look up. “I told you I’m not hungry. Isn’t it enough that you have me strapped to this bed like an animal?”
I moved into the room until I was in full view. “I’m not a nurse.”
She slowly tilted her chin up, those same swollen blue eyes from earlier widening with recognition. “You!” She looked to her left where the nurse call string dangled just out of reach. “I don’t want you here. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Scott was supposed to keep you people out.”
I remembered the guy at the entrance, smiling for the camera and milking his five minutes of fame. A part of me wanted to reveal him for the asshole he really was, but she already felt cornered. The last thing I needed to do was out one of her friends as a fake.
“I’m not here as a rep of Whitmore and Creighton.”
“Oh really?” she scoffed, looking like herself when she arched her eyebrow and gave me her best ‘bitch please’ face. “Why are you here?”
“Because I meant what I said at the meeting,” I answered, crossing the divide and dropping my bouquet on the side table. “I’m here to help."
Surprise flashed in her eyes but she erased it with an eye roll. “I don’t need your help.”
The fact that she’d been found in a pool of vomit surrounded by empty pill bottles and was strapped to the bed The Exorcist style begged to differ, but I knew she wasn’t gonna welcome me with open arms. She’d been living in denial for too long.
“You mind if I sit?”
“Do I have a choice?”
"Not really." I gave her a smile and lowered myself into the armchair beside her bed. The plush, roomy thing seemed out of place in a hospital. Just like the wet bar and fridge and the glossy LCD TV tuned to Teen Mom. I could tell her mattress actually looked like a mattress instead of the uncomfortable pallet thing they usually have in hospitals. And she had fluffy pillows. And a duvet. A. Duvet.
She was glaring at the screen, but when she thought I wasn’t looking, she stole peeks at me.
“Pretty sure this is the nicest hospital room I’ve ever been in.” She didn’t respond other than shifting her eyes back to the TV and keeping them there. “Not that I’ve been to a lot of hospitals or anything, so I don’t have much to compare it to. The few that I’ve been to...” I shuddered. “Death was a kindness compared to holing up in there.”
A vein in her temple twitched at the sound of the word death and I bit my lip, scolding myself for my choice of words. But it was in line with the pseudo reverse psychology thing I was about to try to get the truth out of her.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get why a person would want to get admitted here. This has to be like, The Ritz of hospitals. Michelin star food in the cafeteria--”
“You think I want to be here? That I’m happy to be tied down to this bed because my room is nice?”
“Then why are you here, Mia?”
“I took a couple of pills,” she said nonchalantly. “Something to take the edge off. I guess I had a bad reaction.”
“Just a few?”
“Yes. Like three or four--”
“--Bottles?” I finished for her, sliding to the edge of my seat. “You weren’t trying to take the edge off. You were trying to not feel the edge or anything else, ever again.”
She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You tried to kill yourself.”
Kill. Another trigger word. I watched as it rippled over her, turning her face ashen like she’d just witnessed something terrible.
“You’re wrong.”
"Am I?"
I could see the same fight she’d broadcast at the meeting as she sat up as best she could, squared her shoulders and looked me dead in the face. “Yes. I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately so I took more than I realized.”
I took her in slowly, hard to keep my disbelief in check. She didn’t really believe that, right? It just sounded like a talking point she was told to repeat until it stuck.
“I didn’t come here to upset you. I came because you looked like you needed someone," I said gingerly. "A friend. To know you’re not alone.”
“I have a friend,” Mia said acidly. “He’s the one that found me and brought me here. He was supposed to be keeping people like you out.”
I bit back the desire to set the record straight and let her know that her so-called friend was outside giving a press conference.
“You’re just here to save face," she continued tersely. "If they found out I was a Whitmore and Creighton client and was admitted to the hospital on a 48 hour psychiatric hold, it makes the company look bad.”
It was harder to swallow the hurt that came with that accusation. This had nothing to do with damage control. I was there because I was worried about her. It was obvious she had trust issues and she didn’t know me well enough to know better. I had to fix that.
“Let’s start over,” I said, rising to my feet. “I’m Leila.”
She let out a groan. “I swear if I was closer to that string I’d put us both out of our misery.”
“I was born in the country, but I grew up in the city. Now when I go back to the country with the rolling hills and nothingness I can’t believe I lived there without driving myself insane.”
“Are you being serious right now?” she sneered.
“When I decided I wanted to work in public relations, I set my sights on Whitmore and Creighton," I pressed on. "If you want to be the best, no one else comes close. And then I met Jacob Whitmore.”
She wriggled to the left, inching closer to that string. She eyed me pointedly, clearly trying to let me know that was my warning.
I ignored it.
“I’ve never met anyone like him. I’ve never felt the way he makes me feel. I’ve never felt so....vulnerable." I crossed my arms. “Before him, there were only three things I couldn’t live without. My parents, my best friend, and coffee. Now there’s four.” I looked at her, watching as her features softened. “What can’t you live without, Mia?”
I saw the crack, the sliver, but there was still a chance it could go wrong. She could keep the wall up. Keep the door closed. Tell me it was none of my busine
ss or to go to hell. But she didn’t reach for the white string or punch the button I knew they had on the rail, well within her reach.
“I wish I had something I couldn't live without,” she said in a tiny voice. “Lately, it’s just been a bunch of things I can’t live with." Her eyes dropped and I watched as she picked at some invisible scab with her fingers, black polished nails burrowing into the white sheets. “I know what people say when my face flashes on the screen. ‘There’s another entitled celebrity given everything but she’s still not happy.’ And they’re right. I have everything and I'm miserable. I don’t deserve one bit of it.”
“Mia,” I said softly, “You don’t mean that. I’ve seen your show--”
“You watched Carolina, California?” she asked incredulously.
My face warmed. “I may have watched an episode or two.” Or ten. “You were incredible. And your voice is amazing.”
She gave me a bittersweet smile. “Nowhere near as amazing as Shelly.”
“Shelly?” I asked, stepping closer to her bed. “Who’s Shelly?”
She looked at me--no, stared was a better word. Eyes boring into me, scooping me out to study the bits and pieces. I had no idea who this Shelly person was but clearly Mia was trying to decide if she trusted me enough to confide in me.
“You were right,” she said after a minute, slumping her shoulders. “I was trying to...you know.”
So no to Shelly, but she was admitting she tried to kill herself. I’d take it.
“What happened?”
She shrugged her shoulders or at least pushed them upward in a shrugging motion as best she could with the straps. “I was just tired. Tired of the paparazzi, tired of the blogs, tired of the YouTube comments. I mean, it got to the point where I was keeping a tally of all the new dislikes my videos got. I grew up in this business and I thought I had a thick skin, but I just...” Her voice cracked and she looked away, trying to tilt her head away, but not before I saw the tears. "It just seemed like everyone would be better off without me.”
"That's not true," I said firmly. "You matter and no one would be better off."
My words went right through her. This was heavy, heavier than someone who studied marketing and communication could handle.
“You should talk to the nurses or the therapists. They’re all here to help you.”
“I am talking. I’m talking to you.” She jutted her chin out. “Not some underpaid nurse who’ll run and tell the first photographer she sees that flashes a wad of cash. And not some therapist who nods and acts like they understand then uses me as a punch line at cocktail parties. I don’t trust them but I...” She left the rest open ended, going from the take-no-prisoners young woman I met to someone afraid.
And then it hit me. She was trying to say she trusted me...or at least, she wanted to.
“If you ever wanted to talk, I’m here.” I said with a smile.
Her eyes brightened. “Really? Even if I don’t become a Whitmore and Creighton client?”
“Even then," I winked.
The door swung open and I stepped to the side, expecting a nurse but the overwhelming smell of body spray and douchebag told me otherwise. The lanky guy from before was standing in the doorway, clearly gunning for some more dirt to take to the hungry masses.
Maybe he was good looking once upon a time. He had the right height, broad shoulders, and what was left of the generically attractive bone structure with shaggy blond hair. I’d done my research when we were waiting for news about Mia and I knew he was twenty five but alcohol and drugs made him look like he was nearly forty. Any semblance of the guy who came from nothing to be a movie star was dulled and erased by playing it a little too fast and loose. It was obvious any monetary support Mia gave him went nowhere good. And he had the nerve to look at me suspiciously.
“Who the hell is she?” he growled, taking a battle stance.
“She’s my--” Mia paused, her forehead crinkling as she tried to determine the right word to use. “She’s my publicist.”
Not the 'friend' I was hoping for, but it was better than nothing. And it meant that she was at least thinking about giving Whitmore and Creighton another try.
“Publicist?” he repeated, leering at me in a way that made me wish I was wearing a turtleneck. When I didn’t seem shocked by his lurid stare he just moved to her bed, picking up the ice bucket. “You don’t need a publicist, babe. You know I’m taking care of you.”
“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” I said with a frown, moving closer to Mia. “It kinda looked like you were feeding the fire. Making deals and promises that were less about Mia’s best interests and more about your own.”
“What I do for Mia has nothing to do with you,” he snapped, his face reddening. “I think you should leave.”
I almost laughed at that until I saw Mia’s face. She was torn, looking back and forth between us like she didn’t want to choose. Even though I had a feeling she’d go with Scott and it was the worst possible choice she could make, I didn’t want to push her. Right now, she didn’t need me to make a scene and state things she already knew were true deep inside.
So I plastered on a smile and didn’t make her choose.
“I’m gonna head back to the office." I pulled out a business card and scribbled my cell on the back. “You call me anytime, okay?”
She gave me a nod. “K. And I’ll set up another meeting as soon as they let me out of here.”
I gave Scott one last glare and exited the room. I’d gotten Mia to open the door a little and let sunshine in. Getting rid of toxic friendships would have to wait...for now.
Section 3
“I've never wanted to hurt someone so much in my life. So I reached over the counter, swiped a pair of scissors from her pen cup and jabbed the blade into her neck.”
I waited for the horror. For Jacob to look up at me like I was a woman possessed before his delicious mouth split into a smile when he realized I was joking. If he was listening, that would have been his response after I told him what happened at the hospital. How pissed I was when I went back to the lobby to get Missy and Nurse Deadwood came down with a case of amnesia, politely asking us to leave before she called security.
But Jacob wasn't listening.
He brought the rim of the wine glass to his lips, gave me an absent-minded smile and promptly went back to pretending he was taking in every word that came out of my mouth.
“So she’s fine then?”
“She was after I administered mouth to mouth.”
His brow furrowed as he put the wine glass down. “What?”
I threw my napkin on top of my barely eaten dinner, suddenly not so hungry but plenty annoyed. I’d spent the past thirty minutes telling Jacob about Mia. How I thought she was ready to make a change. How I wanted to literally murder Scott with a vase when he had the nerve to say he was looking out for Mia while he profited from her demise. Right around the time I started talking about the huge sketch factory the guy was and Jacob’s replies interchanged with interesting and cool, I realized I was basically talking to myself.
“Is there a reason you’re ignoring me?” I crossed my arms tight against my chest. “Especially after you asked me how it went?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Leila.” His eyes did a complete 360 before they settled back on me. “I just have a lot on my mind. And I asked about the Mia situation because it’s in my best interest to know.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” he answered coolly. “If the girl is that far gone, she’s in need of a psychiatrist, not Whitmore and Creighton.”
I was familiar with the cold, indifferent tone of the businessman. He was at the head of a multi-billion dollar enterprise and when it came to business, Jacob Whitmore wasn’t someone you wanted to trifle with. But using that mechanical, emotionless approach when it came to a girl nearly committing suicide, especially given his past? That was too much.
“So what are you trying to say?” I could feel my vo
ice rising along with my temperature. “You’d drop Mia because of what she did?”
“If she proved to be more trouble than she was worth, absolutely.”
Before I even knew what I was doing the napkin covering my food was a white ball sailing toward Jacob’s head.
He swatted it away effortlessly. “Thank goodness there’s no scissors handy.”
“That’s not funny,” I snapped, feeling the indignation flare in my cheeks. So maybe he was listening, but now I was the one wishing there was a mute button. Or maybe rewind...back to before my fiancé said the jackassiest thing I’d heard in a while.
“You don’t mean what you said.” I released my grip on the anger that was choking me and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself before I said it again. “You didn't mean that.”
I knew Jacob. And when Natasha blurted out that Mia OD’d, something flashed across his face. I’d been sure it was sadness but now that he was acting like he hadn't just said we might toss Mia overboard, I wasn't so sure.
“I don’t see what the issue is, Leila. If the Rachel Laraby situation has taught us anything--”
I gripped the edge of the table, feeling my anger rush back with a vengeance. “I know you’re not going to compare a sick, sad girl to a grown ass woman who isn't happy unless we're miserable.”
His blue eyes flashed. “I wasn't, actually. If you’re done, I can finish.”
I did a flourish with my hand. “By all means.”
His jaw tightened. Even mad as hell the flare of anger in me was met by one of lust. That look--stern, powerful, in charge--it was one he wore well. Jacob owned that look...and it turned my insides into goo. But I could tell he wasn’t about to throw me over his shoulder and discipline me.
Not yet anyway.
“What I was trying to say is that we can’t get too close to our clients. It clouds our judgment.”
I flipped a mess of brown curls over my shoulder haughtily. “How interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you told me that my ability to connect and empathize with Mia Kent made me uniquely qualified to work on her case.”