Always: Broken Series Book Four

by Annie Jocoby

  I was on the soccer team at my high school, and I was pretty good at it. So maybe Olivia was right. Maybe it was just all the exercising I was doing all the time when I was working out with the team.

  But why was the pain only in my right knee? Shouldn’t I have pain in other parts of my body, not just my knee? “No, Olivia, I think it might be something else.”

  “You’re a little young for arthritis, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  She sat back up. “Okay, I see that you’re not going to leave me alone, despite my asking you to. So, I might as well act like I’m a little bit concerned. How long have you had this pain?”

  “For about six months. Mainly at night, but sometimes during the day.”

  She ran her hands through her thick blue hair. “Okay, so why am I just now hearing about this?”

  “I didn’t want to worry everyone.”

  “But yet you’re telling me now.”

  “I know. I thought it would go away, but it’s not. It’s getting worse.”

  “What I’m getting at is that you’ve had this pain for six months, yet you’re treating it like it’s something really urgent. I mean, you’re getting me up in the middle of the night to tell me about it. If you’ve lived with it for six months, you could live with it until tomorrow morning at around 10, which is when I plan on actually getting up to face the day.”

  I blinked back tears. I didn’t even know how to explain it to Olivia, but I had somehow reached the tipping point. The point where I couldn’t go another second without talking to somebody about it, even though she was absolutely right – I had gone this long without letting anybody know, so why not keep quiet for a few more hours?

  “I’m scared.”

  She sighed. “Munchkin, you can sleep here if you like. Like you used to when you were a little girl and was afraid of thunderstorms. Then tomorrow I can call mom and dad in the Poconos and tell them to come home and take you to a doctor. But right now, there’s not much that can really be done unless you want me to take you to the ER.”

  “Could you? Take me to the ER?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’ve had the pain for six months, and you now want to go the ER? I think it ceased to be an emergency from the first time you ignored that pain.”

  “I need to know. I need to know right now.”

  “Go to bed.” She pointed to the door of her room. “And lock the door behind you.”

  “But Olivia-“

  “Get out. I need my rest and you do too. I’ll take you to the doctor tomorrow, but right now, you’re just going to have live with the pain.”

  I left the room and called Uber. I was going to get some answers that very second, whether Olivia wanted to help me or not.

  Three

  Scotty

  It was that Sunday that everything turned upside down. Nick and I had been at the cabin for a little over a day, and it was absolute heaven. I knew that we would be back in the city the next day, and to say that I wasn’t looking forward to that would be understating things by a lot.

  “Can we just stay here forever?” I asked him as we snuggled naked next to the fire, a glass of champagne in each of our hands. It was early in the morning, but that didn’t matter. We didn’t have any compunctions about drinking well before noon, because we were on vacation.

  He kissed my forehead lightly. “I wish. Wouldn’t that be amazing? We just call the girls and tell them they can fend for themselves. Tell the partners to go to Hell. We’re staying here in our bubble for the rest of our lives.”

  I heard my phone ringing, but decided to ignore it. Nick rolled his eyes. “I thought I told you to turn that goddamned thing off. We don’t need to talk to Harry or Neil or anybody else from the firm about anything blowing up around there. It’s Sunday and I want to spend time with my girl.”

  I smiled. “I’m sorry, I forgot to turn it off. I’ll be right back though.”

  I got up to find my phone while Nick stared at me with a goofy grin. “Hurry back, I miss you already.”

  I looked at my phone, and saw “911” on the text message from Addison.

  Nick looked at me. “Did you turn it off?”

  “No, I think that there’s something going on with Addy. I need to call her and see what it is.”

  “There’s always something going on with one of our girls. Turn off that phone and come back and join me here on the floor. It’s feeling lonely.”

  “Let me call her first.”

  At that, he got up off the floor and took the phone from me. “You aren’t going to call her. You’re going to come back down on the floor and join me. We never get this kind of time with each other, and who knows when we can get this kind of time together again?”

  I crinkled up my eyebrows at him. “I’m serious, Nick. She sent me a text message that said 911. I can’t just ignore that.”

  “Yes you can. Listen, Addison isn’t exactly the most…” He put his hand to his chin. “How do I put this? Addison is a huge worrier, usually for nothing at all. I hate to say that she’s a bit neurotic, but she kinda is. I don’t know where she gets that.” He raised his eyebrows pointedly, and I got his drift. He was saying that he knew exactly where she got her neurotic tendencies, and she got them from me. God knew that Nick wasn’t a man to worry about things. He didn’t worry, he just shined a laser focus on our problems and willed them away. He was never one to really dwell.

  “Let me just call her.”

  “You’re going to be seeing her tomorrow. Now, you need to just relax here next to me, and I’m sorry, Scotty, but you can’t have your phone right now. You’ll get the phone back tomorrow on our way home, and you can call her then.”

  I knew that there wasn’t any arguing with him. He was determined that this weekend was going to be amazing, and there wasn’t going to be anything that was going to mess that up for him.

  This is just great. I’m going to be distracted for the rest of the day, and he doesn’t even care. I glared at him, not wanting to share our champagne anymore.

  “What?” he asked pointedly. “Listen, Scotty, chances are slim and none that there’s actually an emergency with Addison. Slim and none.”

  “I just want to call her to find out for sure, that’s all. It would give me peace of mind.”

  “No. She’ll just tell you something that’s really unimportant, but will worry you all the same. That’s what she does. I don’t want to say that she does it to manipulate us, because that’s Olivia’s department. She’s the devious one of the bunch. But I do want to say that because she tends to worry about minor things, and get you to worry about those same minor things, whatever it is that she’s going to tell you is going to ruin the last day that we have together here. And I won’t allow it.”

  “But Nick-“

  “Don’t but Nick me. You’re not getting your phone back, so don’t even bother asking. You can hear all about Addison’s boy troubles when we get back, because you know that’s what she’s going to tell you. She’s going to tell you all about some loser who she’s crushing on not liking her back or some kind of bullshit, and you’re going to get on the phone with her and then you’re going to worry about it. Next thing you know, we’re on the road home a day early.”

  “I hardly think that romantic troubles are unimportant.” I wasn’t at all sure that romantic issues, such as they are at the age of 15, were what she was calling me about. Even if romantic issues were what she was calling about, they were still important. Nick tried to relate to our daughters, and, for the most part, he was a really good dad. But he saw the boys in their lives as being unimportant, as if he had never been their age and gotten his heart broken.

  Nick sighed. “Scotty, I know what you're saying. I know that the troubles in our girls’ lives are important. Believe me, I hear about their little problems all the time. I’m not completely insensitive about them. But this is our time. I know that it sounds really selfish…”

  “It does sou
nd selfish. It is selfish. But go on.”

  “Okay. I know that this sounds really selfish to you, but dammit, Scotty, I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for at least six months. We’ve been working ourselves to the bone while stressing out about Olivia, Addison and Chloe.”

  At that, he turned off my phone. “Now, where were we.”

  I sighed. There was never any convincing Nick of anything. I was just going to have to put Addison’s urgent text out of my mind for the time being.

  I willed away my worry about my little girl while Nick and I spent the rest of the day in the cabin in the woods. We made love, we played games, we even watched a movie.

  I had to admit that it was heaven.

  I knew, though, deep down in my gut that we soon were going to be in Hell.

  Four

  Addison

  After I talked to Olivia, who so rudely decided that I had to leave, I decided to go ahead and call Uber to come and take me to the hospital. I don’t know why I decided that it was urgent, because I had been ignoring this pain for so long, but I knew that it was. I could feel it in my gut that I needed to see a doctor, and that I shouldn’t delay it.

  The Uber driver picked me up. “Where you going at the time of the night?” he asked me.

  “Greenwich Hospital,” I said. “The ER.”

  He looked at me strangely and started driving. “How come you’re all alone?”

  I looked out the window and said nothing for a bit. Then I decided to go ahead and tell him. “My sister didn’t want to be bothered to bring me. And my mom and dad are in a cabin right now up in the Poconos.”

  He nodded. “A young girl like you shouldn’t be going out in the middle of the night unless it’s something that’s urgent.”

  “It’s urgent.” Of course, I was kinda lying. It wasn’t that urgent, otherwise I wouldn’t have been ignoring it all this time.

  He just nodded his head again. “Do you need me to also pick you up from the hospital?”

  “Yes, probably. I’ll be sure to text you after I’m done.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  He didn’t speak for the rest of the trip, and, it seemed like no time at all before I was being dropped off in front of the hospital’s ER. “Well, here we are. I’ll be looking for your text. At any rate, even if I’m busy with another call, which I probably won’t be, but even if I am, be sure and get an Uber driver to take you home.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went into the ER and went right up to the counter. “Uh, hello, my name is Addison O’Hara, and I think that I need to see a doctor.”

  The lady behind the counter just nodded her head. “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re not here. They’re in the mountains.” I hated to keep having to explain my situation. Was it really that unusual that a 15-year-old would be out alone in the middle of the night?

  Don’t answer that question. Of course it was unusual that I would be all alone in the hospital in the middle of the night. Still, I figured that I wasn’t the only young girl who was there in the hospital with nobody around. It did make me feel just a little bit sad to think that, though.

  The lady sighed. “You do have insurance, right?”

  “Of course.” I gave her my insurance card and she made note of it.

  “Fill this out.” She handed me a stack of papers that I needed to fill out about my medical history.

  “Can’t I just tell you that I’m not on any medication of any sort, and I’ve never been hospitalized nor ever sick in my life?” I hated to fill out forms. Hated it with a passion. My handwriting wasn’t the best, but, more than that, it was just so tedious. And I knew from Chloe and Olivia being hospitalized that hospitals always had fifty bajillion forms to fill out. It drove me up a tree.

  “No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. We need your medical history. We’re also going to have to have your parents sign off on any treatment that we give you here. When are they going to be back?”

  “Monday.”

  She shrugged. “Well, hopefully there’s nothing wrong with you, and there won’t be an issue.”

  As much as I hated it, I did fill out the forms and handed them into the lady. Then I took a seat in the waiting room. As I looked around the room, I became more and more apprehensive about doing things this way. I was a young girl, all alone, in a hospital waiting room. Everywhere around me were people who were hacking and coughing and generally looking miserable. There were quite a few people who looked strung out or homeless or possibly both.

  And I thought, for the first time, that Olivia was going to wake up and find me gone and get really, really upset. Of course, hopefully I would just be let out of the hospital in an hour or so, and I’d be back before she even noticed me gone. After all, she was really hungover and tired, and she probably planned to sleep in because it was Sunday.

  I cleared my throat and looked at the man next to me. He was hunched over, holding his belly and groaning a little. I hated to bother him, but I had to know. “What is the waiting time right now?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been here for three hours and they haven’t seen me yet. I think that there was a major accident on the highway today or something, and they’re really short-staffed.”

  I took a deep breath. He had been waiting for three hours, and there wasn’t any sign that he would be able to see a doctor anytime soon. Maybe I should leave?

  I felt tears coming to my eyes as I knew that I probably shouldn’t leave. I had come this far, and had made a decision to gut this out. I was going to see that doctor and hopefully everything was going to be okay.

  Three and a half hours later, my name was finally called and I was ushered into a little room. A young nurse took my blood pressure and temperature and told me that the doctor would be right with me. “Your vitals are fine,” she said. She seemed very friendly, so I was happy about that.

  I picked up a magazine and flipped through it. I generally enjoyed to read gossipy magazines, and this waiting room had a few. I didn’t like gossipy magazines as much as Olivia did, though. She was always looking through these magazines, trying to get the dirt on who was dumping who and who was having a baby and who was falling in love. Mainly she liked to find out who was being dumped. Guess misery loves company, because she was always getting dumped herself.

  The clock read almost 6 AM. I nervously fidgeted as I sat on the metal table, waiting for the doctor to come in and talk with me. I hope Olivia doesn’t wake up early. That would be my luck if she did. I heard from some kids at school that when you’re drunk you don’t sleep well. Something about alcohol causing the body not to go into REM. I wondered if it was the same thing when you’re hungover.

  I was getting ready to call Olivia when the doctor came in. “Hello young lady,” the doctor said. “My name is Doctor Michaels.” He looked over my chart. “It looks like you’re complaining of a pain in your right knee that comes and goes but mainly occurs at night. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” For some reason, my heart was absolutely pounding right out of my chest.

  He nodded his head and put his hand on my knee and squeezed. I cried out in pain, and he looked concerned. “Okay, let me take an X-Ray,” he said. “I need to send you down to the imaging department.” He then gave me directions and put his pen in his pocket. He patted my hand. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but we can never be too careful.”

  I nodded my head.

  “By the way, how come you’re here all alone? Do your parents know that you’re here?”

  “Yes.” I wanted to lie because I didn’t want mom and dad to have to rush home needlessly. If there was nothing wrong with me, and they came back from the mountains early on my account, I would really feel like shit. “Is it a problem that they’re not here right now?”

  “Well, of course, if any treatment is necessary, they’re going to have to be here. It would be best if you could have them sign off on your taking X-rays, but it’s not n
ecessary.” He looked concerned. “If they know that you’re here, then why aren’t they here with you?”

  “They’re, uh, out of town. But I called them and told them about this.” Another white lie.

  He shrugged. “Let’s take this one step at a time. You seem to be a mature young lady. Now, go on down to the imaging department with this slip,” he said, giving me a slip that authorized me to go down and get an X-Ray. “And I’ll meet you back here in an hour or so.”

  I took the slip and went down to another department. I gave the slip to the lady at the desk, and she told me that they would call me shortly.

  As it was nearing 7 AM, I decided to just give Olivia a short call and tell her what was going on. I dialed her number, and she didn’t pick up right away. But she eventually did, on the 10th ring. “What do you want?” she asked. “And why are you calling me? Aren’t you just right down the hall?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry if you woke up and I wasn’t there. I’m at the Greenwich Hospital, waiting to get an X-Ray.”

  I heard a groan. “You’re kidding me. You little hypochondriac. I never knew that about you, and I don’t know where you get it from. Certainly not me and certainly not dad.” She paused. “Come to think of it, mom’s kinda a hypochondriac too. A little. Well, come home when you can.” At that, she hung up the phone.

  Mom is a hypochondriac? I had no idea where Olivia got that, except that she was always trying to get us to eat organic fruits and veggies and generally never fed us out of a box. She was very concerned that we didn’t eat pesticides, but that hardly would qualify her as a hypochondriac.

  I felt just a little bit relieved that Olivia knew where I was. Even if she couldn’t care less. So, I felt myself relaxing just a bit. I picked up another magazine and flipped through it nervously. I wanted desperately to concentrate on something, anything – I needed to take my mind off of what was going on. The doctor seemed unconcerned about my knee pain, but, then again, he didn’t brush it off. I guessed that was a good thing.