Then, Lori experienced waking up in excruciating pain in a room with all kinds of tubes and monitors attached to her and a nurse with coal black hair moving around her. When she tried to move or speak, the pain increased, so she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
***
At 7pm, Dr. Quincy-tall, bald, in his fifties, and exhausted, emerged from the surgical suite and met with the Brill family.
“We were sure we lost her. She totally flat lined, but she came back to us. The bullet nicked the femoral artery, resulting in major loss of blood and lowering her blood pressure,-while shattering the head of the femur, thus forcing me to perform a hip replacement. It will be a lengthy recovery.
Cate stepped forward. “Is she going to live? Please tell me the truth.”
“I think she is over the worst of it, but we will know more in a few days,” Dr. Quincy said, as he put a large strong hand on Cate’s shoulder.
“May I see her?” Cate asked.
“Your grandmother is still in recovery. Then she will be in intensive care for a few days. Why don’t you and your dad get something to eat? We will call you when she can be visited.”
Jordan stood behind the exhausted doctor. He turned towards Cate. “Let me take you and your dad down to the cafeteria. I will tell James, Lori’s guard, to phone me when you can see her.”
Cate blurted out, “Why a guard? I thought you captured everyone. All over the television and the Internet they’re saying Gram’s kidnappers and Josh Wheeler’s killers have been arrested.”
“Cate, we still aren’t sure that everyone connected with this case has been arrested. We need to be cautious.” He looked at Barry and said, “See that she eats something.” He gave them directions to the cafeteria. “I’m going to the station to sort things out. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Cate perked up at that comment. It sounded like Jordan was taking care of her. She had such contradictory feelings about him. Her dad shook Jordan’s hand and watched him leave the room. Then Barry turned to Cate.
“That federal agent is a great guy. He went out of his way to be helpful. I believe he is really concerned about my mom.”
Her opinion of Jordan went back to being skeptical. Now she wondered why Gould was being extra nice to her dad.
She took her dad’s hand and directed him towards the elevator and then down to the basement cafeteria, talking little as they were both emotionally drained. They walked through the old section of the hospital and into the new.
The Royal London Hospital was founded in 1740, making it one of the oldest hospitals still running. In 2012, it was completely remodeled, with several new buildings added to the complex. Despite its modern equipment, cheerful paintings on its neutral-tone walls, and large windows that looked out onto typical London gardens with colorful flowers, to Cate, it was still an institution for the sick and dying, and she hated being in it.
As she walked along the cafeteria aisle picking up food, she thought, What an irony. Dad a doctor, Mom a nurse, and their daughter a squeamish coward whenever she steps into a hospital. Maybe it had something to do with her emergency appendectomy at six, or her visits to the hospital to say goodbye to her Grandpa Jerry when she was almost eight. Her paternal grandfather, Jerry was so much fun, always crazy, loud, silly, and loving. He told her to become a lawyer, like his brother, because she had the mind for it and lawyers made good money. She still missed her Papa, even though she now knew much of his behavior was due to his alcoholism.
Cate paid for her tuna sandwich and cup of coffee before her dad made it to the cashier. She was still in reminiscence stage when her dad finally sat down with his full plate of chicken, potatoes, and beans. She interrupted her father’s eating with a startling question.
“Was Papa Jerry’s brother, the lawyer, Suzi Wu’s father?
“Yes,” her father answered as he put a fork full of beans into his mouth.
Cate continued with her questions. “Dad, he died while I was a baby, and anytime Papa Jerry started to talk about him, everyone hushed him, especially when I asked how he died. Now that Suzi may be back in our lives, I’d like to know the story.”
Barry put down his fork and turned towards Cate. With a heavy sigh, he answered, “Honey, I’m not sure of everything. I know Uncle Steve divorced his wife, then bought and married a young prostitute from a place called the Enchanted Pussy.” Barry shook his head and thought a moment before continuing. “Well, bought doesn’t sound right, does it? He bought her freedom, actually. She was bought from the madam.”
Cate’s eyes opened wide. “Wow, that is some name,” she said, laughing. She looked at her dad quizzically. “Are you sure you got the name right?”
”Are you kidding?” Barry said, laughing. “I was a teenager then, so the name was the only thing that really stuck in my mind!” Then he turned towards the door of the cafeteria, got up, and started to leave the table. “Mom’s here.”
Cate stopped him. “One quick question. How did Uncle Steve die?”
Barry turned back to Cate. “They found him dead in the trunk of his Lexus. No one was ever charged with the murder.”
”Did he work for the mob?”
”Don’t know. For, against, who knows?” Barry answered quickly as he greeted his wife, Anne.
Cate wore a snide grin on her face when she greeted Joseph and her mother. The thoughts behind that grin were, Wouldn't Her Ladyship Lunt love that story about my uncle? Cate hugged and kissed her mom, and she thanked Joseph with a slight kiss on the cheek.
He was upset at her lack of emotion towards him, but he didn’t show it. He got himself a cup of tea and a beef sandwich and sat down to join them. Cate did most of the talking, explaining to her mom the sequence of events leading up to Lori’s rescue.
Cate’s mom was exhausted. Her plane had been forty-five minutes late, and then it sat on the runway at O’Hare for another thirty minutes before takeoff. Spring weather in Chicago could be nasty.
She sat next to Cate while Barry went into the cafeteria to purchase some food for her. Anne sipped at her coffee and played with her husband’s plate of chicken while listening to Cate's account of Lori's condition. London or Chicago, hospital food was all the same, she thought.
When the call finally came that Lori was situated and awake in the intensive care unit, they hurried back up to the third floor.
Cate slowed down her pace, allowing her mother to catch up to her before they quietly entered Lori’s room. They were shocked by her appearance. In only four days of captivity, Lori had thinned out and shriveled up. Seeing her surrounded by the tubes and IVs holding bags of blood and fluid didn’t help.
Barry sat down on the chair near his mother and gently took her hand in his. Cate stayed back for a minute, watching the tears flow down her dad’s face. Her dad was not one to show emotion. He was the strong, silent type. After the surgery, Barry had conferred with Dr. Quincy on a professional basis. In this room, he was a son afraid that his mother might die.
Cate realized for the first time the special relationship her father had with his mother. As an only child, Cate never felt the competition or jealousy of sharing. From the time she was a baby, Grandma Lori had belonged to her. She almost forgot that Lori was her father’s mother. She looked at her own mother, who had stepped back from the bed. Her mother came from a family of four siblings, and she never understood the only child syndrome, but she understood sharing and when to step back. This was something Cate needed to learn.
Lori’s voice was so weak that she could barely talk. She glanced around the room. There was her son Barry, her daughter-in-law, Anne, Cate, Joseph, and some nurses. She had felt their love, but she had no strength to respond. She loved her living family, but they hardly needed her broken body and emotionally destroyed head. She was ready to go be with Julie. She closed her eyes and wondered why her dead friends and family had sent her back. Didn’t they sense that she had no fight left in her?
Cate had to leave the room for a f
ew moments to pull herself together. Outside in the hallway, she let the tears flow freely. Upon seeing her dad leave the room, she folded into his waiting arms; Joseph stood to the side, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Oh, Dad, she looks awful.”
Barry looked down and gave her a half smile. “Cate, I know she will get through this. Mom is a fighter.”
When Cate re-entered the hospital room, Lori held out a frail shaking hand and summoned all her energy to look into Cate’s face and smile. Lori had walked in Cate’s shoes, caring for and worrying about sick and dying family and friends, but she had never been the victim. Lori had lived a life of good physical health. This was a new challenge.
Since Lori was in intensive care, she could not be seen after 8:00 p.m. Cate and her parents decided to stay at the hotel next to the hospital. Besides thanking Joseph for picking up her mother, Cate totally ignored him. Her mother spent time talking to him, while Cate clung to her father.
Joseph was beginning to feel like an outsider as he watched Cate walk out of the hospital arm in arm with her father and mother. He thought about his conversation with his own father as he left for home without her.
Cate and her parents parted in the hotel lobby, she staying in one room, they in another. The room at the Lyons Inn Hotel was small and sterile but clean and tidy, furnished simply with a chair, a desk, a bed, and a lamp. Their patrons were either sick and dying or visiting ill relatives or families. They needed little.
Exhausted, Cate dropped her bag on the bed. She’d begun to undress when she suddenly froze at the sight of a flashing red light on the phone. Her first thought was, Oh, no, something has happened to Gram. She reached for the message button and stopped. Her heart pounded. Slowly, she pushed the button.
“Cate, it’s Joseph. I would like to come back and stay with you.”
Irritated, she hit the erase button and swore, “Damn him. He scared the daylights out of me.” She just wished Joseph would disappear. He just didn’t fit in as part of her family, and she didn’t fit in with his. The dinner at the Ritz was the last straw. She knew he was upset about his stepmother’s behavior, but what about almighty Lord Lunt’s behavior? How could anyone passively accept that kind of behavior? Well, she wasn’t going to be passive about it. There was no way she wanted to be tied to a family with that kind of attitude toward Jews, toward other classes—toward anyone.
She recognized that the rich elite lived in a world of their own. Would she accept that kind of attitude coming from another lawyer or a college friend or any boyfriend in the States? No way. But she knew—at least she thought she knew—Joseph wasn’t like that, he wasn’t like the snobbish Lord and Lady Lunt. And his kindness lately was complicating things. For months, even before Gram came to town, she had been questioning her feelings for him. She knew being comfortable with Joseph was not the same as being in love with him. She pursed her lips, uttered the word fuck, threw off her clothes, walked into the bathroom, and heaved a sigh of relief as she let the hot shower water run over her tired body.
Chapter 19
A lump hardened in Cate’s stomach as she neared her flat. She should be happy. Gram was doing well; in fact, she was alternating between the wheelchair and her cane, eating, and following orders in an effort to go home soon. Mom and Dad were talking about going home to the States, Cate’s last days of school were practically behind her, and she had a new job waiting for her in America.
That lump seemed to grow larger as she pulled her car into the garage next to Joseph’s. Joseph had been patient the last two weeks while her parents had been there and Gram was recovering, but today was showdown day. She sat in the car a few minutes, barely aware she was biting her nails, something she hadn’t done in years. The fearless Cate Brill, who was always direct and truthful, was afraid to face her boyfriend. Bracing herself, she entered the flat.
Joseph greeted her at the door with a kiss. The only light illuminating the room came from two tall red candles in silver holders sitting next to a cut glass vase filled with roses atop a white linen tablecloth. Joseph helped Cate off with her coat and directed her to one of the chairs by the table.
“Cate, dear, I’ve purchased dinner at Bellisimo, your favorite Italian restaurant. To celebrate our first night alone in the last month.” His hand brushed through her hair. “You look lovely tonight, Cate.”
She sat there silently watching his every move. She hadn’t expected this. In the morning before they both left the house, Cate had told Joseph she needed to have a serious talk with him tonight. He actually never answered, so she wasn’t even sure if he would be there.
Joseph took the wine opener out of the drawer and applied it to a chilled bottle of Pinot Santa Margarita. She watched him pour the expensive white wine into the crystal goblets, open the boxed dinner, and gently spoon it onto the fine china he must have brought from his father’s house.
Before he sat down on a chair next to Cate, he asked if he could get her anything. She shook her head.
She sank deeper into her chair with every one of his romantic attempts. First of all, she was so uncomfortable watching him trying to do her job. This was a poor rendition of dinner at his father’s house without the servants, not dinner at their flat. Normally, she cooked or brought dinner home, and it was eaten on plastic plates with full light and in a hurry, as they were always busy; at least she was always busy with the next project. And most of all, he was so strange, like an actor trying to remember his lines.
Cate silently drank two glasses of the white wine. She’d begun nibbling at the Caesar salad and the vodka shrimp pasta when Joseph asked, “Is something wrong? You are very quiet.”
She put down her fork and looked up. “Joseph, it’s no good. I do care about you, but not enough to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Joseph rose from the chair and went over to Cate. He took her hand.
“Cate, I don’t understand. All was well before your grandmother came. Honest, Cate, I don’t care about your family’s scandals.”
A smile flickered across Cate’s face at a statement she knew came from his father. She wasn’t going to go into his family’s scandalous attitudes and behavior; no, this was about their relationship. Leave family out of it. She couldn’t prolong things; she had to be blunt and honest. She rose and walked away from him to stand by the kitchen counter.
“Joseph,” Cate began, “you are a wonderful person, and you’ve put up with all my mishigas and have treated me like a lady, but I want to go home to the States. My love for you is more like a sister’s. These feelings have been with me for a long time, but I talked myself into thinking with time my love would grow and change. I hope we can be friends.”
He stared at her with sad, wounded eyes.
“I’m sorry, Joseph.” Her voice broke as she burst into tears, turned around, and left the room.
Joseph’s six-foot frame crumbled onto his chair. He rested his head on his arms and began sobbing. Cate continued up the stairs to their bedroom, tears flowing down her face.
Fifteen minutes later, a composed Joseph came into their bedroom. He took out a suitcase and started packing his things. Cate stopped him.
“Joseph, don’t. I’m leaving for the States in three weeks. I’ve accepted that job with Judge Pierce in Washington, D.C. You do not have to move out. I could stay in the guest room.”
Joseph put the suitcase down and in a calm, steady voice, he said, “Congratulations, Cate. A job with a federal judge is a great opportunity. Nice of you to tell me I can stay, but it won’t work for me. I can move into Dad’s townhouse close to court.”
“Whatever you feel is best.” Cate went downstairs to the kitchen and started to clean up the dinner dishes. Slowly, instead of her normal haste, she rinsed each dish and then stacked them in the dishwasher. She blew out the candles and turned on the lights. She listened to Joseph’s footsteps moving around the second floor bedroom. His footsteps seemed heavier than usual, to the point of making the wooden f
rame creak. Cate picked up the wine bottle, but instead of corking it, she took a big drink right out of the bottle. She wasn’t sure why she felt so absolutely awful. She had been trying to break up for months.
Forty minutes later, Joseph came down with two suitcases.
“I’ll pick up the rest of my things later in the week.” He stopped at the door and turned around. “Cate, I’ll always love you, even though I’ve known for quite a while that it isn’t mutual.” In a cold, tense voice, he asked, “Would you please answer one question for me?”
“What is the question?”
“Is it the Yank?"
Agitated, Cate burst out with, "No, I hate that arrogant …..”
Chapter 20
Lori tried to sit up in bed on her own, but her thigh was still painful, not excruciating as before, but still difficult to use. She reached into the drawer by her bedside and pulled out a mirror. Her face showed only a slight amount of brown bruising from her fall, but she appeared gaunt due to weight loss. She groaned as she hid the mirror back in the drawer. She knew she was lucky to be alive, but she was totally frightened by the experience. It made her realize how no one was immune and totally safe.
Of course Lori would hide her fear from her family, who she knew would be visiting after her rehab session.
"Mrs. Brill, we need you to do a better job on your breakfast. You need your strength for therapy." Barbara said as she stood near the bed with Lori's wheelchair.
"I'm trying," Lori answered as she eased into the wheelchair that would take her to the physical therapy room.
Once there, she moved slowly between the bars, tolerating the pain the best she could. "Will I walk on my own?" she asked the therapist.
"You are a very determined lady. You will be walking again, probably with a cane for a while. We will be transferring you to a full rehab facility soon."
Lori had seen friends in her age group start out with bone injuries and end up in nursing homes. She was determined to make it back to her home in Arizona. She wasn't going to let this insanely mad world she has recently occupied get her down.
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