Silver Dove (Silver #2)

by E. J. Shortall

  “That would be telling.”

  “You tease. Tell me.”

  “Nope, you’ll have to wait. It will be worth it though, I promise.” His hands drifted downward and came to rest on my tummy, stroking back and forth. He continued kissing and sucking on all the exposed skin along my shoulders and neck as I leaned back against him.

  Things were getting a little too heated, and I was beginning to contemplate if we could sneak away for a while without being missed, when the phone began to ring out in the hallway. With our spell broken, we both sighed and started laughing in unison. Wondering who would be calling at ten-thirty on New Year’s Eve, I pulled away from Craig, gave him a brief kiss and walked over to the phone.

  Craig

  Who the fuck would be calling at ten-thirty on New Year’s Eve? We’d invited pretty much everyone we knew, so if they weren’t there already, they knew we were having a party and would most likely be busy. I’d been getting ready to drag Amber into the study, looking forward to a bit of privacy for our own private dance. Whenever she looked at me like that, it was pretty damn near impossible to control myself. She was a siren and when I was around her, I lost all control.

  I watched as she walked away from me, her hips swaying in that sexy way they did. I dragged my gaze up her body as she answered the phone in the hallway. As soon as my eyes reached her face, I saw her smile fade and her face drain of colour. Her hand started shaking and she looked like she was going to collapse.

  Fuck!

  Racing from the room, I reached Amber just as her knees gave way and she began to fall down, dropping the telephone handset as she went. Sinking to my knees next to her, I tugged her onto my lap, against my chest, and began stroking her hair. She was shaking violently and struggling to catch her breath.

  “Amber, Baby, what happened?” I asked, scared to fucking death by her reaction. She didn’t respond, so I continued trying to calm her down so she could tell me what was wrong. Just then I heard the faint and distant sound of someone talking on the other end of the dropped phone. Picking it up, I listened.

  “Amber, Amber. Talk to me, are you okay?” The panicked voice on the other end of the line sounded like Owen, Amber’s dad.

  “Owen, is that you, it’s Craig,” I said into the receiver, but continued looking at Amber’s ghost white face.

  “Oh Craig, thank God. Is Amber okay? I heard a thump and she wouldn’t answer me.”

  “She’s… no she’s not alright, Owen. What’s going on?”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s James. Someone’s beaten him up pretty badly. He's in Intensive Care.”

  James was Amber’s older brother. They’d never had a particularly close relationship; in fact Amber hadn’t seen or heard from him since they’d had an argument seven months ago, just after we met.

  “Craig, they say he’s in a pretty bad way, critical in fact. I thought you guys should know. I’m just heading up to the hospital now.” I heard his shuddering breath again, and knew he was trying to contain his emotions.

  After checking he was okay to drive, I told him we’d meet him at the hospital and then hung up the phone.

  An hour later, we’d left our own party behind, and were seated in the dreary waiting room of the ITU. I think Amber was in shock. Since collapsing in a heap at home, she had given me nothing more than a few grunts when I’d spoken to her, and her face was still as white as a sheet. I wasn’t even sure how I’d managed to get her there, she was moving like a zombie.

  Owen had been there, but when the nurses told us we would have to wait for a doctor to come and see us, he’d said he was going for a short walk to clear his head. I couldn’t blame him, hospitals could be intense places.

  We continued to wait, that fear of the unknown weighing down heavily on us. When I heard a deep shuddering breath beside me, I peeked down to see Amber’s vacant stare trained on the dreary waiting room wall. Wrapping my arms around her, I pulled her onto my lap while stroking her hair. I tried to reassure her that everything would be okay, but I knew my words sounded weak. How was I supposed to sound convincing when I wasn’t convinced myself?

  The ticking of the clock on the wall mocked us as we sat in the silence, waiting. I wondered what was taking so long.

  Amber was curled up on my lap and we were looking out of the window at the inky black sky beyond. It was not how I’d imagined seeing in the New Year. We should have been starting it off with a bang, at home. My plans were to take Amber outside at midnight, and while watching all the local fireworks, I was going to give her a small gift. It was only something small, a family trinket representing hope, hope for the new life we were building together.

  A bright flash and a loud bang, startled us both, and Amber jolted in my lap. The flashes became brighter and the bangs became louder and more frequent. Fireworks! I looked at the flat screen TV mounted on the wall and saw the pictures of Big Ben and London, and the magnificent firework display put on each New Year.

  “Happy New Year, Pingu,” I whispered into Amber’s hair, and hugged her tightly. This was definitely not how I wanted to see in our first New Year together.

  “Happy New Year,” she replied her voice so quiet I could barely hear it. She wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled herself into me tighter, like she was holding on for dear life. I continued to sit there watching everyone’s joy and revelry on TV, while Amber remained cuddled into my chest.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened and two people wearing pale blue scrubs walked in.

  “Miss Merchant?” one questioned, and immediately Amber sat up, wiping a stray tear from her eye.

  “Yes, that’s me,” she replied with a shaky voice.

  “I’m Dr Goodwin, and this is Evelyn. We’ve been looking after your brother tonight.”

  “How is he?”

  “He is stable at the moment.” He took a seat opposite and gestured for the nurse with him to take a seat also. “When he came to us he was unconscious, and has remained so throughout. At the moment we have placed him in a medically induced coma to try to give his body time to rest and recover. I have to be brutally honest with you Miss Merchant, your brother’s injuries are severe. He took blows to most of his body, but what is of greatest concern to us is his head injury.” Amber immediately reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. I squeezed back, letting her know I was there with her, supporting her. “He has severe swelling at the moment, and that is our main priority. We are watching it closely for any changes. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.”

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked.

  “From what we understand, Mr Merchant was attacked and left alone with his injuries in an alley. A passer-by discovered him and phoned the emergency services. That is all we know at the moment.” With a small, genuine smile he excused himself and told us we could go in and see James shortly.

  The door closed and we were alone once again. Amber fell back into her chair and began to sob with heart breaking intensity. “Why,” she wailed. “Why would someone do this? How can people be so brutal to do that to another person, and then just leave them?”

  I’d seen some brutal things in my time. When I was younger and mixing with Aleisha’s crowd, I saw her brothers give a few people a good ‘kicking’ because the other person owed them money, or had pissed them off in some way. These people lived to their own agendas, wanting their revenge or payback. They used violence either as a warning, or to seek out their own form of justice. To have received such an extreme beating, I could only guess that James had been involved in something heavy.

  “This is my fault,” Amber whispered after a couple of minutes of silence, her sobs the only sound echoing off the stark white walls.

  “What? How can this be your fault?” I asked, surprised she could think such a thing.

  “I didn’t help him. He said he was in trouble and I didn’t help, I told him not to bother me again, and hung up. This is my fault Craig. If I had given him the money, he wo
uldn’t have had people after him,” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

  “Listen to me. This is not your fault. You can’t blame yourself for things your brother may or may not have done. Besides, you don’t know if this was a revenge attack, or something random. Please don’t beat yourself up over this, baby. You are not responsible.”

  She looked into my eyes, searching, as though she would be able to see the truth in them about what happened tonight. “But if I had just – ”

  “No Amber, this is not your fault.”

  At that moment Evelyn, the nurse looking after James, came in and told us we could go and see him.

  Amber

  I was scared, so bloody scared. I wanted to see my brother, but I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to see him beaten up and, more than likely, unrecognisable. We may not have been close over the years, but he was still my big brother, and despite our arguments I still loved him. I didn’t want this to be happening to him.

  As we walked down the corridor, each step felt like we were getting closer and closer to death. The white walls, yellowing with age were marked with years’ worth of scuff marks. The blue linoleum flooring squeaked under the rubber soles of my boots. The framed pictures haphazardly hung on the walls, trying to bring a sense of harmony to the otherwise hectic surroundings. Who were they trying to kid? There was no harmony here. People in the ITU died. And the smell, urgh that smell, that gut wrenching, near gagging, nasty hospital chemical smell. It is said that it’s the sanitizers and cleaning products. In my mind it was a mask to cover up the stench of death.

  The walk along the familiar corridor felt like Déjà vu.

  I remembered walking this same corridor just over two years previous. Then too, I had been walking along in my own haze, fearful of what I would find at the end. It was in this same ITU that my mum had taken her final breath, and left us for an afterlife where she was no longer suffering and could finally be free of her pain.

  As we neared the main door that would lead us to James, I took a faltering step, almost stumbling over. Craig’s hand immediately tightened around mine, saving me, protecting me. Always protecting me. He couldn’t protect me from this though; he couldn’t make this go away. This was real, and I was going to have to man up and face whatever was on the other side of those doors.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? We could wait until the morning. Wait and see how things go,” Craig asked, looking down at me with worry etched across his handsome features. I was so grateful to have him there with me; I didn’t think I could do this on my own.

  “I need to see him, Craig. What if…” I trailed off, not wanting to think about what if.

  “Okay, but the minute you think it’s too much, you tell me and we’ll get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you upset, Pingu.” I wished I could somehow bottle up the love, concern, and protectiveness pouring off him right then. I would wear it like a little amulet around my neck, my lucky charm, warding off all the evil in this cruel world.

  The double doors swung open as Evelyn walked in before us. I nervously put one foot in front of the other and followed after her. My first thought was, thank God, when she turned left and not straight ahead. I didn’t think I would have been able to keep myself together if she had walked anywhere near the bed Mum had been in. Then my heart hit the floor like a ten ton concrete block when I realised she was taking us to one of the private rooms. There were only two real reasons people got placed in private rooms, and James definitely wasn’t in one because he was paying privately.

  As we quietly walked past beds with sleeping patients hooked up to all manner of beeping machinery, I considered turning on my heels and running, as fast and as far away as possible. I couldn’t do this. I needed to get away. Craig’s reassuring squeeze on my hand told me I wasn’t alone though. It gave me the smallest amount of strength that I needed to step into the room and face what was left of my brother.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Amber

  No amount of television hospital dramas could have prepared me for what I witnessed as I stepped foot inside James’s hospital room. The man lying on the bed was not my brother; he was a monster, like some freaky Frankenstein experiment gone wrong. Tubes and wires were sticking out of him all over the place; leading to all sorts of different machines doing God knows what. There were bandages and dressings covering his arms, chest and head, and the customary stiff white sheet covered his lower half. On the flesh that was visible he had several deep gashes and nasty, ugly purple, almost black, bruises. His eyes were closed, like he was sleeping, but he didn’t look peaceful. He looked tortured. Whoever attacked him did a fantastic job of messing him up.

  Fearing the worst for my brother, I struggled to suppress the overwhelming need to scream. I’d had no idea what to expect, but this wasn’t it.

  The world around me begun to spin, as my heart raced and my breathing became laboured. I struggled to fill my lungs with air as my vision became blurry and dark. I kept my eyes on my brother as I plunged deeper and deeper into the darkness, until… nothing.

  “Amber, come on open your eyes. Please, baby, open your eyes.” Craig’s soothing tone seeped into my consciousness, as my senses began to return. A warm hand caressed my cheek and another stroked along my back, but everything was still black. And the God awful bleeping noise was hurting my head. I wanted to scream for somebody to shut it off.

  “Come on Pingu, I need you to open your eyes for me,” Craig continued. Why wouldn’t he shut up and leave me to sleep? I couldn’t believe he wanted sex right then. It was the middle of the night and all I wanted was to be left alone to sleep. My head was hurting so bad.

  My eyelids fluttered open until I was looking into the worried deep green irises of Craig's eyes.

  “Are you okay baby? You had me worried there for a minute,” he said, pulling me in close to him. We were we on the floor, a cold ugly floor. My brow furrowed with the pounding pain in my head and the confusion of where we were.

  “Are you feeling okay, Miss Merchant? Can I get you a glass of water?” A soft female voice asked from nearby. I looked up, taking in the pale blue scrubs of the woman standing next to us. Scrubs? Where were we? Then it hit me. James. The attack. The ITU. It all came pouring back, like a giant tidal wave of realisation, hitting me hard and fast, and giving me no chance to dodge its path.

  “Craig,” I croaked, needing his reassurance.

  “I’m here, Pingu. You’re going to be fine; you just blacked out there for a couple of minutes. Are you okay to stand?” he asked, and supported me as I climbed back onto my feet.

  “What happened?” I asked when I was standing and no longer felt like I had just exited the world’s scariest rollercoaster.

  “You fainted. I think this is all way too much for you. Maybe I should just take you home,” he said, holding me close to his chest, stroking his hand up and down my back.

  A loud beeping noise pulled my attention back to the room we were in, back to the situation, back to James.

  I pulled myself away from the comfort and security of Craig’s arms and turned to look at the lifeless form lying on the bed. With slow steps I walked across the room until I was standing next to the bed, looking down at my brother. “Oh James, what have you done? What did you get yourself involved in this time?” I cried as tears began to trickle down my cheeks. “Who would do this to you? Why would they do this to you?”

  Craig was back by my side in an instant, holding me around my waist, as though he expected me to collapse again any second.

  “Here, why don’t you take a seat?” Evelyn said as she placed two chairs behind us. “I’ll just be here if you need anything.” Giving me a sympathetic smile she turned to return to whatever she was doing on the computer at the end of the bed.

  We sat for a while longer, both in silent contemplation as we watched over James, not knowing what to say, not being able to do anything. After a while Craig stood and told me he was going to go find my
dad. He felt he needed to be there too. I didn’t disagree.

  Left alone with my brother, so many thoughts and memories flashed before me. Memories of the good times we’d shared through childhood, like the summer he taught me how to ride my bike. He was so patient with me, holding the bike steady as I tried so hard to keep my balance and peddle at the same time. Not once did he get angry with me, not even when I kept falling off, and would end up angry at myself. He defended me when the other kids in the street were laughing at me, and he threatened to punch them if they carried on. James was always bigger than most kids his age, so when he threatened they took notice and left me alone. That was during the good times. As we got older, that’s when the sibling rivalry began and we grew apart, fighting over anything and everything. And then of course he started getting involved in things he shouldn’t.

  “James, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I should have listened to you; I should have helped you out. You have got to get through this. I need you to get through this. I have to tell you how sorry I am.” Taking a long shuddering breath, I tried to reign in my emotions. “I need to introduce you to Craig. You’ll like him, he’s nothing like David. He’s kind and compassionate, and gives me unconditional love and support. We’ll maybe have children one day, and I want you to be a part of their lives. I’m so happy with him, James… Come on, please, please wake up.” I couldn’t hold back my emotions any longer, my fear was too overwhelming. Silent tears started streaming down my face and dripping off my chin as I slumped back into my seat, never once taking my eyes off my broken brother.

  Sometime later Craig returned, frowning when he saw I’d been crying in his absence. He explained that my dad was having trouble dealing with things and had left. It saddened me that he hadn’t felt able to stick around. This was his only son and he needed to be there for him. He needed to be there for me.

  Shortly after that Evelyn asked us to leave, explaining that she had a few procedures she needed to undertake. I didn’t want to leave, but she said they had a strict visiting policy. After leaving her with mine and Craig’s phone numbers and demanding they call us if there was the slightest change, I walked out into the cold night air. I wanted to stay in the hospital but Craig wouldn’t hear it, telling me I needed to try and get some sleep in my own bed, so that I would be refreshed and ready to deal with whatever tomorrow would bring. Who was he kidding? There was no way on earth I would be able to get any sleep.