by A. E. Murphy
“She’s awake!” I hear Sammy cry. “She never could resist singing, even on her death bed.”
“Sammy,” my dad snaps, making Sammy giggle.
I peel open one eye at a time and look around the room, or what I can see of it. It’s another hospital room.
I need to stop visiting so much.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to recall the details of how I got here.
Mum’s warm eyes are all I can see as she leans in to kiss my cheeks, her eyes red-rimmed. “You don’t remember?”
I shake my head, which hurts a lot.
“She likely has a concussion; that’s normal.” A male nurse suddenly appears in my face with a light in my eyes. “Do you feel nauseous? Dizzy?”
“Joel,” a male doctor snaps, stepping into view. The male nurse steps back as the doctor takes his place. “I apologise for him. It’s his first day so he’s a little enthusiastic with the questions.”
“Can I sit up?” I ask, trying to lift myself onto my elbows.
“Sure, just a little though.” He nods to Joel who uses the bed remote to raise the top very slowly.
“I’d like you to drink a little water for me, a few small sips over the next hour or so. Don’t gulp.”
I do as I’m told. The lukewarm water pours into my mouth through the straw and it takes every ounce of willpower I have to not guzzle it down. I’ve never felt so thirsty.
Tobias enters the curtained room, pushing them open dramatically and striding over to me, in front of Sammy.
He kisses me for the longest time, crushing his lips to mine before saying softly, “You have to stop scaring me like this.”
“You have to stop getting her into these situations,” Sammy snaps, but he doesn’t acknowledge her at all.
“Sammy,” I chastise, but Lockhart covers my lips with his again. “Can you stop? My dad is here.”
Lockhart just smiles, kisses me again and rolls his hand over my bump.
She’s happily rolling around so I’m not worried.
Or I’m just too scared to ask.
“Seriously though…” I look at my concerned parents. My dad is sitting by my mum, now holding my hand. “What the hell happened? I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus and dragged behind it for an hour.”
“You have broken ribs,” the doctor clarifies. “Just two. The rest are a little bruised but none of them will require surgery.” Well that’s good news. I think? “Your baby is beautiful and healthy. Your husband…”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Sammy corrects loudly.
“Sammy,” Mum hisses.
Ignoring them I nod for him to continue and he does, raising a brow at the two bickering women, “Your… Mr Lockhart has an ultrasound to show you when you’re feeling up to it. It’s Three-D.”
“Really?” I smile, grinning at Lockhart. “Is she pretty?”
“She’s mine. Of course she is.” He smirks and winks at me in a sexy and playful way.
“The reason you lost so much blood is because the bullet bounced off your hip bone and lodged itself into the fleshy part next to your spine. It nicked a main vessel and, because of its positioning, it wouldn’t allow it to heal. We had to do a small surgery to remove the fragments. It went well and the scarring will be minimal.”
I blink rapidly. “Wait… rewind… bullet? I was shot?”
“That’s enough story time,” Lockhart demands and the doctor nods his agreement, adding politely, “You had a nasty bump to your head which caused the slightest dent in the soft layer of your skull. It’ll heal on its own but you definitely have a concussion. Memory loss is normal in such instances.”
“I hit my head too? What did I do last night?” I frown, searching my aching brain for any sign of an answer. “What day is it?”
The doctor frowns and asks, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t know?” I ask nervously, hoping one of them can see into my mind and figure out what memory goes last. “It’s all a bit random. I’m not sure what came first.”
“Okay, give me any memory from the last few days,” he says softly, nodding for everyone to give us space.
“Liz…” I blink rapidly, as a memory of Liz holding my belly comes to mind making me smile. “Tobias’ mum, she was… I was at her house?”
“When was this, what day?”
“I don’t…” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Wednesday I think? I went there straight from rehab… Joy dropped me off.”
Lockhart breathes a sigh of relief. “That happened on Wednesday.”
The doctor smiles. “It’s only a jumbled few days so I’m not worried. I’m going to set up another IV to help with the acute dehydration and just give you a boost. Your memories will likely come through to you over the next few days but I’m sending you for another scan just in case.” He nods to Joel. “Call through for an MRI.”
“Is that safe for the baby?” Tobias asks before I get the chance.
“Yes, it’s just of the head.” He smiles reassuringly. “I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of your family who are going to talk you through what happened last night when you feel ready.” He looks to Joel and then remembers he just sent him from the room. “I’m going to send a lackey up with some food for you. You need to eat.”
He leaves the room, so I tap my chin and say, “You know that feeling you get?”
“What?” Sammy asks, moving her chair closer to the bed.
“The one when you feel like you’re forgetting something…” I sigh dramatically.
“Idiot.” She smacks my arm, making us both laugh.
“Girls!” Mum chastises.
My heart starts beating heavily and my smile vanishes as I realise something rather important about their visit. “Why are you both here? You hate me.”
“We don’t hate you,” Mum snips, her tone haughty. “We love you. We were just…”
“That’s why Dad hasn’t said a word to me since I woke up?”
Lockhart squeezes my shoulder, letting me know I have his support if I need it. I think I might.
Mum opens her mouth to object but Sammy puts in, “She has a point.”
Dad just crosses his arms, looking like he’s eaten something bitter. We all stare at him, waiting for him to speak. When he doesn’t and my mum tries yet again to defend him, tears spring to my eyes.
“Why are you even here? To show me to my face just how disappointed you are?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.” Lockhart states, staring my father down with his hand still on my shoulder.
“I’m here for her mother, not for her,” my dad snaps, showing no sign that the first man I ever loved is in there at all.
“Dad,” Sammy breathes. “You’re being cruel.”
My dad doesn’t look at me as he starts to hiss, “I could almost forgive you for your affair with your married piano teacher.”
“You knew about that?” I squeak, trying to sit up even more so I can ready myself. I look at Sammy. “Did you tell him?”
She shakes her head and I know she’s being honest.
My dad doesn’t stop and now his eyes are on me. “But then the sex tape… the sex tape.”
“Yeah,” I agree because that was bad.
“That wasn’t her fault. That was mine and the person who filmed us against our knowledge,” Lockhart states, defending me.
“Don’t address me with such disrespect. You impregnated my daughter out of wedlock and abandoned her for another woman the second she was no longer available to you.”
Okay that stings but he’s right; Lockhart did that.
Memories of Rebecca being at his parents’ house resurface as that day comes back, piece by piece, a jumbled puzzle finally finding its edges and middle. The pain at the memory of his kiss and then his rejection hurt me so badly I rub my chest.
My dad stands and shakes his head once. Pointing his finger at me, he shouts, “Since you left home to start this ridiculous bloody band, abandoning such a c
lassy and beautiful life in the classical music industry, you have repeatedly embarrassed our family and yourself. You’ve called hardly at all. You came to visit for the day but didn’t stick around for your parents. And now… now you’re chasing after a man like a weak fool that I know I didn’t raise you to be. The same man who almost got you killed… twice. Because of his choices you were assaulted. Because of his family you were exposed. Because of him you’re pregnant.”
Lockhart snaps, “That’s enough, Mr Branch.”
“Don’t you tell me what’s enough. She’s my daughter.”
“Who has been through a traumatic event.”
“That she doesn’t bloody remember, so I’m taking my pass while I can.” He’s purple in the face with rage. “If she wasn’t pregnant with your child, Mr Lockhart, I’d have buried you already. You don’t think I haven’t heard her crying on the phone to her sister because of you?” My dad looks at me, his face softening from anger to sorrow. “I can’t be around you because I don’t know who you are anymore. You tried to kill yourself. You could have come home. You could have come to us. You didn’t. You bloody didn’t and I had to read about what happened to you for weeks. You didn’t call us once to tell us how you were.”
I wipe away my tears silently and look down at my exposed wrists.
“Time’s up,” Lockhart tells my dad. “Now go and cool down.”
“And leave her with you?” My dad laughs bitterly. “Not a chance. She’s coming home with her mother and I. She needs her family, not a bunch of drugged up tossers and a flighty partner who thinks more about how lonely his bedroom is going to be than how his pregnant woman is in rehab.”
“That’s unfair,” I argue meekly. “He thought I was pregnant with somebody else’s kid. He didn’t know what happened to me until a few weeks later and he still called every day and visited.”
My dad looks a little surprised.
“I don’t blame him for moving on. Dad, I was a mess. I was so angry and abusive in the end. I was the manipulative one. I treated him so badly and he was still there for me,” I explain, looking up at the man whose hand is still squeezing my shoulder. “Also, I kissed his cousin and then some random guy in a hot tub and he didn’t give me any shit at all.” Sammy face palms, my mum rolls her eyes and my dad’s face turns purple again. “He’s a good man when he wants to be and I know he loves me and I know that he knows that I love him too. As for Rebecca, his girlfriend is… well she’s none of my business, nor is she yours, dad. I appreciate you having my corner, but if she makes him happy, I’m going to try and be happy for him.”
That’s a lie. If it were any other woman I’d try to be happy for him.
“Tell that to the snakes you abandoned in her apartment,” Sammy giggles and I shoot her a look that screams for her to shut up.
“I’m not with Rebecca.” Lockhart sounds as though he is extremely frustrated at the subject.
I ignore him because I don’t want to tackle that subject right now. “All of that is in the past. And don’t you dare say it’s his fault what happened to me that night. It was nobody’s fault but Richard Thatcher’s. He raped me. Nobody else. That was his choice. Only really sick people come up with crap like that as revenge. Lockhart can’t help that somebody he once knew is sick in the head.” I rub my aching forehead and wince. “And I’m done talking about any of this anyway. I’m sorry, genuinely sorry, for hurting any of you, but I wasn’t thinking about you beyond worrying that I’d humiliated you all so much that it would be just so much easier if I wasn’t here...”
The slamming of a door echoes through the cavernous space of my vacant mind. I’m not sure why. It happens so suddenly that I lose my train of thought and forget what I was saying.
I look at Lockhart and murmur, “Did they say I was shot?”
“Yes, why?”
I shrug. “Just… I don’t know. It sounds familiar all of a sudden.”
“Does that mean you plan on marrying my daughter?” My dad asks, his Catholic beliefs rearing their ugly head.
“Yes,” Lockhart says as I laugh a nervous, “Definitely not.”
We look at each other. He looks so serious. I’m hoping that I do too.
“Let’s not discuss such things anymore.” Mum pats my hand. “She’s unwell.”
“You have like a whole mess of flowers and chocolates and gifts from your adoring fans.” Sammy grins. “There’s so many that Lockhart released them to the hospital, but they keep on coming.”
I smile at that. I have a larger following than I thought I would. Then I sober and blurt, “How long have I been out?”
“Just the night, no more than how much you’d normally sleep after a night drinking,” Sammy says, checking her phone. “It’s almost eleven in the morning.”
My eyes widen. “OH MY GOD! THE TRIAL!”
Instinctively I try to get out of bed, making everybody gasp and rush to grab me. They don’t have to do much though as I flop back onto the bed as a burning pain rips through my back and side. “Ouch.”
“Don’t worry about the trial.” Lockhart strokes my hair. “That’s some good news we can deliver.”
“Because he basically sent somebody to kill you, putting away like three guys who the Police have been looking for forever…” Sammy rambles. “I mean, he sent like an assassin after you or some shit, and a couple after Mum and Dad. Not me though. Apparently I mean nothing to you.”
“Sammy,” Mum berates my sister again as I try to absorb the information.
“He sent somebody to kill me?” My head starts throbbing again, not that it stopped but it just seems so much more intense now.
“Samantha!” Lockhart is the one who berates her this time.
“Is it weird that I find him so sexy when he says my name like that?” Sammy asks me, making me snort despite my confusion and head pain.
The curtains open and an absolutely stunning nurse with dark skin and thick, long black hair that’s braided down to her waist steps inside with a tray of food in her hands. She places it on the table on wheels and pushes it to me until it’s adjusted in a way that I can eat from it comfortably.
She leaves without saying a word, which is disappointing because she looks like she might be of Polynesian descent and I just have such a girl crush on some of the accents when spoken by the women.
“Good Lord,” Lockhart grumbles, removing the lid from the plate and placing it on the side. “This looks vile.”
It’s a square cut of fish in runny parsley sauce, a few boiled potatoes still in their skins and a spoonful of peas. The drink is a tiny cup of orange and the dessert is Tapioca pudding, which me and Sammy always called frog spawn.
“I’m suddenly not hungry anymore,” I grumble, taking the drink and the dessert, skipping the dinner.
“Dad, take me to Burger King,” Sammy says. “We’ll sneak her a three cheese in my bag.”
My dad, who seems a lot calmer since our fight, nods, stands, moves to me and kisses my cheek so gently I hardly feel it and I know it’s because he’s worried he’ll hurt me. Then he moves away, which I’m grateful for because I feel like crying at the tenderness he showed me despite how angry he is.
Mum stays by my side for a moment before declaring, “I think I’ll go with them, give you two some space.” Before she leaves through the small gap in the curtains, she turns to Lockhart and says softly, “You saved my daughter twice. She’s right. What happened isn’t your fault any more than it is hers. You’ll always have my gratitude, Tobias. You’re a good man.”
Then she leaves and Lockhart looks surprisingly emotional. It flashes through his eyes and shines in the soft lines around his lips as he relaxes his face. Though when he turns back to me it vanishes, only to be replaced with a loving gaze, tense with whatever he’s about to tell me. I can always tell when the conversation is about to turn serious.
Lockhart steals Sammy’s chair and rests his hand on the top of my bump. She’s resting now so he can’t feel anything, b
ut he stays like that anyway.
I eat my pudding slowly, being careful with each time I raise my arm because it fucking hurts so bad from my armpit downwards.
Flashing images of me being airborne and then no longer being airborne assault my mind but I shake them off because they make no sense. That and they’re making me feel dizzy and sick.
“You saved my life?” I cut through the silence.
He nods and then looks down when a dollop of my tapioca pudding falls from my suspended spoon and lands on his hand, below his thumb.
“Sorry,” I giggle, lifting his hand with my uninjured side. I bring it to my mouth and lick it from his flesh.
He pinches my nose between his index and middle knuckles and then places his hand back on my bump. “I wasn’t going to go…”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d asked me to stay away and I was going to respect that, but everything with Rebecca finally fell into place,” he calmly explains, but I see the turmoil swimming in his eyes. “I wanted to come and tell you we were over. I don’t know what I was expecting…”
“Well nothing good, I hope. I’m not being second best.”
“You’ve never been second best,” he states firmly, pinching my chin and forcing me to look him in the eye. “You have been and always will be my first and last fucking choice until the day I die.”
“Or the day I do. Apparently I have a tendency to do that a lot at the moment.”
He growls and kisses my sticky-from-pudding lips. “Stop telling jokes.”
“You love my jokes.”
“I do.”
I wink at him and tell him to continue.
He obliges. “I heard you scream while I was leaving the elevator. The door to your apartment was open. If it hadn’t been open I wouldn’t have gotten to you in time.” His eyes drift closed and when they open they’re on fire with hate and anger. “I should have tackled him or something, but he had so many fucking weapons strapped to him, I knew my reaction would just get us both killed.”
“I feel like you’re telling me a story that I wasn’t party to.”
“I wish you weren’t,” he admits. “Seeing him kicking down your bedroom door, knowing that I’d have to be extremely careful, I’d have to let it continue until I had something… anything to help… to stop him.” I stop eating and push the table away, ignoring the pain it causes in my ribs, so I can hold his hand. “I just had this horrible feeling that my hesitation would kill you. He was so close. If I’d tackled him you might’ve been able to escape. Instead I just… I went into the kitchen. I found a knife in the block by the door and I didn’t even think as I pushed it into the back of his skull.”