Chapter 15 Chapter Fourteen
ARA
I stumbled down the hospital hallway partially blind, using the walls to guide myself down and down the hallway.
No one paid me any attention, and I was grateful for that. I didn't need anyone recognizing me here. I was intent on getting out of the hospital quickly.
Mr. Slade Senior had said my system was too weak to fight the substance I'd been pumped with, but it seemed like the heavens were smiling down at me today.
My feet were unsteady, but I could manage to move them. I just had to keep going. I needed to get to my sisters before it was too late.
Neil would not hesitate to sell them to a whorehouse or a drug lord looking for minors to toy with.
The thought caused some of the haze in my head to clear. I kept walking until I found myself in the hospital lobby.
Either Thayne's father had left strict instructions for the nurses to leave me alone, or the nurses were just not very observant staff.
Or it could just be that they were not bothered at all if I lived or gave up right in the hallway.
If Thayne's father had been able to get them to poison me with that drip, I guessed there wasn't really anything they couldn't do.
I’d barely made it past seven blocs after stepping through the doors of the hospital when the world tilted on its side and I felt myself colliding against the sidewalk.
When I opened my eyes again, it was in a dimly lit room that smelled like lavender oil and baby powder.
I was lying on an unfamiliar mattress, and when I moved, the spring squeaked.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes, and reared back when I discovered there was an elderly woman in the room with me.
She looked strangely familiar, but I'd already fallen off the bed and was too distracted by the pain of landing on my tailbone to place her face.
My stomach was twisting and growling from hunger, and I knew it wouldn't take long before I passed out again.
She rushed to help me up, and I didn't try to resist as she helped me get back into bed.
I eyed her warily, waiting for her to speak first.
“I found you on the sidewalk foaming at the mouth." She finally said.
She sounded like an AI in its sixties, but she was short and plump with a short bob that reached her shoulders.
I knew this woman, but hold up on that…. Foaming at the mouth?
“That can't be correct." I murmured, more to myself than her.
She gestured to a bottle of medicine sitting on a reading table by the corner of the room.
"I gave you something to purge the poisonous substance out of your system. You'll feel the urge to throw up soon. Let me know once the nausea climbs up.” She spoke slowly, as if choosing her words carefully.
I studied her face, trying to remember her. I gasped when I realized who she was.
Gabe's mother! I'd seen her pictures in his phone, and we'd even spoken a few times together on the phone.
“I need to go," I said, swinging my legs down from the bed, preparing to leave even though I didn't even know where the hell I was or where I would go to.
I needed to leave, first of all.
“No, wait, please. Listen to me, I just want to help." She stopped me from walking past her by grabbing my shoulders gently.
“I need to go, please.” I protested.
"I know my son wronged you, and I know that you will likely never forget me, but allow me to help you. I don't know what happened, but I can get you food. You look like you'll pass out again.”
I ate quickly, then threw everything back up in the toilet. Gabe's mother coaxed me into eating again, and when I was finished, she sent me into the bathroom where I took the fastest shower anyone had ever taken in the history of showers.
Before she let me go, she gave me a burner phone. I didn't understand why she was helping me, but I guessed she felt guilty for what her son had done.
As I passed the quiet neighborhood, I dialed Neil's number in the burner phone. He picked on the first ring.
“Where did you send my sisters, Neil?" I snarled into the phone.
“Forget about them," he sounded drunk to hell. “You won't be seeing them for a really long time."
I resisted the urge to hurl the phone across the road.
Neil had ruined me. I had nowhere to go, nobody to turn to for help. Soon it would be nightfall and there would be no place for me to rest for the night.
“Tell me where they are, Neil." I was practically begging, but right now I didn't mind.
All I wanted to know was the location of my sisters. I would ask Neil's debtors to trade me for them. But I couldn't do that if I didn't even know where they were.
“Fuck off, Ara. You tricked that billionaire bad boy into marrying you. You can do it all over again. Don't try to call me again." He barked the words and hung up on me before I could even respond.
How was it possible that in less than a week my life had turned into this?
I fell to my knees in one of the alleys in the neighborhood and screamed out my frustration until one of the tenants in the building whose backyard faced the alley yelled at me to ‘piss off’.
Dusk was coming, and I was yet to come up with a plan. What had I even done to deserve this?
All I'd ever prayed for was customers in my mother's restaurant so that we could make enough money to save up for my sisters' college funds.
I'd been lucky enough to finish college, but with Neil's debts hanging over our heads, my sisters stopped dreaming of getting into college.
I'd promised them I would get them into college. Once, I'd assured them I would strip in a club if it would fetch money for their college funds.
Now? I didn't even have a roof over my head anymore. I couldn't go back to Gabe's mother. That would be embarrassing.
She'd done enough.
I wandered the neighborhood until nightfall, occasionally getting frightened by rats and raccoons leaping in and out of trash bags in the alleys.
I was about to cross into the next neighborhood when loud screeching of tires rent the air, followed by loud slamming of doors and screams of excitement from passersby.
Helicopter blades thundered overhead, searchlights slicing through the dark.
I looked up, half-delirious, thinking I was hallucinating.
What the hell were people shouting in excitement for? I turned slowly to check if I needed to run or move on, but I was astonished to find Thayne and what had to be the tightest circle of security heading my way.
Thayne was in the middle, storming toward me like the world was on fire and I was the only water left.