Return of Anastasia Worth

“Hello?”

In ten seconds, the male staff double up the staircase and urgently knocks on Bethany’s room door where she is getting dressed for work.

“Who is there?” She calls out from the inside.

“Its Aziz ma’am. We just received one of those calls…”

The door flings open. “Is this one real?”

Aziz nods. “He called and said she has collapsed on the side of the road and was rushing her to the Worth Hospital, former Arctic Lane Hospital.”

Bethany abandons the jacket she had been holding, and only in her chiffon top and black pants, she dips her legs into a fitting slippers and races downstairs. Almost bumping into Gina who is on her way bearing a small package in her hands.

“Ma’am…?” She calls out questioningly but Aziz stops her instead. “We received a call that is ninety percent possible to be Anastasia ma’am. She is on her way there.”

“Whoa. Let me inform the others.”

She leaves for the kitchen just as Bethany opens the door to her car, her driver had gone to bring it from the company that morning on orders from her.

“Ma’am, please let me drive. I’ll get you there fast so you can collect your thoughts before you there. Please…”

She pauses and sees worry on his face, then nods, closes the door in her hands and gets into the back seat.

There was every possibility that with the hurried way she had been rushing away from home, she could get into an accident or possibly hit someone on the road in her hasty blindness, which is why she reasonably considers the driver’s earnest plea. They are all just looking out for her anyway.

She gets into the car and the car tears down the long driveway, seeming for once to never have an end. When the barrier is broken and they are outside the estate, she sighs, her head in her hands, every emotion at play and every emotion trying to stop the other from overshadowing the other. Trying to stay calm and collected and not cry even before she sees her mum is much more work than din any other thing, so she resolves to stay there, silent and slightly curled up at the back of the car, eyes closed and just wait till she arrives at the hospital.

“We are here.” The driver announces and her eyes open and look around.

Bethany takes a deep breath, imagines what her mother would do in her situation.

Weirdly enough, she is actually trying to retain her composure, something that had never crossed her mind, ever. She opens the door and gets off, looking at the name on the hospital. It had been Arctic lane but now Worth owned.

She is the boss here, and she has to act like one even if the patient is her mother, because the same mother will not like it any other way.

As the double doors automatically open for her to walk in, she sees the hubbub of activities and when she had come in through here before, she had been unconscious. But now, she sees that the place is a worthy acquisition and walks to the first nurses’ station she could find.

“Good morning. Is there an Anastasia worth here? And where would I find her?”

The nurse, with her back turned—“What kind of accident or issues is she involved in? or any other valuable details that might help?”

“I don’t know the full details but she was brought here by a young man who found her collapsed on the roadside.”

The vague but valuable brings the nurse’s head around and there is a mini flicker of recognition in her eyes, but professionally enough, she immediately dials a number while Bethanya waits.

“I called the general medicine and they confirmed the presence of an Anastasia worth. Please take the elevator to the eighth floor, and I’m sorry for your loss ma’am,

Bethany musters a smile, taking the elevator to the eighth floor where she is warmly received by another nurse. “Lovely to have you here… err, I’m sorry for the circumstances.”

Bathany musters another smile to help her nervousness. “It is completely fine. Where is she?” She is busy reassuring others while there is nobody to reassure her that all is well, or that it is even her mother.

“Please come with me.”

She leads her down the hall, to the eighth room on the floor.

“She is in there.”

Bethany takes a long and deep breath, placing her hand on the door.

The nurse retreats to the back.

Bethany pulls the door open and enters, standing in front of the closed door, letting the silence wash her, the silence other than the steady beep of the vital signs monitor hooked to her body. Her heart rate is just the regular up and downs and then steady.

Bethany leaves the door and walks inside the room, looking at the woman on the bed.

—She is totally unfamiliar.

For a stranger, of course, it is going to look like it is Anastasia but her daughter will be the best judge of that now that her husband is dead.

Bethany releases a long exhale, tears clouding her vision as she heads for the door, using less than two minutes in the room. Breathing very heavily to prevent breaking down in the midst of her employees, she musters all her self-control and makes it into the elevator, questions and greetings called out behind her.

“Ma’am…!”

“Is she the one?”

Again, she is not the only one in the elevator and has to watch her eyes turn very red, standing at the back and trying to distract herself from her own mind as she takes very heavy breaths, earning her some concerned glances from the co occupants of the elevator.

Down in the ground floor, she practically runs for the exit, feeling immensely suffocated by the aura in the hospital. Outside, she releases a big exhale, and with it comes tears.

She makes it into the back of the car, crying loud and violently, beating the front of the chair in front of her.

Her driver politely stays back outside while trying to prevent people from coming to see what is wrong with het.

Slowly, she begins to calm down, her tears still coming in fierce torrents.

That disappointment had been a major one, she had gotten all her hopes up for pretty much nothing. And there the woman had lay, comfortably on the bed where her mother should be the one laying there.

From sadness and disappointment, it switches to anger. Sand anger that brings even more tears to her eyes.

She thinks for a moment and stops herself. Oh, how she would have loved to have that woman kicked out from the bed she lay so comfortably in.

Where… Just where on this earth is Anastasia Worth?!

“MUM! WHERE ARE YOU?!” She yells painstakingly, letting all her anger and sadness and disappointment flow away with the words as she falls back, exhausted into the back seat of the car…

But, that is exactly what would have happened if it was not Anastasia Worth in the bed.

Bethany stares at her mother in the bed, tears in her eyes, not of anger but of exhaustion and relief.

Anastasia has lost a lot of weight and there is no footwear on her legs or on the bed, so she either does not have one or must have lost it.

Bethany sits on the bed and takes the legs in her hands, massaging it in her hands, pressing gently on the cuts and bruises on it and the coarse spots.

She had been missing for two eeks. What horrors had she witnessed from the time she disappeared, in fact, right from the time the intruders had burst in till this present moment?

What was she dreaming right at this very moment?

Where had she been?

Why did she run away? Or what really happened?

Bethany’s head is now swirling with all the questions she had suppressed for so long.

Her emotions still all over the place, she continues to gently massage her mum’s legs.

“Mum, I can’t believe I am saying this but I miss you. Please wake up an come back to me. A lot happened while you were gone. From attending Dad’s funeral alone as the chief mourner, to uncle trying to take over the company, to meeting a man, to being here right now.”

She pauses and wipes her eyes.

“You would have yelled ‘language’ at me a ton of times if you ever saw what I did or said sometimes.” She chuckles drily. “Dad is not here anymore; you are the only one I want right now. Please, come back to me, I will not even mind the yelling and frustrating times again.”

Anastasia’s hand twitches.

Bethany does not see it.

“I need someone to teach me business, who better qualified than you? Please, Mum, wake up, I need you.” She finally whispers, dropping her head on her legs, letting her tears flow freely.

Her body wreaks gently with sobs and sniffles.

“Beth…” A cracked voice manages to mutter.

Bethany’s head fl

ies up and Anastasia’s eyes are slightly open. “I missed you too.”