New Beginnings (33 page)

Drake gripped the edge of the bar as the nausea made his stomach churn. “I have to get to the hospital. I have to see her.”

“She’s in surgery, man. There’s nothin’ you can do. Phil said he’d call as soon as he knows more.”

“I don’t care. I have to go to the hospital.”

J.T. nodded. “You want me to come with you?”

He needed time alone to process what had happened. “No, thanks. You go on home to your wife.”

“I think Phil called from his cell.” Checking the call display, J.T, said, “I’ll call him back and get the details about where she is and—”

“Just text me.” He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“At least let me call you a cab!” J.T. shouted.

***

Drake was still feeling sick by the time he arrived at the hospital. The clerk at the front desk directed him to the Intensive Care Unit and he went through the motions in a haze of confusion as he travelled on the elevator, made the correct turns, and located the appropriate waiting room.

He walked up to Phil. “Please tell me you have some news on her condition.” He couldn’t stand not knowing whether she was going to pull through.

“She’s still in surgery, Drake. The doctors will tell us just as soon as she’s out of surgery…” His gaze fell to the ground. “Assuming she makes it out—”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think that,” Drake whispered fiercely, not trusting himself to remain calm. His rage and fear was like a bore, threatening to take out anything in its path. “How the hell did this happen?”

Phil sank down in the plastic chair, dropping his head in to his hands. “It was all my fault. I asked her to keep an eye on things at the center while my wife and I went out to celebrate our anniversary.”

The last thing Drake wanted was to sit down, but he had no choice if he wanted to learn the details surrounding Cassidy’s hospitalization. “This happened at your center?”

“Yes,” he said, looking as miserable as Drake felt.

A nurse approached them, holding out a card. “I’m sorry, sir. The insurance card you provided is no longer valid.”

“I found that in her purse,” Phil said by way of explanation. “I’m not surprised she didn’t have medical insurance. The poor girl couldn’t even afford to put a roof over her head.”

Drake reached into his wallet and handed the nurse his black American Express card. “All of her hospital bills can be charged to that.”

Her eyes widened in surprise as she looked at the card. “You’re Drake Elliott?” she asked, looking at the name on the card. She flipped it over to look at the signature on the back.

“Yes.”

“Are you a friend or relative?”

He glared at her. “Does it matter? I said I’d pay her medical expenses, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir,” she said before rushing back to her desk.

Phil watched her depart before he said, “I was right last night, wasn’t I? You still have feelings for Cassidy.”

“You were telling me what happened to her.” There was no way Drake was going to dissect his feelings for Cassidy. If he did, he couldn’t trust himself to hold it together.

“We’d never left her alone at the center before. Either myself or my wife, Susan, was always on site and she’s trained in mixed martial arts. One of our residents, Bill, has been having a tough time of it lately.” He took his glasses off and rubbed his blood-shot eyes. “I never should’ve left. I should’ve known he was volatile. He’d been exhibiting symptoms…” He stopped as though he’d revealed more than he intended to.

“Where is this guy now?”

“In police custody.”

“What the hell happened?”

“According to another resident, a woman who watched the whole thing from an upstairs window, Cassidy followed him out of the house when she found out he had drugs on him. She was desperate to convince him not to use them, but…” Phil was visibly shaken as he tried to finish the story.

Drake knew Phil wasn’t the man who’d administered the blows that put Cassidy’s life in jeopardy, but he had put her in that situation by leaving her alone with some madman. He couldn’t forgive that any more than he could forgive himself for giving her no choice but to live in a shelter for recovering addicts because she had nowhere else to go.

“I need to know exactly what he did to her,” Drake said, curling his hands in to fists.

“He tried to force himself on her.” He took a deep breath. “When…”

The rest of the words fell on deaf ears as an inferno of rage assailed him. Images of Cassidy at the man’s mercy in some dark alley with no one there to protect her or hear her screams began to filter through his head. “The woman…” he said, trying to force the words out, “why didn’t she call the police or try to stop it?”

“She did, but by the time they got there, Bill was already gone and there was nothing they could do to help Cassidy.”

“Did he…?” He swallowed the bitter taste of bile rising in his throat. “Did he rape her?”

“He tried, but she fought back. That’s when he became enraged. He beat her, kicked her, slammed her head into the pavement…” Phil rubbed away the sweat beading on his forehead. “I’ll never forget the sight of all that blood.”

Drake got up and started to pace, hoping to find an outlet for his fear and fury. He couldn’t sit there doing nothing, waiting for a doctor to tell him whether he’d ever be able to say… he was sorry. He was so sorry for putting her in this position. He hated what she did. He hated that she’d betrayed him, but he never intended for her to pay with her life.

“Bill took the ring. I guess he wanted it to buy drugs.”

Drake stopped pacing long enough to look at him. Hands braced on his hips, he asked in a deceptively low tone, “That dirt bag took her engagement ring?” An image of Cassidy exploded in his head. She was laughing and crying through her tears as he slipped that ring on her finger. She told him it was the happiest moment of her life and she’d never, ever, take the ring off.

“I begged her to get rid of that ring,” Phil said. “I knew it was an invitation for some of the transients passing through our center. Most of them aren’t bad people, just desperate.”

He was almost afraid to ask the next question. He already felt bad enough, but he feared hearing Cassidy’s reason for keeping his ring may bring him to his knees. “Why didn’t she take your advice and just get rid of the damn thing?” If that ring had contributed to this…

Phil smiled. “She told me this over morning coffee, not during one of our therapy sessions, so I guess I can share it with you.”

“You think I really give a goddamn about doctor-patient confidentiality right now?” Drake asked, taking a step forward. He was a big man, towering over the therapist, but the other man didn’t seem nervous or intimidated in the face of Drake’s anger. Probably because he dealt with out of control people for a living.

Phil gestured to the chair next to him. “You may want to have a seat when you hear this.”

Without questioning the reason, Drake suspected he may be right, so he acquiesced. “Fine, tell me.”

“She said that ring represented hope and faith to her.” He shook his head. “It was amazing, given all she’d been through that she still tried so hard to maintain a positive attitude. She said she never wanted to forget the way she felt when you slipped that ring on her finger. You believed in her. No one had ever believed in her before. She said that gave her hope that the future would be better than the past had been. She also told me that your faith had given her the strength to start rebuilding her life and she never wanted to lose that.”

“Tell me why she did it,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. “Why the hell did she start using again that night? Why did she sleep with my brother?”

“Only she can tell you that,” Phil said, clasping his hands in front of him. “If she wakes up—”

“Not
if
she wakes up,” Drake said, raising his voice. “
When
she wakes up. Don’t even question whether she will. I know she will.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said, quietly. “I’m praying you’re right.”

Before Drake could respond, a doctor walked through the restricted swinging doors pulling a mask off his face.

“You’re waiting to hear about Miss Ross?” the doctor asked Phil.

“Yes,” Phil said, leaping to his feet. “How is she, doctor?”

“It’s too soon to tell. She made it through the surgery, but the next twenty-four hours will be critical.”

“Can I see her?” Drake asked, his throat scratchy. “Please.”

The doctor frowned. “Are you family?”

“He’s her fiancée,” Phil said, quickly.

“Fine,” the doctor said. “Someone will let you know when you can go in. But only for a few minutes.”

The nausea Drake had been fighting all night re-emerged as soon as he walked into Cassidy’s hospital room. She was hooked up to several machines. Her head was bandaged and her beautiful face was battered and bruised while her eyes were swollen shut.

He had to blink back the tears as he pulled up the chair beside her bed. What kind of monster could have done this to her? She was a petite woman, defenseless against this kind of evil.

Carefully lifting one of her hands and bringing it to his lips, he noticed it was ice-cold, almost as though the life had already seeped from her body. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, resting his forehead against her limp hand. “Baby, I never thought it would come to this, you have to believe me.”

He watched her for countless minutes, praying for some sign she’d heard him, that she’d pull through and treat him to the insolence he’d convinced himself he could live without. He was watching her eyelids, hoping to see a flutter, when a nurse walked in and offered him a gentle smile.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll have to ask you to leave now. Miss Ross needs her rest.”

Drake wanted to refuse, but he knew the nurse was only acting in Cassidy’s best interest, so he gently kissed her hand and laid it back down on the blanket. “Can I come back in later?”

He would gladly stay at the hospital all night, sleeping in one of those cold plastic chairs, if he could help see her through the night. If the unthinkable happened, he didn’t want her to be alone.

If he had to sit in this room and hold her hand while the sickening sound of her alarm alerted the emergency staff that she was in distress, he knew he would hear that sound in his nightmares for the rest of his life, but the thought of letting her leave this world the way she’d lived, alone, seemed cruel. She deserved better. She deserved to have someone who loved her by her side to help her move through the fear of dying.

“I’m afraid not.” The young nurse smiled to soften her words. “You can come back in the morning if you like. Visiting hours start at nine.”

Leaving her lying in the hospital bed, not knowing if she’d still be there when he returned, was the hardest thing Drake had ever done. He looked back one last time before he closed the door.

Once he was safely outside of her room, he leaned against the wall for support and cried the first tears he’d shed since he lost his parents. He didn’t think anything could ever affect him as deeply as that loss had, but seeing Cassidy lying in that hospital bed because of his actions made him question everything he thought he knew about himself.

He’d never considered himself a hateful or vengeful man, but for the past year, he’d told himself he despised Cassidy and his brother. He resented them for being weak, for betraying him, but most of all, he loathed Cassidy for not loving him as much as he’d loved her, for not being strong enough to remain faithful to him and the life they’d promised to build together.

“Hey,” J.T. said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You okay?”

Drake had been so lost in his grief, he hadn’t even heard his friend approaching. Clearing his throat, he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hands. “What’re you doin’ here, man? I thought you were gonna go home.”

“I did, but I couldn’t sleep. Nikki was worried too, so she told me to get my butt down here and find out what’s goin’ on with Cassidy.” He looked at the closed door. “She’s not… I mean, she didn’t…”

“She made it through the surgery,” Drake said, his voice still trembling. “But, uh, it’s gonna be touch and go for a while.”

J.T. put his arm around his friend’s shoulders and led him back to the waiting room. “Phil told me to tell you he had to go down to the police station to answer some questions about what happened. I have his cell number in case you need to reach him.”

“Thanks.” Drake sat down in the same chair he’d occupied earlier.

“You feel like talkin’ about it?” J.T. asked, sitting down beside him.

He was so drained, physically and emotionally, he didn’t know how he would find the strength to repeat the story Phil had shared with him earlier. “I did this,” he said, leaning forward and covering his face with his hands. “If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have been living in that place and she would never have met that sick bastard.”

“Come on, now,” J.T. said, nudging his shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself. You had no idea it would turn out this way.”

“What the hell did I think would happen? I knew she had no other way of making a living. Her music was the only thing she had. It was her reason for getting out of bed in the morning, her reason for staying clean. Hell, it was the only thing she had that made her feel good about herself and I took that away from her.” The more he thought about it, the worse it made him feel.

“You reacted the way any guy would’ve in your position, Drake. If I’d come in and found one of my brothers in bed with Nik, I probably wouldn’t have left until some of his blood was spilled.”

“But it wasn’t his blood spilled. It was hers.” He opened his palms. “And now it’s on my hands.”

“No, it’s not. You can’t think like that. It won’t help either one of you.”

“J.T., she looked so broken.” His voice cracked as he thought of the ugly red and purple bruises marring her body, a sharp contrast to the stark-white sheets she was resting on.

“I know, but she’ll heal. Every day will get better and before you know it, she’ll be back on her feet.”

“You don’t know that,” he whispered, wishing someone could give him that kind of reassurance. “Neither do I.” He sighed. “The doctor said the next twenty-four hours are critical. I don’t want to leave, but they told me I can’t stay.”