Vengeful Love (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

It’s done. I’ve taken the steps necessary to finalise the deal. Gregory Ryans is about to become the proud owner of a company he hates and his own father’s demise.

Now I’m standing in the window of my office, watching people going about their business on the streets below. It’s approaching rush hour. If I’m going to dinner, I have to leave soon.

Am I going to dinner?

I fold my arms across my chest. I think it would be best if I didn’t. If I walked away.

It wouldn’t help to see him again. This is cleaner.

“But...” I practically exhale the word.

I should really go, see Lawrence, Williams and, yes, Gregory, because they
are
clients. Even if they don’t come back to me, the legal world is small, we should part ways on good terms.

Then there’s Jack. Gregory wiped out my boss and had some part to play in his resignation from the partnership. I want to know what that is.

I move to my desk and slump into my chair as Margaret calls goodnight.

And why does he feel the need to protect me?

And what was that, in the room, before he left? Was he going to kiss me?

I flop forward, dropping my head in my arms on my desk. I can’t remember ever being so confused.

He’s had more than one chance to kiss me and he hasn’t. I’m not delusional. He’s chosen not to kiss me.

Do I even
want
him to kiss me?

In the few times I’ve met him he’s lost his temper with me—and just as quickly turned on the charm. He’s punched my boss. He’s tried to fight Pearson—for good reason. He’s taken something, immorally, underhandedly—although I understand why.

“Damn it, even now I’m defending him.”

Closure is what I need.

Glancing at my watch, I quickly shut down my computer and start packing up my tote.

I’m going to put an end to this.

As I head out to the street I decide to treat myself to a cab instead of the tube. After the last few days, I deserve a cab. My iPhone starts to ring as I slip into the back of the car and relay my address to the driver.

“Sandy, hang on a second.” I clip in my seatbelt as the driver pulls out into traffic. “Sorry, I’m back.”

“Scarlett,” she sobs. “It’s your father.”

A feeling of terror slithers around my torso and constricts my chest. “Sandy, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

* * *

In less than half an hour, I’m running from the cab, throwing notes at the driver, hurtling into Accident and Emergency.

“I’m looking for my father, Doctor Phillip Heath,” I say frantically to the girl at reception. I watch, my feet bouncing, my temperature rising, as she types details into her keyboard. “Please hurry,” I beg.

“Scarlett!”

I turn to Sandy and grab her tightly, pulling her in to me. “How is he?”

“They won’t let me see him because I’m not family,” she says, clearly distressed, her eyes red, wet and swollen.

“What! Excuse me,” I snarl at the receptionist, “this lady is more
family
than anyone else I know.”

“Sorry but the policy is immediate family only.”

I have to think quickly. “She’s my stepmother. She’s lived with my father for more than twenty years. They’re common-law husband and wife.”

The receptionist pouts as her eyes run from Sandy’s head to her toes. “She didn’t tell me that. He’s in room seven. Go down the corridor, all the way to the end, turn right, go through the double doors and it’s about halfway down on the left-hand side. You can both go.”

Thanking her, I take Sandy’s hand and we march towards room seven at such a pace Sandy is forced to remove her burnt-orange wool coat.

Sandy bursts into tears as soon as she sees the frail man lying before her, bruises already showing on his body. I’m numb, unable to move from the spot where I’m standing. He’s propped up on one pillow, his head wrapped in a thick bandage, blood seeping at his temple. He’s dressed only in tubes beneath the sheets and his clothes, which have been torn from his body, are piled on the plastic chair at his bedside. Intravenous drips are strapped into the back of each hand. Tubes pumping oxygen into his tiny, helpless body are wrapped around his head and nestled into his nose, artificially inflating his lungs. His eyes are red and black, swollen shut.

A machine beeps, frightening me out of my trance and I step toward him saying his name. There’s no response. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and goose pimples form on my arms. The shell lying in the bed, the shell wired up to these machines, is not my father.

A doctor dressed entirely in green enters the tiny prison of a room with a clipboard. His grey hair is in stark contrast to his black skin. “You must be...?”

“Scarlett, his daughter.” His large hand is ice cold as it shakes mine. “This is Sandy, my stepmother.”

“I’m Doctor Jefferson,” he says, turning to shake Sandy’s hand.

“How bad is it?” My words are shaky.

“Your father has sustained some superficial wounds and broken his right arm. We can clean the wounds and x-ray the arm but we needed to stabilise him first. When he fell down the stairs he suffered serious injuries to his head.”

“I think he must have hit it on the stair lift.” Sandy sniffs. “There was blood.” She shakes her head and retrieves a tissue from inside her jumper sleeve.

The doctor nods as if Sandy has offered the next piece of a jigsaw puzzle and it fits. “The impact fractured his skull. It caused severe swelling and hemorrhaging.”

An intangible weight forces the air out of my lungs and my hand moves to my open mouth.

“Will he be okay?” Sandy asks through a tissue.

Doctor Jefferson flashes a look of sympathy to Sandy then speaks to me like a professional, stoically. “Scarlett, it’s possible that your father may never regain consciousness. We have machines breathing for him. We’re keeping him alive to give him a chance to recover.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a but?”

“Your father’s health was already poor. The chances of him recovering are reduced because of that.”

Sandy steps between Doctor Jefferson and me. “I don’t understand. He will recover?”

The doctor sighs, in the way doctors sigh in movies for dramatic effect right before they tell the relatives that their loved one is dead. “If he does wake up, he will have irreparable brain damage. How bad that will be is a guess at this stage.”

Sandy sobs hysterically into her tissue. I don’t know whether I thank the doctor but he leaves the room. I slip my fingers into my father’s cold, lifeless palm.

He would hate to live like this. Even if he wakes up and goes back to his old life, the life he had just hours ago, I know he hates living that way. But he still has good days. They might be few and far between but they exist. For so long as he has coherent days, days when he looks at me like my father and I can see and feel how much he loves me, I’m not ready to let him go.

There’s an unbearable mounting pressure in my brow and behind my eyes but I don’t cry.

He’ll recover. He’s my dad.

* * *

My father is moved to a side room on a ward and registered as an inpatient. I wonder if he’ll ever become an outpatient. Sandy and I watch him in his vegetative state whilst auxiliary nurses bring us endless cups of tea—the good old English cure for anything—and give us each a plate with four cheddar triangle sandwiches and half a bag of ready salted crisps.

“The only other spare meals we have are dysphagic but you’re welcome to try if you like?” Valarie, the evening nurse, asks.

“Thanks all the same but cheese sandwiches are great,” I say.

Valarie chuckles. “I thought you might say that.”

The food reminds me where I’m supposed to be. The completion dinner. I slip out of the room and I’m grateful for the fresh, crisp air in the hospital carpark.

I find Gregory’s number on my Blackberry and dial, staring up to the dark sky, trying to keep it together.

“Scarlett.”

It’s crazy but something in his voice, the sound of my name, brings everything that’s happened crashing down on me.

“Scarlett? Are you there? Is everything okay?”

I sniff back the first sign of tears and pinch the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb. “Gregory, I’m sorry but I can’t make it to dinner.”

“Scarlett, what’s wrong?” His tone shifts to rigid concern.

“I, ah, it’s my dad. He...” I breathe out slowly and wipe a tear from my cheek. “My dad has Alzeimer’s. He, ah, he feel down the stairs and...” A sob unwittingly breaks from my throat. “I don’t think, God, he’s, he’s brain damaged. I don’t know if he’s going to wake up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be crying to you. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry about dinner.”

I send Sandy to the café on the ground floor of the hospital for a break. It’s getting late and we’re both exhausted but as long as the nurses keep turning a blind-eye to us being here, we won’t leave him.

I sit with my father, having a one-way conversation for almost an hour. There’s no change. Once or twice, I imagine him responding to my voice, answering my questions, but if it weren’t for his chest subtly rising and falling, he’d be still. The machines that keep him alive beep and whisper in rhythm. A score of death. That’s the brutal reality. My father, the man he was, has been slowly dying. But this can’t be the end.

My body goes stiff with both realisation and disgust. Part of me, tiny though it is, is relieved that his suffering might be drawing to an end. I swallow the impending sickness rising in my throat.

My father’s skin is increasingly pale, almost translucent under the fluorescent lights when we eventually leave. Sandy and I walk out of the main entrance linked together. She carries a plastic bag containing my father’s torn clothes in one hand and holds the lapels of her coat closed at her chest with the other.

“Scarlett, I’m sorry.”

She stares at her shoes as tears drip to the ground at her feet. She looks young and vulnerable. Her coat hangs loose at her waist; the toll of the last few months has led to her weight gradually decreasing. I wish there was an upper limit of tears that one person could shed in a day.

“I left him,” she cries. “He couldn’t feed himself so I tried to help him. He got angry and—”

Throwing my arms around her, pulling her head onto my shoulder, I rest my chin on her soft black curls. “It’s okay.”

“He spat his soup at me then started screaming that he was hungry. I just, I just needed a break. I went out for a walk around the block. I shouldn’t have left him for so long.”

“Shhh.”

Her sobs become uncontrollable, taking over her entire body. “When I got back...it was too late. He was at the bottom of the stairs. I thought, I thought—”

“Hey, enough!” I say sternly, pulling back and holding her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “This is not your fault, Sandy. You’re not his nurse. I should’ve never let you take on so much responsibility. It’s me who should be apologising.”

“Scarlett.” The voice is one I recognise. Deep, male, wary. “Can I take you home?”

“Jackson. How did you know we were here?” I say, brushing tears from my cheeks.

“We worked it out. Mr. Ryans insisted that you have a lift home whenever you need it.”

I don’t have the energy to refuse and let Jackson lead Sandy into the back of the Mercedes. He gently wraps one arm around her shoulder and takes the burden off her legs by tucking her other arm in his. She’s still sniffling when she sits onto the back seat. Jackson pulls her seat belt across her and fastens it into the holster, then he turns to offer me a hand.

“I’m okay, thank you,” I say, genuinely touched by his compassion for Sandy.

When I climb into the car, I fold Sandy’s cold hand in mine.

Jackson’s phone rings and he draws up the black glass divider between the front and back of the Mercedes as he punches the button for the speakerphone.

“Greg, I’ve got them.”

“Good. What about the other thing? Did you find anything on Jack Jones?”

I sit forward to listen but the partition reaches the roof and I can’t hear a word. I’m too weary to deal with work and Jack Jones right now. I rest my chin on Sandy’s head and close my eyes.

* * *

Jackson wakes us and helps Sandy out of the car. Carrying my father’s torn clothes, Sandy’s handbag and the documents from my meeting at Eclectic—which feels like more than just a few hours ago—he walks alongside Sandy as I lead us to the house.

“I think I’m going to make a cup of tea,” Sandy says. “Geoffrey, would you like tea?”

“That would be lovely.”

I hang my coat on the stand by the door then stare at the bloodstains—on the chair lift at the bottom of the stairs, on the wood floor, sprayed on the wall. “I’m going to clean this up.”

“Would you like me to do that?” Jackson asks.

“No. Thank you. You’ve already done enough.”

As Sandy and Jackson move to the kitchen, I make my way upstairs, my eyes taking in each drop of blood. I follow them into my father’s dark and empty bedroom.

I flick on the light and my eyes are immediately drawn to the soup bowl cast into the middle of the floor, red sauce spilled across the carpet. My father’s small lamp has also fallen to the floor by the bedside table, the bulb shattered. The bedside table is out of place from its normal position parallel to the bed. A water glass rests on its side in the crevasse between the table and the wall.

I take a step back, absorbing the scene. The duvet is in a messed bundle, as if it’s been flung from one side of the bed to the other. I wonder if that’s what has knocked my father’s favourite picture out of place at the opposite side of his bed. It’s a framed photograph of my father, Sandy and me on Brighton Pier, each of us holding candy floss. It’s always positioned where he can see it, a perfect angle, just-so. Now it faces away from his bed.

I rest my back against the wall and slide to the floor, taking in everything that’s wrong with this tableau, rubbing my hands up and down my suddenly ice-cold arms.

“Are you okay?”

“Jesus! Fuck! Jackson, you scared me.” He steps into the room and turns his head almost in sequence around the same evidence I just witnessed.