No Strings Attached

Chapter Twenty Eight

“It’s speculation right now,” he tried to soothe calmly, “Franchetti said it was kicked back by almost everybody. But Sebastienne called him at the house, and I don’t really know what passed, but I know that he would’ve known exactly which route Nate was taking. He’s also that arrogant and greedy that he would take an offer like that off the table – seduced with the figures – when nobody else would.”

Tori looked over at Shannon affectionately – almost maternally – and inside she grieved for everything that this beautiful, brave girl had lost for this – and for what they all stood to lose here. Once again, she was weeping quietly, shaken to the core with fear that she would once again be cast adrift, after the promise of everything she could have lived for with Nate.

Tori lifted a slender hand to the dark fall of hair that cast shadows over Shannon’s beautiful features, and tucked it behind her ear gently. She watched the despair and the misery that was clouding her best friend’s dark, bottomless eyes, and she turned back to Jayden with no more than two soft words that seemed to echo in the air around them.

“Kill him.”                                                               

Jayden’s entire body stiffened in response – that sounded so far from his Tori that he was taking double glances, and running over the last twenty seconds in his head – was that even fucking real?

“It’s uh ... I mean,” he was hedging around his words – thoughts and emotions mingling together in a stone cold cauldron so that he had no restraint – no concept of what to say or how to say it, “It’s not that simple right now, babe.”

Her eyes were as clear as thunder when they looked back at him – for the first time ever she stepped up to the plate and she asked for the shadows and the darkness in him.

“Make it that simple.”

The tension between the two of them, when the young Doctor walked into the room was absolutely palpable – the air inside the dire, traditional waiting room was fraught with unspoken words.

“Mr. Caine?” he was almost nervous underneath its intensity.

Jay shook his head clear of his thoughts, and rose to his feet to shake the Doctor’s hand.

“Yeah, sorry Doc. How is he?”

“He’s stabilised,” the doctor assured immediately, before gesturing for Jay to take a seat with the girls, “We have inserted a chest tube to reduce the risk of Traumatic Pneumothorax as a result of the punctured lung, and he is being aided with a respirator for the mean time.”

Jay looked over to the girls agitatedly, stabilised was good right? He didn’t understand most of the medical jargon – but stabilised was good.

“Is he conscious? Can we see him?”

“Mr. Caine,” the doctor said softly but assuredly, glancing over to the two beautiful women at the side of him – watching the confusion, the worry on their faces, “Please understand - the accident was severe – as a result of the internal bleeding, we have had to administer Thiopental in order to relieve the Intracranial Hypertension – the EEG showed no obvious damage to the cranial activity, but we do need to administer the treatment given his current state of unconsciousness.”

“Cranial activity?” Shannon was white as a sheet as she spoke, and her eyes were darting between Tori and the doctor, “Has ... I mean ... you do an EEG to check for brain damage right?”

The doctor gave her a long, sympathetic look, “We can gage a better understanding of the brain’s activity with an EEG, and we are better equipped to prepare the family in the event of such occurrences after the scan, but it is cannot tell us positively that the risk is nil, we will only know for certain once Mr. Casey is awake. The scan showed no obvious reduction in activity, but we have to execute caution on the matter.” Tori winced slightly at the use of the word execute. “As it stands, the internal bleeding was profuse. We’re relieving the pressure on his brain, and, once we are satisfied that the swelling is reduced, we will steadily reduce the Thiopental in order to bring him around.”

“But he’ll come around – that’s what you’re saying, right? When?”

Jayden was teetering on the edge of the chair – the stiff plastic cutting into his skin almost painfully – and his knee was shifting nervously at the doctor’s words – why couldn’t they speak like normal fucking people? Why must it be jargon, and chemical compounds? He didn’t have a clue what they were trying to say to him!

“There are, unfortunately, no guarantees in this profession Mr. Caine. I can assure you that we have done everything we can in order to ease his pain, and that we are expecting him to come around. We are currently, however, inducing a comatose state with the Thiopental.You will need to be patient, however, and the uh,” he nervously glanced over at Shannon, “The sight of him – I find many families struggle with the machinery, and the chest tubes. It can be quite a shock on your first visit.”

Shannon closed her eyes – the tears stinging at the retina – dipped her heavy head and said a silent prayer, because sometimes faith is all you have, even when you didn’t even realise you had it.

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It was just gone midnight when Jayden’s phone started trilling into that artificial stagnancy of the waiting room – both girls were sleeping uncomfortably, on top of Tori’s thick coat on the floor with a hospital issue blanket covering them.

Somewhere along the way, tears had exhausted their eyes, and they fell slowly to sleep.

It had been a bit more of a shock to see Nate like that – Shannon’s knees had buckled the second she set her eyes on him. His huge body was linked up to almost everything – IV’s running from his arms, the respirator a hoarse artificial breath beating in the air around them – the monitors beeping with his pulse an eery, echoing sound in the midst of their tears. It was fucking harrowing.

“Caine,” he said simply as he answered the call – knowing by the untraceable number that it would be Clarke.

“I can’t get hold of Nate,” Clarke was growling harshly, as though that should be the very top of the list of Jayden’s priorities.

“Nobody can,” Jayden said coldly, “He’s in a fucking coma.”

Clarke wasn’t a man that functioned well with social graces – the pleases, thank you’s, the I’m sorry for your pain’s – they just weren’t in his repertoire.  So he skipped a beat in the conversation inside, leaving the words to linger between them in the silence.

“I saw her,” he said gruffly, “Sophie. Only it’s not exactly what you’re expecting.”

“How do you mean?” Jay’s voice was weary – fuck, his whole body was weary – there were shadows on shadows under his eyes, and he ran his palm over his face as Clarke spoke.

“Sebastienne is keeping his options open with this one – he knows she is a goldmine.”

“Stop talking in fucking riddles, man, just tell me!”

“He’s auctioning her.”

“Auctioning her? How do you mean, auctioning her?” What the fuck? There’s eight mill riding on her – presumably – safe return, why would he auction her?

“He thinks he’ll get more than eight mill from anyone of these perverts,” Clarke’s was a proprietary growl; it was no longer just a timbre in his voice, it was a possessive, instinctual growl, “She’s Dobrev’s niece.”