Ever After (9 page)

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t lie. Even if I could convince the partners that you are the wronged one is this entire situation, there’s always the chance that one of our important clients might pull their account because of the gossip about you. I’m so sorry, Scotty, I didn’t think this through. I just so wanted you to get justice against that asshole that I was blinded to the consequences of doing so.”

“Oh, god,” Scotty said. “Oh my god. I don’t believe that this is happening to me. I mean, the most likely scenario is that the monster is going to beat the rap with a good attorney, and my name will be mud in this town. In other words, the only person who’s really going to pay for Mr. Lucas’ sins is going to be me.”

Suddenly, the delight that both Scotty and I felt upon seeing Mr. Lucas being led away in handcuffs was forgotten. We now had to deal with the explosion that occurred when Mr. Lucas was charged with this crime, and the unintended consequences might be severe for Scotty. In the meantime, Mr. Lucas
was
bound to walk free, with the right attorney.

I put my head in my hands, trying to untie the impossible knot that had formed. There was just no way out of this. Even if, god forbid, Scotty went back to the police and retracted her statement, that wouldn’t be the end of it. Mr. Lucas was arrested, and that arrest was very public, and he would no doubt drag Scotty even more through the mud. Her retraction would be ‘proof’ that she lied, and the only thing that would happen would be that he would have a much easier time mounting a civil suit against her for slander, and would have no barriers whatsoever in tarnishing her reputation with all of his buddies, cronies and clients. She might never be able to get a job in this town.

Hell, if Mr. Lucas’ tentacles went far enough, which they did, as he was an international financier, Scotty might not be able to get a job, period, anywhere. And all of her hard work would be for naught.

In seeking to destroy that bastard, she would be the one who would be destroyed instead.

Scotty was looking at the floor and she said softly “You’re nobody and I own this fucking town. I’ll get away with whatever I want.”

I looked at her. “I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”

“When I was on the plane with that monster, going down to St. Croix, I tried to tell Mr. Lucas that he wouldn’t get away with what he was about to do. And he said ‘you’re nobody and I own this fucking town. I’ll get away with whatever I want.’” She looked at her hands sadly. “And, lo and behold, he was right. He owns this town, and he will get away with it. My dreams are shattered, though. All of my life, all that I have ever wanted was to be an architect. Ever since I found out what architects do, that was what I wanted for myself. Now, what, Nick? Now, what? Mr. Lucas is going to blackball me now. I mean, he has his fingers in many pies around the world. There are many clients who rely on his financing. I doubt anybody will hire me now.”

I took a deep breath, as I suddenly realized something. Something that I really should have realized all along. This was a zero sum game that was being played out before my eyes. There would be a winner and a loser, and it looked increasingly like Scotty was going to be the loser.

I sat there looking at Scotty, my wheels spinning the entire time. It was increasingly looking like there was no way out of this, except for my Plan B.

“Nick?” she said. “Please talk to me. I need answers from you.”

There was no way that Scotty could ever, and I mean ever, know what I was about to do. It would devastate her beyond measure. So, I just smiled and said “Scotty, please, let’s not think about this right now. Let’s remember how we felt when we saw that bastard doing the perp walk.”

Scotty was now clearly agitated. “Nick, how can you say that? I need solutions here, not happy-clappy unicorn rainbow farts. My career might be over because of all of this. Over. That bastard destroyed me for years, and now he’s going to keep on destroying me. He’s taken everything from me – my ability to trust, my peace of mind, everything. He’s even taken away my ability to say that any child I have with you would be my first. That’s huge for me. I think about those babies every day. Every day, Nick. Every day. And now it looks like he’s going to take away the one thing that means more than anything to me in this world, except for your love, and that’s my future career as an architect.”

She was pacing the floor now. “Okay,” she said, shaking her head and walking back and forth across the hardwood floor. “Okay. It will be okay. I’ll just go down to that police station and retract my statement. No harm, no foul.”

“Scotty, you can’t do that.”

“Why not, Nick? Do you have a better idea?”

“Because the cat’s out of the bag. He’s been publicly humiliated. Which is great, but if you retract your statement, you might as well say to the world that you did lie about him. Trust, that will do you more harm than good.”

Scotty was pacing some more. “You’re right, Nick, you’re right.” She started mumbling to herself incoherently and shaking her head. She took a clump of her hair and pulled on it, and continued to pace manically. “What can I do, Nick, what can I do,” she said, although she was not actually asking me that question, so much as mumbling it to herself. “Think, Scotty, think. There must be a way out of this.”

I watched her pacing, my heart breaking. I felt so incredibly stupid for forcing her to do this. So stupid for not playing the chess game and seeing that this was bound to
happen. I was blinded by my thirst for justice for her, and it never even occurred to me that she would be destroyed when she decided to go against him.

I should have just quietly went to Plan B and taken care of this mess myself. Scotty never would have had to know, and she could have gone blissfully on her way. If I would have thought about this angle for two seconds, that was exactly what I would have done.

“I know!” she said excitedly, pointing at me and jumping up in the air a little bit. “I’ll find Superman and have him fly backwards around the earth so fast that time is turned back, and I can be transported to the day that I decided to give Angie my statement. Of course, I would never give that statement in that scenario, and everything would be just fine.”

I couldn’t tell if Scotty was trying to make light of the situation, or if she somehow was manically hallucinated a solution that, of course, wasn’t viable in the least. To tell the truth, I was a little bit scared for her.

“Scotty, calm down, please calm down.”

“I won’t calm down, Nick, I won’t. Don’t you see? Don’t you see that my life is over now? I mean, I didn’t have the best life before, but I had my career in front of me. My career, my dreams – those were the only things that kept me going through all those dark years. I stayed up all night working on projects for school, and I put in 80 hour weeks on my studies. I mean, I have a passion for architecture. A thirst for it. I ate, slept and breathed it. I can never imagine doing anything else. And now, anywhere I go, that bastard is going to get me blackballed because he has the power to do it. He has the power and the means to make sure that I never get a job.”

I swallowed hard. I had no words for her, because I now knew that she was right.

I would have to see Ryan as soon as possible. He and I would have to go through all of the intricacies of my plan, to make sure that I made it out alive and not in prison. I knew that I had to go through with it.

“Excuse me, Nick,” Scotty said. “I need to use the bathroom.”

I nodded my head. I felt so impotent at that point in time.

I sat down and stared into nothingness. I knew what I had to do, but it wasn’t helping the situation right at that moment. I wanted so badly to tell Scotty comforting lies, but that just wasn’t in me. I was a straight shooter, always, especially with the people I loved. And I loved Scotty more than I ever thought that I could love anybody. So, there was just no way that I could ever lie to her. And to tell her that it was all going to be okay would be just that. A lie.

Aaron came in from the other room . “Is Scotty going to be okay?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t telling Aaron the comforting lie that I refused to tell Scotty. “Yes, little one, she’s going to be okay.”

He climbed up on my lap, a toy plane in his hand. He zoomed it around and around, making a noise like an airplane, while I continued to stare into space.

After about ten minutes, I started to feel concerned. Scotty still wasn’t out of the bathroom. I put Aaron on the ground gently, and went to the bathroom and knocked. “Scotty, are you okay in there?”

There was no answer, so I knocked louder. “Scotty, answer me! Are you okay in there?”

Still no answer.

I tried the door, and it was locked. She never locked the door when she went into the bathroom.

I kicked in the door and I immediately started screaming.

She was lying in the bathtub full of water.

The water was red with her blood.

Chapter 12

With shaking hands, I dialed 911.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“My girlfriend has slashed her wrists,” I said, picking up one of Scotty’s arms. “Please hurry!”

“We’ll be sending an emergency vehicle to your residence as soon as possible,” the dispatcher said. “Please try to be calm.”

I breathed in through my nose and expelled through my mouth. I looked at her wrist carefully, and saw that she didn’t slash them vertically, but, rather, horizontally. Thank god. She was therefore losing blood at a much slower rate than if she had slashed them vertically. I might even be able to stem the bleeding before the ambulance got here.

“Sir,” the 911 dispatcher was saying, “do you know how to bandage her wrists?”

“Yes,” I said, as I dashed to my First Aid kit that I, thank god, purchased the last time I had an emergency with Scotty. I got some bandages and the maxi pads that I bought when Scotty had her miscarriage, and rushed back to Scotty and wrapped her wrists tightly. Then thought better of it, as I saw the blood was soaking through rapidly.

I would have to give her stitches.

I frantically looked through the emergency kit for some needle and thread, and, finding some, I set about sewing up Scotty’s wounds. I could hear the sirens in the distance, and I prayed that they weren’t too late.
If I could just sew up her wrists, then she might have a chance.
So, I sewed them rapidly, and, to my relief, she stopped bleeding.

I had no idea how much damage was done to her vein, but, at the moment, I had stemmed the bleeding, so she had a chance.

The paramedics were soon in the loft, and they immediately got Scotty out of the tub, and asked me if I knew her blood type.

I blinked rapidly, remembering that I did see her blood type on her chart when I took her to the hospital for her miscarriage. She wrote it down, thank god.

“O negative,” I said. “It’s O negative.”

For once, I was glad that I was forced to fill out those forms before Scotty saw the doctor at that hospital.

The paramedics hooked her up with a bag of blood, and they put her on a stretcher with a blanket covering her naked body.

I followed along behind them in my Jaguar, not wanting to wait for Charlie to come and pick me up. In the car, I called Ryan.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Goddamn, I hate to bother you again. But I really need to talk to you about what you and I discussed. Scotty’s going to the hospital, because she slashed her wrists.”

“Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my god. Why?”

“Because. Because I have to be the stupidest son of a bitch alive for making her go down there and press charges against that monster. Goddamn, why did I do that? Why?”

“Calm down, Nick, you aren’t making a lick of sense.”

“Ryan, why didn’t I think this through? I mean, the guy is a goddamn multi-millionaire hedge fund manager. With very important clients.”

Ryan immediately got my drift. “Oh, crap. I get what you’re saying. He has the power to blackball that poor girl.”

“Right. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I didn’t either,” he said. “I should have thought of that, because I’m the one who is supposed to look at this situation objectively. Shit.”

“So, anyhow, Scotty got an anonymous threat from Mr. Lucas’ colleague, saying that he was going to tell our firm partners to fire her. And, he just happened to know just who has it in for her at the firm, too. But that’s another story for another day. And, as I thought about the situation more and more, after she got her threat, I realized that Mr. Lucas had the power to blackball her. I don’t know, at first, I kinda dismissed what Scotty was saying. I thought that there was no way that my firm would fire her for a ‘he said she said’ situation.”

“Except the ‘he’ in this case is a very powerful man,” Ryan said.

“Yes, and the ‘she’ in the same situation has no power at all.”

“Goddammit,” Ryan said. “Goddammit. How can this be? How can Scotty be victimized by this monster, and she’s the one who is ruined?”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. I have to fly down there to see you as soon as Scotty is stabilized to meet with you, so that we can go over our plans.”

“Oh, Nick, I so hoped that it wouldn’t come to this.”

“I know, but now, there’s really no choice. Scotty can’t have her life ruined because of this bastard. She just can’t.”

Ryan was quiet. “Don’t fly down here,” he said.

“I have to,” I said. “I have to talk to you about what I’m going to do, and make sure I have my bases covered.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll fly up there. You need to be there with Scotty in the hospital. I hope that I’m not in the way, but maybe we can do some brainstorming while we wait in the waiting room.”

“You don’t have to-“

“Relax, I want to. Besides, Nate called me and told me that he and Nat are expecting another child. I need to see him and congratulate him in person. So, two birds, one stone.”

“Good for Nate,” I said, without enthusiasm. I mean, it was wonderful news that Nate and Natalie were expecting a new baby. Like Ryan and Iris, their marriage had been severely tested in the past few years, so I was happy to hear that their union was strong enough to bring a new child into the world. But I couldn’t think about that. Once again, I had a single-minded focus, and that was in making sure that that fucking bastard Mr. Lucas couldn’t hurt my Scotty anymore.

The hospital was looming ahead, so I said my goodbyes to Ryan and parked the car and went into see the front desk, so that I knew where to find Scotty.

“The paramedics just brought her in,” the lady told me. “Please wait in the waiting room.”

I sat down. I couldn’t believe that I was in the hospital, yet again. I hated that Mr. Lucas was causing so much chaos all the time. The last time Scotty was in the hospital was because of him. Now, this time was as well.

∞

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the receptionist lady told me that I was free to go back and see Scotty. She had apparently been stabilized, and I hoped that she was mentally stabilized as well. I tentatively went into see her, after stopping by the gift shop to pick up some roses. She had been admitted to the hospital for observation, and I would imagine that her next stop would be the psych ward, which broke my heart, but I knew that all suicide attempts eventually ended up in that part of the hospital.

Why she was in a regular room at that time, I didn’t know, but I figured that there probably wasn’t an available bed at that time for her.

I entered her room, and she looked at me and turned her head away.

“Hey,” I said, softly. “Look at me.”

She turned her head back to me, and I said to her “listen, Scotty, you might think that your life is over. But it’s not. It’s only beginning. Now, I told you I would take care of this, and I will. I will, Scotty, you can count on that. Do you hear me? You can take that to the bank. You won’t be blackballed. You will continue to work at this firm. I’m going to make sure of that.”

“How?” she asked. “How? Don’t you see, I’m never going to be rid of this man. He’s going to follow me wherever I go. Wherever I go, Nick. My whole life is going to be destroyed by him. I’m not only going to be blackballed, but humiliated in this town. I’m so sorry for doing what I did, but I just didn’t see any way out.”

“Scotty,” I said. “Now, you listen to me. Don’t ever think that you don’t have a reason to live, because you do. You do. You have me, you have Jack, and you even have your mother and Aaron.”

She nodded her head, and then looked out the window again. I put my hand on her forehead, and smoothed back her hair. “I’m going to fix this, Scotty. I promise you.”

And, for once, I truly knew that I meant what I was saying to her. I was going to fix this for her, no matter what the cost.