Obsession (Endurance) (2 page)

My
parents would have preferred me at home, under their watchful eyes and loving
attention.  Instead, I booked my room in the hospital and paid for three
months in advance.  I wasn’t leaving until the casts came off and my
physical therapy had me back on my own two feet. 

The
hospital administrator came to visit after two weeks, explaining that they’d
stabilized my condition and recuperation from home was my best option. 

I
smiled and said, “You obviously haven’t met my parents.  I’ll be
recuperating
here
, thank you very much.  I’ve scared enough years
off their life.”

My
parents are great.  They don’t mean to smother me.  They were in
their forties when they had me.  They’d adopted a little boy a decade
before I was born but he’d died of leukemia when he was just a toddler. 

Afraid
to risk losing another child, they’d resigned themselves to a life of
childlessness and threw themselves into their businesses and charities. 

I
was such a surprise to my thought-to-be-going-through-early-menopause mother
that she was five months along before they considered giving her a pregnancy
test. 

As
their only child and heir to the positively massive fortunes they held
individually and as a couple,
highly protective
did not begin to cover
it. 

Being
allowed to go to a college in another state had been a battle of epic
proportions that had worn me down the summer before I embarked on my first
sojourn outside their protection.  I was in the second semester of my
freshman year when I realized the man I’d begun to notice watching me was a
bodyguard they’d hired. 

I
figured it out when a group of men waylaid me on my jog from the library to my
dorm across campus.

I
am highly trained in self defense.  Since I could walk, the panicked
discussions of ‘stranger danger’ between my parents ensured I was capable of
assisting in my own protection.  However, the sheer number of large males
intent on making the
rich little virgin play nice
would have overwhelmed
me eventually. 

Hyde
landed in their midst, sweaty from his jog not far behind me.  He wore
running shoes and basketball shorts.  I found myself strangely stunned by
his bare chest as he took down the rest of my attackers.  All told, I’d
dispatched three with blows to balls, knees, and throat. 

Their
mistake was in initially coming at me one at a time.  Idiots.  That
never works in Kung Fu movies.  For Hyde though, the remaining four
swarmed.  They’d sensed the level of threat he represented and descended
on him en masse, attempting to wrestle him to the ground.

He
had been magnificent to watch that day and every day since.

Only
when all seven were cuffed with zip ties pulled from an ankle pouch did he call
campus security.  They arrived and took my statement.  Hyde took me
by the arm and guided me bodily to my dorm room. 

As
he made calls and kept me away from windows and doors, I took my time studying
his physique.  Stunning was the only word that came to mind.  He was
chiseled with a beautiful golden glow over his skin. 

His
voice was like honey.  I couldn’t place his accent but I knew from the
beginning I’d never get tired of staring at him or listening to him. 

Four
hours later my parents arrived – just in time to witness the police
photographer taking photos of what bruises and scrapes I’d sustained during the
attack.  I wore a sport bra and form fitting bike shorts but felt
completely naked as my mother cried and my father barely contained his
fury. 

Glancing
away from them, my eyes met Hyde’s.  It was the first time he’d held my
gaze fully and I was unable to breathe as my face blushed hot.

Within
one week I was ensconced in a five bedroom high-security penthouse with Hyde as
my live-in companion.  There were additional members of my personal staff
that lived with me.  A driver named Fiaaz, a cook named Si Ling who was
better with knives than the profession honestly called for, and a housekeeper
named Bianca who made as much use of the in-home gym as I did. 

My
assistant Padme had worked with me daily for three years before I’d left for
college and she was once again a permanent fixture.  I pretended not to
know she was even more proficient with guns than she was with technology.

A
few months later, the full weight of my parents’ wealth and influence was
further brought to bear when the seven men were charged.  The unspoken
deal was that if the men pled guilty to the crime they’d committed, my parents
would
not
make it their life’s work to destroy them. 

If
it went to trial, I knew none of them would survive…convicted or not.  My
folks were apoplectic at the thought of me being subjected to an open
courtroom, complete with police photos of my partially unclothed, battered
body. 

Since
two of the seven had already died, one in a horrific car crash and another from
drug overdose, the rest were convinced that doing the right thing – belatedly –
was the correct course of action.  The men were sentenced to the maximum
but since I’d not sustained any severe injuries or technically been raped, they
were out within months after my college graduation. 

And
so it was that almost five years after the first attack, now age twenty-three,
I’d been jumped at a park near the Fields estate that I had used for my daily
run a thousand times. 

The
three surviving members of the recently paroled group had figured out they had
quite a bit in common when it came to how they thought about women.  Since
I had
ruined their lives
they thought to try out their ideas on
me. 

Two
of their friends hadn’t survived prison and I’m still uncertain if my parents
had anything to do with that or not.  I’d received threats before they
were released and my parents may have
neutralized
the perceived
threat. 

When
it came to me,
cold-blooded
didn’t come close to describing Monica and
Samuel Fields. 

Justice
could be swift but not very effective sometimes.  Time in prison had
accomplished nothing for the three men who came after me other than make them
even more vicious and misogynistic than they’d been before.

At
this moment there was a privately paid army of mercenaries searching for the
three men who’d hit me in the head with a rock, dragged me into the storage
shed, beaten me so badly my own mother was unable to recognize me, and spent
hours raping me separately and together.

I
can think about this, talk about it even, because so far I don’t remember
anything
. 
It’s like it happened to someone else.  They hit me harder than they’d
intended and ended up fracturing my skull.  I’m lucky I didn’t sustain
permanent brain damage; though the headaches make me want to claw out the
inside of my head sometimes. 

Once
I get to the blackness on that wooded path, I remember nothing until waking
hours after the fact.  I was unconscious through all of it.

I
made the hospital put me in the geriatric wing.  I didn’t want to chance
being near children or other women.  They didn’t need to be touched by the
violence of my situation or frightened by the armed men stationed outside my
door twenty-four hours a day.

Besides,
I love the elderly.  Talking to a kind older woman who watched three of
her six children starve to death during the Great Depression puts my own life
in perspective. 

A
visit from a man who talks about being a young concentration camp victim guided
to safety after WWII – the
only
member of his large family left alive –
reminds me that life can be, and often is, worse. 

Not
that the elderly friends I’ve made here are depressing.  Far from
it.  They’ve lived through it all and have stories about the first
television, what drive-ins were like in a ’58 Chevy convertible with your
boyfriend, and how granola saved them from food poisoning during
Woodstock. 

It’s
distracting.  Nice.

The
day I was brought in, a member of my team was with me every moment.  Even
when I went in for surgery, one of them scrubbed and stood armed inside the
door. 

During
the days that followed, a battered Hyde said not one word to me but checked the
ID’s of every doctor, nurse, or orderly who so much as peeked into my room in
the ICU then the private room I was moved to after my condition was considered
stable. 

My
attackers had taken Hyde out first with a tranquilizer dart.  Given his
size, it hadn’t kept him out long but when he’d regained consciousness, he’d
been bound and gagged ten feet from my body. 

I
have no memory of what happened in that storage shed but Hyde had been forced
to witness every degrading deed.  They’d beaten him savagely first;
killing time and hoping I’d wake up.  When I didn’t, they didn’t let that
spoil their fun. 

After
they’d finished with me, they took turns beating him again.  Much of it
was in payback for their first meeting with him.  He had broken ribs, a
shattered cheek that had to be rebuilt, and a severe concussion from where
they’d hit him with a shovel.  The fools thought they’d killed him. 

Once
again,
idiots
.  It would take more than a shovel to kill Hyde.

The
police and paramedics hadn’t seen him at first.  It was the park
landscaping supervisor who’d noted the various tools scattered around; then the
blood trail that led to Hyde’s bound and gagged body tied to a tractor and
covered with a tarp. 

The
moment they cut him loose, Hyde had collapsed beside me and refused all
treatment until I was safely in the ambulance, surrounded by other members of
my team.

Knowing
Hyde had seen what happened to me was another reason I stayed in the hospital
instead of going home.  I knew my parents would never allow me to stay in
my own place disguised as a guest house on their estate.  They would want
me in the main house with them. 

I
also knew the rest of my protection team would know the circumstances of my
attack and I couldn’t face them on a daily basis.  Not yet. 

I’d
seen them, of course, but only in short visits. 

When
Hyde insisted on sleeping in a chair that converted to a bed in the corner of
my room, I’d barely been able to bear it.  He had the same trouble, a look
of constant rage on his face I’d never seen on any person in all my life. 

One
morning, I woke up and he was gone. 

I
wondered if he’d come back.  The thought that I might not ever see him
again hurt me more than I could admit to anyone. 

So
I spent my time reading and writing notes for my third book.  The days
passed slowly but I avoided trying to piece together what had happened to me or
dwelling on Hyde’s absence. 

Even
though it felt like I was still bleeding on the inside.

Seven
weeks after the attack, my primary doctor entered my room and closed the door
on the two heavily armed men I didn’t recognize flanking it.  They were
the daytime detail.  They tried to stop her but she had a spine of
steel. 

“I
don’t care who the fuck you are, this is private between doctor and
patient.  Back off.” 

Dr.
Theresa Spellman was flown in from Boston to oversee my case.  My parents
offered her a new lab to make the move permanently but she refused.  I’d
met her several times when I was younger and we’d always had lovely
conversations.  We worked together on multiple charities. 

Right
now, her normally lovely latte skin was pale and the skin was drawn tight
around her eyes and mouth. 

I
gave her a smile.  Small but genuine.  “Just tell me, Theresa. 
Best to just get it out.  Do I have an STD that’s going to haunt me for
the rest of my life?”

Clearing
her throat carefully, she said, “No, no disease of any kind though you’re still
anemic from the blood loss you suffered.  Your progress is coming along
well because you were so healthy before your attack.” 

Folding
her hands in front of her, I watched as she closed her eyes and took a deep
breath.  “I’ve waited to tell you something because I can’t imagine all
the shit you’re dealing with and my main priority has been stabilizing
you.  I can’t wait any longer.”  She met my gaze and said calmly,
“Ellie honey, you’re pregnant.” 

As
the statement hung in the suddenly heavy air between us, the enormity of what she’d
said reached me like a sharp slap. 

Theresa’s
voice was incredibly kind.  “Listen to me, Ellie.  I can take care of
this and no one, not even your parents, will ever know about it.  I know
how deeply you love them and they will never need to know this happened to
you.  I will take your confidence to the grave.”

I
stared out the window for a long time.  The heat vapor coming off the roof
below my floor held me mesmerized as I rolled the shocking news around in my
mind.  I’d always been pro-choice and I always would be.