Trainwreck 2 (Trainwreck #2) (17 page)

“What’s going on?”

There was no time to answer her.

Sarah

S
pike’s face contorted in pain as I continued to shred it. Though my strength was waning, I dug deeper and deeper into his flesh with my bloodied tiara. His ugly face looked even uglier and more terrifying with the bloody patchwork of scratches covering it. Then finally, with force, he tore it out of my hand and tossed it across the room.

“You fucking cunt. You’re mine now.”

Unable to move or speak, my eyes stayed fixed on him, wide with terror. Oh God! Was this the end?

BUZZZZZZ.

“What the fuck?” he sneered at the sudden sound of my intercom.

BUZZZZZZ.
Oh my God! Someone was here! Ari? It could only be him! If only I could free myself and let him in. But Spike’s weight held me down.

The intercom continued to buzz and buzz.

“Finish her off! And let’s get the hell out of here,” I heard Catherine bark at him, panic in her sharp voice. “We’ll go down the fire escape.”

One more long buzz and then the buzzing stopped. All hope flew out the door. Ari was gone. He had given up. Another round of tears swam down my cheeks.

“Just do it, you moron, and get it over with!” screamed Catherine.

Still pinning me down, Spike released his hand from my mouth, and with all I had, I spat at him. His blood-streaked face reddened with rage.

“That’s it, cunt!”

I watched as he reached into his jeans pocket and then I gasped. In his hand was a pocketknife—a much bigger one than the one he had held to my face earlier in the day.

“I prefer them big,” Catherine snorted. “What the hell are you waiting for, Spike?”

With a flick of his finger, a six-inch, razor-sharp blade shot out of the knife. His eyes blazing with rage, he pointed it at me, aiming it directly at my heart. I was too paralyzed with fear to let out a scream or squeeze my eyes shut. On my next petrified breath, the cold metal plunged into my chest with a sharp ripping sound. At first, as warm blood seeped through my gown, I felt nothing. Then, a horrible pain permeated my body. An unbearable throbbing, like none other, circled my heart, coming in waves of intensity, sometimes sharp twinges, sometimes profound pounding. It was much like the heartache I felt when I decided to no longer see Ari, but magnified one hundred times over with the sheer intensity of it. Burning tears leaked from my eyes as the bodice of my pink gown quickly turned a shade of crimson and my breathing grew labored.

“Say goodbye to your pathetic life, Sarah,” Catherine snickered. “Oh, and don’t worry about me. Assistants are a dime a dozen.”

With all I had left, I rasped out the two words I had always wanted to fling at her. “Fuck you.”

Stamping out her cigarette on the floor, she cackled. “No, you little whore. Fuck you. While you’re rotting in hell, I’ll be in happily-ever-afterville with my husband and son.”

Her wicked words only added to the pain. Oh Ari! Oh Ben! I could taste my tears as my assailant yanked out the knife lodged in my flesh with a smarmy grin. He had finished what he had started this afternoon. He rose to his feet and admired his handiwork. His mutilated face and my surroundings became hazy as life ebbed out of me. The profound aching succumbed to numbness. The image of my mother’s beautiful, once youthful face filled my head and alternated with that of my beautiful Trainman. I was dying.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I heard Catherine say with urgency.

In the distance, I thought I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs to my apartment. Perhaps my mind was just playing tricks on me—that the pounding was just in my head and this is what happened as life reached its end. And then a loud thud sounded at the door.
BANG!
BANG! BANG! SMASH!
The door burst open and crashed to the floor.

“Oy vey iz mir!”
shrieked a familiar voice.

“Call 911!” shouted another as he tackled my assailant, sending him sprawling on the floor. “You motherfucker!”

Ari!

“Spike, you moron, kill him!” shrieked Catherine.

Her words whirled around in my head as my breathing grew haggard and life ebbed out of me.

No easy prey, an enraged Spike staggered to his feet and charged at Ari with the knife in his hand. “Fuck you, asshole!”

With lightning-quick reflexes, Ari dodged him. Then with one single flying roundhouse kick—straight out of a
Power Rangers
episode—he knocked the knife out of Spike’s hand, sending it flying across the room. Balling his hand into a fist, he plowed into my assailant and, with a loud grunt, sent him crashing to the floor, this time unconscious.

It was all such a blur as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

“What have you done to her, you fucking bitch?” I heard Ari shout out to Catherine.

“I’ve saved you the time and effort of eliminating that lowlife little whore. I’m the only one for you,” she retorted while Ari ran over to me and crouched down beside me.

“Jesus,” he muttered as he yanked off his tux jacket and held it firmly against my now numb wound. In his other arm, he cradled my head.

I gazed up at him, and my lips curled up into a faint smile. “My Green Ranger,” I managed, my breathing labored, my voice just a whisper.

His eyes burnt into mine. They were watering. “
Saarah
, stay with me. You can’t give up.” His voice was hoarse and tearful. He lifted my limp, bandaged hand to his lips and kissed my fingertips. Though I was numb, the touch of his velvety lips still made me feel alive.

“I’m going to miss you,” I rasped.

“Shh,” he said, smoothing my hair. A tear escaped one of his sapphire eyes and landed on my cheek.

Sirens sounded in the distance outside. They kept on getting louder. Closer.

Ari leaned in closer to me until his warm breath skimmed my cheeks. “Please don’t leave me. I love you,
Saarah
.”

I knew it was the last time I’d ever hear him say my name. Hear that sexy lilt that made me tingle every time I’d heard it roll off his tongue. But I was at peace. Love has no age, no limit, no death. My Trainman loved me.

As his lips neared mine, my eyelids fluttered. Terror consumed me. Catherine, with the knife in her hand, crept up behind him. I tried to warn him, but my lips wouldn’t move no matter how hard I willed them. I screamed in silence. With madness flickering in her eyes, she lowered the knife to his back.
Noooooooooo!

An explosion rocked my body…a flash of white light…and then everything faded to black.

Ari

T
here’s no such thing as a beautiful nightmare.

As surreal as it was, I was living a real life one. A nightmare from hell.

The events of the last few hours whipped through my throbbing head like a cyclone.

All the blood. The explosion. The sirens. The gala was now a blur, having faded from my memory.

A sudden chill ripped through me. Still in my soaked tux, I tugged at the blanket the paramedics had given me to keep warm while my weary eyes stayed locked on my fallen princess lying motionless in the back of an ambulance that was taking us to Lenox Hill Hospital. All color had left her fair face and it was now covered with an oxygen mask. IVs were hooked up to her thin arms, and a blanket like mine was wrapped around her along with what remained of her pink gown. By the time the paramedics arrived, the entire bodice was soaked completely through with blood. Without wasting a second, they ripped off the spaghetti straps and cut through the top of her dress so they could treat her massive wound. About three inches deep, it extended from her left collarbone to the top of her chest. Having spent a year in med school and been there myself before, I knew it was fucking serious. Even as the paramedics frantically worked on her, the blood kept pouring out with no end in sight. No one had to tell me they were dealing with a possibly fatal wound. I now knew how much she meant to me. She was no longer just under my skin. She was in my heart, a part of me. For as she lay there close to death, I was dying too.

I took a much needed deep breath as I sat beside her, never letting go of her limp, ice-cold hand. Had she not been wearing the mask, I would have kissed her beautiful lips with the hope of breathing life back into her just like a prince’s fairy-tale kiss awoke his beloved Snow White. But deep down inside, I knew fairy tales didn’t come true. My so called fairy-tale marriage to Cassandra was a disaster and now this. My broken heart ached so badly I thought I’d cry out from the pain. Fucking Cassandra had succeeded again. And I hated her more than ever for doing this to me and to the woman I loved with all my heart and soul.

After weaving in and out of the insane Friday night traffic that was made worse by the pouring rain, the blaring ambulance flew into the VIP entrance of Lenox Hill Hospital where just a few days ago I had taken Sarah’s friend Lauren. The back doors of the emergency vehicle swung open and I jumped out. My heart in my throat, I watched as they wheeled my beloved princess out and transferred her to another gurney. But as they strapped her down, she began to convulse. My inner panic button went off.

“What’s happening?”

“She’s going into hypovolemic shock!” responded one of the paramedics, her voice full of alarm. “Quick. Move it! Move it!”

Clutching the railing of the gurney, I kept up with the medics as they rushed her through the sliding electronic doors into the hospital. My heart was pounding.

“Where are you taking her?” I breathed out as we raced through the halls of the hospital.

“Straight to surgery.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured, my pulse thrumming in my ears as I watched my baby shake violently.

“Stay with me, my warrior princess.” In my strung-out state, I wasn’t sure if I’d said the words to myself or out loud. Her eyes fluttered. Either way, I knew she’d heard them.

###
♥
###

I’d been in this hospital too many goddamn times. To visit my father as he lay dying…to be with my son after his premature birth and then later when he hit his head and fell into a coma…to be treated after my own brutal stabbing…and just the other night to deal with Sarah’s friend’s suicide attempt. And now, here I was again, perhaps dealing with the worst life or death crisis of my life.

Sarah had already been in surgery for two hours. I sat anxiously in the waiting room for any sign of some news. My sister Gwen had come to join me and brought me a change of clothes—some jeans and a sweatshirt. Everything, thank God, was okay with Ben, who was not told anything of what had gone down tonight. There was no need for him to know. Not now. Not ever. The only thing that weighed on my mind was how I was going to break the news to him if Sarah didn’t pull through. At the thought, I shuddered and felt bile rise to my throat.

I had told everything there was to know to my sister. That Cassandra was Sarah’s boss. And that she’d earlier threatened me at my office. Gwen was totally shocked. The police had found two items of interest in her handbag. The gun was bad enough, but it was the other item that had shaken me. A letter from a very respected law firm taking her on as a client in an effort to win full custody of Ben. Gwen knew the firm well. One of the top ones, they were as cutthroat as they come and known for their scare tactics.

“Do you think Sarah knew about the letter?” Gwen inquired as we continued to await news about Sarah.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, growing more worried by the minute. Why was it taking so long?

Before Gwen could say another word, the doors to the waiting room swung open and a doctor came through them. Silver haired, he wore his mask above his head and was still in his scrubs. An expression of worry was etched deep on his weary face. I leapt up from my chair.

“Is she going to be okay?” Still sitting, Gwen gripped my hand.

The doctor flipped his steel-rimmed glasses atop his mask. We shared a short stretch of silence as a sickening feeling swept over me. Gwen tightened her grip, knowing the inevitable as well as I did.

“She’s—”

“Fuck no!” I cried out, cutting him off, my hand flying to my face. “Goddammit!”