Unexpected Consequences (11 page)

“Funny. Report back when you have something. I’ll expect to hear from you soon,” Vincent said before walking to the door.

“I’ll miss you too, Vinny,” Nick said dryly as he watched the door close behind him. “Asshole.”

That creep always got to him, despite his efforts to ignore him. Needing something to smile about, he pulled out his phone and replied to Kelsey.

I’m glad you liked them. I saw them and thought they were almost as beautiful as you. I’ll see you soon.

He packed the rest of his things in less than an hour and decided to check in with his old pal Bart before heading out for dinner. Pacing the length of the room, he dialled his phone and waited for a response.

“Hey, Nick. What’s up?”

“Just checking on that hangover, dude. How’d you do getting to work this morning?”

“Tough morning, man. I’m not as young as I used to be. Late nights affect me a hell of a lot more now than they did back then.”

Nick laughed. “You’re just blaming the beer for all those games you lost last night. You’re rusty. Admit it.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I could never seem to beat your ass.”

“I enjoyed myself, dude. I forgot how much fun it is to hang out with you,” Nick said seriously.

“Yeah, man, it was fun. I’m glad you’re gonna be sticking around for a while. By the way, I’m glad you called. Faith and I want to have you over for dinner one night this week. What’s your schedule like?”

“Well, I’d have to check with my activities coordinator and she’s away from her desk right now.”

“Always a smartass. Some things never change.”

“Some things do,” Nick whispered softly.

“How does Friday look for you?”

“Friday? No, dude, I got plans on Friday.”

“Ah, you got a date with the hottie, huh? Well, how about Saturday? You can bring her along. I’d like to meet her, too.”

“Okay, we’ll plan on Saturday, but I can’t speak for her. Let me check with her and I’ll get back to you on that, okay?”

“No problem. I gotta run. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Take care, Bartholomew. And give my best to the little woman, okay?”

He hung up the phone and sighed heavily. He hated everything about this plan. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he could finish the better. This life was no longer for him.

The question was—could he get out?

Chapter Twelve

Nick tossed his phone callously on his bed and mumbled in frustration. Seems there was no pleasing them, no matter what he did. He walked to the window of his dismal new apartment and winced each time the insipid neon light blinked on and off.

How had he ended up here? He’d been told he’d amount to nothing, and here he was, living in a one-room hovel above a restaurant, his sole purpose to convince his once best friend to turn a blind eye.

Trying to shake off dejection, he flipped on his favourite jazz station and lay on his bed. Music had always calmed him, bringing him a sense of peace when nothing else could. Listening to the haunting sounds of Louis Armstrong, he closed his eyes and tried to quell the lingering memories. The soulful melodies often eased his pain, but not today.

He looked around his run-down
home
and sighed. There was so much more to life than this, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever have it—or even deserve it.

Giving up all hope of relaxation, he stood from the bed, grabbed his leather jacket and walked towards the door. Perhaps some fresh air would help.

* * * *

“What do you mean it won’t be here until Thursday?” Kelsey yelled into the phone. “That’s tomorrow! It was supposed to be here yesterday!”

Not getting the answer she wanted, she shook her head and let out a cleansing breath. ”Just get it here. And I expect compensation for the delay.” She slammed the phone on its cradle, knowing it made no difference to the incompetent clerk on the other end but was rewardingly therapeutic for her.

“Ugh,” she grunted before dropping her head down on her desk. Getting the clinic up and running was so much harder than she’d expected. When she’d accepted the job, she’d been briefed as to what had been completed and what was still pending, but unfortunately, many of the things she’d been told were finished were far from it. She should have anticipated that, considering how many different people had been handling the duties before she’d started. With only a matter of weeks before the clinic’s scheduled opening, she was quickly becoming overwhelmed with the fear that she wouldn’t meet the deadline.

Frantic voices near the entrance caught her attention as she lifted her head and wondered what else could possibly go wrong. The man had finally arrived to fix her front door, but unless he was talking to himself, something else was going on.

“Can I help you?” she asked as she walked around the corner. Standing before her was a teenager holding the wobbly shell of a young girl under his arm, her head buried in his shoulder.

Kelsey shook her head at him as he began to rattle off a long explanation of what had happened—not only was he frantic, but he also spoke Spanish, which she didn’t speak. Regardless, she understood enough to know his
hermana
, his sister, had been hurt.

Kelsey gestured for him to wait one moment as she picked up the phone. Calling University Hospital, she requested an ambulance to come and pick the kids up, knowing the clinic wasn’t prepared to assist them. They told her it would be just a few minutes, so she tried to help them the best she could in the meantime.

“Do you understand English?” she asked the scared young boy. When he gestured ‘a little’ with a pinch of his fingers, she nodded in agreement.

Kelsey spoke slowly and made gestures with her hands as she explained, “I called the ambulance to take her to the hospital. The doctor will take care of her there.”

He visibly relaxed when she spoke the words ‘ambulance’, ‘hospital’ and ‘doctor’, and his heavy sigh told Kelsey he understood she was getting them help.

He bent down and whispered into his sister’s ear. After he’d finished, the poor girl finally lifted her head and turned her face towards Kelsey, revealing just a hint of the injuries she’d sustained.

She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, with long black hair and gorgeous golden brown skin. The left side of her face was puffy and covered in a myriad of black and blue marks, along with several bleeding scrapes and cuts. Her thin, frail body was covered in an oversized denim jacket, evidently given to her by her brother to cover her. When Kelsey noticed the tatters of the torn skirt hanging out from underneath the jacket, her heart shattered with the assumption that she’d been raped.

Relief finally arrived in the form of sirens in the distance. Instead of showing comfort, however, the terrified girl clung to her brother. “It’ll be okay,” Kelsey said with a warm smile, bending down so her face was even with hers. “They’ll take good care of you. You’re safe now. No one is going to hurt you.”

She tried to shut out the horror of the scene—two innocent lives, forever changed in a few darkened moments. The gang violence plaguing the area had been gradually increasing in intensity, but Kelsey’s brothers assured her they were doing all they could to help the Brookfield Police Department end it. She prayed they could double their efforts, or she’d be seeing many more victims like this pitiful young girl once the clinic opened.

She helped the frightened child into the ambulance, saying a prayer of thanks that not only was one of the paramedics a woman, but that she spoke Spanish as well. She wasn’t sure how the girl would have dealt with the transport to the hospital otherwise. The brother thanked her and followed his sister into the back of the ambulance. Kelsey helped secure the doors and sent the vehicle on its way.

By the time the ambulance had left, the maintenance worker had finished installing her brand new door, but she was left with a mound of unfinished paperwork. The events of the day having left her mentally drained, she threw a stack of papers into a box and secured the lid, preferring to tackle them in the comfort of home instead of the hollow atmosphere of the unopened emergency clinic.

She locked the new front door and felt a small accomplishment when she read the stencilling on the top. The new entrance, complete with a replacement plate glass window on the side, was a small reminder that the clinic was finally coming together. It may have been slower than she wanted, but her dream was becoming a reality.

She admired the shiny glass for a few minutes and headed for her car. In the distance, she heard the familiar pounding of loud music and occasional boisterous voices, but she wasn’t concerned for her safety. She’d been there for several weeks and there’d been no trouble in her immediate area. It seemed to be an unspoken rule in the neighbourhood that the clinic was off-limits. She just hoped it remained that way.

* * * *

As Nick strolled along the pier, soothed by the lapping water below, his thoughts drifted back to that dreadful day. He lived with the horrible images, seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy. Images no person should ever have to see. Fifteen years had passed, but although the memory had lessened, the pain never did. It’d affected every aspect of his life, every decision he’d made, from that day forward.

He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it, or perhaps he had intentionally ignored it, but when he realised today would have been the bastard’s fiftieth birthday, all the negative emotions flooded back. Uncharacteristically lost in a world of self-pity, Nick wondered why he was the one forced to deal with this heavy burden. Why couldn’t he have had a normal childhood like any other kid?

With a heavy heart, he passed a family enjoying the cool night air. The man and woman each held a hand of the little girl walking between them. They laughed and counted, lifting the squealing child high in the air on every fourth step.
That’s what a family should be, happily laughing and enjoying each other.
It was the life he had desperately wanted, but had never had. Instead, he had dealt with beatings and booze, neglect and fear.

The stars sparkled in the clear night sky, but Nick paid them no mind, his focus instead on the old weathered planks of the Brookfield pier. He was wandering aimlessly, no thoughts about where he was going or what he would encounter. He’d been on his own for over half his life, but he’d never felt as alone as he did in that moment.

A few steps later, he spotted a smooth, flat rock sitting on the edge of a pylon. Skipping it skilfully across the water, he laughed at the irony, knowing it was the one and only thing his father had ever taught him that wasn’t horrific and traumatising.

He jogged up the nearby staircase and away from the water, and suddenly realised where he was. He walked past the abandoned bowling alley, and stopped to admire the condition of the smaller building beside it. Its brick had been painted, the windows and door replaced, and the sidewalk and adjoining alley cleaned and made to look as good as new.

Peeking into the crystal clean window to the dimly lit space, he smiled when he saw how great the place looked. Though still covered in plastic, the front desk and chairs in the waiting room seemed like they were set up and ready for business.

He smiled as he looked towards the small office around the corner, imagining her by her desk, working hard to achieve her dream. After backing away from the window, he wiped away the marks his hands had made on the glass and smiled proudly. Unable to resist, he turned the corner and headed south, one destination in mind.

* * * *

Kelsey’s eyes could no longer focus as she stared at the same papers. Flopping back into the couch, an invoice in each hand, she sighed in frustration. She’d been trying to balance the clinic’s account for almost an hour, and no matter how she tallied them, the numbers just wouldn’t match.

The stress of the day, plus her aggravation with this stage of the clinic’s opening, was so overwhelming that she just couldn’t take it any longer. She threw the papers into the box and slammed the lid, giving up for the evening.

She smiled when she passed the vase holding the pink roses on her way to the kitchen. In the two days since she’d received them, they’d given her that same reaction more times than she could count. Seeing the blooms reminded her of the wonderful man who’d sent them, and the inevitable butterflies again fluttered deep inside.

After taking a glass down from the cabinet, she opened the wine and poured until the glass was full.
I just need to relax. I need to unwind. I need… Nah. I can’t call him. Can I?

After another glance at the flowers, she returned to the living room and fished her phone from her purse.
Could I? No, that would be presumptuous, but, maybe…

She flipped through her text messages and sighed when she got to the handful they’d exchanged since their abrupt separation on Sunday.
I’m supposed to see him in two days anyway, what would be the harm in calling him? Would he be turned off if I called? No, that’s silly. It turned him on when I approached him at the bar. What would be the harm?

“No,” she said aloud and set her phone on the counter. “I’ll see him Friday.”

She grabbed her wine, walked back to the couch, and kicked her feet up to make herself comfortable. With her drink in one hand and the remote control in the other, she clicked through channels, hoping to find something decent on TV to keep her entertained for at least a short while.

Ten minutes later, she shut it off and tossed the remote back on the table. “All crap. Why can’t they put something on TV worth watching?” She got up to refill her wine, trying to figure out what else to do. Anything was better than balancing ledgers.

Glancing at her cell sitting silently on the counter, she again brushed off the idea.
I’m not sure I could even hold the phone, much less punch in the correct numbers.
Although she was far too nervous to call him unexpectedly, she couldn’t tear her eyes from the small electronic device that was seemingly calling out to her.

“Oh, good grief, Kelsey, just call the man.” She finally picked up her phone, but just as she hit the button to display her contact list, a knock on the door startled her and the phone dropped clumsily to the floor.