CHAPTER TWO
1529 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Katie felt breathless as she listened to the phone ring. Who would answer, her mother or her father? Would they listen when they heard her voice? Or hang up on her immediately? Her stomach twisted at the thought. Surely they wouldn't do that.
When she’d been a kid, five a.m. had been a busy time in the summer months. Her dad would already be awake, in the shed behind the house, preparing for the day ahead, hitching up his trailer, checking bookings for the boats he hired out. Her mother would be making coffee and snacks for the guests, school lunch for Katie and Josie.
When she'd been there recently, the house had been different. Quieter. Her parents had been shrouded in depression and grief, staring at the television. Surely at this early hour, they couldn’t already be stationed there? And yet that was how she pictured them. That image of them had stuck in her mind.
Just as she thought it was going to ring unanswered, the call was picked up.
"Hello?"
Katie felt a rush of relief that it was her mother speaking. She closed her eyes, and gripped the phone tighter in her hand. She knew what the next few words would mean.
"Mom?" she said in a low voice. "It's me, Katie. Please don't hang up. I’m calling from a payphone. I have important news." She needed to get that imperative across to her.
"What is it? Are you okay?" She could almost imagine her mother, standing in the hallway, glancing behind her, conscious of her father's angry inhalation of breath from the living room as he realized that the daughter that he'd banned from communicating, was getting in touch again.
"I'm fine." She took a deep breath. "Mom, I - I found her. I found Josie."
Tears prickled her own eyes at the words, flowing onto her cheeks, unstoppable. Her chest was heaving as she spoke and she found herself fighting for control.
Her mother gasped.
"What? Katie, what - you mean, you found her? Are you saying she's - she’s alive?"
"She's alive. She's not well, but she's stable. She's in Rochester General Hospital. Sedated. He had her. Gabriel had her. He kept her locked away."
It didn't help that now she could hear her mother sobbing - great, rough, gasping sobs that sounded as if her whole heart's pain was being poured out. No way could Katie stop herself from crying as she heard this onslaught of emotion.
"You need to get here. Please. As soon as you can."
She wanted to hear some acknowledgement from her mother. But all she heard were the sobs, more intense and heartfelt than any grief she'd ever heard before.
"Rochester General Hospital. I'm here, Mom."
She thought her mother was trying to say something.
But then, abruptly, the call was cut.
*
Katie sat in the waiting room, fidgeting impatiently. It was an hour and a half later. She didn't know what was happening, or if her parents were going to arrive.
She hadn't wanted to call back. They knew her cellphone number if they needed to call her. All they had to do was unblock it.
But if they had decided to come to the hospital, if they'd gotten into their car and headed to Rochester, then they should be arriving at any moment.
She could hear the nurses and doctors coming and going in the neighboring ward. But the corridor door remained closed. She'd heard no other visitors, no other voices.
And then, suddenly, footsteps approached and the door swung open.
Her mother walked in, her face sheet-white, her eyes swollen. She seemed dazed, as if she was treading a line between disbelief and reality.
"Katie," she cried. "Oh Katie. You found her. Is she really here? Really okay?"
The tears streamed down her mother's face.
Katie stood up, rushing over to her mother, enfolding her in her arms, holding her close.
"She'll be okay. She's going to be better. They said so. But she's sedated now."
She hadn’t held her this way for sixteen years, in all the time she'd been estranged from her family.
"I can't believe it," she wept, "I - I can't believe it. It's incredible. You found her."
"I promised I'd try," Katie whispered.
Katie felt her mother convulse with sobs, holding on to her with desperation.
"I'm so sorry for what I did," she sobbed, "I'm so sorry I failed you. I failed her."
"No," Katie comforted her. "You didn't fail me or Josie. It's all okay."
Katie put her arms around her, and held her tightly, waiting until her sobs had calmed, watching while she dabbed at her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
And then, looking up, she saw her father walk in.
He looked more forlorn than Katie had ever seen him.
He had also been crying. His eyes were reddened and swollen. His shoulders were hunched. His graying hair was tousled and untidy.
He looked at Katie. Then he looked down.
"I'm sorry, Katie," he said. "I'm so, so sorry. I don’t know how to say this, the words don’t mean enough. I doubted you. I couldn't hear what you said. I didn't believe it was possible."
"It is possible, Dad," Katie said.
She stepped forward and embraced her dad. He wasn't much of a hugger. The embrace felt awkward, but he held her tight, and to Katie, it meant the world.
"Shall we go and see Josie?" her mother asked. "Are we allowed?"
"I guess we are," Katie said.
She walked over to the door where the doctor had come out, and pushed it open, finding herself in a small annex.
Beyond was the other door to Josie's private high-care ward. Katie tapped on it, and a minute later, a nurse opened it.
The white-uniformed woman looked inquiringly at Katie.
"Do you want to see Josie?" she asked, glancing at her parents beyond.
"Yes, if it's possible, please," Katie said.
"Sure. You can come in. She's sedated, so you can't interact with her. But I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear your voice."
There was a hint of uncertainty in the nurse's voice; Katie wasn't sure why. She saw she had a fresh, deep scratch on her cheek.
The nurse stepped aside and Katie walked in, with her parents anxiously crowding through the doorway behind her. They walked over to the bed where Josie lay. She'd been bathed, Katie saw, but her skin still looked pale and sallow, as if starved of sunshine for years. Her lips were cracked and dry. Lines on either side of her mouth and around her eyes were deep and grim even in repose, and Katie thought, with a clench of her stomach, that they spoke of untold stress, suffering, and torment. Her eyes, though closed, looked sunken, with blue shadows underscoring them.
The beeping of machines was the audible reassurance that she was alive, that she was stable. A drip filtered liquids and nutrients into her veins.
Her mother stepped forward and grasped her hand. Josie’s nails looked freshly cut and Katie guessed the hospital had done that. They hadn't been able to do anything with her hair, though, except to chop the tangled, filthy mess into a roughly short, neat style.
"Oh, Josie, Josie," her mother whispered.
Tears dripped down onto her twin's arm.
"Things are going to be okay," Katie said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
Wanting to give her father some space, Katie stepped back. Her father sat down on the chair by the bed. He reached out and took Josie's other hand.
"Hello, my little girl," he said, tears staining his cheeks. "Oh, my little girl."
And, at that moment, her phone started buzzing in her pocket. It was Leblanc's name on the screen, she saw.
Detective Leblanc, her case partner at the cross-border task force, and now, her lover.
“I’m just going to go out and take this call,” she murmured, but she didn’t think her parents even heard. They were so preoccupied with Josie, that Katie didn’t feel guilty for giving them some time alone with her as she hurried out and picked it up.
"Leblanc. Where are you? I'm here at Rochester hospital."
She wasn't sure where Leblanc would be, whether he would still be at work, in the office at Sault Ste. Marie where the task force was based, or whether he would already be home in his apartment.
But his next words shocked her.
"I'm here, too. At the hospital. Scott told me what happened. I had to come and see you, Katie. I needed to make sure for myself that you were okay. And to speak to you. There’s something I have to tell you urgently."
Katie's eyes widened. Leblanc was here? That was a total shock. Over and above the stress of her current situation, she felt her heart briefly lift at the thought of seeing him. What did he need to tell her?
Feeling curious to know, and eager to see him, she rushed out of the waiting room and down the stairs to meet him.
- Writer
