Malice in Paradise
Chapter One – Meeting Alice
She awoke with a start. The door of her room was pushed open, before two male nurses rolled a bed inside. There was someone lying on it but only a head, covered in bandages, and a hand, which had slid off the bed, could be seen around the amount of bed sheets. She sat up slowly, her head slightly aching due to the noise, and looked puzzled at the two men who had rolled the bed next to hers and were now bringing it into an immobile position.
"Everywhere else is full, we're overrun by emergencies tonight," one of the two said to her, answering her confused look. "I hope you don't mind, Alice!" he added with a slight smile before he turned to the other nurse and signaled him to leave. With that they were gone.
She wanted to ask who her new roommate was, but too late. She tried to see some trace of face or skin amidst the pile of sheets but she couldn't make out anything. The other patient seemed to face the other side. She decided to leave her bed and look who was accompanying her. She got off the bed slowly as her head was still racing and its deafening noise made her feel rather shaky. Her bare feet touched the cold floor and she quietly walked over to the end of the other bed. Going around it a bit, she then could see a male face, covered in bandages and band-aids, and some dark hair, standing wildly off the top of his head. She walked to the clipboard that was attached to the end of his bed and began to read.
"Seamus O'Grady," she read quietly. "Accident. Lung contusion, broken rips, brain concussion, wound in the stomach, mildly injured organs, fractured wrist."
She looked up at the guy in the bed again.
"O'Grady… O'Grady…," she muttered to herself. "I know that name…"
She furrowed her forehead and examined the man's face (or the parts that she could see).
"Well, whoever you are, you must have been through a hell of a time!"
It was then that she heard voices outside the door. She quickly got back to her bed and almost jumped into the cushions (her head was now about to explode), when the door of the room opened quietly. The noise inside her head was so loud it completely shut out everything the men that had entered the room were saying. She only caught some bits that made no sense at all – and she caught the funny way those men were talking. She recognized their thick accent immediately. Irish.
O'Grady. Irish.
"Irish mafia!" she gasped, hiding her face deep in the pillows of her bed, trying to lie still and listen over the drumming in her head.
The men didn't seemed to notice her and after a while, they left the room again. She looked up slowly, and seeing that she was alone with that O'Grady guy again, she sat up in her bed and looked over to the other. There was no movement from the man next to her, she couldn't even see if he was still breathing. But however bad his injuries were, he had to be more or less healed again as he was now sharing a room with a girl who got here because of a rather banal fact.
She slowly got off the bed again and, walking to the end of it, shot a quick look at her own clipboard. It said: "Alice M., circulatory disturbance. Scratch to the forehead. Mild concussion."
"That's pathetic compared to his injuries…," she muttered and looked over to the other bed.
When her head began to race again, and she remembered how it had come this far, she decided to go to the bathroom of the patients' room. Entering the small cabinet, a wave of nausea rushed over her and she quickly leant onto the sink, watching her pale self in the mirror.
Her dyed blond hair (the roots of which had to be re-dyed for her originally black hair would come through again) was totally messed up and looked as if it had never seen a hairbrush before. She tried to straighten it a bit with water, but it wouldn't help. She shook her head slightly and decided to throw some cold water in her face that felt awkwardly hot even though her skin was as white as a piece of paper (which was odd even for her standards as a daughter of a rather tanned Latin American woman and a very pale Canadian man). Cold sweat poured from her forehead, making her lean down and refresh herself. Drying her face with a towel she found next to the sink, she sighed loudly, remembering why she had to spend the next twenty-four hours in this goddamn hospital…
It had been after lunch when Alice walked to the next class with her friends. She had spent the whole time of her lunch break thinking about how she could figure out her current parental situation of having to cope with a drunken stepfather, a little brother and no mother around while her stupid little friends had been complaining about how stupid boys of the same age were that she had forgotten to eat anything. Three hours later, when she was supposed to have PE with the prospect of having to run a mile, the world around her went black and she found herself lying on the ground, stared at by many worried faces. She fainted and she didn't just fell over, but hit the edge of a locker when she fell. There was blood involved too. The teacher soon after sent her to hospital where she had to stay over night because the doctors thought she might fell over once more.
Stupid doctors. She hated to be here. She hated hospitals. She was too young to stay here! She had heard so many terrible stories about people dying in hospitals, right under the great noses of those great doctors who can almost heal anything! Screw that! Those doctors were just as human as she or the guy was that was now sharing the room with her. And that was the next thing: they didn't even have enough space of every patient! Stupid! However stupid it might be to spend the night in a place full of sick people, she still had the tiniest bit of contentment that it would be one night without watching her stepfather sitting on a couch watching stupid football games. Drinking every can of beer he could find.
She quickly quit thinking as her head was beginning to race again and she couldn't stand the sound of her own blood rushing through her ears. It was deafening... She sighed and left the bathroom. When she entered the patients' room again, her eyes fell immediately on the stranger's bed – which was empty.
She looked around in confusion before she saw him standing at the window, his back turned to her. He was tall, really tall, and he was wearing a grey shirt and tight black trousers that emphasized his muscled legs and were stuck in red Doc Martens. He also wore red braces that hung loosely at his sides. His short black hair had some Mohawk-ish features to it. Even though she only saw his back, she thought that he seemed to be muscled and definitely in good shape. She again wondered what brought him into this hospital.
She slowly walked over to her bed (and tried to reach it before he noticed her) and spotted that he had ripped off all his bandages, now lying on his empty bed. Before she could, however, reach her bed and slip under the sheets unnoticed, the man at the window turned around – and stopped right in his tracks when he saw her.
So did Alice. She immediately froze due to his staring gaze and tried to hide the fear that rose inside her. She never stood face to face to an Irish mobster. But living in Los Angeles, she knew, that making eye contact with one of these guys practically always meant trouble. And this was the exact same thing that she felt when she stared into this guy's eyes. He stared at her as if she was a ghost – and she suddenly wished to actually be one.
He slowly broke his stare and came walking towards her, shaking his head, staring and muttering things she couldn't understand. As he was merely two feet away from her, she heard what he was muttering:
"Helen!" There was blind hatred in his voice.
She stared at him but before she knew it, he was in front of her, locking eyes with her, his hands clenched to fists, dangling at his sides, his face switching with anger. Even without having the slightest chance to react to his sudden movement, Alice saw his hand shooting forward. He grabbed her throat with a force that made her squeak in shock and just stare, motionless, into those dark eyes that were sparkling with red fury.
A/N: This Seamus O'Grady fanfiction is set some weeks after Seamus fell off the roof of the Los Angeles Theatre - and I know that he seemingly died in the end, but no, there was no direct proof (no, Creepy Thin Man didn't killed him and neither did the giant E that fell on him xD); I mean, come on, the Angels survived so many mad things, so can he. It's fiction, man, and it's Hollywood, everything's possible! So, what does a man like him do after almost dying by the hand of the gal that put him to prison? Right, sweet, sweet revenge! That's what this story is about. And other things, actually, but we'll come to that later!
- See in the next chapter: Alice and Seamus - innocent girl and bad guy? Read on, and learn more about Alice!
Disclaimer: Seamus O'Grady belongs to Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Alice is my OC!
