Sorry for the massive delay, but in the last months I lost my beta-reader and I was no longer motivated to continue 'Protect you', but considering that I wrote other fan-fictions with no beta-reader, I thought I could go on with this on my own. Surely it won't be as good as before and I'm gonna lose many readers, but I really hate to leave things incomplete and so I'm gonna publish all I meant to. Thank you so much for everyone who reviewed and will keep reading. A few chapters left.
P.S.
When I started writing this fiction, I never really thought that Brendan would have been violent with Ste, well the show proved I was wrong.
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Chapter 14
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Amy started running, breathless, towards the hospital as soon as she took Brendan's call.
Just seeing his name on her phone was enough to put her in red alert, making her heart beat frantically for the strange and eerie premonition that something bad had happened to Ste and Brendan was the only responsible.
She could not even believe him when he swore that he hadn't put a finger on Ste. Simply she refused to believe it.
The only thing still standing was her firm conviction that the time had finally come, the time Brendan Brady would pay for all the bad he had done, once and for all.
At that moment, Ste was inside a fucking operating room, and she didn't know why.
She could have imagined that, though. Because Brendan Brady was a crazy psychopath and had ruined Ste's life, their lives actually, from the first day that he had set foot in them.
Her heart had a moment of break only when Brendan got up from the seat of the waiting room and disappeared away from her sight. She could not think clearly facing him. She could not stand his movements, his going back and forth like a caged animal, his breathing harsh, his sighs. For a moment she had a fleeting feeling that he was muttering a prayer. It was normal in such circumstances. Normal for anyone. But hearing that come out of Brendan's lips, made her blood run cold.
After those few moments of respite, she saw a full glass of hot tea under her nose and she absently accepted it, thanking the man in a mechanical and colorless way, bringing it to her lips that liquid that tasted of anything but tea, but that took her mind off her feelings of revenge for a moment.
She looked up and, only then, seemed to notice other people sitting there in the waiting room. One of them was Cheryl who occasionally sobbed behind a her jeweled hand, then Declan who still had the exact indecipherable glance of when he was sitting onto her sofa.
Her eyes slid over to the clock on the wall. An hour had passed and no one had bothered to tell her what had happened, and more importantly what was going on.
A sudden feeling of discomfort knotted her guts tight. Dark thoughts. Merciless. Justifiable.
What would she do if Ste was more serious than she had thought? What if he died? What kind of world it would have been without Ste, without his best friend. Her children's father.
Amy started sobbing silently, her breast shaking, as a light hand softly lied on her shoulder.
"It's gonna be okay," he whispered in a low and torn voice.
She looked up and stared Brendan in the eye, wet eye, circled. She wondered what he was feeling at that moment. Grief? Love? Guilt?
That was the lonely and psychopath man she hated, and hating him was so easy for everyone, but no one ever hated him as much as he did himself . At that moment, however, it felt almost impossible to believe she were facing the same man who had broken Ste's heart and bones, with the same cruelty and coldness with which Terry had in the past years and she had been hit later. In front of her, now, she could see a person whose heart and every piece of flesh was being cut into thin slices as if he were in the operating room along with Ste.
Suddenly, she felt her own breath and beat become irregular, so she got up, determined to get out and run from those terrible images that had shaped before her eyes, the smell of disinfectant, her own thoughts. She was heading for the door that would lead outside searching for a breath of fresh air, as the operating room's door flew open.
Doctor's words came to her muffled, as if they did from a distant place, in a language she had never learned. And she was standing there, trying to understand and not to superimpose her questions to the doctor's, his answers to her thoughts either. She felt massively stupid as she was almost stammering, like she had gone back to school, scared to be caught unprepared by the more terrible teacher.
Why was Ste there? Why was he under a surgery? Why was he tied to a machine that helped him to breath?
Why?
Then her voice became weak, clumsy.
No, he didn't use drugs.
He's healthy.
Was.
What does you mean 'he was already injured'?
Before his fall, you mean?
I don't know how he got hurt.
He had bruises? The cut in his hand?
He told me it was an accident.
His head?
I don't know if he had hit his head in the past forty-eight hours.
Images of Ste slumped to the floor and Brendan's rage came back to her mind a moment later.
"Likely," continued the doctor, "The bleeding had already started after the head injury. It happens. "
"But now he's okay, right? His surgery has gone well and he'll be fine. He'll wake up, right? Tell me he's gonna be fine. "She begged him, in tears.
The man's compassionate expression and his hand resting on her shoulder seemed unprofessional, but his words elicited an instant feeling of nausea and malaise, something that could be compared to a slow death.
"Mrs Barnes, unless a miracle happens, pray that he never wake up. "
Blunt. Cruel. A stone cold on her heart.
Amy turned around, looking for Brendan who was standing behind her. Behind her till a moment before.
She wanted to shout him his contempt, throwing punches, hurt him in every possible way, see him bleed as much as she was, right then.
But he was no longer there. He had bolted away, that coward.
Amy left the doctor standing still as he was explaining how Ste wouldn't be anymore and started running through the corridors, making her way to the exit. Then she saw Brendan get into his car. He was leaving.
"You're not gonna get away with this!" she yelled. "You're going to prison. You are-"
Devastating sobs stole her voice, her legs gave out and she found herself kneeling on the floor, as hot tears streamed on her face, down the tip of her nose, and ended up in wet puddles on her skirt. The screeching sound of wheels became more distant.
Cheryl appeared behind the girl, her eyes full with questions; her look first incredulous, then astonished, finally horrified.
Declan was panting, his eyes instead were full with tears and inflamed in determination.
Brendan drove the car out of the town, where the traffic road used to be more sparse and speed limits higher. However, he didn't care to exceed any of them at that moment. His sight was blurred by tears and mind clouded by pain. He pushed his foot on the gas pedal and closed his eyes. He sheered towards the nowhere and the sea below. Suddenly, he braked.
He lied his head down on the steering wheel and started crying.
He straightened up only when someone knocked on the glass of the car door and told him to get out.
The cops did not care he was already dead inside. He was running and had been drinking. Full stop.
Few minutes later he was pushed in a yellow and blue car. He had too often gone through the same bad moments and always for faults that weren't his. But now he deserved what was happening to him, although he would prefer that the police had come to pick up his remains from the bottom of the cliff.
He didn't want to cry in front of those men in uniform, but he couldn't help himself. The tears flowed from his eyes and he could do nothing but feel their bitter taste.
The cops had the delicacy to stay silent and pretend to look away, though.
That was until the two- way radio started sending news about him and someone who was dying in the hospital.
The cops looked at each other in surprise.
"You think you've got a cat and instead it's a lion," said one of them, concluding with a hoarse laugh.
Brendan didn't look up from his knees. He closed his eyes, instead, and kept crying silently.
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Cheryl had watched over Ste throughout the night, letting Amy go back home for a bit of sleep and checking on the children after a couple of days she had not moved from the hospital.
In the morning she had gone straight to the police station in Chester where his brother was on custody, but she got her visit refused. Disappointed, she made her way home.
She could not still believe Brendan was responsible for all that had happened to Ste, and when she was told that her brother had refused to pay the bail, she could only imagine the state he was. Alone, afflicted and consumed by guilt.
He was still her brother and she loved him, in spite everything.
"I think you should go home," she told Declan, staring at the glass of water where she had put in an aspirin to dissolve. Her headache was killing her.
"I'm already home," said her nephew, looking at her with a marked scowl.
"You know what I mean. You should stay with your mum. Here it's all too heavy for-"
"I'm where I wanna be. I can't leave him. "
"I'll take care of your dad, and when the whole thing solve-"
"I don't give a toss about Brendan!" he talked over her. "I meant Ste."
Cheryl stood with his glass raised in the air in surprise. "Since when do you call your dad... Brendan?"
"Since he's no longer my father," he replied, coldly.
Cheryl rubbed his eyes and ears, hoping that she had heard wrong.
"Look, Declan. I don't think your dad did what he had intentionally. He loves Ste. "
"Yeah, right," he muttered. "I was there. He's a bully, a murderer. I hope he's not gonna get out of prison anymore, " he concluded before turning and running up the stairs.
He would stay in his bedroom until the time of hospital visit.
"Declan!" his aunt called after him, shocked.
She didn't get any answer. Cheryl took her aspirin and started praying for a miracle to happen. A big one.
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"I said I don't need any lawyer!"
"You have a right to defend yourself, Mr. Brady"
"Well, I don't want it. I don't want anything. "
Brendan rubbed his face, trying to clear his head and at the same time ignore the man whom Cheryl hired for his defense.
"Do you realise, Mr. Brady, that in a short while you could be locked up until the plea hearing?
Brendan stared at an indefinite point of the wall in front of him, avoiding to respond, well aware he was ready to accept terms and torments of his own actions.
The lawyer took in a disconsolate breath. Never and ever he had had to persuade one of his clients that out was better than in.
"We can demonstrate that there was no criminal intent, that it was an accident ... and also in the case the injured party died- "
Brendan snapped like a wild beast, shoving the man against the cell's door that produced a deafening noise.
A few seconds later, two guards rushed in, drawing their weapons on him, while the lawyer wiped the sweat from his own forehead with a handkerchief.
"Your sister's not paying me enough to bear this" said the man, panting.
"Get out! " growled Brendan, while the guards grabbed his arms.
After everyone had gone out of the cell, he dragged himself across the room and finally flopped down on the bed, his face buried in his hands and thoughts that crowded in his head, bouncing painfully from side to side.
Desperate men do desperate things...
Steven's voice took the upper hand over the fog clouding his brain, but he wasn't desperate. His feeling went far beyond despair, and he still regretted having stopped the car on the cliff edge.
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The next day Brendan was transferred to the local prison and his plea hearing was scheduled for the following week. The Sunday before the hearing he agreed to see Cheryl and his first question was "Steven?"
Cheryl fell silent all of a sudden, shaking his head sadly.
"No news, babe. But at least he's not getting worse," she concluded trying to sound hopeful.
Brendan buried his face in his hands, hiding the tears that had begun to sting his eyes.
Then he drew in a long breath, sniffling. "Declan? back to his mum?"
Cheryl shook her head again. He's home... ours. Do you know how kids act, Bren. And he's much more like you than you can imagine. Stubborn as a mule. "
Brendan cracked a brief smile at the thought of his boy, then the images of all happened at Steven's came back to him mercilessly like icy water on his heart. At one fell swoop he just destroyed the only two things it was worth living for, Steven and being a father. He should have found in that hospital bed instead of Steven. He could bet that there would be lots of people willing to pull the plug.
"Bren," he began his sister, timidly. "Do you sure to not want another lawyer? That McGinn guy... I don't like him."
Brendan frowned. "Have you seen him? When?"
"Well... I just wanted to know what was going-"
"I asked... begged you to keep your nose out of it, Chez."
"But .. Brendan-"
"Leave me alone!"
Saying that, he jumped up from his seat, interrupting the conversation before the time expired.
Cheryl stood still in place, looking at Brendan who turned away from the visiting room.