Chapter XXVI
E il bambino
Con occhi chiusi
Lui non si muove
Perso e gia
And the boy
Eyes closed
Doesn't move
He's already lost
Cardiff General Hospital, Cardiff, Wales
"I'm very sorry Mr.Marick. We tried but we couldn't save the baby."
Dimitri stared at the British doctor. His lips were moving but Dimitri couldn't hear what they were saying. He couldn't absorb anything.
Alex was pregnant?
"Mr.Marick, are you alright? I really think you should sit down, I know this is a shock for you. I'll have someone bring you a glass of water..."
Dimitri took a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair, still unsure of what to say.
The doctor gestured towards a chair, "Mr.Marick, won't you please have a seat?"
Dimitri shook his head, "No…I…I want to see my wife. May I see her, please."
The doctor pointed towards a room near the end of the hall, "She's in the room at the end of the hall, on the left. We gave her quite a bit of blood, as well as something for the pain. She might appear a little disoriented, but physically she will be fine."
Dimitri walked down the hallway, pausing at the door of her room before entering. There were two other patients in the room, and he saw Alex at the far end, near the window. Her eyes were closed and there was a thick, white, bloodstained bandage wrapped around one of her arms.
He observed her in silence, wishing there was a way to transfer her pain onto himself. Wishing there was some way of undoing everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours.
God, he loved her so much.
He bent down and kissed her cheek, moving a strand of hair from her face. She opened her eyes in response.
"Dimitri…?"
He nodded, running his index finger along her face. "Yes…it's me."
Her eyes watered, filling with tears. "Dimitri…I'm sorry about the baby. I'm so sorry…I tried…"
She pushed herself off the bed, giving him the chance to wrap his arms around her. "Alex, it's alright...all that matters now is that you're going to be okay…"
"I should have told you… I tried so hard not to lose…Dimitri, I didn't want this to happen…oh god, I'm so sorry." She was sobbing. Hysterical.
Dimitri kissed her forehead, holding her tighter to stop her body from shaking. She felt small and fragile in his arms. "Alex…it's going to be okay. Don't blame yourself for this…it's going to be okay."
But it wasn't. Nothing would ever be okay again.
'How can anything be okay if I find out my wife is pregnant at the very same moment that I find out we lost our child?'
He watched as she wiped the tears from her eyes. His touch was the one thing that seemed to have a calming effect on her. "What about Max...did you find him?"
He averted her eyes. She could read them far too well.
"Dimitri…?"
"Max is fine…" he started, willing the conviction into his words.
"Dimitri, look at me..." Her hand gently turned his face towards her, sensing something wasn't right. "Where's Max?"
Dimitri felt the last vestiges of strength flow out of him. Was it really possible he had lost two children today? His own eyes filled with tears. He didn't have the energy to lie. "He wasn't there, Alex…I couldn't find him."
The look in her eyes broke his heart all over again.
"No Dimitri, I don't believe you…he had to be there…he had to be…don't tell me wasn't."
"I'm sorry..." There was nothing else to say.
Tears rolled down her face, mercilessly. "We have to find him Dimitri…"
Dimitri nodded, making her lie back down again. Helping her. Gently. She wasn't strong enough for this right now. "I know…we will."
He sank down onto the cold, tile floor, next to her bed. He had to turn away because he couldn't stand to see the look on her face.
Dimitri leaned his head against the bedside railing, his raised hand still holding on to hers, and wept.
Emergency Room - Main Level
"I don't think she's ill, Ms.Kane, she's in shock," O'Malley tried to reason with Erica.
"You don't know that," she told him, "You're not a doctor."
"No, but I've seen enough injured bodies to know how human beings react. Bianca's in shock." He sat down next to her, lowering her body onto the bench she was sitting on, putting her legs onto Erica's and his jacket under her head. "She needs to lie down and be kept warm. Keep her legs raised." He also loosened the belt on her jeans.
"What are you doing?" Erica demanded, about to grab his arm.
"Make sure her clothing's unconstricted...she needs to get her circulation going again."
O'Malley stroked Bianca's arm, "Good girl. Try and breathe deeply and slowly, can you do that for me?" She nodded, the slightest hint of colour returning to her face as her breathing steadied.
As her other sensations returned, she started to cry again.
Erica clasped her hand and rubbed her legs, "Shhh…Bianca. It's okay, you're safe now. No one is ever going to hurt you again."
Bianca tugged at O'Malley's arm.
"What is it?" he asked, softly.
"Alex…is she okay?"
O'Malley frowned. "I don't know. Dimitri went to check on her. I'm going to get a blanket for you."
Bianca held her hand to her mouth, "It's my fault. Everything's my fault…"
"Bianca, my darling," Erica tried to comfort her, "None of this is your fault."
"It is my fault. I shot her."
Erica caressed her hair, "Bianca, honey, you're sick and you've been drugged. You don't know what you're saying…"
Bianca grabbed her mother's shoulders, desperately needing her to understand what she was saying. "Mom, listen to me! I did it…I shot Alex!"
Erica pulled away from Bianca, staring at her in disbelief.
"Sweetheart, tell me that's not true…tell me you didn't shoot Dimitri's wife? Please tell me you didn't..."
St.Agathe Hospital, Paris, France
Robin Scorpio walked towards the nurse's station and saw her colleague, Pierre, writing something on a clipboard.
"Good morning," she said, not entirely sure why she was still bothering with pleasantries. She couldn't remember Pierre ever saying so much as a hello when he saw her.
"I know what you're going to ask me," he mumbled in reply, not bothering to look up at her.
"Well then, tell me what I want to know. Did you file a police report? It's been almost a day since the boy was brought in."
Pierre smiled a cynical smile, "I'm working on it as we speak. Maybe if you stop pestering me it'll get done faster."
Robin felt relieved to know that something was being done to find out where the boy had come from and what had happened to him. Pierre might not be pleasant to be around, but Robin hoped he wasn't entirely indifferent to the welfare of a seven-year old. "It's strange, but I've got this gut feeling that there's someone out there desperately looking for him."
Pierre snorted, "You're like a mother hen with every little injured kid that comes in here. How are you going to do this job for a living if you get attached to every one you treat?"
"That's not true," Robin countered, defensive. No one else she worked with took as much pleasure in putting her down. 'So I'm not a cold, clinical robot like you,' she thought, biting her tongue. 'How in the world are you ever going to inspire anyone into any sort of recovery?'
She got up to pour herself an espresso from the Faema machine in the corner of the station, a habit she had picked up since living in France. "There's something about him, I can't explain it…it's like, I feel drawn to him somehow."
"He's only seven Doctor Scorpio...I don't know about the United States, but here in France we wait until they are twelve." He laughed when he saw her disgusted expression. "It's a joke...pour me a cup as well."
Robin wasn't amused. "You're a sick, twisted person sometimes. You should stick to corpses, not live people."
Pierre played with his pen, "Hmmm…that's not a bad idea."
"Why don't you just let me file the report?" she asked him.
"Because it's my job. Why don't you go see our little gypsy and get him to talk. A kid his age should at least manage to croak out his own name, don't you think?"
'Anything to get away from you,' she thought. "I think I will." She left his espresso sitting on the counter and watched as he picked up the phone to call the local police office.
Pierre waited until Robin was out of earshot before he started speaking to an officer with whom he had filed countless other missing person reports before. An officer who was also an old school pal."Morning, Alain, two guesses as to why I'm calling..." he said, reaching for the the cup that Robin purposely hadn't handed him, before taking a sip of his espresso. "This time it's a little boy, maybe about seven or eight years old." He went on to describe when and where they had found him, his current health condition, a physical description and lastly, he paused, "And just between you and me, don't bother searching through any Interpol databases with this one, I guarantee you he's a local gypsy. They'll come and claim him before the end of the day."
On the other end, officer Alain DesRochers was just finishing a buttered croissant, "Thanks, mon ami, I appreciate that." He hung up the phone and took the last bite of his croissant. Normally, all lost children required an extensive computer search through the worldwide Interpol database for missing and kidnapped children. It was standard protocol. Had he done that he would have eventually found a listing, complete with DNA, blood type and physical description to perfectly match those given to him by Pierre, for one missing seven-year old American boy named Maximillian Dimitri Marick.
Instead, Alain DesRochers simply checked the necessary boxes in the report that stated he had done the computer search through the database, without having any intention of actually doing so. 'You just saved me at least two hours of pointless work, my friend.' Without having to do the Interpol search, he could concentrate immediately on his next case, a theft of valuables belonging to a pair of Russian tourists, stolen from a hotel safe deposit box.
At the same time as Alain Desrochers decided to file away the case of the lost boy, Robin Scorpio had made her way to Max's room, sitting down next to him on the bed.
He was wide awake, his dark brown eyes staring at her, as directly and unabashedly as only children's eyes dared.
"So, how are you doing today, my friend?" she asked him. She wasn't sure why she felt compelled to speak him in English rather than French. "Are you going to tell me your name today?"
Max looked at her and said nothing in reply.
"Can you hear me?" Robin asked, pointing to her ears, trying to establish whether he was deaf or not, before they would run a battery of tests on him.
He still said nothing but offered her what almost looked like a smile.
Suddenly, before he realized what she was doing, Robin pushed the lamp off the night table sending it crashing to the floor with a loud thud. Max jerked back, shocked by the unexpected noise.
Robin picked up the lamp and flashed him a victory smile, "Guess you're not deaf then, huh?"
In return his smile was lopsided now, as if aware of what she was trying to do and gearing himself up for the challenge, while at the same time congratulating her for having won the first round.
The more time Robin spent with him, the more convinced she became that he did understand her, and that he purposely avoided speaking. 'I think you're a clever little guy, but you picked the right person if you're looking for a challenge,' she thought.
She ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair, "You're pretty cute, you know that? And judging from the way you look, I think you're feeling a lot better than you did when you were first brought here."
She kept talking to him, hoping to elicit some sort of verbal response, but twenty minutes later, he was as adamantly silent as he had been when she first entered the room.
"You're not making this easy," she sighed. Spending this much time with any one patient was a luxury. There were at least a dozen others with far more pressing injuries and ailments that deserved her attention. "I should go now," she told him and she could have sworn she saw a trace of disappointment in his eyes.
'Judging from the way you look at me, I could swear that you do understand me,' she thought, frustrated.
She took a look at his right wrist, still heavily bandaged. "Does it still hurt?" she asked softly.
He shook his head.
The realization of what his gesture meant, made Robin grin from ear to ear. "Aha! I got you! You really do understand me, don't you?"
Max closed his eyes and pouted, upset at having given himself away so easily.
"Aw...sweetie, come on, it's alright to admit it," she chided, moving as close to him as he would allow. "I promise you, I won't let anyone hurt you and no one is going to take you anywhere you don't want to go, but you've got to help me a little bit. Just tell me your name…that's all."
She stroked his cheek with her hand. His skin was soft and smooth. "I promise you, cross my heart…"
Max looked at her, biting his lip, hesitant and uncertain, while he weighed his decision.
"Max…my name is Max," he mumbled the words so softly, his voice was barely a whisper.
Robin's eyes lit up upon hearing his voice for the first time. 'I knew it,' she thought. He spoke with a soft English accent that reminded her of her mother.
Tears had formed along the rims of his eyes, as if the knowledge of what he had done was overwhelming.
'You're so afraid that if I know who you are I'll take you back to where you came from...'
Robin wanted nothing more than to comfort him. She moved her arms around him in a hug. "Sweetie, it's okay. I meant what I said. I won't let anyone hurt you or take you anywhere you don't want to go."
She sat by his bedside and held him, longer than she intended, wondering what could possibly make him so afraid.
Cardiff General Hospital, Cardiff, Wales
After Bianca's revelation, O'Malley left her and Erica alone. A part of him wanted to stay and hear the whole story, but he knew it wasn't his place. Whatever happened was an accident, that much was obvious from Bianca's reaction. For now he would leave the whys and hows between mother and daughter. 'You've got your hands full there, Ms. Kane,' he thought sadly.
Leaving the two women, O'Malley went to look for Dimitri and thanks to the directions of a nurse, he found him seated on the floor, next to his wife's hospital bed, in a room on the second floor.
O'Malley had seen many things, some of which he would just as soon forget, and yet the sight of Dimitri Marick sitting on the floor, at his wife's bedside stirred something inside him that he didn't think he was still capable of feeling.
It was such an intimate connection between husband and wife that O'Malley felt like an intruder just by standing there, observing them. He coughed as he walked into the room to alert Dimitri Marick to his presence, tapping him lightly on his shoulder. "Mr.Marick, may I speak to you for a moment?"
Dimitri nodded, wiping tears from his eyes, composing himself. He left the room with O'Malley.
"How is your wife?" O'Malley asked him.
"The bullet grazed her…she'll be fine."
O'Malley looked at Dimitri, sensing there was something else he wasn't telling him. "I'm glad. That's good news."
"We have to get out of here, don't we?" Dimitri asked.
O'Malley nodded. Dimitri had spared him the difficulty of pointing it out. He lowered his voice, "I don't want to jeopardize your wife's well-being. But if her injury isn't serious, I would strongly advice that we try and get out of here as soon as possible. We broke into a government facility today and killed a woman. Whether or not Nigel Hawthrop goes to the authorities with that knowledge or not is almost beside the point. He could be sending his own agents after us. And anyone brought to a hospital with a gunshot wound in the UK is automatically investigated by the local police. I don't think we can afford to have that happen."
Dimitri held up his arm, "Shawn, Alex can't leave tonight…"
"But I thought you said…?"
"I want you to take Bianca and Erica back to the airfield as soon as possible. Fly back to Pine Valley with them and arrange for a change of flight crew when you get there. Then send the plane back here for myself and Alex."
"Mr. Marick when do you plan on flying back with...?"
"Just do it."
"Fine," O'Malley replied. "I'll drive them to the airfield and I'll come back here and stay with both of you until you're ready to leave."
"That's not necessary," Dimitri insisted, "I'll take care of Alex. I don't want anymore people hurt because of Charlotte Devane, yourself included."
"Yes, sir." O'Malley said nothing and turned around, heading towards the Emergency Room waiting room.
'Sorry, Mr.Marick,' he thought as he walked down the stairs, 'That's one order I won't follow.'
Shawn O'Malley had worked for his share of wealthy clients. Most of them enjoyed excesses and along with ethics of convenience that had left a bad taste in his mouth. But Dimitri Marick was different. Dimitri Marick was one employer he genuinely respected. There was a sincerity about him that was rare and the love he had for his wife and family was deep and real. O'Malley knew exactly what Dimitri Marick had gone through to get Alex back from Charlotte Devane's world. Unlike most of his old employers, Dimitri Marick had fought hard for his happiness. Because of it, it seemed like he treasured it all the more.
'I'll take the others back to the US,' O'Malley thought, 'As you asked me to, but then I'm coming back here to make sure you and Alex get back safe too. If anyone comes after you here, they'll have to go through me first.'