Damon is missing….
The moment she heard Rebecca utter those words, something inside of her died and her world collapsed. The pain that she was feeling in the stomach…. That was the pain of all the butterflies dying that she felt when she was with him. Her heart was getting stabbed again and again but nothing in the world could stop it.
"Wh… how?" She whispered.
"We don't know. Nobody has got a clue." Rebecca sobbed.
She walked towards his room and peeped inside.
The tubes were thrown haphazardly, the drip and the bag of saline water were lying on the ground, ECG monitor was blank. If someone else had taken a look at the room, they would have probably concluded that the patient had died. But she couldn't accept that. She just couldn't.
A world where he wasn't there was like her own personal hell. A never ending fire that she would burn in for all eternity. She was after all ready to live in a world where she hated him and he hated her but a world where he didn't exist? She wasn't ready for that.
"Where the hell was your security when they took him? A patient and not just any patient but Damon Salvatore got kidnapped from your hospital. Do you know what that means?" Elena heard Alaric growl at the doctor behind her.
"I am …. Very sorry sir but … we can assure you that we have the best security team. There must be some mistake." The doctor stammered.
She heard some ruffling and turned around to see Klaus grabbing the doctor's collar.
"I can assure you mate that this mistake will cost you your bloody job. I will shut down this God forsaken hospital and send you to the employment line where you will earn money by digging graves. If you don't want that, then I suggest that you cooperate and help us find him soon."
The doctor gulped and nodded.
"Where is your security room located? We can start there." Shane asked the doctor.
"6th floor. I'll take you there."
Elena was still standing there when they all rushed towards the security room, trying to find out where her love was. Never in her life had she felt so helpless. Never had she felt so defeated.
She fell on her knees and folded her hands in a prayer and she prayed with all her heart. She prayed like she had never prayed before. She prayed because his life was on line.
"I know I haven't really been a good Christian. I haven't gone to church since ages but please …. Please just save him. I promise I'll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. I'll pray every day and I'll do my best to keep my promise. Just save him. Don't let anything happen to him please. You know I can't live without him. Let him not love me, let him not be with me but please keep him ok. Please, I am begging you please. Just keep him safe."
Her face had stained with tears, her lips trembling. She was choking on her breath but she didn't stop. She kept on praying, that he would come back to her and her life would go back to the way it was. Somewhere in her heart she knew that all she was doing was give herself a false hope but the same heart was yelling at her not to stop, that maybe it would work. Miracles did happen after all and he certainly was hers.
In the security room….
Stan was sitting in his usual place, looking at that same usual screen that he had been staring at for that past 1 year and eating the same bagel that he gets from the same shop at the corner of the street. To summarize, his life was pretty boring and confined to this room that no one really entered and he was pretty sure no one even in the hospital even knew he existed.
So today when 5 angry men, a doctor and a very pretty nurse barged into the room screaming at him, he had to take a deep breath to restart his heart that had almost stopped. There couldn't be anything worse than dying in a hospital while he was still a virgin.
"I am detective Shane from NYPD and I need you to answer a few questions." The man with dark hair and angry eyes spoke.
"Look I only stole one issue of playboy ok? I can pay you. You don't have t arrest me." He answered, handing him his copy which only earned him eye rolls.
"Did you see anything suspicious happening on the 4th floor 40-45 minutes ago?" Shane asked.
"Suspicious as in?"
"As in a man kidnapping one of the patients."
"Woah … ummmm. I don't think so but let me check the footage." Stan answered as he turned towards the screen started typing something on the keyboard.
"This is your security? A dark room with one computer, a bean bag and a nerdy looking douche jerking of to a stolen magazine?" Another man scoffed at the doctor.
"Yeahhhhh… that nerdy looking douche heard that." Stan gave a sarcastic smile as he continued typing on the keyboard.
A few minutes later, he turned towards the group and shook his head.
"Someone has messed up with the tapes. I can't get anything."
"What the fuck? There are like hundreds of cameras and you can't find one single footage?" Shane growled at him and he took a couple of steps back in fear.
"Actually sir, the cameras are fake." The doctor intervened. "Due to budget issues this year, mostly fake cameras were planted and only working ones were kept on 4th floor where the VIP rooms are."
"Am I the only one who is thinking that Narnia has better security than a 5 star hospital in New York?" Kol whispered.
"Whoever kidnapped Damon must have known this." Shane said to the group and then turned towards Stan. "Did someone come and talk to you Stan? About the security and don't even try to lie to me. I'll take you to the office and interrogate you there and then you can say bye to both your career and your wiener."
Stan gulped.
"There was this guy and he asked me not to say anything and he paid me 500 bucks."
"Did he do something to the tapes?"
"No .. I mean, not on my watch. There was a moment when I left for a little bathroom break." He muttered, realizing his stupidity.
Shane grabbed his collar and pushed him on the ground.
"You better tell me everything or else you'll find yourself in jail full of men who will love your pretty face very much."
"I'll tell you everything ….."
Rebecca and Elena were looking at the room that once had Damon, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Elena was silently crying for her love whereas Rebecca was tensed for her very best friend. Damon might have been a lot of things to lot of people but to the people who mattered, he was the nothing less than a big tree that sheltered everyone from everything but asked nothing in return.
"You want some coffee?" Rebecca asked the girl sitting beside her who hadn't slept for 3 days. She looked like a proper mess, a ghost who was wandering without an aim, helplessly.
Elena shook her head but Rebecca was having none of it. If they were going to sit here, worrying their ass off, they might as well do it with some caffeine in their system.
"I'll bring one cup for you." She heard Elena sigh but didn't say anything. She got up quietly and started walking towards the machine.
The hospital was starting to smother her, was starting to suffocate her. She never liked hospitals to begin with because all the bad things in her life had happened here.
Rebecca was 7 when she was picked up from her school and brought straight to a hospital where she found out that her mother had left all of them by committing suicide. For a seven year old girl, it made her believe that her mother didn't love her enough to stay with her.
Then she was thirteen when she came to visit Nik in the hospital because their father had drank too much a night before and beaten her brother black and blue that had sent him into a coma for almost a week.
Five years later, hospital was the place where she saw her father's body for the last time. She knew who had done this, everyone in their home knew who had done this, even the maids and the gardeners but all of them kept quiet. A day after that, her brother Nik was admitted to the rehab center of that very hospital for almost a month for depression.
Yes, Rebecca Mikaelson hated hospitals very much. Because they brought nothing but bad news.
Elena was sitting on the bench, thinking about Damon's kidnapping when the phone kept beside her rang.
Shit, Rebecca forgot her phone here.
She picked it up and saw the caller Id. It was an unknown number. Contemplating whether she should take it or not, the caller stopped calling. On seeing the home screen, she saw that it was Kol's phone and not Rebecca's.
As soon as she kept it down, the phone rang again and she decided to pick it up, thinking that whoever was calling might have some urgent work with him.
"Hello?"
"Hello dear Elena." The voice on the other side spoke and it chilled her heart. She didn't know who the person was and she was pretty sure she had never heard it but something about it just scared her to no end. And how did he know it was her?
"Who is this?" She asked in a firm voice, not wanting to show her fear to him.
"Doesn't really matter. What should concern you is that your fiancé is with us and now I know you won't believe us and demand that you talk to him but really Elena, the guy is unconscious so cut us some slack. Now I want you to get up from that bench and find your friends and do hurry up. Damon here doesn't have much time with the poison pumping in his veins."
"Wh… why? I mean I don't know where they are." Elena got up frantically and started looking around. The guy could tell what she was doing at that instant so he must be near.
"Yeahhhhh… I am not near you so you can stop looking around like a crazy person. And if you don't know where they are then find them out. You know, I'll give you a hint since I like Damon and don't want him to die. You friend Rebecca will come back to you in a minute, I am sure she must have her cellphone with her. Use it and call one of the members of the powerpuff girls and inform them about our little chat."
"Please don't do anything to him. Please…. I'll do everything you say." She sobbed, clutching the phone tightly.
The man on the other side clicked his tongue.
"Damn it I should have asked you to take off your shirt then. But this matter is much more important so how about you inform them and then later we can have our own session. You like that sweetheart?" He gave out a dark chuckle. "Blondie will come to you in 10 seconds. You time starts now."
And the next thing she heard was the sound of him hanging up the phone.
She couldn't breathe, as though all the oxygen in the air had vanished around her. Someone had Damon and they were slowly killing him and here she was, on the ground, not doing anything.
"ELENA…." She heard Rebecca running towards her. "What happened?"
"I … call Elijah please. I need to speak with him. Someone …. The kidnapper… he'll kill him Becca. Call someone please." And as soon as she uttered those last words, Elena Gilbert fainted.
What We Find in a Soulmate is not something Wild to Tame but Something Wild to Run with….
- Robert Brault
