Taylor's POV
"Is this a "How to catch a pedophile" book?" I ask Welch as he throws a wad of papers at me.
"Fuck No, it is the list of young adolescent boys the she-devil has had contact with over the last 2 years alone" Welch says and I nearly gag, my eyes popping out of my head. "Can we just bury her somewhere?" I say, "Car accident, falling down stairs, thrown off a cliff into shark infested water, fuck, nothing is good enough for her."
Welch looks like he feels exactly like me as I say "How the fuck did we all miss the fact that she was the biggest fuckin' threat to the Boss? Can you believe that this shit has been going on since he was 15? All that other crap makes sense now doesn't it?" and we both sit there shaking our heads.
Finally Welch says, "What's the girl like in hospital? She's not a disaster is she, she's not one of his usual girls is she?" and I have to control my temper because he has no idea how far from "one of those girls" Ana is as he hasn't had anything to do with her. "Look Welch, have you been able to call the Boss the last couple of days?" I ask and he says with a look of complete surprise "No actually, every single call has gone through to voice mail and he hasn't answered emails, it's been weird" and I say "Well, that's because he's had his phone off, he never turns his phone off, but he doesn't want to be disturbed when he is with her, he is completely besotted with her, whether he realises it or not".
"He's not replaced one controlling woman with another one, is he?" Welch asks and I can see why he'd think that but my bones tell me that isn't the case.
"Nah, she does him good, calls him out when he's being an idiot and shit the girl had a more fucked up life than him growing up and his early years were beyond fucked up. He explained to her what happened before he was adopted – shit man, he was left with his dead crack-whore mom for 4 days and he had been abused by her pimps, burnt with cigarettes, belted, kicked, the works and that explains those fuckin' nightmares he has and then to think the Evil One got her claws into him and fucked him up good." I shudder as I say it because hearing the Boss say it the other day made my stomach turn.
I continue "The little one though was looking out for herself from the age of 5 and doing the cooking from the age of 6 so she didn't starve. Not only that she was trying to get away from HER mom's pimps and then you read what happened to her at the hands of Stephen Morton and heard what his crazy daughter said about that part of her life. I don't know if I'm getting soft but seriously these two are made for each other but their joint shit is going to be something to deal with. I think they are both going to fuck things up, the Boss more so than the little one and we're all going to have to be on our toes. By the way, we have to protect the little one even more than the Boss, at the moment I think she's the only reason he can put one foot in front of the other, his head is all over the shop. And no, she's not intentionally controlling him, he's thinking about her and that is controlling his actions." Welch nods, I think he gets it, this situation is weird for all of us.
"Welch, nothing I just said goes out of this room. Understood? You need to know as head of security because there are lots of things impacting on security for the Boss at the moment but no-one else out there needs to know. It was all basically whispered between the two of them, the Boss had me on listening mode so he wouldn't have to go through it again and she doesn't know that." And he nods, I didn't need to say it but with the load of shit that has been dumped on us all over the last couple of days, it's fair for someone to want to share the load.
I told Gail some of it because she has always wondered at why the Boss was into the BDSM lifestyle, saying that there had to be a reason for it because he really didn't look like he "enjoyed" it, he looked like he was enjoying it to me but she was adamant about some shit about him looking empty. I guess she was right. She always hated Elena Lincoln, said she made her skin crawl and she couldn't figure out why the Boss was a friend with her and now she understands. Gail's an awfully good judge of a person, maybe she can bring the breakfast in the morning and give me some sort of take on Ana, that would be interesting and I can wrangle it if the Boss goes back there to sleep tonight.
"Shit, we'd better get on with this, the Boss will likely go back to the hospital later and he'll want to know what's been done so far, you know he wants this all to have been done by before we knew about it. Ok, what have you found?"
"Pictures, we have pictures of boys going into her house, see these. Then we have the traces of them going down into the downstairs rooms. One of the boys is totally broken, see, this one, Macy Dwyer, he looks desperate and not much more than 14 or 15. I have arranged with a social worker to try and get a discreet recording device onto him, it's a watch that looks like a watch but has a recording device and a camera in it but he doesn't know that and it is all hidden so the Evil One shouldn't see it either and hopefully we can get recordings of what is going on. We are also working to find a good foster family in the area to see if we can have him put into a loving environment where hopefully he will be able to open up – Dr Flynn has agreed to work with him and any other child and try to draw the information out of them." As I look at him, feeling sick that we are leaving the kids there for a day more, he says, "We are working as fast as we can. Carrick knows a couple of legal people that focus on this area and are drafting up all the paper work so that as soon as there is evidence it can be slotted in."
"With the Boss giving evidence and the stuff that Cecilia has said, there should be enough to put away Elena Lincoln and Stephen Morton. Although both are extremely resourceful and we are relying on someone in a psychiatric institution who will be charged on the two charges of attempted murder based on her own confession. All of this is being drafted today so that only the bits that need to be specific are being left to be filled out, with evidence we can turn it around in less than a couple of days. However, what the fuck is going on with Carla Adams? She now knows that Cecilia tried to kill Ana yet she goes and fucks Cecilia's incestuous father, her ex-husband and has stayed there all day, she didn't even attempt to leave to go visit Ana. I don't get that woman at all." Welch finishes with a shake of his head.
"Oh I can answer that, she's been on drugs since Ana was a baby by the sound of things" I say and it's like a light goes on for Welch "Oh Fuck! That makes sense now. I couldn't figure out what she was gibbering on about and I'd say then that Morton is on them too…. Ooh, we might just be able to organise some truth serum…..in the form of a few little white pills, we might be able to bring the witch down. What are we going to do with this Adams woman though? She hasn't done anything other than be awful from what I can tell" and I say that Ana doesn't want her own mother there so I don't know if we know everything, there is a chance that she has done something else but at the moment, no, we don't know of anything else. "If we don't find anything to put her away, I think the Boss will ship her back to Vegas for Ana's sake, the further away she is, I think the happier Ana will be."
"Let's have a look at the history of this Carla Adams, it might tell us something. Married to Bob Adams, married to Stephen Morton, married to Ray Steele (gee that name rings a bell for some reason), married to Frank Lambert (that name rings a bell as well)" and Welch sits there tapping his pen against his chin as I watch his eyes flicking backwards and forwards unseeingly across the page, willing the memory of something to come to the fore and then he stands up abruptly, tipping his chair over backwards. "Fuck, Carla Adams is Carmela Montenga. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" and at my bewildered look he paces backwards and forwards.
It all spills from Welch as the memories come back, "She was the village bike on base … everyone had a ride and then when she got pregnant, Frank did the right thing and married her. At the time she said she wanted to get rid of all of her old life and changed her name to Carla and it seemed like she had calmed down. He came back to base to see the baby when she was born and was killed the next day, he was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from celebrating his beautiful baby's birth. Fuck, so the girl in the hospital is his daughter?"
He continues, "Ray stepped in a couple of months later when Carla was partying like an idiot, acting like the old Carmela and leaving the baby by herself, Ray held some sort of candle for Carla and in an effort to get her to change her life and look after the baby, he married her and it all seemed to settle down again although she remained a piece of work. Ray was the best thing for her and for the baby but she still played around when he wasn't there, just not as much!. My god, it's a small world, I left that base a year or so later and lost track of everyone. That baby was the most gorgeous baby on base, everyone loved her, she was always calm, she didn't cry, she'd just look at you with those baby blue eyes and you'd melt then she'd give you the biggest smile and giggle. That giggle is still in my brain and when I came back from deployment and the psychs were telling us to find something good to think about to overwrite the bad memories, it was her giggle that came to mind. Amazing! "
"Well" I say, "She hasn't changed except that she's grown up and has the same effect on everyone, well, except her mother!"
I see it then, it has moved from just being another job to being personal and I know that Welch is more than completely on board. "Do you want to involve Ray in anything? He is going to be at the hospital every day I think, it looks like it is killing him seeing her in there and he's trying to do anything to help her" I ask and Welch says, "I'd love to catch up with him, he was always a smart bloke, dumbest thing he did was fall in love with Carla but I think it was the love of the little one that made him stay when he realised that he had screwed up majorly by marrying her. The little one gave him a reason to come back, to fight through and make it back and…. he saw some shit out there on deployment… very nice guy, he'd be an asset to the team." He pauses and then says quietly "I wouldn't mind going in and seeing her to be honest, her giggle saved me a lot of heartache."
I grin and say, "Oh don't worry, you'll be seeing her, the Boss isn't letting this one go and your balls are on the line if even the slightest thing happens to her – your screening processes are going to have to be even better than before for whoever is protecting her. If he was paranoid about family safety before, expect it to be a hundred times worse with her."
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Elena's POV
Where the fuck is Morton? Why isn't he picking up? What's he doing? I need to get to that stupid daughter of his and make sure she doesn't mention me at all. If I can get to her I can make sure that it's worth her while to never ever speak of me.
Aargh, I need a whipping boy and Isaac is out of town, Morton isn't answering his phone, oh I know, I need a little boy to make me feel better, to make me feel like a queen. I AM the Queen and fuck Christian, how dare he choose a mousey little girl over me and what I can provide. I give him a week and he'll be crawling back to me, begging me for someone for relief and I must thank him, I look forward to our meeting on Friday when I tell him I'm expanding into Portland, I had forgotten there was a university there with feeder schools …. an easy supply of young meat.
Where. Is. Morton? "Stephen, I am not leaving any more messages, if you are not here within an hour, we are done" there, that should get him over here pronto.
Let's see if I can have an afternoon of fun, I am crawling out of my skin with worry as to what Grace is going to do now that she knows about her "precious" son, I guess I was lucky she just slapped me. I don't really care, she probably thinks she has a huge sway on society and can lock me out of things, little does she know that I know the secrets of quite a few high level society people and they will stick by me. She's just a little doctor, she can't do much. Hah, she's going to have to organise that ball now, I was having so much fun using the subs and I really thought that Christian would go for Sheree before mousey bitch turned up. Ugh, thinking about that "thing" trussed up like a turkey in hospital, with matted hair and as white as a ghost just makes me sick, that little bitch has ruined the best thing I had going. Oh well, best make use of my day, I am going to have me an afternoon full of afternoon delights, if Morton isn't here, I will get my latest whipping boy.
"Macy, can I pick you up after your shift? Yes, mistress does want to see you. ….. Yes I will pick you up from the bus stop in 10 minutes. NO! NO! You will not tell her where you are going, remember this is our little secret. Yes pumpkin, I will look after you." There, that's the afternoon taken care of and if Morton calls me back, it will be the night taken care of and then I only have to get through tomorrow, maybe I can have a session with Macy tomorrow afternoon. Yes, that's it, I can pick him up from school, he can skip gym class and that way, no-one will see the cane marks before I see Christian again for dinner at our standing dinner appointment. I look forward to talking sense into him.
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Taylor's POV
Debriefing with the Boss and a message comes through.
"Sir, we have to get back to the hospital" and I show him the text message.
Security Text:
BabyBlue: Distressed
How soon can you get here?
And I am practically chasing him to the lift and down to the cars.
"Where taking the R8 and you're driving" he says, I am about to protest then realise that he said I was driving – cool, I never get to drive it and he obviously wants me to drive it fast. He continues with "I'm likely to wrap it around something with the speed I need you to go and the faculties I have operating." Shit, it's bad if he can tell how impaired he is but there's no time for thinking about that, I have a beast to drive and fast.
We arrive safe albeit with white knuckles and run up the stairs to the lifts and thankfully no-one is around at this time of night but like normal, the lift seems to take forever and he is crawling out of his skin by the time the doors open. He launches himself down to her room, bursting in to see 2 nurses attempting to hold Ana down and she is screaming and kicking and punching and looks scared out of her wits.
"Ana", he barely whispers it as he runs to her side yet she must hear it as she simply stops screaming and goes limp as he wraps his arms around her "It's ok baby, I am here, I am here" he whispers and she sobs, her breathing is a heartbreaking ragged sound as she is trying to breathe with her damaged lungs and the obvious adrenaline rush is leaving her as quickly as it probably came and has left her a shaking quivering wreck.
I take a look at the two nurses who appear to be as shocked by her behaviour as she was by them and I realise why she must have reacted this way when I catch through her hiccupping sobs, "make her go away, make her go away" and I look at one of the nurses who disturbingly looks just like Elena Lincoln. Platinum blonde hair, a slashing red mouth and a hard set to the eyes, if I didn't have all her features imprinted on my brain and had only seen her once through a hospital door like Ana, I'd mistake her for the evil one too, I am not surprised that Ana mistook her when she woke her in the middle of the night.
The Boss takes one look at the nurse, his eyes harden and he says "Get out and call the doctor" she doesn't move and just appears to sneer and so I decide for everyone's safety that I will assist her out, my grasp on her arm seems to do the trick and the other nurse with a gaping mouth who has just spent the last few minutes ogling the Boss, follows us out quickly.
A doctor is paged and arrives flustered at the room to be met by a dangerously calm, controlled statement from the Boss "I will have Anastasia Steele discharged into my care tomorrow morning, I would like the complete treatment plan documented so that it can be followed under the supervision of Dr Grace Trevelyan."
The doctor looks like he is about to protest and the Boss is admirably holding his temper as he spits through clenched teeth " Anastasia has had an enormous fright tonight and we arrived as soon as we could which was still 20 minutes after the episode started and what do you think we found when we arrived? We found two inexperienced nurses attempting to manhandle her and hold her down – she has if no-one remembers, the following injuries from a major car accident 3 days ago, not months ago, but 3 days ago she sustained and let me list
a dislocated left shoulder yet one of the nurses was pushing down on her left shoulder trying to hold her down
a broken rib so holding her down was just pushing that into her already punctured lung plus causing excruciating pain
a pelvis fracture so her kicking and twisting to get away from nurses is only going to damage that further
a left leg with fractures to the femur, tibia and fibula so an extremely unstable leg even though in a cast should not be subject to the rough movements I saw, including the nurse throwing her back onto the bed. Not only that but all the twisting in trying to get away from the nurse meant the weight of the cast which was for some reason no longer being held by the crane would have been dragging down and putting extra pressure on the pelvic fracture
a right leg with massive lacerations as well as a leg under a cast that had blood vessels cut which may well now be rupturing internally.
not to mention the mental damage that has been done
And what has happened to her lungs and given the pulmonary embolism that happened the other day and the blood thinners she was on, damage that can be happening elsewhere.
Why did the nurses attempt restraint instead of following the procedures that have worked in the last couple of nights when these nightmares have been dealt with in a manner not only providing dignity but ensuring no further damage is done to the patient?"
The doctor's face has paled considerably as the Boss has set out the potential damage that has occurred in the last 20 minutes and then completely ignores him and rushes to press the emergency button as he and we all notice that Ana has passed out in the Bosses arms – none of the monitors are attached anymore, so everyone is blind as to what has actually happened but it is obvious that Ana is not in a healthy state.
The look of horror on the Boss's face as he places her back on the bed and allows the doctors that have rushed in to take over, mirrors that of the other day when he thought she'd died in the operating room but this time he continues to hold onto her hand and I know that they are not going to pry him away from her until he knows what is happening.
An oxygen mask is forced onto her face, the heart monitor is back on and the fact that there is a beat, albeit erratic is a relief, the Boss took his hand away so that they could move her closer to one of the machines and her heart rate dropped and in alarm he grabbed her hand again and the heart rate stabilised and the emergency doctor who was monitoring it says with a smile "Hang onto her son, you're our best bet at the moment." The Boss, doesn't look at all impressed with the attempt at levity and I just can't believe the little one's rotten luck.
I go out to see Ryan to see what happened, why it escalated so badly and he says that the nurses wouldn't let him intervene and although he tried to tell them what had worked previously, they wouldn't listen and just tried restraining her which caused her to react and it just became worse and worse. He says, "Make sure they check her chest, that awful looking nurse that was first in, pushed her back down onto the bed forcefully with both hands on her chest" so I go back in and pass on that information to the doctors. The Boss's jaw clenches so hard I wouldn't be surprised if he has a chipped tooth in there somewhere as the doctors worriedly converse and decide that whole body scans are going to be required to determine how much damage Ana has sustained from what was effectively a 20 minute attack.
As the preparations are made to transfer her to ER, the Boss leans down and whispers something into the little one's ear and I watch enthralled as the heart rate slows and steadies. Dr Grace who had come in just before he bent down to speak to Ana watches the monitor as does one of the other doctors and raise their eyebrows at each other and then converse quietly and she nods. Before he has a chance to speak, Dr Grace says "Christian, you are coming into the scans with us and you will stay with her until they are all done" and he looks relieved and simply nods, I honestly think there would have been some serious restraining to be done if any other suggestion had been made.
An hour later and with scans showing that while the ribs have been damaged further, the lungs are no worse than they were, thankfully there is no sign of deflation of the punctured lung or of bleeding in the lungs. The shoulder doesn't look like it is dislocated again so she should be fine although probably sorer. The worse thing is that the pelvic fracture seems to have widened a little and is the biggest concern as any further damage and she will need a full body cast and this damage will slow down her rehabilitation as any jarring now will potentially destabilise her pelvic region or cause nerve damage. The legs are thankfully ok and no bleeding under the cast means that does not need to be changed and with the Boss next to her, all the monitors are now indicating normal responses.
As the doctors make to leave the room, the Boss singles out his mother and the most senior doctor there and reiterates what he said to the junior doctor at the beginning "I will have Anastasia Steele discharged into my care tomorrow morning, I would like the complete treatment plan documented so that it can be followed under the supervision of Dr Grace Trevelyan." He adds with a tone that brooks no argument "I can provide around the clock nursing care in my premises, I can provide full rehabilitation services and facilities and if she is with me, I will ensure her security and peace of mind," and he turns away, not waiting for an answer to press his lips onto Ana's forehead.
"But Christian, you can't provide the medical care, what happens if there is an emergency?" Dr Grace says quietly.
"Mother, if my security had not called me and I had not made it here in 20 minutes, Ana would have been dead, you did not see how they were manhandling her, would you manhandle someone having a night terror, would you be restraining someone with a rib injury by pushing against their chest, would you throw someone with these sorts of injuries around?…. The hospital should be thankful I am not suing them for any number of things" He stops himself saying something more and then asks "Will you supervise Ana's recovery?" and then so quietly that only Dr Grace and I can hear "I can't bear anything to happen to her mom, if she doesn't make it, I'm gone too."
With tears in her eyes, Dr Grace says "Yes son, I'll supervise her recovery and I know you will provide what we need to do that. Will you stay with her tonight to make sure she is ok and then we can organise it in the morning?" and he says with a small smile "Like you had to ask" and they stand there looking at the little one and then he says "Is there any chance of pushing another bed up against hers, I don't want to bump her when she's in so much pain but I want to be right there if she wakes up again?" and Dr Grace says "I'll organise it immediately and see you in the morning" and he kisses her on the cheek and she walks out.
The Boss has locked the 2 beds together and is lying as close as possible without nudging her, he's holding her hand with his left arm resting along the little one's arm providing a connection that keeps her calm and his right hand is nestled in her hair, resting on her good shoulder and finally he drops off to sleep.
I settle for another night sleeping in a chair …. hopefully things will start going back to "normal" tomorrow and I will be back in Gail's arms, I smile and sleep welcomes me after another day that I am happy to see finished.