A/N: See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer. I also want to remind everyone reading One Little Girl that the final chapters of this story deal with subject matter that is very disturbing. A major character death will occur, and it may be triggering for abuse survivors, so please read responsibly.
Chapter Summary: When the whole truth about Blair Warner's double life as "Ariah" finally comes out, everyone at the Eastland campus is devastated, and so is Lou Grant.
Chapter 14: Icebergs
As it turned out, the location of the underground city, a.k.a. Hell City, was actually not far from Peekskill, and somehow, a few people uncovered precisely where it was. Once that happened, an entire army of furious police officers and civilians stormed the underground city, got all the children out of there, and killed every single pedophile with their bare hands, especially Blair's DNA donors. It wasn't long after that Blair was rushed to a hospital in Manhattan by ambulance.
Mrs. Garrett, the girls, Mrs. Gordon, and Mr. Parker sat together anxiously as Blair remained in surgery for the next several hours. When a surgeon, a tall, slim, middle-aged black man, finally came out into the waiting room at two-twenty-eight the following morning with Blair's blood all over his blue scrubs, it was obvious that the news was not good.
"I'm looking for Mrs. Gordon," he announced. He'd seen what had happened to Blair just as most of America had that night, and he also knew that Blair Warner now had no parents to speak of. But right before Blair was taken back into surgery, the hospital was contacted by a man who was in a very high position at the FBI, and he made it clear to them that they were to regard Mrs. Gordon as Blair Warner's next of kin, and any medical decisions that needed to be made on Blair's behalf were to be made by her and her alone.
"That's me," she told him as she approached him with Mrs. Garrett, Mr. Parker, and the girls.
"I've been informed that you are Blair Warner's legal guardian now," the doctor told them, and naturally, Mrs. Garrett's face registered a look of shock and disdain. The school had always considered Mrs. Garrett to be Blair's guardian while Blair was living there during the school year, so to say the least, that came right out of left field.
"That's correct," Mrs. Gordon confirmed, and again, Mrs. Garrett couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"In that case, I need to speak with you about Miss Warner in private. We can go into one of the conference rooms down the hall."
Mrs. Gordon shook her head and told him, "No, doctor. These girls and Mrs. Garrett, here, have been more of a family to Blair Warner these past few years than her own parents have been. There's nothing you can say to me that cannot be said in front of them and in front of Mr. Parker, our headmaster."
The doctor nodded and said, "Very well. If you all would kindly follow me into the nearest conference room, I'll explain Miss Warner's current condition to you."
"Lead the way, doctor," said Mrs. Garrett, and then they all walked down the white, sterile hospital corridor together into the nearest conference room.
The walls of the large conference room were white and the floor was gray, and the large rectangular table and chairs in the middle of the room were also gray, and just like any typical hospital setting, it all felt so cold and sterile. Just being there sent chills down all their spines.
As soon as everyone entered the room and sat down at the table, the doctor closed the door behind him. He then walked up to the head of the table, sat down, and told them, "Everyone, my name is Dr. Brooks. I'm one of the surgeons who operated on Miss Warner tonight."
"Dr. Brooks, tell us. How is Blair doing?" Natalie, ever the doctor's daughter, demanded to know.
"Yeah, doctor," Tootie chimed in. "Is Blair okay?"
"I'm afraid she's not okay. Not by a long shot. I'm certain at least some of you witnessed for yourselves exactly what happened to Miss Warner. She was beaten; she was raped; she was stabbed. What this young lady has been through tonight was absolutely brutal. The stabbing did do some damage to Miss Warner's liver, but we were able to repair it. However, a terrible amount of damage was also done to her heart and to her kidneys, and as of right now, her heart and kidneys are shutting down. She is young, and we just might get a miracle, and we can certainly hope and pray for one. However, in my professional medical opinion, I do not believe that Miss Warner will survive for long. I'm so sorry."
In that moment, everyone began openly crying, even Mr. Parker, and they were not ashamed of their tears. Dr. Brooks walked out of the room then to give them some privacy.
"How in the lowest pit of hell does something like this happen?!" Mr. Parker raged. "How in the lowest pit of hell does an Eastland student get raped and stabbed by her own parents on national television?!"
Mrs. Gordon then spent about the next hour explaining everything about Blair's double life as "Ariah." She told them all about all the students at Eastland and Bates who were really students there because Blair had saved them from a life of being trafficked. She told them all about how she had grown up being abused by her DNA donors. She helped them to truly understand for the first time just how painful Blair's day-to-day life actually was, and so did Jo.
"I know you guys have lived with Blair every day these past few years, just as I have, and I know you felt you knew her pretty well. But the truth is, what you saw of Blair every day…it was just the tip of the iceberg," Jo told them.
"Jo is absolutely right," Mrs. Gordon agreed. "With Blair, there has always been so much more going on beneath the surface that she kept hidden from everyone. Mr. and Mrs. Warner were pedophiles, and they abused Blair throughout her childhood in unspeakable ways. Warner Textile Mills is just a cover. I mean, it is a real, legitimate business, but most of the Warners' wealth never came from that. Most of their money was made through child trafficking, child prostitution, and child pornography."
"And the burdens Blair has carried every single day have been…unbelievable," Jo said soberly. "Blair Warner was never just some annoying, spoiled debutante. I know I've always said things like that about her, but it was never the truth. The truth is, she's the most extraordinary person I've ever met. She has literally sneaked away from campus, risked her life to meet with pimps and buy a child's freedom, then come back to campus, put on her uniform, and gone on as if she were just an ordinary Eastland student going through an ordinary day at school. She's done this dozens of times through the years. There have even been times when she has paid for the lives of children trapped in Hell City by enduring further rape. Like I said a few moments ago, what you all saw from Blair every day was just the tip of the iceberg. There was always things going on with her underneath the surface that none of you could have imagined. There has always been so much more to Blair than meets the eye."
"Okay, Jo, Mrs. Gordon," said Mr. Parker. "You've explained everything about the Warners, Dorm Z, all of Blair's work to fight child trafficking, all the students at Eastland and Bates that she's rescued. But I still don't understand how it is that one of my students ended up getting raped and stabbed by her own parents and it ended up being broadcast in nearly every home in this country."
"It was always Blair's final goal to get Hell City to fall," Mrs. Gordon explained. "It was always her final goal to expose what her DNA donors were doing to children behind closed doors and put a stop to their evil, once and for all. She had possession of some of the sick footage the Warners had of them molesting and raping children, and she could have leaked it to the press at any time, but she chose not to for the children's sake. She didn't want to risk re-traumatizing them. She knew that if any of the children she had managed to rescue from Hell City learned that she'd allowed others to see the footage of what had been done to them, they could feel as if they'd been violated all over again, and she didn't want to risk it. Furthermore, simply exposing the Warners' pedophilia might not have been enough. They had so much money and so many powerful friends in high places in this country. Even if the whole country had known that they were raping children all these years, they still could have possibly managed to buy their way out of prison. That's why, when one of Blair's contacts in the FBI got Lou Grant at WJM to first break the story about David Warner, it was only about certain white collar crimes that he'd committed, not about any of the children he'd raped. That story only discussed certain white collar crimes committed by David Warner that only Blair knew about. As soon as that story broke and went out nationwide, it was a clear signal to him that Blair had turned against him. There have been people in the past who have tried to go to the authorities about the Warners, and whenever that happened, those people ended up dead very quickly. That's why it was always so vital for Blair to stay in character practically every second of every day. She knew her DNA donors were paranoid and she knew they were murderers, and she knew she was always being watched, even at boarding school. Blair had to keep the Warners convinced that she was nothing more than a shallow, spoiled brat who was on their side and would never turn on them, and she had to keep them convinced of that until she was old enough to make her move against them. And Blair knew that the instant the story about Mr. Warner broke, the instant he knew that she had turned on him, he would eliminate her very quickly, before she had the opportunity to expose his and his ex-wife's pedophilia to the whole country. And that was always the plan."
"You mean you guys planned for the Warners to murder Blair all along?!" Natalie asked, absolutely horrified.
"I never planned it, Natalie. I never wanted this to happen. But Blair and her FBI contacts did plan it. Blair's FBI contacts managed to have hidden cameras installed in Hell City secretly. And they managed to find enough people in high places in network television who still had enough of a conscience, despite all their wealth, to take a stand against pedophilia. Who agreed to keep the footage of the Warners' rape and murder of Blair running despite network censors, so that it would be shown on almost every TV set in almost every home in America. As long as that happened, as long as America personally witnessed Mr. and Mrs. Warner raping and murdering their own child, Blair knew that almost everyone in this country would be out for their blood. America would never be satisfied until it had the Warners' heads on a platter, as well as the heads of every pedophile in Hell City. Blair had witnessed the Warners murder children before, and whenever they murdered a child or abused her, it was always in their quarters in Hell City, so Blair knew there was a very good chance that that was where they would take her after she made her move against them. That's why her contacts in the FBI had hidden cameras installed there."
"Moves and countermoves. It sounds like the most terrifying game of chess in the world," Tootie said with tears streaming down her face.
"That's precisely what it is, Tootie," Jo told her soberly. "It is the most terrifying game of chess in the world. All her life, Blair has been in a constant game of chess with the Warners. And this was her endgame. This was her strategy: to allow the Warners to murder her on national television so that they would be exposed, their reign of terror would be ended once and for all, and all the children in Hell City could be saved. And it worked. Blair won the game and called checkmate. Hell City has fallen, and the children have been rescued. Blair sacrificed her life for this. All those high-placed TV executives who agreed to be a part of Operation Omega only agreed to it if Blair would agree to wait until she turned eighteen and was legally considered an adult. While Blair was working so hard to rescue trafficked kids, she was also biding her time until she turned eighteen and was finally able to make her move against the Warners."
"As brutal as it was for all of us to witness Blair being beaten and raped and stabbed, we all need to remember that Blair's sacrifice has saved the lives of hundreds of children, and it has finally brought the Warners down for good," Mrs. Gordon reminded them, but everyone was so shocked and devastated that the housemother's words fell on deaf ears.
Mary Richards Slaughter and her husband Murray didn't typically knock on their boss's door at ten minutes after six in the morning, but obviously, this was not an ordinary morning. After Lou Grant had called up his former friend in the FBI, Paul Greene, spending hours yelling at him at the top of his lungs over the telephone, he finally ended the conversation and called up Mary and Murray. As soon as they arrived at his house that morning, they sat down his living room together, and he explained everything about his meeting with Paul Greene years ago, and he told them all about Operation Omega. Paul had never been completely forthcoming about Operation Omega. Lou had never known that by releasing the story about David Warner's white collar crimes, he was actually participating in events that would lead up to the brutal rape and stabbing of Blair Warner. He knew now that the moment he'd allowed the story about David Warner to air on the six o'clock news at WJM, he'd basically signed a young woman's death warrant without realizing it, and he was devastated.
"Mary…Murray…what have I done?" he asked them in a shaky voice as tears came to his eyes. "I'm a daddy. I raised three little girls. And Mary, you're my little girl, too," Lou said as Mary lovingly reached out and took his hands in her own. "When I saw what was happening to Blair, to that beautiful, beautiful little girl…it was just as if it were happening to you, Mary, or to my daughters. It was as if it were happening to one of my precious little grandchildren. I called the hospital in New York City just before you got here. Blair isn't doing well. My contact at the hospital in New York tells me that she probably won't survive. If this little girl dies…it'll be my fault."
"No, Lou. No; no," Mary said with such compassion as she hugged the surrogate father she loved so much. "All you knew was that Blair Warner was trying to put an end to their evil. You had no idea that she was going to sacrifice herself like this. There's no way you could have known this was going to happen."
"Mary's absolutely right, Lou," Murray insisted as he put a loving hand on his old friend's shoulder. "You never could have foreseen this. No one could have."
"You're a good man, Lou. You're such a good man," Mary said warmly as she continued to hug him. "You wanted to help save children's lives. You never, ever wanted anybody to get hurt. None of this is your fault. Like Murray and I have said, there is no possible way you could have foreseen this. If you had known all along what was going to happen, then it would be your fault, but you didn't know. You couldn't have known. You're just one person, Lou. You're not God. None of us are. You did the best you could with the knowledge you had at the time, just like we all have to do."
It was then that Mary's kind words began getting through, and Lou started to realize that she was right. As horrific as all of this was and as devastated as it made him, it truly wasn't his fault.
"Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Murray. I guess you guys are right."
"Of course we are, Lou," said Murray.
"I just feel like I'm on the Titanic. I feel like I just got slammed into a great big iceberg."
"I think everybody in this country feels that way right now," Mary said sympathetically.
Lou nodded, and then he told his friends that he wanted them to pray for Blair together. In the following moments, they all joined hands and bowed their heads in fervent prayer.