Standard Disclaimer
A/N: So instead of starting a new story completely, I'm just going to pick the plot back up. It won't be terribly long, maybe three or four chapters, give or take. You'll probably really like this chapter--we get nearly all Vincent's POV.
Time
Vincent didn't hate hospitals. Everyone else did, but he didn't. He found the cold, white sterile surroundings to have a detached comfort to them. The booths that littered the halls, filled with flowers and gifts, bright spots of color. He knew a lot about hospitals, their routines, their ins and outs. They were generally alike, especially in their procedures. All medical places had a standard they had to live up to. All he ever had to do was foot-mark the place and he had it made.
Hospitals were not as easy to infiltrate as all of that, however. On more than one occasion, when he'd had to step in and finish a mistake another contractor had made, he'd nearly been caught. He found that having information on the nurses' rounds was very helpful to avoid that situation. Plus there was the fact that each and every room was about the size of a large closet, and if there was even so much as a single guard posted at the door, entry was nearly impossible. Distractions had become a necessary art. He was glad when he was able to go into business for himself, and he didn't have to take the stupid hospital jobs anymore.
But that wasn't why he was here. It was a busy night in this place. There had been an overturned bus about six blocks away and this emergency room was filled with the wounded. Many were minor, but there were a few serious, and they got first priority. He could hear the medical jargon all around him, understanding a little, not caring about the rest.
His ears were set for a name.
He knew it was a foolish thing, but he didn't know what else to listen for. His information wasn't as good anymore. He missed his old employers simply for the fact that they were extremely well connected. They could have told him her name now. Because it certainly wasn't Victoria Potter anymore.
He sat down in the waiting room, finding a single empty spot in a linoleum chair that had three holes in the seat and a big crack along the back. He found that he blended in rather well. There were a few other men there wearing their hooded sweatshirts up tonight, on account of the light spit of rain that was covering the city. He'd never considered Indianapolis a beautiful city, but in the haze of the rain and with the approach of winter in the air, he could see the appeal he'd been missing.
Still, if forced to choose, he would take Chicago any day.
He'd picked a very non-discriminate color - sweatshirt gray, nothing on the front, not even a college emblem. Thick jeans that were slightly too big, a wide belt to keep them in place. Hands stuffed in the slinging pockets in front to keep them warm, but mostly because he didn't want her to recognize him.
If she was even here. It wasn't entirely out of his imagination that he'd been sold a dud. It happened. If it had happened now, he knew how to take care of it. It was just more time lost.
Vincent watched the world pass by him. A woman came in with a baby, the baby looked an off-shade of blue. A nurse started her on paperwork, and then another woman approached, wearing the long white coat of a doctor, like in a television program.
Brown hair, having been streaked to take away the black. Contacts in her eyes, altering the color slightly. But her profile was still the same.
"Dr. Lancing," the nurse said, "room seven is open."
Dr. Lancing...so Victoria had a new last name. He wondered if she had friends here, people who would call her by her new first name so he could hear it. The two disappeared into a small room with a seven outside the door. He didn't see her again for a while. When she came out, she was pushing back her hair from her face, which clung to it in sweaty strands. She disappeared a second time around a corner, and Vincent waited.
Gradually, the chaos around him calmed. The people thinned out, the sounds lowered. The entire room seemed to cool. "Dr. Lancing" came out of the maze behind her as a woman entered pushing a large carriage.
The woman with the carriage was obviously not a patient. She didn't have the strained, scared look on her face that the other mother had. Plus, Victoria's eyes lit up when she saw her, and she quickened her pace to approach her.
"Cindy," Victoria said in greeting.
"Hello, Sarah," Cindy replied, pulling back the hood on the carriage. "We thought we'd stop by and say hello."
"I'm so glad you did," Victoria said, bending down into the carriage. Her hands went in, unbuckling something, and then they came out holding a baby.
A baby boy, with thick, dark hair on his head and cooing happily to see his mommy.
Victoria. That was her baby. Their baby. And he'd caught her new first name..."Sarah." He wasn't sure what he thought of it. He didn't think she looked like a Sarah. Or maybe it was the highlights, the highlights did help make her look more like a Sarah.
Victoria cuddled the baby close to her, kissing him repeatedly. In her arms, he wiggled his own little fat ones, kicked his feet playfully, and she pressed her finger against his lips, moving up and down rapidly so he could make a noise that vibrated with the movement of her finger.
"I can't believe you taught him that!" Victoria laughed. Vincent looked up a little more as she laughed. He couldn't recall too many times he'd heard her laugh. There hadn't been a lot of laughing moments in their relationship. He could remember throaty chuckles, sarcastic throwaways caused by a bad situation, and the nights they spent together in Mexico, her soft giggles when he was in a particular mood...
He blinked. He was losing his touch, to let himself get distracted like that.
He watched her play with her son, watched the motherhood wash over her, change her, bring out all those things in her he thought only he had ever seen. He felt himself smiling to see her like this. He was glad she was happy. She looked happy. She looked content. She looked like she was getting her life back in order, getting it to be the way she had tried to make it before, but had failed at miserably. He wondered how exactly she was able to practice medicine again, but had a suspicion that Prosecutor Farrell had probably had a hand in it. That woman couldn't live without seeing justice served, to everyone.
Except maybe him. She didn't like him. He could still remember the guarded hatred in her eyes every time she looked at him. No, she never showed it. But it was there. He didn't blame her at all. After all, he had tried to kill her. Fair was fair.
"Something funny happened this evening," Cindy said, as the playing calmed a bit and the baby boy became fascinated with his surroundings, which were new, compared to his mother, which wasn't.
"What?" Victoria asked.
"Well, I was getting ready to take Charles out--" Charles, she'd picked Charles... interesting name, he sort of liked it-"and this woman was at the speaker to the apartment. She was asking for a Dr. Potter."
Victoria stopped. Vincent saw the color begin to fade from her flushed cheeks. "Potter?" she echoed.
"Yeah, really weird. I asked her if she meant Dr. Lancing, but she said no, she wanted Dr. Potter. I told her she had the wrong apartment. She was pretty insistent about having the right place, though-"
"Did you get her name?" Victoria asked.
"No, she wouldn't give it, which was just rude, if you ask me. I saw her on the security cameras. I hate those things, they use the night-vision green? Made her hair look completely white."
Vincent took a sharp breath. So his information had been correct. He'd been hoping it was wrong, that he'd come here and find everyone all right and calm, and he could slip back to his new life - not that there was much to go to - and let Victoria alone. Maybe he could still do that.
"Anyway, I waited a bit before leaving, just to make sure she was gone," Cindy said. "Just seemed really weird. If she shows up again, you want me to call the police?"
"Probably a good idea," Victoria said. "Although I wouldn't trust Marion County Cops with handling a parking ticket."
Cindy chuckled. "Well, I'm sure it was nothing, really. But I'll call them if it happens again, anyway." Victoria reluctantly gave the baby back to the woman, Cindy, and there was a sadness in her face. Yes, it had been there before, but it was more clear now. It hung over her, a shadow. But she pushed it back, as surely as she did the stray strands of her hair, waved goodbye to the woman, kissed her son one more time, and went back to work.
Vincent didn't see her again that night.
The woman, Cindy, however, took a few minutes getting out. The wheels on the carriage, although it was obviously top-quality and brand new, were being stubborn. As she pushed the carriage out the sliding doors, she stopped at the curb and wrestled with the hood to get it to cover the baby again.
Vincent walked past them. He slowed down as he neared the front of the carriage, and the baby, Charles, was sitting up, pushed away from the back of the carriage, looking up and around, and Vincent saw his own eyes staring back at him in a wide-eyed wonder.
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Time passes. Time always passes. Whether liked or not, it was an inevitable fact. The seconds became minutes, into hours, days, weeks, months. Six of them. Three of them were spent in the safety of her home. Taking care of Charles. Finding herself again. Rediscovering who she was, finding out the new person she had become. She went back to church. She took a priest into confidence and confessed her life. And at night, she still thought of Vincent.
As much as she tried not to, she knew she still loved him.
She'd been working at the hospital for three months. Night shifts, usually, and in the ER. It was the easiest position to fill, the place where she was least noticed, and the best hours. During the day she could be home with Charles, and go to work in the evening, and there was a wonderful woman, her name was Cindy, who was a nanny, and she liked the nights. She was very much a night person, and it was a good relationship. Cindy watched Charles from about eight in the evening to eight in the morning, a twelve hour shift that Dr. Sarah Lancing could afford, considering she used her pay for little else. Plus there were Cindy's meals, all taken care of, and the benefits of short naps if she needed them while Charles slept. He usually didn't sleep until a few hours after his mother had gone to work, around ten, woke up around four, was awake until eight and then went to sleep again when his mommy did, a not-so-small blessing, for at least another two hours.
His mother didn't sleep much, anymore.
The hospital was a good place to work, especially at night. Sure, it could be crazy at times, but it was rarely so. The bus overturning was a rare accident, and there had been mostly lacerations and bruised bones, only a few seriously injuries which were easily fixable.
Most nights, however, it was quiet. Cindy would stop in, if she could, if the weather permitted and the hospital wasn't too busy, and Dr. Lancing could say hello to her baby boy.
But then came the story about the woman looking for Dr. Potter. And she was suddenly Victoria again, feeling more alone and scared than ever.
Still, it was entirely possible that it was a coincidence. Just because the security cameras showed the woman as having white hair didn't mean it was Claudia. They did use the green-tint night vision, which made everything look white or green.
By the end of her shift, she was almost sure it was nothing, and she wasn't going to worry about it.
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Victoria was living in a nice place, Vincent decided. A condo, a bit yuppie, but it seemed to have a certain kind of elegance to it that suited her. How she afforded such a place was a bit beyond him, although when he thought hard about it, he was sure there had been at least two million dollars left of what they'd gotten from Shakespeare. It impressed him that she would spend it. Then again, what choice did she have? Be a single working mother, slaving away, all her money going to pay for a nanny and the other bills? Never a time to rest? No savings for her son? No, that wasn't Victoria. She was practical. And after everything, she probably felt there was enough distance between her and the money's source to justify it. Especially since she wasn't using it for herself, but for her son.
It didn't take long to spot a figure lurking a block away, within view of the complex, but not close enough to be alarming. Vincent's trained eye recognized the techniques immediately. And the figure.
He waited, hidden, for the figure to disappear inside a building that looked like a brownstone, slightly older than the rest. He watched patiently, and then saw a dim light come on in the foremost corner. There was a window, blinds drawn tightly over it, and there was something protruding from between the overlaying panels, something round.
Surveillance equipment. Softly, he slipped into the building, after having counted the floor and memorized the location. He moved through the hallways, careful not to make any sound. There were enough sounds around him to cover his steps, but not from her. She would probably sense him. She had probably tuned all her senses for him, expecting him at any moment. He wouldn't do anything stupid like break in on her. He would just find her door, check out the security she had on it.
It was a plain, wooden door, the numbers 23F on the front. He pressed against the wooden panel, feeling for the metal of the locks, finding two of them and a chain. There was a peep hole, which he quickly covered with a spot of glue. Then, he slipped out, knowing she was inside, and determined himself to wait, even if it rained all freaking night, to see if she went anywhere, did anything, talked to anyone.
If this was a trap, he needed to know all the ins and outs.
He walked across the street, planting himself at a bus stop, very much alone at two in the morning. Victoria had been at work for a while now, and the neighborhood was silent. This wasn't Los Angeles, he noted dryly, or even Chicago. It did sleep, or take heavy, long naps. It was comforting, though, knowing their was normalcy somewhere, that these people probably knew each other, that at the same time in the morning they got up, drank their coffee, kissed each other goodbye and went off to work in the normal world.
And his Victoria was the opposite. It was fitting.
As he waited, the back of his head went over the details again. He'd gotten wind of this from a highly unlikely source, if his deductive skills were still intact. Somehow, Annie had managed to inform him of it. Why the Prosecutor would be interested, or how she would even be able to do such a thing, it was beyond him. He figured it was partly on account of the fact that with his testimony, she had effectively buried Felix for the rest of his life. Say what you will, the woman didn't hold a grudge once someone had done her a good turn. Not that that was ever his intention, it was just a matter of convenience.
There was movement. Upstairs. She was adjusting the telescope - no, she was removing it. And it was being replaced by something thinner.
He realized with a shock that there must have been a hole cut through the glass, because the new scope was sliding right through, out into the open air.
He heard a pop, then something shatter. He looked toward the condos, saw Victoria's bedroom window became a glass spider web. He looked back toward the scope, now what he knew to be the barrel of a sniper's rifle, and it had withdrawn. The blinds flapped as the air passed through, rattling them slightly. The dim light faded, and Vincent felt his feet begin to surge toward the door, determined to go after her.
Then, he stopped. What had Claudia been shooting at? The nanny, of course. As a message to Victoria. Victoria would come home and find her nanny dead and her son screaming his head off from fear and neglect, and it would totally demolish her. Plus, God knew what could happen to little Charles now.
His feet seemed to begin to argue with him. He didn't have a fatherly instinct in his body, but when it came to Victoria, the thought of her good seemed to suddenly overrun everything else. He should chase Claudia, catch her. But no doubt she had a good escape route planned, and if he failed to catch her, how much time would he waste chasing after her? Besides, if shooting the nanny was a warning, she was going to be back.
His feet turned. He ran toward the condo. He pressed the buzzer wildly until someone let him in, just to make him stop. He ran up the stairs and when he reached the condo of the shattered window, he had to gather all his wits about him to get the door open. He never went anywhere without the ability to pick a lock, be it professional tools or the simple matter of a few sharp metal objects.
The woman was on the floor, in the bedroom, in a pool of blood. The bullet had hit her shoulder, but she was alive. Alive and writhing in agony. Vincent knew what that wound felt like, he'd had it himself.
Claudia hadn't been aiming to kill, just to really, really make a painful mess.
Vincent picked up the phone. The nanny - Cindy - was making strange rattling noises in her chest. The bullet had shattered bone and sent some of it into her lungs. She could barely breath, let alone move.
From the next room, Charles began to howl.
He dialed 911.
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When they brought her in, Victoria was currently the only doctor in the emergency room. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning, she was enjoying a quick break with a cup of coffee. The paramedics came in, with Cindy strapped to the table. One of them walked directly up to her, holding Charles in his carrier in one hand, and a note in the other.
"Dr. Lancing?" he said.
Victoria looked down at her son, not quite registering what was going on.
"Dr. Lancing!" came a shout, "major bleeding, we got to get her prepped now!"
"This note was left for you. This is your son?" the paramedic said quickly, handing her the note.
She took it. It read: To whom it may concern, this woman is the nanny for Charles Lancing, son of Dr. Sarah Lancing. Please deliver him to his mother in the ER at St. Margaret's Hospital.
"Yes, yes," Victoria said, clutching for her son. A nurse she knew very well, Tonya, came up beside her, taking the baby.
"Go to work, Doctor," she said. "I'll watch your son."
So Victoria did.
A/N: First of all, I'd like to thank everyone whose ever sent in a review. That is so important and it's been the main reason I've kept writing this story, even though I seem to be moving out of my Tom Cruise obsession. But a good story and loyal readers are very important. So thank you, really, from the bottom of my heart.
That being said, I've written more chapters for Solace than for Soulless, and Soulless has more reviews! What gives? I guess Warm Mittens and Sweet Treats not kicking in really did some damage. So you hear that girls? You'd better get to reviewing! :) I'm really kidding. Well, half-way, anyway.