A/N- Thank you to al of thosse who reviewed, I'm glad you are enjoying this story. So for all those who reviewed, this is for you. I'm sorry taht it took me so long to update, but this chapter is a lot longer than any of the other ones, so hopefully the wait was worth it. so without further adou, here is chapter 6.
When the little girl was awakened by the headlights coming up the road, she was violently shivering and could barely move. She didn't know when she had fallen asleep, but she knew she must have been there for a while by her fingers, and the fact that they were now blue. At first she didn't realize where she was or why she was so cold that she was almost numb. Then she remembered she had climbed her tree and had sat on her platform. It was still a few seconds later until she remembered why she had climbed the tree. It was then she remembered what it was that had woken her up, headlights. Her daddy was home.
The little girl struggled to sit up, but her muscles were too cold. She did not give up though, and continued to strain against the urge to sleep. It was then that she heard her name being called out, and saw the beams of light sweeping over the ground. They were heading towards the barn. She tried to call out to him but even her throat didn't seem to want to work. By the time she was able to make a sound, the lights had disappeared into the barn.
When the little girl saw the lights again she called out for her daddy. Her voice was still too quiet to reach him so she tried again. Between the storm and her soar throat, the sound she made wouldn't reach him even if he was only 10 feet away from the tree. Realizing this, she struggled to untie her shoe and take it off. When she finally managed the task, she pushed her shoe off the side of the platform, hoping that her daddy had Nova, her dog, with him. If he was, than maybe Nova would notice or hear the shoe hitting the ground and come over to investigate, bringing her daddy with him.
She didn't know if her plan worked or not, because shortly after her shoe fell, she gave into the darkness that had been creeping up on her. She guessed that it did, because when she woke up again, she was in a hospital bed with nurses and doctors fussing over her. When they allowed her to talk, the first words out of her mouth were 'Where's my daddy?' Everyone in the room went utterly quiet, and no one would look her in the eye.
"Where's my daddy?"
-----
Sawyer walked back to the beach, soaked from head to toe, feeling absolutely horrible. Not only was he cold and wet, but the woman he was falling for had told him flat out that she didn't want him. He shouldn't have been surprised though, after the way he had treated her, but why did she always have to run after him? Why couldn't she give him a chance? He could be just a good a man as Jack, if only she would let him.
He walked across the beach to his tent with his head bent towards the ground, not wanting to look at anyone and not wanting anyone to look at him. When he got inside his tent, he flopped down onto the cot, not caring about his arm or the wet clothes he was still wearing. Maybe Kate would give up on Jack and come back to him. Maybe she would realize how much more, a relationship between the two of them, made sense. Maybe she will come back. And just in case she did, Sawyer decided to stay awake until she returned. But soon after he decided that, his eyes began to drupe and then sleep overtook him.
"So you need money huh?" asked Nick.
"Yeah I do," he said.
"What makes you think this would be a place to get it?" questioned Paul.
"You tellin' me it ain't?" he said snidely.
"Now he ain't tellin' you nothin', he was just asking a question," said Nick. "See, we can't go around talkin' about stuff, you never know who might be listening, or who we're talkin' to."
"What are you sayin', that I might be a cop?" he asked.
"Well if you want to be so open about it, yes that's what we're sayin'."
"I ain't a pig alright, I just need a little cash."
"What would a guy like you need 'a little cash' for?" asked Nick.
"It ain't none of your damn business," he said.
"Alright, I can respect wanting to have some privacy. How much money were you wanting to get if we just happened to know someone who could get it for you?" asked Nick.
He thought for a second. He knew that for his plan to work, he would have to ask for a large sum, one that they wouldn't naturally give out, even to trusted customers. "I need $500,000."
"$500,000. I thought you said you only needed a 'little' cash?" said Paul, a little taken aback.
"Well actually, that's only about two thirds of what I owe."
"Who the hell do you owe $750,000 to?" asked Paul.
"That don't concern you alright."
"Well something that does concern us, is how you're goin' to pay that kind of money back," Paul informed him.
"That is if we find someone crazy enough to lend you the money in the first place," added Nick.
"Listen man, I need that money. I need it by the end of the week or else I'm a dead man," he told them.
"What makes you think we care about weather you live or die?" asked Paul.
"You guys are my last hope okay, I've been everywhere."
"Again I ask, what makes you think we care about you?"
"Please, I'm beggin' you, you gotta help me."
"Sorry kid, but there ain't no way I'm givin' you $500,000," Paul said then turned away from him.
He bent his head forward, looking like he was about to cry, but inside he was smiling. So far everything was going exactly as he had planned. He picked up his beer and downed the rest of it, then got up from his seat and slowly headed towards the door.
"What exactly are you willing to do to get that money?" the question coming from Nick.
He stopped just short of the door as a smile spread across his face. He quickly turned it back into a frown as he turned to face Nick. "Just about anything," was all he said.
"Well than, maybe we can help each other," said Nick, a big grin on his face.
-----
As Jack sat there day dreaming about Kate, the stress and lack of sleep over the past few days, started to take their toll and Jack felt himself falling asleep. He didn't want to fall asleep because he knew he would dream, and his dreams were never pleasant. But despite his attempts at trying to stay awake, he felt himself falling into unconsciousness, and thought that maybe his dreams wouldn't be so bad compared to the scene he kept repeating over and over in his head. Kate kissing Sawyer.
His day was not going well at all. First he had woken up late with a major hang-over, then he had to listen to Emily yell at him about where he was the night before and who's bed he was in. When he finally got to the hospital he had to listen to his superior chew into him for being late yet again.
He found his way into the prep room and began washing his hands. His head was still throbbing a little but the couple Aspirin he took would kick in soon. He couldn't remember how many surgeries he'd done with a hang-over, there were too many to count, but they had all gone perfectly. He was a great surgeon, one of the best in the city. And just as he was about to step into the operating room, his father walked in.
"What the hell are you trying to do to me?" his father demanded.
"I'm not doing anything to you, I'm going in to do an operation," he stated with just a hint of annoyance.
"You were late again and I had to here it from Jacobs. Are you purposely trying to make me look bad? Or are you just incapable of acting like a real man? I knew it was a mistake for you to work at the same hospital as me. Hell, it was a mistake you becoming a doctor in the first place," yelled his father. The nurses in the operating room looked away from the door, pretending like they couldn't hear what was going on. Everyone was afraid of his father, except him.
"If you're about done berating me, there is a man on that table who is waiting for me to perform a very delicate surgery. I don't want o make him wait any longer."
"Well he's going to have to wait a couple more minutes until I'm ready to go."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm going to be the lead surgeon during this operation."
"No way, this is my patient, my operation."
"You really think I would trust you with an operation of this magnitude?"
He was speechless; he didn't know what to say. He couldn't believe his father was doing this to him. His father came within inches of his face and said, "Now, while you're waiting for me to get ready, you could go in there and help the nurses set up. And maybe while you're watching a real doctor operate, you might learn something."
His father turned and headed toward the sinks, leaving him only with the smell of alcohol in his nose. He tried to tell his father that he shouldn't perform the surgery while he was intoxicated but it was no use. He tried to talk to the nurses, to tell them not to help his father, but they were all too scared of his father to listen to him. The surgery went on with his father performing the surgery.
Halfway through the procedure, he watched helplessly as his father was making a cut and the scalpel slipped and cut through the man's spinal cord. He watched as his father struggled to fix what he had done, he watched as try after try, the damage increased. He tried to step in and take over but when he got close to the table his father pushed him away, saying he would only make things worse. He couldn't help but think that things couldn't possibly get worse than they were. The man lying on the table would never walk again if he wasn't fixed up fast, and if his father kept doing what he was doing, he might not make it out of the operation table alive.
He tried to step in again, to take over from his father, but when he moved in to take the scalpel and clamps away from his father, his father punched him in the face. He didn't try it again until his father, at one point, dropped what he was doing, and without a word, turned and left the operating room. As soon as his father had turned away, he had jumped up to the table and tried to rectify what his father had done to the poor man. He tried for three hours to stitch up his father's mistakes, when the heart monitor showed that the man's heart was no longer beating. Still he did not give up, he tried to resuscitate the man, but after 47 minutes with no change in the man's condition, he gave up hope in trying to save him.
The hardest thing he had to do was to go out into the waiting room and tell the man's family that he didn't make it. Watching the man's family break down and cry right before him, with the man's wife clinging onto him for comfort, he shared in their pain. And as tears fell down his face, he realized it was the first time he had cried since he was a boy. Even after his grandmother had passed away, not a single tear fell from his eye, and she was the one person he was really close with. She was the one person who always believed in him, no matter what he did.
And as he stood there, holding onto the man's wife, he looked back on his life, on everything he had done up to this point, and knew that his grandmother would not be happy with him of the life he lead. She was probably looking down on him with disgust. He didn't know when his life had become so horrible. He was drunk all the time, he was married to a woman he had never loved, and he had become his father, the one man he had always hated. And right there, in that moment, he vowed he was going to change his life around, starting that day. So when he was approached by Jacobs, he swore to himself that he would tell the truth, no matter what.
He found out that none of the nurses or other staff that was present in the operating room was telling the truth about what happened. He found out that his father was blaming him for what went wrong and that because the other staff was scared of his father and how he would use his connections, they were going along with the story. He told Jacobs the truth and later that day went before the medical board. And because he told the board that his father had been drinking before the operation, they had to look into the accusation. They stopped his father just as he was about to go into another operation and took a blood sample. When they analyzed his father's blood, they found that he was indeed drunk. When the members of the staff heard that news they started coming forward with other incidences involving his father. After all information was collected and proven, the board decided to take away his father's medical license.
That day he decided he didn't want to work in New York any longer. So after his father was escorted out of the hospital, he handed Jacobs his resignation. And on his way home he called his lawyer and asked him to meet him at his house.
When he got home he went inside and found his wife in the kitchen making diner.
"I want a divorce," was all he said.
Emily looked up from what she was doing to look into his eyes. She expected to see him drunk but what she saw stunned her.
"You're really serious about this?" she asked.
"Yes I am."
"What brought this on?"
"The truth is, I don't love you, and I don't think I ever have. It's not you, don't even think that you did anything wrong. I know how it sounds, but it is true. When I asked you to marry me I was just trying to impress my father, I was trying to prove something to him. You are an amazing woman and you will make someone very happy, but it won't be me, I'm sorry."
"So am I. I probably could have saved us all this trouble by turning you down that day. I knew that you didn't really want to marry me, I even knew that you didn't really love me, but I was hoping then that maybe that would change."
"So you're saying that you want the divorce as well?"
"Yeah I am. Neither one of us are happy Jack, what's the use in continuing this charade?"
When his lawyer got to his house, they quickly settled on who would get what and signed the papers. And because his lawyer was one of the best and very highly paid, the divorce was final in 24 hours. And by that time he was already in Los Angeles, looking for a cheap apartment and going to the local hospitals to see about getting a job. By the time his mother called, he was settled into his apartment and his job. He had also been sober for five days and hadn't slept with any random girls. In fact he hadn't slept with anyone, but he was happier than he had ever been, and than he got the call.
-----
For the first part of the week they went over the plans repeatedly until they could do it in their sleep. Then the day came when they were able to pull off the scam, and they did it without a hitch. And because it went so well, Nick offered him the chance to work with him. He agreed and they started working up a new scam.
He wanted Nick to trust him because then it would hit him harder when he pulled the rug out from under him. He wanted Nick to feel the hurt that he had as a little boy, he wanted Nick to pay. So he would wait for when the time was perfect. He would wait for him to set up a really big scam that they would have to do together, and then he would take off when Nick needed him most, leaving only the letter. His plan was perfect.
So they set up the next scam and pulled it off perfectly once again. When it was over, Nick invited him back to his place in Hawaii. He went of course and spent two weeks there with Nick and Nick's friends. He found himself starting to like Nick and having fun, but when he thought about it, he brushed it off as just playing a role. And when Nick asked him to do another scam, he agreed right away.
And so, over the next two months, they pulled off three extremely successful scams. During those two months, in between the planning and the execution, there were lots of parting and girls, and after every scam, his cut of the money got bigger and bigger. But as big as the scams got, he told himself that it still wasn't big enough.
So two months became four, then four became twelve, and soon two years had passed by. The letter he wrote was in a safety deposit box along with a large sum of cash. The plan he had made had long been forgotten as well as his old way of life. All that mattered now was money and the next scam.
Then one night when they were at the bar telling stories about the jobs they had pulled and the people they had ripped off, Nick got up to go to the bathroom and never returned. It was then that he remembered what he had planned to do and realized that he had missed his chance. He tried desperately to find Nick but no one knew where he had gone. When his stash of money began to run short, he realized the only thing he knew how to do was take other peoples money, so he devised a scam to get more money.
And as it was before, he fell into a routine. And after a year of working solo, he ran into a man who had information on where Nick had run off to. It cost him all but $200 of his money to find out that Nick had run off to Australia three weeks before. But before he went after Nick he needed to get more money, so he decided to pull off one last scam. It was then, when he was just about to walk away with the money, he realized what kind of man he had become and hated himself for it.
But as much as he hated himself, he hated Nick more. Not only did he blame Nick for his parent's death, but he blamed him for what he had become as well. He knew he was mostly to blame, but it was easier when you could cast the blame on someone else. So with the little amount of money he had left, he bought the cheapest ticket to Australia.
He worked odd jobs as he moved around Australia looking for Nick, knowing he couldn't go back to the life he had become accustomed to. He was there for almost five months when he found Nick. He had tracked down a friend of Nick's and learned from him that Nick had gotten into a fight two nights before. His heart fell when he was told that Nick had been stabbed to death after one of his scams went south.
The next day he was boarding a flight back to Los Angeles, angry at the world and at himself because he never took the chance to give Nick his letter. He would never have the chance to get the closure he so desperately needed and wanted. He had lost everything he had to live for, but he wasn't a weak man, he wouldn't take the easy way out. He would go back to the place he had first called home and try to start over.
-----
The little girl found out that her daddy, on the way to Mr. Hanson's house, got caught in the middle of a big accident along the freeway. She was told that her father, along with eleven other people, died that morning. The little girl cried and cried for her daddy, he couldn't really be gone, he never said goodbye. So she cried and she prayed for her daddy to walk through the door and take her home. She even told God that she didn't need Aslan, that she didn't want him, and that she would never ask for anything ever again if her daddy would come back. But he never came back, and even though she didn't get what she wanted, she never asked for anything again. She didn't think that he could hear her, so she never tried again.
For the next few weeks the little girl was moved from place to place, from home to home. She didn't have any family in Montana so the police were trying to track down her mother. They finally traced her mother down to California and then to Los Angeles and put the little girl on a plane. It was her first time ever leaving the county she lived in and she was more alone then she had ever been.
On the way to Los Angeles, the little girl became more nervous and more scared as each minute passed. It was the first time she was going to meet her mom, at least that she would remember, and she didn't know what to expect. All her daddy had ever told her about her mother, was that when she turned two, her mother left both her and her father. She ran off with her daddy's best friend to Vegas and never tried to contact her or her daddy again. Now here she was on her way to live with the woman who had walked out on her six years ago.
Her mother, her daddy's beat friend, and their daughter, were waiting for the little girl when she walked off the plane. They all had smiles on their faces and they seemed genuinely happy to see her. Her mother, with tears running down her face, gave the little girl a big hug and when she was done, Mike, her daddy's best friend, gave her a hug as well. Not wanting to be left out, Sarah, their daughter, came forward and gave the little girl a hug too.
When they got back to the house, they spent the time sitting around talking about the past and the things that they had missed. They took the time to get to know each other and tell jokes and laugh, and slowly the little girl started to lose some of her nervousness and didn't feel as scared as she had on the plane. And that night at dinner, they all sat around the table and continued the conversations. The little girl began to feel more and more like she belonged and she wished that her daddy were there to share it with her.
She was given her own room filled with books and stuffed animals and blanket with horses all over it. That night she slept well for the first time since her father had died. But before she crawled into bed, the little girl sat on her floor and told her father she was happy but that she would never forget him and she would always love him.
The next morning, Mary, the little girl's mother, took both of the girls down to the beach. She was so excited because she had never seen the ocean before and she longed to play in the sand. When they got to the beach, her mother took her and Sarah to the water's edge and told them to stand there and not to move. She told them that if they stayed there long enough, with the water lapping at their feet, they would slowly start to sink into the sand.
The next few days went about the same, more of the loving family routine, but then she had to start at her new school. That was the day everything changed. She didn't fit in with any of the girls in her class and she was made fun by the boys. She went home that day very sad, looking forward to seeing her mother and the rest of her new family. She knew that when she got home Mike would not be there because he worked until 6:00pm, but she was hoping that Mary and Sarah would help brighten up her day.
She walked through the door and called out that she was home but no one answered. She looked in the living room but no one was there so she continued looking through the rest of the house. She was just about to open the door to her mother's and Mike's room when her hand was pulled back. She turned around and saw Sarah holding onto her arm looking terrified.
"Don't go in there," Sarah said the fear evident in her voice.
"Why not? What's wrong Sarah?" she asked.
"She'll get mad and she'll hurt you."
"What do you mean? Sarah, she won't hurt me, trust me okay."
"But she will, she will hurt you."
"Listen Sarah, I'm four years older than you so I know more than you okay. She's not going to hurt me."
With that she opened the door and went inside. She looked behind her to see if Sarah followed her, but her sister had disappeared. She closed the door and turned back to the room. It was dark and smelled of the kind of drink her daddy would have when his friends came over to play poker. Her daddy had said it was called scotch and that she wasn't allowed to have any until she was a lot older. But here in this room the smell of it was overpowering.
As the little girl moved into the room, she tripped over a bottle that was lying on the floor, and fell with a big thud. In that same moment the mound on the bed jerked and sat up.
"Who the hell's there?" came her mother's slurred voice.
"It's me mom."
"Who's me?" her mother slurred again.
"It's Kate, are you okay?"
"Don't you dare talk to me like that you ungrateful bitch," her mother screamed at her.
"I only asked if you were okay," Kate said as she was starting to get a little scared. Maybe she shouldn't have come in here like Sarah had said.
"Don't talk back to me," she yelled as she got off the bed and slapped Kate across the face.
Kate fell down hard and hit her head on the side of a dresser that was sitting against the wall. She felt her head begin to go dizzy and she was more scared than she had ever been. She remembered her mother coming towards her yelling at her to get out, but somehow she was able to dodge the book her mother through at her and make it out the door and into her room where she closed the door and sat against it crying.
She didn't think it could get any worse than it was, but then Mike came home. He started yelling at Mary and about diner not being ready. It was then that she learned that she was expected to come home right after school and make diner for everyone, and she learned not to go near her mother when she smelt scotch.
The next month consisted of Kate trying to cook and getting slapped when it didn't turn out, which was almost always. And when she got home from school and her mother had been drinking, Sarah would be waiting in Kate's room, and together they would hide from their mother's wrath. They became very close and Kate looked out for her whenever her parents wanted to blame her for something. Kate felt it was her duty to protect her, so she did, often taking a hit that was supposed to land on her.
It wasn't all bad though, there were moments when her mother didn't get drunk, or when Mike was in a good mood. There were times when Mary would take the girls to beach, and it was only those times when the world seemed right. It was only of those times that Kate would have good memories of her mother, and it was those memories along with the memories of her daddy, that she was able to continue on from day to day.
By the end of the month Kate had gotten down a routine that kept her and Sarah off her parent's radar. They had gone about a week without being slapped or yelled at when one night their mother started slapping Kate around because she found Kate's mini report card. She was failing all of her subjects and Mary was not happy with her at all. And that night after her mother had drunk herself into unconsciousness, and she put Sarah to bed, she went to her own room. And that night she crawled into bed but couldn't fall asleep, she was thinking about her daddy and how much she missed him.
She was lying on her side facing her wall when she heard her door start to slide open. She watched as the rectangle of light grew larger on her wall, then she saw the silhouette of Mike step into the rectangle. She lay completely still as she heard him enter her room, then she watched utterly terrified, as she saw the rectangle of light grow smaller and smaller, until she heard the door close.
But my dreams, they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
So there is chapter six. I had to add the part about her going to the beach with her mom after watching last night's episode. I thought it could still work. Please let me know what you think. And sorry to all those people who wanted to know what was going to happen to Kate. I promise you will find out in the next chapter. Bye for now.