Summary: After the Oliver incident. Child services finds out about Ryan's trouble at school and takes him away. Sandy and Kirsten do everything they can to get him back with an unlikely source to help them.
AN: Another chapter for you guys. Hope you like it. Keep up the reviews. They make me very happy. Please R&R!
Disclaimer: I own no one. They all belong to Josh Schwartz and Fox.
Chapter 3: Rescued
The same day that Ryan had his meeting with Rachel, Sandy was on the phone arguing with the administrator of the youth facility at eight o'clock at night because they hadn't talked to Ryan yet. Kirsten stood by as Seth came down with Summer after hearing all the yelling.
"We were promised a phone call from our son at seven. It is now eight. I demand to talk to him." Sandy spoke into the phone.
"I got it." Seth said as the doorbell rang, anxious to get away from all the tension. "Grandpa, come in."
"What's all that racket?" Caleb looked towards the stairs as he heard pounding and some laughter.
"Seth, Summer, and some of Ryan's soccer teammates are making the guest room into Ryan's permanent bedroom." Kirsten told him as he walked into the kitchen. "We all agreed to it."
"I don't care if he is in a therapy session. He can continue it once we're done talking to him." Sandy's voice got louder after each word. "Put my son on the phone so we can talk to him."
"Who is he talking to?" Caleb looked at Kirsten.
"The facility where Ryan is." She told him. "We were promised a call at seven, but they wouldn't let him out of therapy early."
"What facility is he at?"
"It's the teen youth facility on the other side of town." Caleb took the phone from Sandy and spoke harshly to the person on the other end.
"This is Caleb Nichol. I own half this town including that facility. Now let my daughter and son-in-law talk to their son, or I will shut you guys down so fast." Sandy, Kirsten, and Seth looked at Caleb in shock as he spoke; never had he ever come to Ryan's defense since he met him.
"Thanks, dad." Kirsten told him.
"You guys get ten minutes." Caleb handed the phone back to Sandy. "I'm going to go finish some business."
Caleb walked out of the house and took out his cell phone and dialed a number and waited.
"Yeah. It's me. I need you to shut down that youth facility you investigated a few months ago. As soon as possible. My grandson, Ryan, is being held there. I'm afraid of what he's going through in that place. Just let me know as soon as it's done."
Caleb hung up the phone as he climbed back into his car and pulled out. He may not have given Ryan a fair chance up till now, but no one deserved to go through what he thought was happening in that facility at that very moment.
Ryan sat on the uncomfortable couch across from the 'counselor' who sat in a chair across from him writing in a folder every time he offered one-word answers or a shrug of his shoulders. He was trying very hard to keep his cool, but he was close to losing control. Everything they asked him about the Oliver incident, made it sound like they were looking to blame him for the entire thing.
Ryan was pulled out of the torturous therapy session when he was informed that the Cohen's were on the phone for him. He was led into a private room and sat at the table as he picked up the phone.
"Hello?" he spoke into the phone.
"Ryan, thank god." He heard Sandy. "Hold on. I'm going to put you on speaker phone."
"Ryan, are you ok?" he heard Kirsten.
"I'm fine. Who all am I talking to?"
"The three of us. Summer's here, too." Seth told him.
"Hey, Chino." He heard Summer's voice.
"Hey, Summer."
"So how are you handling everything, kid?" Sandy asked him.
"It's fine. My roommates are kind of cool. The food here is worse than Kirsten's, though." He heard everyone, including Kirsten, start to laugh.
"So everything's ok, then?" Sandy asked. "How are the therapy sessions?"
"Torture." They heard a hollowness in his voice. "It's like everything I say, they turn it around so that it's all my fault."
"Just hang in there, ok. Monday isn't that far away."
"I know." He turned around as he heard the door open and saw one of the guards. "They're telling me I have to hang up now."
"Ok. Just keep your head up, kid. You'll be out of there soon."
"We'll see you soon." Seth told him as they all heard a dial tone.
"He didn't sound like the Ryan that we know." Kirsten said as Sandy hung up the phone.
"Those kinds of places change people." Sandy told her.
Summer pulled Seth out of the room and led him back upstairs into the guest room. Luke was finishing putting together the desk, and a couple of Ryan's teammates were putting together a bookcase.
"We just talked to Ryan." Seth informed them.
"How'd he sound?" Luke asked.
"Different." Seth told him. "But dad says that place probably changed him."
"He'll be out soon." Chip called. "I hope he likes this surprise."
"I just need to figure out what kind of mural to put on the wall." Summer said. "Nothing I come up with really screams Ryan."
"Just do something with sports." Luke suggested. "Or the beach. Or both."
"Maybe." Summer thought about it.
Sandy and Kirsten peered into Ryan's new room and smiled at the amount of effort everyone was putting into it for Ryan. They walked away from the room, leaving the teenagers to their project and went to their bedroom to talk about the conversation they had with Ryan.
Ryan was in the 'activity room' with Andrew and Alex just chatting when the door opened and a group of people came in.
"Oh my god." Andrew looked up wide-eyed.
"Grams? Gramps?" Alex said astonished.
Ryan watched in jealousy as they ran to their grandparents and they all hugged each other. They all talked excitedly as Alex introduced them to Ryan.
"He's our roommate. He's only here until they evaluate him."
"Nice to meet you." They shook his hand. "I hope you're out of here soon."
"Me, too." Ryan agreed as Alex gave Ryan their new mailing address and told him to write to them once he got out.
Ryan said good-bye to them as they received all their belongings back from the administrator and followed their grandparents out to their car and pulled away from the facility.
Ryan got back to his room and saw another kid there lying across one of the beds. His new roommate, he assumed. Just by looking at him, he knew that he wasn't going to like him as well as his last roommates.
"Hey," he looked up at him abruptly. "Name's Riley. What's yours?"
"Ryan," he sat down on his bed.
"No offense, but I don't like you. I'm not here to make friends. I'm only here because I have to be."
"Fine by me." Ryan lay back on the bed and sighed, knowing it was going to be a long stay judging from his new roommate's attitude.
Caleb was at home reading through some files for work when his cell phone went off. He picked it up immediately once he saw who it was.
"What'd you find out? Can you get it done? You can't do it tonight? No. We'll go first thing in the morning. The sooner, the better." Caleb hung up and sighed, hoping he'd be able to get there in time for Ryan.
Sandy and Kirsten were up early again the next day and stopped when they heard noises coming from Ryan's new room. They slowly opened the door and saw Seth and Summer arranging the furniture that they had put together the night before. They were arguing about where to put everything when they saw them standing in the doorway.
"You guys did all this in one day?" Kirsten looked around amazed.
"We're not quite done with it." Summer told them. "We need to bring all his things in from the pool house, and I think he needs some new sheets, and I still need to do the mural."
"I think he'll love it either way." Sandy told her. "I need to call Rachel and get an update on Ryan."
"I'll go with you." Kirsten followed him out.
"Now let's finish this, Cohen. Then we can go get his things." Summer said as they continued to rearrange the furniture.
Caleb pulled up to the facility early the next morning and walked in and approached the sign-in desk.
"I'm here to see Ryan Atwood." He stated to the person at the desk.
"Mr. Atwood isn't allowed any visitors unless it's his lawyer."
"I'm much worse than a lawyer. My name is Caleb Nichol-" he was cut off when an alarm sounded and someone ran in.
"We need back up. It's the Atwood kid again." Caleb followed behind the staff members and into the meeting room where a group of teenagers were gathered around some kind of commotion.
Caleb pushed his way through and saw a nearly-unconscious Ryan lying in the floor as someone knelt above him punching him.
"Sir, you can't be in here."
"I can be wherever I want." Caleb stated. "As of now, this facility has been shut down. Now pull that kid off my grandson this minute."
It took four staff members to pull the hot-tempered youth off Ryan. He was barely coherent as the medical staff tried to help him.
"Caleb, I'm here." A short man came into the room. "Randall is in the lobby."
"Good. Take care of it." Caleb got Ryan off the floor and practically dragged him out of the room. "One of you get his belongings while I take him out to my car."
Ryan wasn't really aware of what was happening until he was placed into a comfortable seat and he felt himself moving very fast. He tried to move his head, but it was too painful.
"Just hang in there, Ryan." He heard a familiar voice, but it didn't make him feel very safe.
"Mr. Nichol?" he managed to open his eyes a crack.
"I'm taking you to get checked out at the hospital, and then I'm taking you back home to Sandy and Kirsten."
"Thank you." He managed to whisper before he gave up on any more coherent speech and passed out from the pain.
Ryan knew that the rest of his stay at the 'facility' would be harder that it had been so far. Judging from how his new roommate and the rest of the inhabitants now treated him now that his old roommates had already left. He tried to stay out of everyone's way and not give them any ammunition, but now it seemed like they went out of their way to torture him. And it's not as if the staff would come to his 'rescue'. In their minds, they all deserved to be punished.
He barely got any sleep the night before due to the fact that Riley wanted to stay up past lights out and the 'guards' kept coming into their room to tell him to do as they said. When the alarm sounded, he slowly got out of bed and made his bed before they came in to check it. Unfortunately, Riley got to the made-up bed right before they came in to check on it. When the guards found it messed up, they promised Ryan a hard day by telling him that he would have to do some 'hard labor' before he would be able to eat his breakfast. Although the guards made a point to double-check his work, not believing that he could finish before they thought he would. So they gave him more work to do, which he finished just as fast.
It was after breakfast when the attack came. He had just walked into the 'activity' room when his new roommate Riley came up behind him. Before he could react or try to defend himself, he found himself pinned to the floor and he felt the pain explode in his head as it continued to get worse. Suddenly after what felt like hours, he heard a harsh voice and his opponent was lifted off him. He was picked up off the ground and dragged out. He was put into a comfortable seat and he felt himself moving. He swore he could remember having a conversation with Kirsten's father, but thought he was just imagining it. Caleb's hated him since before he met him. There's no way he would've helped him.
Ryan regained consciousness in the emergency room with Caleb standing off to the side as the doctor and nurses checked his reflexes again. The doctor was leaning over him lying prone on the hospital bed as he shone a penlight in his eyes. He startled awake and glanced around the room at everyone, his eyes landing on Caleb.
"What's going on?" he asked softly.
"Welcome back, Mr. Atwood." The doctor told him. "How are you feeling?"
"What happened?"
"You took a pretty good beating. It's a good thing your grandfather got you here when he did. We've already done x-rays and a cat scan and it shows no long-term damage. We want to keep you here a few more hours to make sure you don't have a concussion."
"Ok." Ryan said, confused about the 'grandfather' part.
"Just keep him awake, Mr. Nichol. I'll come back to check on him in a few hours." The doctor walked out and Caleb walked closer to the bed.
"So they were referring to you when they were talking about my grandfather?" Ryan looked at him. "Why didn't you correct them?"
"That's what I announced when I brought you in." he told him.
"What's your game?"
"What?"
"You must have something planned for me. Are you going to send me to an even worse place once I can get out of here?"
"No. No matter what I think of you, no one deserves to be in a place like where I pulled you out of." He reached over for the Styrofoam coffee cup near Ryan's bedside and saw him flinch from him, but didn't mention anything about it.
"And you just plan on taking me back to the Cohen's just like that?"
"Well, there are some conditions."
"I knew it." Ryan sighed.
"I think you'll be able to live with these."
"So what are they?" he listened in wonder to the conditions that Caleb was relaying to him as he kept thinking that he had to have a motive.
AN: So what'd you all think? Next chapter Ryan will be reunited with the Cohen's. But is he the same Ryan that left? Please R&R!
