Chapter Seventeen

"He's been missing for the past 7 weeks Cal, he quit working here two days after we came to the hospital. I know Special agent Ramsey, well not personally but I know his kind. He has unmarked cop cars in front of that little funhouse he took you to, and in front his apartment building. If Stark shows up at any one of those places I know Ramsey will have him arrested." I pause to look at my still unconscious wife. "I know what you're thinking, what if Ramsey already arrested him? I feel that if Ramsey arrested Stark it would be all over the news because he is the one who killed Colleen, and he would be here asking me more questions about you and that night 7 weeks ago. I haven't gotten the chance to do a full out stalking session, because I'm busy with work, you and the kids." I take another pause. "They really miss their mama. I've been debating if I should being them here to your room since Teddy and Derek removed all the tubes wires away from your body. What do you think? Do you want me to bring them by?"

I pause to look at her again thinking that maybe she might respond back, but like all the other times I talk to her and ask her questions she doesn't respond. She just lies there quietly with her eyes closed and her chest moving up and down slowly by itself. Last week when she moved her hand she almost gave me a heart attack when she started to make that choking sound, and her body started to shake a little bit. According to Derek that was good thing because that meant she didn't need to be attached to a respirator, because she started to fight the machine so she could breathe on her own. Derek keeps saying that she will wake up any minute since she is breathing on her own, but it's been a week and she is still lying here in a coma. Teddy and I usually spend our lunch break in here with her, mainly because I want to be here when she wakes up, but Teddy got a page from Yang and had to leave early, leaving me alone with my wife.

"Maybe I can find something in his personal file here at the hospital?" I say as I grab my tablet from the nightstand next to Callie's left side. "This is probably the only good thing that Stark has brought to peds." I say with a light smile, "I can pull his record with no problem and if someone asks why I did it. I can just say that some other hospital is thinking about hiring him and called me asking questions about him."

The room is quiet while I look thought Stark's personal file. He has one apartment that both Ramsey and I know about. There is nothing weird about his file or life, until I look at his bi weekly paycheck. $3,000 is taken out of every paycheck and goes to an assisted living home. Who does he know that is in an assisted living home? He's not married and I don't think he has kids, seeing how he takes great joy in killing kids. "Did Stark ever say that he knew someone in an assisted living home?" I ask Callie.

Every time I look at her and talk to her with no response I feel my heart break a little each time. "I don't know who I'm more pissed at right know, me for not taking this asswhole down sooner or Stark for attacking you." I clench my jaw as I try to keep myself from crying. "On a scale from 1 to 10, how mad would you be if I hunted down Stark and then gutted him like fish?" I say in slight whisper while looking down at the floor.

"Negative… infinity…" I hear a low raspy voice say.

My head whips up so fast I'm surprised I don't have whip flash. When I look over towards Callie, I see her eyes slightly open reveling chocolate brown orbs that have missed looking into. She is staring up at the ceiling and her eyes are unfocused. I stand up get closer to her as I grab and kiss the back of her hand. "Calliope," say in a soft whisper as tears of joy start to roll down my face. "Calliope I was jo-"

"Shut…up," Callie cuts off, and I do as I'm told. "I don't care what you do with Dr. Stark…" Callie pauses for a second, "do it before I change my mind…"

I don't say anything mainly because I'm in shock about Callie and her sudden change in attitude about me and killing, but I don't want to push it and ruin my chance to kill someone without fear of what my wife will say or do. I just lightly shake my head before I push the nurse call button. After the first nurse arrives it's about 10 minutes before Teddy, Yang, Derek and Lexie show up. When the four of them get there I'm kicked out of the room as the four of them test my wife on her memory and physical movement.

I'm not allowed to see Callie until at least an hour after work. I'm told by Teddy that Callie wants me to bring the kids up when I do come back, so I go to Brightwater and pick up Sofia before I bring her back to the daycare where she and the twins play with legos in the corner by themselves.

We are in the process of building a giant colorful tower when we hear Addison's voice. "Arizona, Sofia, Jack, Will someone wants to see you upstairs." The kids don't say anything as they get up from the floor with me. Callie's training has kicked in and before they come over towards me they pick up their mess together. Once everything is clean I pick up William so he is resting on left side and Jackie so she resting on right side. Since I can't hold Sofia's hand she grabs onto my pant leg and the four of us go upstairs to Callie's new patient room that is not in the ICU.

The second we round the corner and enter Callie's room the kids' faces light up. "MAMA!" the three of them scream causing me to get nasty looks from a family to our left. I just give them a blank stare as the twins slip out from arms and Sofia lets go of pant leg. The three of them run to Callie's bed and proceed to climb up the bed and into Callie's weak and waiting arms.

I know I should have helped or stopped them but I always found it interesting to watch them climb things. The three of them climb up the bed from the bottom by Callie's feet, when they got onto the bed they crawled their way over towards Callie's chest. Just like they did for me they climb over each other, but Jackie is the one who wins this battle.

"My babies," Callie says in a breathless cry. "Look at you guys, you're so big. Sof, you're practically a young lady now, Jack you look exactly like mommy, and look at my handsome little boy." Callie wraps her hands around the kids the best she can. While the four of them are hugging Callie looks over towards the doorway where I'm standing and she waves for me to come over towards her. I don't say anything and I do as I'm told. When I get close enough Callie grabs my arm and pulls me down close to her so she can hug me at the same time as well. "I missed guys so much." Callie says before she starts to break down and cry.

"Missed you, mama." Jackie says before she leans up to give Callie a kiss on the cheek. William nods his head agreeing with his sister before he leans up and kisses her other cheek, while Sofia gives her a tighter hug. The actions from all three of them cause Callie to cry harder.

"Hey you," I say in a soft whisper as I reach over to turn her head to face me. "It's okay, were going to be okay." I say to her as I wipe away a few of her tears. Callie nods her head before we both lean in for kiss.

God I missed her lips. After being in a coma for over a month her lips are still soft, plump and inviting. I could spend the rest of my life kissing her, but the squeal from William and Jackie cause us to break apart.

Callie spends the rest of the night playing the kids in her bed. However I have to constantly remind them that they can't ruff house with her yet. Callie's hand and arm movements are still a little on the slow side while plays with the kids. Derek lets Callie play with kids on the bed because it helps serve as therapy for her brain.

It's around 9 pm about an hour past the kid's bedtime when the kids finally pass out along with Callie. The twins are sleeping on either side of Callie and Sofia is sleeping on my lap with her head resting on my chest. I just sit there with my thoughts because Sofia is making it hard to use this quiet time to research Stark and his funds to some assisted living home.

I drift in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. I only wake up every time the nurse comes in to check up on Callie. The next morning the kids say a long and painful goodbye to Callie because just like they did for me they don't want to leave her side. After I leave with kids the Derek and Lexie take Callie downstairs to run some more tests while I take the kids home to clean them up before I drop them off at school and at daycare.

When I get back to the hospital I see Callie in her room watching TV while trying to eat yogurt by herself. "Hey you, do you want some help?"

"No," Callie says before she puts down the cup in front of her. "The faster I do this by myself the faster I get to go home."

I just give her light smile before I walk over to her, standing at my usual spot, the left side of her bed. I lean down and give her kiss, and just like last night I love the feeling of her lips against mine. After a few seconds I take the first step to deepen the kiss, and she doesn't protest. After our long enjoyable deep kiss I give her several small pecks on her lips. "Seriously Arizona?"

"Yes, just one more." I give her small peck, "okay I lied," I kiss her again. "I swear this will be the last one," one more kiss. "I can't stop," I'm about to kiss her again when she reaches up and covers my mouth with her hand. "I'm done," I say with a muffled voice through her hand.

"Are you sure?"

"No,"

Callie lets out small chuckle and gives me a small kiss on nose, "sit down Arizona." When Callie removes her hand from mouth is when I take a sit next her. Right when I sit down is when a nurse comes in and starts asking Callie questions about pain and headaches. Once the nurse leave the two us watch movies, until finally Callie falls asleep. With the kids down stairs and Callie asleep I use this time to get out my iPad and look more into Stark and this assisted living place he has been paying for.

I stare at his pay stub waiting for something to jump out at me. All it says on the form is assisted living, not the name of the place which would be really nice. For about 10 minutes I stare at the screen until it finally dawns on me that the numbers next to the name 'assisted living' is a phone number. I get out my phone and dial 206-470-8000, after about four rings someone answers the phone. "Era living, this is Ruth. How can I help you today?"

"Hi," I say with a slight chirp in my voice. "This is Susan…Stark…" I start out saying. The last name is not only obvious, it was a stupid thing for me to do. I don't know if this woman has personal contact with Stark and if she does then I could be put at a disadvantage again and I can't afford that. The first name just came to me, because from my seat I can see the Derek's favorite nurse, Susan, flirt with Teddy at the nurses' station while Addison looks like she is two seconds away from jumping the woman. Well that will be a conversation starter when I see Teddy later on.

" I was unaware that Maggie had more family in the area. We have only seen Mr. Stark since Maggie came here from the hospital."

"Yeah, I'm here on business and I just want to call and check up on my sister-in-law." I smile into the phone.

"Let's see Margaret Parmenter…" Ruth says as I hear her type on a keyboard. Parmenter rings a bell but I don't know from where. "Her condition hasn't changed, however we did move her from the housing in Renton to the housing in Broadview. Are you coming to visit her, I can set up a badge for you."

"I don't think my work will allow a visit this time around, plus Robert and I haven't spoken to each other since our fight about Maggie and assisted living."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, well just call if you ever want to see her. I know she could use some company."

"I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm in Seattle." Ruth and I say goodbye to each other before I hang up the phone.

I just sigh to myself as I lean back into chair. My conversation was a little helpful as I tried to pull as much information out of Ruth without being obvious that I have no business asking questions about this women named Margaret Parmenter. It looks like the rest of my information about Margaret is going to have to come from a field trip to Era assisted living.

The room gets quiet expect for the TV in the background. "How can you do that?" Callie says from behind closed eyes.

I don't say anything as I look over towards her. "Do what?"

"Manipulate people." Callie finally opens her eyes and looks over towards me. "We both know Ruth wasn't supposed to the give you information on 'Maggie' but you got her to do it anyway. Being in the medical field we both know that she could get into a lot of trouble, and the blank stare on your face lets me know that you don't care about what happens to her or her career." Callie pauses for a moment, "listening to you on the phone and seeing the 'real' Arizona over the past few months makes it hard to believe you, when you say that you truly care about me and our kids. You fake emotions so well."

I don't say anything to her as I give her a light shrug. "At one point in time when we first started dating, I can truthfully say that I didn't care about you or your feelings. But there's something special about you, the more I was around you the more I actually started to care about you. I've been around a lot of people for long periods of time and when they came to me with their problems, I could care less. But you, our kids, Teddy, Addison because of Teddy, Mark and Lexie are people I actually care about and I want to protect if the situation calls for it. Don't get it twisted I still don't like Mark and he is very low on the list of people I care about, but he's still on that list."

Callie and I look at each other for a few seconds. The only difference between now and all the other times we have had a twisted heart to heart talk is her eyes are not wide and filled with tears. She isn't disgusted with my answer. She's just looking at me with the same blank stare that I'm giving her.

"Ever since I could remember, I've always been a predator, Cal. I prey on the weak, and if your strong I poke around until I find your weakness and then I use against you. Emotions and caring about others is a sign of weakness in my world, and in my world the strong destroy the weak within seconds." Callie still gives me blank stare but I see the questions stirring in her brain.

"Alright, you ready for round two of testing?" Derek says as he claps his and walks into the room and stands on Callie's right side.

"Yeah," Callie says in a soft voice while breaking eye contact with me to look over at Derek.

I get up and walk over to help Lexie get Callie in her wheelchair. "I'll be here with the kids when you get back." I say to her.

Callie just looks at me briefly before she nods her head in agreement. Derek and Lexie take her downstairs to do some more testing and some physical therapy. I just watch as Callie gets wheeled away and I can't help but think that her skull fracture is the reason for her sudden attitude change. She used to be a hot mess when confused about my dark and twisted world, now I just get blank stares of understanding. Once Callie, Derek and Lexie are out of sight I grab my phone and look up the address for Era assisted living.

Era assisted living has eight different campuses located around Seattle, and the campus in Broadview is about 20 minutes away from the hospital in light traffic. When I pull up to the main building I get a little intimidated. Broadview looks like a nice upscale luxury apartment building, it reminds me of the luxury apartment Teddy and Addison live in. In the background I can see small townhouses and they have a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool and some hiking trails. I'm going to need a good story if I want to wonder around here.

I step through the automated front door into the lobby and I'm greeted with a nice homey feel. There are several chairs and couches scattered around to make visitors feel welcome. There are a few families talking in the lobby. I smile and give a head nod to a few people to make it seem like I should be here. I start to walk towards the empty front desk while getting a good look around the place. When I look to my left I see a long well lit hallway that goes somewhere, I'm not too sure where and about 10 feet from the hallway is a staircase that leads somewhere as well. I have never been here before and I'm only here to find Maggie, so if my journey to Maggie doesn't take down that hallway or up those stairs I really don't care about them.

When I finally reach my destination, the front desk, I see that there is still nobody around. Another glance around the room shows that there are no nurses or front desk staff down here at the moment, so I turn my attention at the desk area in front of me. From my angle I can see a pile of visitor badges and what looks like an unlocked employee tablet.

I guess Era assisted living was audited by the same company as Seattle Grace. I grab a badge and notice right way the texture of the badge. It's an expiring ID badge, which means I have to snap in half to active it, which I do. When my badge is activated it turns blue and from the table behind the front desk it looks like my badge will turn red when it's expired. I put the badge over my left chest and grab the tablet in one quick moment and start to walk away from the desk. I walk up the staircase for a safe measure and take a seat upstairs in a lone seat by the window.

Using the stolen employee tablet I pull up the roster for people living here at Broadview. It takes a few minutes to find Margaret Parmenter. She is here in the main building on the first floor in the medical wing. She's in room 22-210, since I have never been here; the room number is foreign to me. It takes another 5 minutes to find and figure out the floor plan. According to the map I have to go back downstairs and through that hallway I saw when I first arrived here. I plan my way to Margaret's room before I get up and leave my seat. This seems like the place that knows if a person shouldn't be here.

It's a 10 minute walk from my seat to Margaret's room. When I get to Margaret's room I greeted with a pale, fragile looking women that is hooked up to every machine known to man. Respirators, heart monitors, you name it, it's here connected to this poor woman. I grab Margaret's chart and being to read through it. She has been on life support for the past 5 years, she has little to no brain active which means she is a vegetable, and will stay like this until someone pulls the plug on her.

When I read more into Maggie's chart I see that Stark is the only family member that has been here to see her since she came here 5 years ago. She's too old to be his daughter, so she is either his sister or his wife. I put the chart back at the foot of Maggie's bed and leave the tablet in her room as well.

Now that I have a name and a face, I need to see how much this Maggie woman means Stark. If she means a lot to him, which I think she does because he refuses to take her off life support. She might be my key to pulling Stark out of hiding.

Sofia had a half day at Brightwater, something about teacher grading, but whatever the reason she got out of school at noon. I pick up Sofia and drive back to the hospital and get the twins from daycare before the four us meet Teddy downstairs in the cafeteria. The kids get their usual junk food when it's just Teddy and me, which consists of Chicken tenders, fries, pizza and milkshakes. After lunch the three of them are on a sugar high and hyper, which might be a bad since the next stop in the hospital is Callie's room. However I luck out because when we get there we see that Callie is still doing her testing and or therapy.

Teddy and I decide to let my three little monster run loose outside on the playground. The three of the play in the snow while Teddy and I sit on a bench and just watch them play with each other. "So what is up with you and Susan?" I start out saying with a small smile.

"Don't," Teddy responds back immediately. "Addison is 2 seconds away from killing her."

"Well when someone has the guts to openly flirt with you in front of your wife, what would you expect?" I pause for a moment, "Well look on the bright side when you get home tonight, you and Addison are going to hot borderline illegal sex."

Teddy slowly turns her head to face me with a look of confusion. "Susan openly flirts with me not caring about who is around to witness it. If Addison is going to do anything with me tonight, it's going to be murder and not of sexual kind."

"20 bucks says she has sex with you at some point today."

"How's your hunt for Stark going?" Teddy quickly changes the subject. She has never liked being the center of attention.

"It's going; I think I found a family member that can lead me to him. The only problem is they are on life support with no signs of waking up." I say with a slight shy before I turn my head to see the girls chasing their brother around in the snow.

"I was unaware that he had family, who is in the hospital?" Teddy asks.

"Margaret Parmenter,"

"Really," Teddy says as looks over at me in shock.

"Do you know her?" I ask.

"Who doesn't, she was the owner of the Parmenter Cider Mill on Seola Beach Drive, the only good thing to come out of West Seattle." Teddy starts. "The Parmenter's have had that land since forever. The best place in Seattle to pick apples and pumpkins, and who can forget their homemade donuts and hot apple cider."

"God I loved their donuts," I say when I finally realize where I recognized the name from. Callie and I would always go to the cider mill in the fall when they were still open. Callie would always climb on my back so she get the apples at the top of the trees. We wanted to take Sofia there but they closed down before she was old enough know what a cider mill was.

"And the haunted corn maze," Teddy jumps.

"Callie always hated that part," I say with small chuckle. "Why did that place close down?"

"A group of boys trying to be Crip gang members attacked, raped, and robbed her. I thought she died from her injuries but I guess not. I knew she had a husband, I just didn't know that it was Stark." Teddy pauses for a moment, "nobody wants to bring their family into gang territory especially with that constant Blood and Crip rivalry going on in West Seattle. They lost a lot of business and then finally closed down."

"That explains a lot," I say before we enter around of silence as we watch the girls torture William. Sofia is holding her giggling brother while Jackie piles snow around his legs trying to turn him into a human snowman.

We let this torture happen for another 30 minutes before we spend another 20 minutes chasing the kids trying to get them inside. Teddy manages to grab a giggling Sofia while I grab onto the giggling twins, in my usual twin carrying position, William over my shoulder and Jackie resting nicely on my hip.

We venture up to Callie's room again and this time she's there in bed waiting for her family to come back to visit her. Her face lights up when she sees me and kids, and the kids get even happier when they see their mama.

Just like yesterday the kids climb into bed with Callie and the three of them play and eat dinner with their mama. Unlike yesterday after dinner and a TV show the five us go upstairs to the Peds floor play with the kids in one of the many play rooms that we have. William and I goof around in the corner jumping and tackling each other while Callie and girls play with the Barbie dolls on the other side of the room.

We end up playing like this for about 2 hours before we call it night. This time when we get back to Callie's room Sofia climbs into bed with Callie and the twins, and soon the four them are sleeping peacefully while I take the time to research more into Margaret Parmenter and the Parmenter Cider Mill.

Margaret Renee Parmenter was the daughter of Matthew Parmenter, a farmer whose family has been here in Seattle since forever. She has four other sibling all doing something different than farming, lawyers, engineers the list goes on but I don't care about them, I care about Margaret. The Parmenters own about 10 acres of farm land, and grew just about anything, but they are more famous for their apples and pumpkins. When Margaret's father passed away he left her the farm and she has been in charge of it until her attack a few years ago.

Farming isn't that reliable of an income source so every fall they allowed people to come on their land and pick apples and pumpkins for about $10, which is a good deal because you take home everything that you picked without paying extra. Margaret was a baker and her donuts were to die for so they made more money off her baking as well. The Parmenter's also turned their corn field into a haunted maze for Halloween which brought them a lot attention, they rated the best cider mill on the west coast by several blog sites and TV shows. Travel channel, Esquire, Food Network and other big name networks constantly talked about the Parmenter cider mill. They were also rated scariest for their haunted corn maze as well.

15 years ago, Margaret met Stark and the two got married and lived happily ever after until one night when Margaret was closing the cider mill down a group of young men and women entered her store. They beat and raped her before they took all of her money. She had massive head trauma that should have killed her but somehow she pulled throw, but not for long. After her second brain surgery, Margaret didn't wake up and has been on life support ever since then. West Seattle isn't the greatest place in Seattle, gang violence and crime has been on the rise ever since the early 2000s so it should be no surprise when I say they never found the group of kids who did this no matter how much evidence they had against the kids.

Margaret's condition, the fact that these kids are still at large, is probably what produced the Nyx, but taking out your anger on innocent kids is not the answer. Yeah we deal with brats from time to time but that doesn't give Stark the excuse to kill them.

The fact that Margaret is still on life support when we both know that she should be taken off it lets me know that Margaret, just like Callie, is his weakness. I close my iPad and put it on the table next to Callie before I lean back in my chair and put my feet up on the lower part of her bed. I'm about to close my eyes when I hear Sofia, "Mommy."

I raise my head to see that she wants to sleep with me so I grab her from the bed and resume my position. The minute I lay back Sofia curls up into a little ball and falls asleep right away. I'm awake thinking of my game plan because even through Stark's days are numbered, he is still a smart man that will fight me all the way to his death. I'm awake for another hour coming up with the place to kill him, how I want to kill him, and to use Margaret against him. When I close my eyes I feel a small smile creep on face. Stark may have a check, but after next week I'll have a checkmate.

A/N: The showdown that you all have been waiting for will happen next week... It might get a little intense.