Chapter 162
AN: This chapter is dedicated to everyone who posted in the “101
Ways…” thread on my forum. Hope you like
it. ;)
Standing
just inside the hospital waiting room, Nick watched the display of emotions run
across Jamie’s face.
First,
recognition came to his cool blue eyes.
Almost instantaneously, it was replaced with anger, as his features
contorted into an enraged glower. He
muttered something Nick could not decipher into his phone and then flipped it
shut, tossing it down on the chair as he stood, glaring daggers at Nick.
“You’ve got
to be fucking kidding me,” he spat bitterly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here??”
“We’re here
for Claire,” Nick said evenly. “How is
she?”
“None of
your damn business, Carter.”
“What about
me?” spoke up Laureen, her voice challenging him. “I’m her friend. Dianna called me. I think I have a right to ask how she’s doing.”
“Dianna
can’t keep her big mouth shut. She
shouldn’t have called you,” Jamie replied.
“Claire doesn’t want anyone around.
She’s trying to sleep.”
“What about
the babies?” Laureen pressed.
Jamie’s
anger seemed to fade a notch. “Everything’s
alright now. They stopped her labor.”
“Thank
god,” murmured Nick, feeling instantly relieved.
Jamie was
immediately back on the defensive. “Oh,
what do you care, Carter? They’re not
your babies, and Claire’s not your wife.
You have no damn business being here.”
“She’s my friend. I care about her and her babies.”
“Yeah,
well, if you ask me, you’re a little too friendly with her. I want you out of here, now, or I’ll call
security and have them throw you out.”
Nick didn’t
take well to being threatened. Deciding
to bait Jamie back, he replied, “Oh, so now you call on the rent-a-cops who
work here to do your dirty work for you?
If you really want me gone, why don’t you just throw me out
yourself? You should have no problem
taking on a fucking gimp like me… but oh, wait?
Didn’t you try that once?”
He was
referring to the time when Jamie had gone after him on the beach, the night of
Claire’s moving away party. Clearly, by
the way Jamie’s face reddened, he remembered that time too.
“Your face
is all you got left, Carter. You really
want me to fuck that up?” asked Jamie, his voice mocking.
“I really
wanna see you try,” Nick retorted, not skipping a beat. “I’m not leaving without seeing Claire, so if
you want me gone, you’re-”
He didn’t
get another word in, for apparently, Jamie had heard enough to know what he was
going to have to do. Without warning, he
lunged at Nick, grabbing the collar of his shirt, and reeled back his fist. But before he could get in a good punch, Nick
jerked the stump of his left leg upward with as much force as he could muster,
sending his titanium prosthesis straight up between Jamie’s legs. As the durable metal made contact, Jamie
choked out a gasp of pain and immediately crumpled to the ground, the fight instantly
sucked out of him. He writhed on the
floor, cupping his bruised genitalia and moaning in pain. Hoping he’d caused enough damage to prevent
the prick from ever impregnating a woman again, through any means, Nick
couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction.
“That was a
low blow, you fucking gimp,” Jamie coughed bitterly, glaring up at Nick from
the floor with tears in his eyes.
“I know it
was below the belt. Literally,” Nick
cracked smugly. He couldn’t feel sorry
for the guy who had stolen Claire away, only to walk out on her whenever she
needed him. He was a pussy; he didn’t
deserve to call himself a man.
Laureen
giggled, and Nick looked over at her appreciatively. But in the moment he let his guard down,
Jamie struck back. Like a cat, he suddenly
sprang out of his fetal position and pounced, grabbing the thin ankle of Nick’s
prosthetic leg and tugging as hard as he could.
Nick’s plastic foot was pulled right out from under him, and he fell
hard onto his ass, nearly cracking his tailbone. Thankfully, his well-defined ass successfully
cushioned his fall, and as soon as he got over his surprise, he reacted
quickly, jerking the valve on the side of his socket which kept it suctioned to
his stump. As soon the suction was
released, the prosthetic leg slid off easily in Jamie’s hand.
Jamie was
so shocked that he let go quickly in disgust, and the leg banged to the floor
with a dull thud. Nick snatched it back
and, using a nearby chair for support, rose back up and stood on his one good
leg, holding the artificial one above his head.
“Fucking
gimp, huh?” he taunted, smirking down at Jamie.
“You wanna mess with a fucking gimp?
Fine. Then prepare for pain.” And, using the titanium leg like a baseball
bat, he swung it down, colliding with Jamie’s head.
Jamie cried
out in pain and put his hands over his head, cowering as Nick raised the leg up
again, his well-developed balance keeping him steady on his right leg. All of the frustration and resentment he’d
felt towards Jamie over the last few years starting pouring out, as he brought
down the leg again and again, battering Jamie’s pathetic form.
“Stop it,”
Jamie sobbed, trying in vain to shield himself from the blows of the prosthetic
leg. “You can have her; just stop
beating me! Oww, that hurts!”
Nick might
have continued the beatdown as long as Jamie was conscious, but his
high-pitched shrieks of pain and fear attracted the attention of a nurse, who,
after getting over her bewilderment at seeing a one-legged man beating the
living shit out of someone with his fake leg, ran to call security.
The
rent-a-cops Nick had spoken of earlier came quickly. One of them dragged Nick away from Jamie,
confiscating his prosthetic weapon, while the other pulled a whimpering Jamie
up from the floor. “You’re out of here,
both of you,” one of them growled, as they hauled both men down the hall, into
the elevator, and back to the main floor.
“And stay out!” he shouted, shoving them both out the door.
“Hey, can I
have my fake leg back?” Nick begged, teetering on his good one.
They gave
him back his prosthesis, and he couldn’t help but raise it menacingly at Jamie
once more. Jamie shrieked like a school
girl and ran, not looking where he was going.
He ran right out into the street, oblivious to the silver Jaguar that
was hurtling toward him.
“Hey,
watch-!” Nick started to call out and then thought, Hey, that silver Jag
looks a lot like…
But before
he could finish that thought, there was a scream and a dull thud, and he
watched in horror as Jamie’s body bounced off the hood of the Jag and landed in
an awkward heap in the middle of the street.
The Jaguar
screeched to a stop, and a woman jumped out.
“Oh my god!” she screamed. “He
just ran out into the middle of the road!
I didn’t have time to stop!”
“Meh,
that’s okay. He’s a douche anyway,”
shrugged Nick, offering the woman a reassuring smile. “So what’s your name?”
“Christine,”
answered the woman, eyeing Jamie’s still form warily.
“I’m Nick,
and I used to drive a car just like that.
When did you get it?”
“Oh,
earlier this year… middle of February, I think.”
“Hm, just a
couple weeks after I sold mine.
Interesting…” said Nick.
“Hey! He’s alive!” Christine exclaimed suddenly,
pointing. “Oh thank god, I didn’t kill
him.”
Nick looked
over at Jamie, who was showing signs of movement, starting to pick himself up
off the street. “Hey, dude, are you
okay?” he called.
Just then,
out of nowhere, a navy blue Escalade came along and barreled right over Jamie,
its tires crushing his already contused body.
“Stupid
potholes,” muttered the driver of the Escalade, who looked an awful lot like
Laureen, as she typed away on her Sidekick, completely unaware of the
pedestrian she’d just flattened. She
zoomed on down the street, narrowly missing a fire hydrant, an old lady in a
wheelchair, and a squirrel.
“Oh my
God! She killed Jamie!” Nick cried.
“You
bastard!” yelled Laureen, coming up beside him.
Glaring at Jamie’s mangled body, lying in a crimson puddle in the middle
of the street, she added, “I can’t believe you would pull someone’s fake leg
right out from under him! You deserve to
rot in a leper colony!!”
“Uh,
Laureen? I think he’s… dead…” said Nick,
eyeing Jamie’s mutilated remains. It was
a gruesome sight; his left leg, which had taken most of the weight of the
tires, actually looked almost flat. All
the bones inside were surely crushed, the tissues smeared against the asphalt.
Then, suddenly,
Jamie’s body began to twitch.
“Look! He’s not dead!” Laureen exclaimed.
Behind her,
the doors of the hospital suddenly burst open, and a team of medical personnel
came rushing out with a stretcher. “Move
aside!” they shouted, pushing the curious onlookers out of the way. As Nick was still holding his fake leg in his
hand, he simply toppled over sideways when they pushed him and struck his head
against the concrete.
The last
thing he remembered was Laureen screaming “You bastard!” again and everything
going black…
***
When he
woke up, the first thing Nick saw was Claire’s face. She was smiling down at him, and for a
moment, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. His angel… she was there.
“Claire?”
he asked, and he was surprised at how raspy his voice sounded, as if he’d been
sleeping for a long time. “Are… are you
okay?”
“I’m fine,”
she answered, sounding surprised. “How
are you feeling?”
“Okay, I
guess,” he said, also surprised because his head didn’t hurt nearly as much as
he thought it would. In fact, it didn’t
really hurt at all. But he wasn’t
thinking of himself; he was more concerned about her. “Are the babies still alright too?”
“Oh,
they’re great!” Claire exclaimed cheerfully.
“They’re starting to sit up!”
“They’re…
wait, what??” Nick asked, suddenly very confused.
“Nick, the
twins are four months old now. You…
you’ve been in a coma for over six.”
“What?!”
“That night
I went into preterm labor, when Jamie had his accident, you fell and hit your
head on some concrete. The blow gave you
a head injury and put you in a coma.
You’ve been here in the hospital ever since.”
Nick looked
around in utter bewilderment and realized with a start that she was right. He was in a hospital room… in a hospital
bed. He was the patient now, not
her. She was… well, she was fine. Looking more closely at her now, he realized
that she was no longer pregnant, her body returned to its old figure (or close
enough).
“What the
fuck… this is crazy,” he muttered, blinking up at her in shock.
“I know… I
knew you’d be in for a shock when you woke up.
I’m just glad you did finally wake up. We weren’t sure, for awhile. But you’re awake now, and that’s all that
matters.” She smiled and squeezed his
hand. “I love you, Nick. I just want you to know that. I’ve been whispering it in your ear for
months, but I want to say it to you now, while you’re awake to hear it.”
“I love
you, to-“ Nick stated to say automatically, and then he stopped. “Wait… why did you say that?? How can you-?
Where’s Jamie??”
He’d dead, he realized suddenly, before she
could answer. He got hit by a car –
two cars, actually – and he died. Why
did I ask that??
Claire
shrugged. “Not sure. I guess you have no idea what all happened to
him.”
“No…
what?? He’s still alive??” Nick asked
incredulously.
“As far as
I know, yeah.” She sighed. “This is a long story, but here goes. It’s actually pretty freaking ironic, what
happened to Jamie. He was hurt really
badly when the car hit him; he almost died.
He was in surgery for, like, ten hours, but they managed to repair his
internal injuries. The only thing they
couldn’t save… was his leg.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, they
had to amputate his leg. His left
leg. Above the knee. Just like you.”
“What?! No way!”
“Yes
way. That’s what I mean about it being
ironic,” Claire said, grinning. “So
Jamie lost his leg, and everything went downhill from there. There was no saving our marriage at that
point. I was still pregnant and on bed
rest, and he was recuperating, and neither one of us could be much help to each
other. All I could do was talk to him,
but he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. As far as he was concerned, his life was
over.”
“I can
relate to that,” admitted Nick, offering her a crooked smile.
“I know,
but you came out of that. You went on
with your life. He didn’t. He threw himself a pity party for the rest of
our marriage. A pity party with lots and
lots of booze. He turned to alcohol, and
it got to the point where he was drunk all the time. I didn’t want him around me anymore, and when
the twins were born, I definitely didn’t want him around them. So I filed for divorce.”
Nick
blinked at her hopefully, his heart soaring.
“You did??”
She gave
him a thin smile. “Uh-huh. It almost broke my heart to do it… I didn’t
want to leave him… but he wasn’t even trying to get on with his life, and I
couldn’t let him hurt me or my kids anymore.
I gave him an ultimatum, and in the end, he made me leave him.”
“So... so
you’re divorced now?”
In response,
she held up her left hand, and he could see that her wedding rings were
gone. “I’m Ms. Ryan again. Just became official a few days ago. So your timing’s perfect.”
“My
timing?”
Claire
nodded and smiled seductively. Leaning
over, she lowered her face to his and captured his lips in a long, tender
kiss. Nick drank it in, savoring it,
feeling as if he were tasting something sweet he had not had in a long, long
time. In essence, he was.
Man, he thought, when she finally eased away, allowing him to breathe, if
she had done that a few months ago, I’m sure I would have woken up then. He suddenly knew what it felt like to be
Snow White, brought back from death by true love’s kiss.
“I’m ready
to be Mrs. Carter now,” Claire whispered, slipping her hand into his. “That is, if you’ll have me.”
“Of course
I’ll have you. You’ve always had me,”
Nick replied simply, bringing her hand to his lips. “You’re the Ren to my Stumpy.”
Claire
giggled. “And you’re the Stumpy to my
Ren. The one and only Stumpy. That’s what I told Jamie when I filed the
divorce papers.”
Nick burst
out laughing. “You did not.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“You should
have, though. The guy’s a douche.”
“Yeah.” She grinned.
“I know that now.”
What she
didn’t know, and neither did Nick, was the current predicament Jamie was in.
After
losing Claire, Jamie had in turn lost himself, deeper and deeper into an
alcohol addiction. He spent his lonely
nights in seedy bars, drinking his misery away, numbing the phantom pains and
emotional pain with vodka and whiskey.
One night he got into a fight with a guy who was bigger and stronger
and, ironically, also named Nick. The
next night, he met a woman, the first woman who had shown any interest in him
since Claire had left.
Her name
was Carmyn.
She had
coaxed him back her house that night, and it was then that he had discovered
why she was attracted to him, when most other women weren’t. After several more drinks and a few hits of
GHB, he spent a night engaged in the kinkiest and most depraved sex acts he’d
ever witnessed. And when he woke up in
the morning, he found himself chained to a bed in her basement.
He’d been
there ever since.
He spent
his days rocking back and forth in bed, wishing for death and trying to drown out
the strains of Nick Carter’s song “Is It Saturday Yet?” which she kept playing
on constant repeat while she was away at work.
He spent his nights letting her tease off the prosthetic leg he’d never
quite learned to walk on properly and stick his stump in places he’d never
dreamed it would fit, all while listening to a medley of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s
Get It On” and Nick’s song “Miss America.”
The phrase
“Take it off, take it off… let’s get it on, get it on” had never held such
meaning.
And never
had Jamie believed in karma, until he met Carmyn.
He paid the
price for the way he had treated Nick and Claire, as they grew back together
and went on with their lives without him, never knowing quite what had become
of him. Eventually, he escaped from
Carmyn, but he would never see Claire again.
He embarked on a trip around the world, in an attempt to bring meaning
to his life, but his plane crashed and left him stranded on a deserted island
for several years, with only his fake leg Filson to keep him company. Eventually he built a raft and sailed to
Tanzania, where he would remain.
Claire
married Nick, just as she’d always meant to, and they raised her twins together
as their own. Laureen eventually found
her own true love and married too. And,
in the end, they all lived happily ever after…
… except
for Jamie, who died of leprosy two years later.
The End.
***
“Nick?”
A firm poke
caused Nick’s eyes to spring open.
“Huh? I thought the story was over…” he mumbled,
disoriented.
“What story? We’re here,” said Laureen. “At the hospital. Come on, wake up. You wanna see Claire, don’t you?”
All of a
sudden, Nick was awake and alert again.
Looking around in confusion, he realized he was still in the taxi, which
was parked in front of the main entrance of Tampa General. He must have fallen asleep on the ride from
St. Petersburg to Tampa. How had that
happened??
“Yeah,
yeah… sorry, I’m awake now,” he muttered and quickly fumbled for his wallet.
He paid the
cabbie, tipping extra for the speed in which he’d gotten them there, and
climbed out. Laureen followed closely
behind as he led the way into the hospital that was all-too-familiar to him.
“I can’t
believe I fell asleep,” he mumbled, as they walked inside. “I had one pretty whacked out dream, too.”
“Did
you? You were pretty out of it,” said
Laureen with a smile. “You were smiling
right before I woke you up though. Must
have been a good one.”
Nick
avoided looking her right in the eye as he answered, “Well, yeah… it ended
good, anyway.”
***
AN: Thanks to Erin, Jenna, Nina, Laureen, Nick, Veronica,
Christine, and everyone else who contributed ideas for this chapter or simply
opted for the “selective abortion” of Jamie. ;) It’s the Sanctuary crew who made this
chapter so trippy though, and I love them for it – I had fun writing it anyway
=P Hope you guys had fun reading it too!