As
I walked alongside Mandy, my mind was racing with questions of what I was going
to do. Was giving up my life and my freedom the right choice? There weren’t any
options, I thought to myself. This was something I had to do, Brian’s and Lizz’s lives depended on what I did.
“Okay Nick, you can sit there,” Mandy pointed to a hard chair in front of a
small wooden desk. She placed a thick folder down and walked over and closed
the door behind me. I noticed my name was printed in the upper right hand
corner of the yellow folder.
The room was plain, white walls, dark navy carpet and no decorations on the
walls at all. A white office phone hung by itself on the wall furthest from the
desk.
As Mandy shuffled through the papers, occasionally marking things with her pen,
I swallowed hard, as if it was going to give me the courage I needed to do what
needed to be done.
“I want to make a confession.”
My voice sounded too shaky to me. I cleared my throat and spoke the sentence
again, this time with a touch of confidence to make it sound more believable.
Mandy looked up from the paperwork, setting her pen down and folded her hands
together. “Okay Nick, what is it you’d like to tell me.”
I made sure my eyes locked directly onto hers. “I intentionally wanted to hurt
Terri. I wanted to see her dead, but my aim wasn’t so damn hot so I ended
maiming her instead. I would have done something to the rest of them too if I
had the chance. I wanted to shoot and kill Marcus but he was a little stronger
than me and he ended up shooting me in the shoulder.”
“What about Kurt, they found dead outside of the plane,” Mandy asked.
I tried to remember that person before I spoke. I recalled Terri kneeling down
by his frozen body, weeping and I remember accusing Lizz of strangling him with
a seatbelt.
“I got sick of his mouth and I took a seatbelt after the crash, and I choked
him. He was a little too hard to kill because of his size. I know you’re
wondering why I’m confessing to you now and why I didn’t say anything to anyone
sooner.”
Mandy didn’t speak, she only nodded.
“I thought I could skate through the system. Play insane and get off of jail
time with mental instabilities and serve a short time here and then be off scott free. It was only after spending the night here I
realized that I couldn’t stand living here for another hour. Jail has to be far
better than this place.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying Nick?” Mandy asked.
“Yeah, that I’m a murderer and I need to be locked up for the rest of my life,”
I stated quietly. Deep inside of me I was scared to death. Deep inside of me I
wanted to cry out.
Mandy calmly got up and walked over to the telephone and punched in a three
digit number.
“Scott, I need you in conference east. Transfer to ISO nine for a d/c to
county. Thanks.”
“Okay those were all codes to me. I figured we were in conference east, but the
rest went over my head.
“What’s an iso nine and county?”
Mandy answered me and as she wrote notes in my chart. “ISO nine is isolation
unit number nine and county is county jail.”
My heart dropped. I was going back to the county jail. She bought my story. My
life was now officially over.
~*~*~*~
Brian was happy to see AJ’s face as he rounded the corner. He was starting to
feel sick to his stomach, which he remembered from back when he had his heart
surgery, it was his body’s way of telling him that he had done a little more
than he should have.
“That was a short walk,” AJ commented as he walked alongside Brian.
br> His physical therapist was holding onto the
strap that was around Brian’s waist. “Just a little further to go, do you think
you can still make it?” Marilyn, the therapist asked.
Biting his lower lip in concentration, Brian nodded. His legs felt like he was
dragging chains behind him.
Brian appeared a little unsettled to AJ. He decided to fish a little to see if
Brian would break and tell him what happened.
“Meet up with autograph seekers in the hallway?”
AJ rushed to Brian’s side to help the therapist guide him back into bed. He sat
on the edge of the bed for a moment. As Brian lifted his legs to get back into
bed, his face contorted with pain.
“You did good Brian, I’ll be back later this afternoon,” the PT stated as she
left the room.
Brian waited until the girl had left before he told AJ what had happened.
“I ran into Lizz while I was out,” Brian stated.
“Oh god, what was she doing out of her room? She’s too sick to be wandering the
halls and besides, she isn’t on this floor. Was she alone?”
“Kinda sorta,” Brian replied. He was vague in his reply because his nurse came
into the room with a syringe.
“Boy Brian, Marilyn was right, you do look like you’re hurting,” the nurse
observed. “Okay, pain scale time. What do you rate it right now?”
“Probably a seven,” Brian sighed.
“Okay, I need you to face your visitor for a sec please.”
AJ winced when he figured Brian was getting the shot. He hated shots, always
had, especially when he saw someone else getting them.
AJ waited until the nurse left the room. “So, kinda sorta meaning she wasn’t
alone?”
Brian straightened his blankets, pulling them up to his chest. “Well, that
woman was....,” he trailed off, not sure what to tell AJ. He remembered the
look in Lizz’s eyes when he was going to tell the
crowd outside of the elevator about Agnes.
“That woman? The one that is always hanging around and stuff!? She was with
Lizz?”
“Agnes,” Brian stated.
“That nasty bitch! She threatened to do something to you guys if she felt that
things weren’t going the way she intended them,” AJ spat.
Brian started feeling drowsy from the pain medication. “AJ, go down to her
room, I don’t trust her and I want Lizz to be safe. Make sure she’s safe,
okay?”
“But what about...” AJ stopped in midsentence when he
saw that Brian had fallen asleep. He stood up and pulled the blankets up to
Brian’s chest and turned the lights off that were shining from the back of the
bed. He walked quietly out of the room towards the elevators.
~*~*~*~
Agnes stood in the doorway to ICU room number 18. The patient was fast asleep,
no doubt from all the medications that had been given. A slight smiled played
across her lips as she clutched the small white paper sack she held in her grip.
‘This was going to be far too easy,’ she thought to herself. ‘Way too easy.’
~*~*~*~*~
It didn’t take long for
the scene to be swarmed with police, state troopers, a wrecker, a fire truck,
and an ambulance. Emergency lights flashed and commotion was wild. The obese
man in the front seat of the suburban was immediately determined dead on the
scene. Pictures were being taken of everything and glass from shattered windows
was being swept off the road.
Kyung sat inside the
ambulance, a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She slowly rocked back
in forth, not comprehending anything around her. Any attempt to get through to
her had proven futile. She had retreated within herself like she had done
before. It was a form of protection. After being terrorized and watching her
friends be terrorized for that long, she simply couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Sweetie, I need to see
your arm. I think it might be broken.” Lisa gently spoke to Kyung. She started
to reach for her arm under the blanket and Kyung started to get upset.
“It’s okay, we’re here to
help you. No one is going to hurt you anymore. We need to take a look at you
okay?” Rick added soothingly.
Kyung wouldn’t have any
of it though. Without knowing what she was doing, she fought against the paramedics.
Worried that she was going to cause further physical damage to herself, the
paramedics had no choice but to tie her down to the stretcher. They were unsure
of her injuries and her violent struggling could cause her more injuries. It
didn’t matter anyway because almost immediately she passed out from exhaustion.
It was then that the medics were allowed to put her arm in a splint and see to
the rest of her injuries.
“Is she going to be
okay?” Lisa asked anxiously. She had only been a paramedic for a couple months
and she was slightly overwhelmed.
“She should be. It looks
like she’s got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s no wonder with what they’ve
been through.” Rick explained.
“Are we taking her to the
same hospital that everyone else is in?” Lisa had been following it all and
knew of the chaos that surrounded the hospital that was treating Brian, Lizz,
and Terri. And previously Nick.
“No. First off, too much
chaos. Secondly, Memorial is closer.” Rick glanced outside the ambulance to see
what the sudden commotion was. “Shit! How did the press get wind of this
already?”
~*~*~*~*~
AJ stepped off the
elevators outside the ICU. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that
something wasn’t right. His conversation with Brian was unsettling. He knew
that Brian was holding something back. Brian had started to tell him what had
happened in the hallway when he had seen Lizz, but stopped, unsure of himself.
He buzzed into the ICU
and they let him go right on in, recognizing him. AJ pushed softly on the door
to Lizz’s room and stepped around the curtain.
Agnes heard the door and
whirled around.
AJ froze in his steps,
seeing Agnes standing by Lizz’s bed. She was holding Lizz’s IV line in her hand and the sick feeling in AJ’s stomach
grew.
“I wouldn’t make a sound
if I were you.” Agnes stated quietly. She held up the IV line where she held a
syringe in one of the infuser ports.
“What the hell are you
doing?!” AJ hissed. “If you put air in her line you are going to kill her!”
Agnes shook her head and
smiled tightly. “No no, dear AJ, I said I was going
to put air in Brian’s line. This isn’t air.”
AJ glanced at the door
behind him then back at Agnes.
“Oh it’s okay, no one
will be in here for another 15 minutes. I have it timed perfectly. And you had
better just cooperate with me.” Agnes addressed AJ’s thoughts smugly.
“What is that?” AJ nodded
at the syringe. He was trying to stay calm. If he got upset then she might and
then she might inject that stuff into Lizz.
“Do you know what it was
that got Lizz into this mess in the first place? A medication called Albuterol.
People take it in breathing treatments, much like Brian is getting right now.
In fact, I happened to get this bottle out of his room while he was sleeping
earlier today.” Agnes’ voice was slow and calculated.
AJ took in a sharp
breath. She had been in Brian’s room?!
“See, the first time Lizz
swallowed slightly more than three quarters of the bottle. Unfortunately this
is merely a quarter. It isn’t enough to kill her, but it will definitely make
her very very sick. She needs to suffer for what she
and Carter did to my Terri.” Her voice was strangely calm.
“She did suffer. So has
Nick. None of this is going to help your daughter.” AJ tried to reason with
her.
“Yes it will. It makes me
feel better already to think of what this is going to do to her. Even though it
is only a quarter of the bottle, it is going to go straight into her
bloodstream. She won’t die. But she is going to wish she would.” Her voice was
flat.
“Lady, you are going to
go to jail for this! You are going to leave your daughter all alone in here if
that happens. Is that what you want?!” AJ tried to keep the desperation out of
his voice.
Agnes ignored him. “Isn’t
it ironic that the same drug that landed her in the first place is going to
teach her a lesson now? This is only a fraction of what is going to happen if
she opens her big fat mouth.”
AJ raised his eyebrows.
This had something to do with what had happened earlier. Whatever had made
Brian so uneasy. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to leave your kid
in here by yourself do you? That’s what will happen if you get caught. She’ll
be here all alone.”
Agnes let her eyes
soften. “She can’t be alone. She is afraid of hospitals. She is hurting so bad
and I can’t leave her.”
“Then put the needle down
and walk out of here right now. I’ll make you a deal. You leave this room and
stay the hell away from Brian and Lizz, and I won’t tell anyone you were in
here.” AJ tried to bargain with her. He let out the breath he didn’t know he
was holding when Agnes pulled the needle out of the infuser port.
“I can’t leave Terri.”
She mumbled.
“That’s right. Go be with
her.” AJ said, trying to keep his voice calm. He was livid, but if he blew up
at her, that would not help. Then to his dismay, Lizz’s
eyes began to flutter open.
I blinked and looked
around. There was someone standing over my bed, but I couldn’t tell who it was
at first. When it registered, my heart skipped a beat. I looked frantically
around and AJ was standing a few feet from her. He was looked shaken.
“AJ?” I whispered.
Agnes whirled around to
face me, eyes hardening. “Little bitch, you should have stayed asleep.”
“It’s going to be okay
Lizz.” AJ tried to reassure me. I glanced at what Agnes was holding in her
hands and my eyes widened, my chest growing tight. A syringe. She was going to
kill me.
“Breaking news from
the Backstreet Boys kidnapping case! I am here live at the accident scene. This
white suburban you see here was the vehicle that carried the final missing
victim and the last two kidnappers. The cause of the accident has not yet been
determined...“
All three of us stared at
the television, none of us moving. All I could think about at that moment was
Kyung and if she was okay.
“The accident was
fatal. One of the kidnappers, this man, was killed instantly when the vehicle
rolled before it came to it’s final stop.“
The same picture that had
been flashed all over the news since this whole mess started was shown. It was
Dale. Dale was killed. Agnes gasped, tears forming in her cold eyes.
“The final victim in
the kidnapping is alive, but her condition has not been released. It has also
been stated that the deceased’s son, one of the kidnappers, has escaped and it
still at large.”
Agnes turned to me, tears
running down her face. “You. Will. Pay.” With that, she plunged the needle into
my IV line pushed the liquid in.
When
he saw that Agnes injected the contents of the syringe into Lizz’s
IV line, he didn’t stop and think about his actions, he just reacted by diving
at Agnes, throwing her onto the floor and ripping the IV line out of Lizz’s hand.
AJ was fine until he saw the blood running off of her hand and pooling onto the
sheets. He suddenly became nauseous and fainted.
Agnes scrambled to her knees. “You’ll pay now, I’ll make sure you pay!”
With that said, she quickly darted out the hospital room’s door.
“Lizz? What’s all the commotion going on in here---oh my god!”
Lizz watched helplessly as her nurse rushed over to an unconscious AJ, slumped
against a wall.
“What happened here Lizz?”
At first, Lizz didn’t want to tell the nurse anything, worried about putting
Brian at risk. Then she quickly decided that Brian was probably already in trouble.
“Brian Littrell, he’s in trouble and you’ll find her there,” Lizz choked out.
“Find who Lizz?”
“Agnes, she said she was going to kill him, make him pay,” Lizz cried out.
Her nurse didn’t move from AJ’s side, waving smelling salts under his nose.
Lizz grew more upset and impatient at the way the nurse was purposly
avoiding her statement.
“Please, you have to get someone to help Brian, please!”
~*~*~*~
“Mr. Carter, you realize that this isn’t in your best interest, we can build a
defense, but it’s going to take a little time, you don’t have to do this!”
I looked directly into my attorney’s steel blue eyes. “I have to do this, you
don’t understand.”
“All I understand is the fact that you’re figuratively putting a loaded gun to
your head. I have no other choice than to resign from your case. I can’t stand
by you and let you ruin your life.”
“It’s already ruined, believe me, there’s nothing more left of it, this is
something I have to do to save my friends and my family.”
“Are you being blackmailed Nick? Is that’s what’s going on?”
My attorney hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t make eye contact with him, I
couldn’t look him in the eyes and lie. I shrugged my shoulders.
“I never said that, did I.”
Marshall Spencer closed his briefcase and stood up. As he was patting me on the
shoulder, an old man in a uniform entered the small holding cell. “The judge is
ready for you.”
I nodded slightly and clenched my teeth. This was going to be hard to do but I
had to stay strong.
Strong for Brian.
Strong for Lizz.
After the guard checked the chains on my wrists and the shackels
on my legs, I was led to the judge’s chambers. I closed my eyes and tried to
block out the clanging sound of the chains as I walked.
There wouldn’t be a court hearing, I was confessing my guilt, there wasn’t any need for any courtroom production.
Guilty as charged. Period.
~*~*~*~
Breathing heavily, Agnes hid in a small linen closet on the eighth floor -
Brian’s floor. She managed to steal an ID badge from a nurse and the dark blue
scrubs were readily availble in the closet. She
wasted no time dressing in the scrubs and attaching the hospital ID badge to
the front left of the top.
Adjusting the uniform, she casually walked down the hall towards the room that
was heavily guarded by a large black uniformed guard.
Agnes had a slight smile cross her lips as the guard glanced up at her and then
nodded her in. Upon slowly entering Brian’s room, her eyes swept the perimeter
and was not happy upon seeing a young man sitting in a chair next to Brian’s
bed. She was happy to discover that Brian was asleep.
Howie looked up from the television screen when the woman with blue hospital
scrubs entered the room. He didn’t give her another look and went back to
watching the television program.
Agnes leaned against the sink, her back to Brian’s company. She placed her hand
inside the scrub pocket, grasping the empty syringe. Agnes knew that she
couldn’t risk injecting air into Brian’s IV line with that man sitting there.
That would be an instant clue that she was the killer. As she glanced up at the
clock above the cabinets, she noticed that the cupboard that held all of his
prescribed narcotics was carelessly left unlocked.
She opened the door farther and pulled the yellow plastic mesh box that
contained the vials of medications for Brian. Fishing around she found one that
looked lethal enough and pulled it out and plunged the syringe needle into the
vial.
~*~*~*~*~
“Please! You have to help
him!” I cried out desperately. I was starting to feel dizzy, but I didn’t care.
My main concern was Brian. My nurse continued to ignore me and kept her
attention on AJ. I reached my hand up to the bedrail, and started to pull
myself up. I barely even noticed the dark bruise and the blood that oozed from
the hole that was in place of where my IV was ripped out of. The dizziness
turned into a pulsating pain. I felt like my heart was pounding in my head and
the alarms started to ring. Still, I tried to get out of the bed. I had to get to
Brian.
“Lizz? Oh my...” My
nurse’s head shot up when the alarms sounded. They grew more and more shrill as
I started to lose my grip on reality. Everything was spinning and it hurt to
breathe. It was like de já vu all over again. My
nurse jumped up and grabbed me before I slipped to the floor. She leaned me
back in the bed, her face growing pale.
“I need some help in
here!” She shouted over her shoulder. “What’s wrong dear?”
“Brian...he’s
in...trouble...” I panted. Did it hurt this bad before?
The room started to fill
with people and I thought I heard AJ’s voice. He sounded so far away. The
beating of my heart seemed to grow louder. My vision was going out on me. The
dizzy mess that I was seeing was fading into blackness.
“Shit! She is going to go
into cardiac arrest! What the hell brought this on? What happened to her? Who
was that woman that I saw run out of here?”
“Young man, are you okay?
You have a good sized knot on your forehead.”
“BP’s falling.”
It was so far away.
“Brian.” I whispered.
“What?”
“What did she say?”
“AJ?” My voice was so
weak. “Get to Brian.
“What the hell is going
on here?! People, we are going to lose her if we don’t...”
~*~*~*~
AJ raced down the hall,
his head pounding from the fall. When he had come to, the effects of the
Albuterol had already taken their effect on Lizz. She frantically pleaded with
him to get to Brian’s room since no one else took notice that he was in danger.
It took a moment for the cloudiness in his head to clear, but when it clicked,
AJ hauled ass out of Lizz’s room so fast that no one
had a chance to stop him.
He flew by the elevators
and down the steps. People jumped out of his way and some even yelled at him as
he almost barreled them down. The guard in front of Brian’s door, jumped in
shock as AJ slammed through the door.
Howie looked up,
startled, as did a woman in blue scrubs.
“You bitch!!” AJ seethed
at her.
The commotion woke Brian
up and he looked around, unsure of what was happening.
“Get the hell away from
him or so help me...” AJ snarled.
Agnes smiled. “Too late
again huh AJ? I think you best stay where you are. The second you move and this
shit goes straight into his veins.” She held Brian’s IV line just how she held Lizz’s.
Brian’s eyes widened and
Howie looked from AJ to Agnes. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean ‘too
late again‘“ Brian whispered.
“I just shot Lizz up with
the same shit she tried to kill herself with the first time. Now you are going
to get a shot of this shit, whatever the hell it is.” Agnes smirked. Then her
eyes clouded over. “My husband is dead and I will make all of you pay.
Brian paled.
“Over my dead body.” AJ
glared at the woman that held his friend’s life at her mercy.
“That can be arranged.”
Agnes said sweetly.
“Let’s think about this.
You don’t want to do this. Is your revenge worth going to jail for?” Howie
tried to reason.
“Don’t waste your
breath.” AJ spat.
“Oh no, I really do want
to do this. See, we don’t really need Brian and Lizz. It’s a liability
to have them both around. Only one of them needs to be here in order to secure
Carter’s future.” Agnes explained.
“What do you mean?” Howie
narrowed her eyes at Agnes. AJ looked horrified and desperately hoped what he
was thinking wasn’t true.
Brian gasped when it
dawned on him. That was what Agnes had just said to upset Lizz so bad. Lizz
knew. And now, so did Brian.
“If you kill us both,
then what?” Brian shot at her, trying to keep the tremor out of it.
“Oh I didn’t give her
enough to kill her. You on the other hand...” Agnes smiled to cover up her
nervousness. On one hand, no one was going to move when she had this needle
stuck in Brian’s IV. On the other, she was trapped. Unless she came up with
another way out of this...
~*~*~*~*~
I could barely hear their
voices anymore. I was slipping out of consciousness and it seemed like the
harder I tried to hold on, the harder it got. I could feel the blood rushing
through my veins, my erratic heartbeat in my chest, filling my ears. God it
hurt so bad. Was this it? Was I going to die this time? How did I make it last
time? How did I survive this?
Nick.
Nick was there last time.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we had a link. We still do. In a sense, we
were affecting each other from the beginning. Almost from the very beginning we
understood each other. Sometimes too well. We would say all the time that we
could get through anything. And we always had. We helped each other and took it
a day at a time. We can do this. We said it all the time. I couldn’t
leave him. I couldn’t imagine him ever not being there and I couldn’t do it to
him either. I can’t do this alone though. Was he feeling this? I wasn’t going
to let go. I couldn’t.
Nick!!
~*~*~*~
The judge was sitting behind a large oak desk. He was leaned back in a burgandy colored leather chair, his glasses were slid
halfway down his nose, looking over a file. The guard led me to the front of
the desk, the judge barely looked up at me.
“Sit down,” he mumbled.
I really didn’t want to sit, I wanted to stand and get this overwith,
but the guard pretty much forced me to the chair. I watched the judge as he
laid the folder on the desk, took his glasses off and folded his hands
together. He sighed heavily.
“They tell me you’d like to make a confession and Marshall Spencer resigned
from your case,” the judge began.
“Yessir,” I replied, I was trying to be as polite as
possible.
“You realize that what you say to me here in the chambers sticks as much as if
you told me out in a courtroom. That is why I have our court recorder here. She
will record your confession. Do you completely understand what I am telling
you?”
“Yessir,” I again replied.
“Go ahead then,” the judge urged me on.
I nodded and took a deep breath in. “I wish to confess my g-g-g....,”
I couldn’t take a breath in, it was suddenly like someone was sitting on my
chest. I started gasping for air, it was like I was breathing through a tiny
straw. It must have been evident that something was wrong because the judge
stood up from his seat.
“Are you alright? What’s wrong? Can you speak?”
Clutching my throat, I couldn’t even shake my head yes or no. Funny thing about
this was the sound was going away and all I could hear was the sound of my
heart beating in my ears. It was going really fast and the faster it went the
dizzier I got. My legs were feeling rubbery and suddenly without warning, they
gave out from under me as I was making an attempt to grab the desk only to be
hindered by the chains around my wrists and waist.
~*~*~*~*~
Brian tried desperately to think of a way out of this mess. He knew in his
weakened condition he was no match for Agnes. He, AJ and Howie were each
privately trying to think of a way to foil Agnes before she injected the
medication into Brian’s IV. They each knew that if one of them made a quick
move towards her, she would panic and react.
Agnes looked at each of the men in the room, sweating out the situation she was
in. Her mind was calculating the different scenarios in trying to get out of
the sticky mess she was in.
“Oh shit,” Agnes mumbled as she looked towards the door.
AJ and Howie turned towards the door to see what Agnes was staring at. They saw
the security guard enter the room with another uniformed guard.
“Stop! Don’t come any closer!” Agnes demanded.
The guards hesitated at first and then started rushing towards her.
“NO DAMMIT, stay back!” AJ pleaded with the guards. His eyes shifted from them
to Agnes. He gasped when he saw her empty the contents of the vial into Brian’s
IV line.
The guards pushed Agnes away from Brian’s bed and pinned her up against the
wall.
“AJ, find out what she put in my IV,” Brian pleaded.
“You’ll never find out, I put it back in the box,” Agnes laughed.
“Oh shit,” Brian softly commented. All he could do was wait for whatever was
going to happen, happen. He could feel his heart start to flutter but he wasn’t
sure if it was nerves or the medication Agnes had used against him.
The guards led Agnes over to the corner of the room, away from Brian, Howie and
AJ. They had to wait until the state troopers came to relieve them of their
burden. Agnes just stood there, staring at Brian, a smirk on her face.
As AJ hit the nurse button above Brian’s bed, Howie noticed that the wavy
flowing lines on the monitor were now becoming more erratic, growing closer
together and then far apart. It was no longer consistent. He looked at Brian’s
face and could see that he was pale, his face soaked in sweat.
The pains in his chest were more than he could stand. He wanted to cry out in
agony, but didn’t want to give Agnes the satisfaction. A soft sigh escaped his
lips and the heart monitor’s alarms started their shrill ringing.
Howie and AJ looked on in horror as the ringing kept up but the wavy lines were
now flat and a long beep permeated the air.
updated:
Doctor Doug MacMasters raced into the room. He was just finishing lunch
when they paged him stat to Lizz’s room. When he
reached it, it was already full of people.
“What the hell is going
on?” He snapped some gloves on and began assessing the situation.
“I was on my way to check
on Lizz and I heard a loud crash. Some woman almost ran into me running out of
the room and when I got in here, there was a young man unconscious on the
floor. I saw to him, meanwhile Lizz kept repeating to ‘help him.’ I assumed she
was talking about the guy on the floor. Then the alarms sounded and I saw that
she was trying to get out of bed. She was drenched in sweat and her pulse was
very erratic. Meanwhile that guy tore out of here like a bat outta hell.” Lizz’s nurse explained while the team worked on her.
Before Doug could answer,
another alarm started to sound. “Shit! She’s not breathing. Intubate!” He
worked furiously and with precision. He was not going to lose this girl. They
got the tube in and began to rhymthmically bag her.
Her heart was still beating, although it was very unsteady. Doug was afraid
that if it stopped, he would have to use the paddles, and it would be too much
for her body.
“Something caused this
and I want to know what it is. What the hell is all the blood from?” He
demanded.
“Somehow her IV was
ripped out.” Came the reply.
“Alright, I want a CBC,
BUN and creatatinine, calcium and phosphate levels,
potassium level, and a hematocrit level. I want to
know what happened here.” Doug ordered.
~*~*~*~*~
AJ and Howie stood
outside Brian’s room as the nurses and doctors worked furiously on him. The two
guards had already led Agnes away. She wasn’t so calm anymore. The realization
of the trouble she was in finally sunk in and she had put up a fight. More
security had met her at the elevators and they had taken her away. Outside the
room, AJ and Howie could still hear that long, steady beep, even through the
closed door. He had gone too long without breathing or his heart beating.
“Charging...200...Clear!”
A doctor shouted.
AJ’s breath caught in his
throat when the line didn’t even flicker a response.
“Charging...300...Clear!”
The line still didn’t
budge and AJ barely heard Howie murmur a frantic prayer. AJ held his breath. He
couldn’t bear watching them shock his friend, yet he couldn’t turn away. A sob
caught in his throat. AJ saw one of the doctors shake his head and without
thinking, he slammed through the door.
“Dammit,
don’t you give up on him! You make him breathe again! Please, don’t let him
die!” AJ cried, tears now streaming down his face.
Howie was immediately
behind him, steadying him.
That same doctor gave a
short nod to the one holding the paddles.
“Again...charging at
360...Clear!”
Beep...beep...beep...
AJ wanted to go over to
Brian, but a nurse came and gently ushered them out. “The doctor will come and
talk to you in a minute.”
“It’s my fault. My
fucking fault. I didn’t stop her.” AJ slumped against the wall, his face burried in his hands. Howie put a hand on his shoulder, his
own tears falling.
“There wasn’t anything
you could do.” He said softly.
“AJ? Howie?? What’s going
on?”
Both guys looked up to
see Kevin walking quickly towards them, his face scrunched in concern.
AJ could only shake his
head.
“Agnes, Terri’s mother,
shot something into Brian’s IV. He stopped breathing and they had to shock
him.” Howie said quietly.
Kevin gasped and all the
color drained from his face. At that moment the door opened and the first
doctor stepped out. He wore a grave expression on his face. Before he could
continue, a young nurse came running down the hallway.
“Mr. McLean?” She asked
breathlessly as she held a portable phone out to AJ. He gave an irritated look,
but took the phone.
“Hello?...What?! What
happened?...” Howie and Kevin tried to ask what was going on, but AJ waved them
off. “Okay, I’ll be right down.” He disconnected the phone and handed it back
to the nurse. “Thanks.”
“What’s going on?” Kevin
demanded.
AJ rubbed his eyes. “Nick
is in the ER.” He stated flatly.
“What?! Why?” Howie
exclaimed.
“Apparantly
he was in the courtroom, talking to the judge and he had a panic attack. We
gotta go down there.” AJ explained.
“Shit.” Kevin closed his
eyes for a moment. He turned his attention to the doctor that had come from
Brian’s room. “How is he?”
The doctor let out a
sigh, dreading what he was going to have to tell these young men. “Well we got
him breathing again, but I’m afraid there are some complications. He went
without oxygen and he has slipped into a coma. There is no brain activity at
all.”
Jenna's update
~*~*~*~*~
I woke up and the first thing I saw was AJ’s face, his eyes looked bloodshot.
“What the hell are you doing here, AJ?”
“You’re not crying, are you?”
AJ quickly wiped his eyes with a knuckle, and then blinked quickly, as if to
wash any remaining tears away.
“You were! What’s going on? I know damn well it wasn’t about me,” I urged.
All he could do was shrug his shoulders and shake his head.
“What! What the hell’s going on?” I jerked my arm that was attached by a
handcuff to the bedrail. The policeman that was assigned to me, stood up
quickly.
“Carter, calm down,” he ordered sternly.
“This is crazy,” I spat as I pulled against the restraint. “AJ, what the hell’s
going on?”
“I can’t...” his voice trailed off. Before I could say anything else, he turned
away from me and darted out of the room I was laying in.
“AJ PLEASE! SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?”
~*~*~*~*~
“Okay Kyung, I need you to drink you medicine now,” an elderly woman requested.
Kyung flinched when the cup met her lips. She inched away from the woman.
“Sh-h-h, honey, it’s okay,” the woman soothed.
Kyung’s dark brown eyes looked into the woman’s green eyes. Kyung’s gaze
softened and then she slowly nodded, she understood the request and she
accepted the medication. She wanted to get better, she needed to get better for
Lizzie. She hated the psychiatric sessons that they
led her down to, three times a day, but she went willingly, she
had to.
~*~*~*~*~
AJ ran into Kevin, not looking where he was walking.
“Whoa, AJ, what did you find out about Nick?” Kevin asked as he grabbed AJ by
the shoulders.
“I didn’t,” AJ replied in a rhaspy voice, thick with
emotion.
“Could you please follow me down this hall?” a young nurse asked the guys as
they stood out on in the hall outside of Brian’s door.
The nurse led them to a small office that had a desk, two chairs and a white
upholstered couch. There were pictures of children, a dog and some diplomas
that covered the walls. The men assumed that they were in Brian’s doctor’s
office.
Sure enough, the tall man that they had seen working on Brian an hour ago,
entered the room and softly closed the door behind him. He was holding a thick
chart and he slowly set it on the desk as he pulled his chair out and sat down.
“I’m Doctor Greg Carter, chief of trauma and surgery,” he started out as he
leaned forward and placed his hands ontop of the
folder.
“How is he doing?” Kevin rushed the question, dreading the answer, but wanting
to know.
“He’s stable right now, I don’t know how but he’s stable. We’re doing a few
more tests, but I need to be straight up with you, the prognosis isn’t very
good, in fact it’s grave. Do you know if his family wishes organ donations?”
Kevin drew a quick breath in. Howie swallowed hard. AJ jumped up from his seat
causing it to fly backwards.
“How can you sit there and talk about Brian like he’s dead? Do something dammit, he’s still alive his heart’s beating!” AJ yelled.
“His heart is only beating because his brain hasn’t shut it down yet. He’s on
life support and once that’s discontinued, his heart will cease,” Dr. Carter
replied.
“YOU SONOFABITCH!” AJ yelled as he started to reach for the doctor’s chest.
Kevin jumped up and grabbed AJ’s arm, restraining him.
“I’m sorry but I can’t lead you on and give you false hopes, we’ve tried to
contact his parents without success. Organs have to be harvested within a time
window and the quality is diminished the longer the donor is kept alive by artifical means,” Dr. Carter stated.
“You asshole, you’re talking about a human being not some damn freak in a lab,
it’s Brian, not a donor!” AJ spat as Kevin held him down in the chair Howie had
quickly set back up.
“I just want the necessary papers filled out, we’re not going to disconnect
life support until all efforts have been exhausted. This is something you must
think about,” the doctor replied as he stood up and opened the door to his
office. “I’m leaving a copy of the request on my desk, please look it over
within the next day and make your decision. It would be easier if you had his
driver’s license because if he had wished this, he would have made it known on
the license.”
The doctor left his office leaving the three men in the room, numb. The tears
flowed and there was no stopping them.
~*~*~*~
Doctor Doug McMasters took a chair from the corner of
the room and swung it around, with the back facing him and straddled the chair,
holding Lizz’s chart.
“Lizz, you gave me quite a scare this morning, how are you feeling right now?”
Lizz swallowed as she thought. Her throat was sore from the tube they had
removed 30 minutes ago when Dr. McMasters determined
she could be on oxygen again, breathing on her own.
“Like shit,” Lizz replied with a slight smile.
“Ah, just what I wanted to hear,” Dr. Doug replied with a grin. His face then
grew serious as he looked into his patient’s eyes. “I found out from your labs
that somehow there were high amounts of Albuterol in your bloodstream.”
Lizz nodded slightly. It was that damn Agnes.
“You will be happy to know that she has been arrested, she won’t be hurting you
anymore.”
Lizz smiled, feeling relieved that they had stopped her before she got up to
Brian’s room and harmed him.
“Now, as for you, kiddo, we have some serious problems, are you ready to hear
or do you want to rest for a bit until you’re less groggy?”
“Tell me,” Lizz replied weakly. She already had most of it figured out in her
head but she needed his confirmation.
The George Clooney lookalike sighed. “Okay, the
kidneys you got in that transplant have failed you. You will have to go back on
dialysis until your name comes back up with a matching donor.”
A single tear slipped down her cheek. Dr. McMasters
pulled a tissue out of the box that was on her bedstand
and gently wiped it from Lizz’s cheek.
“Sweetie, you’re a strong girl and I have no doubt that you’ll pull through
this.”
“What about Brian?” Lizz asked. She worried about him and wanted to make sure
he was doing okay.
Dr. McMasters smiled lightly at her question. Here
this girl lay in a hospital bed, her kidneys shut down putting her in critical
condition and all she could worry about was that Backstreet Boy that was in a
private ICU room. “I don’t know, you want me to find out again, right?”
Lizz’s eyes brighted. “Oh
yes, please.”
“Figures,” Doug teased as he eased his tall frame out of the chair. “I have to
go and---”
“Finish my rounds,” Lizz interrupted.
Dr. McMasters winked. “I’ll be back with a report as
soon as I can, just don’t go anywhere okay? No walking the halls or doing
things that will make your nurse freak out, okay? I have to pick up the pieces
when you pull those stunts missy!”
“Yes sir,” Lizz replied.
~*~*~*~*~
I laid on the bed in the emergency room for hours, worrying and wondering why
AJ had been crying and then took off on me before he would answer my questions.
A nurse had come in twice to give me a shot of Ativan
so now I was feeling a little floaty, but my head was still clear.
“Mr. Carter?”
I turned towards the voice to see my nurse and a police officer standing side
by side.
The officer went over and took his keys from his belt and unlocked my handcuff.
I was waiting for him to slap the open end onto my free arm when he unlocked
the other cuff. I looked at him, confused.
“Charges have been dropped. You’re on your own,” the guard remarked as he took
the handcuffs and placed them into a box that was attached to his belt.
The nurse laid a pair of dark green hospital scrubs on my bed. “I’m guessing
you don’t want to put the bright yellow prision garb
on, so I’m letting you have these. Do you have family or friends you can call
for a ride home?”
I was about to say no when I remembered that Brian was still in the hospital
and that one girl too. “No, what floor is Brian Littrell on, is it still
eight?”
“Yes,” the nurse answered.
“Good, I’ll just go up there then,” I replied as I grabbed the scrubs.
“How about I place a call to the nurse’s station on the floor and one of your
friends can come down and get you, you’ve had a couple of Ativan
injections and I don’t need you falling and hurting yourself. I’ll be back in a
minute.”
She pulled the drapes around my bed. I seized the opportunity to get out of the
hospital gown, sliding on the scrubs with the legs falling down on the floor.
“Shit, too long,” I mumbled as I cuffed the pant legs up over the tops of the
jail issued sandals.
“Nick?”
“Yeah, in here.”
Kevin greeted me with the biggest hug I had ever gotten in my life. Bigger than
even from the most spastic fan. It took my breath away.
The ride up to the eighth floor was the longest in my life. Kevin had told me
all that had happened with my best friend and my heart was in my throat as we
walked down the hall towards the room. We pushed past the security guard that
was situated in a chair beside the door. I already hated that bastard, he
didn’t do his job, in fact I pretty much hated anyone
in uniforms lately.
It hit me hard at the sight I witnessed.
Brian Littrell laying in a hospital bed, monitors and machines on each side,
two IV poles stacked with IV’s, and the tube in his mouth, his chest rising and
falling with every hiss the machine was making. His face was a ghostly pale
color, the lids on his eyes were a pale blue-ish purple. I felt my knees get
rubbery. Kevin held me up.
Kevin helped me as I slowly walked up to Brian’s bedside. I gently touched his
cheek, stroking it with the back of my hand. His skin was clammy. I looked at
Howie and AJ through my tearfilled eyes. No one said
a word. No one dared to.
~*~*~*~
Doug McMasters held his identification badge out for
the security guard to verify. After the guard placed a call to the nurse’s desk
and they described the young doctor, he was allowed to enter the room.
Doug knew as soon as he opened the door that this was not a good sign. He saw
the pale faces of four young men, holding a vigil over their brother. He
remembered that one with the tatoos and the bleached
hair running past him when all the chaos was happening in Lizz’s
room.
“I’m Dr. Doug McMasters, Lizz’s
doctor,” he carefully introduced himself to the men.
Narrowing my eyes, I stared at the doctor. It took me a second and then it
clicked.
“How’s Lizz doing?” AJ asked quietly.
“You were the one they said had fainted in her room, right?” the doctor asked.
AJ smiled sheepishly. “I get queesy over the site of
blood.”
“She asked me to check up on Brian’s condition. I gather she’s not aware of
this change in his status.”
AJ shook his head. “She was worried about Brian and that Agnes was going to
come up here and make him pay for all that happened to her daughter. I was too
late, she had the needle in his IV and was threatening to use it when I got to
the room.”
Oh god, Agnes..... Terri? Shit, it was coming back to me. That girl that was
black mailing me and Lizz about our attempted suicide pact. I looked at Brian’s
body laying in the bed. This was my fault. All my fault.
“How is Lizz?” I nearly yelled.
“That woman injected her with Albuterol. The stain proved too much on her
system. Her new kidneys have failed her and she has to go back on dialysis
until a new donor is found,” Dr. McMasters explained.
Shit, this was definately all my damn fault. I needed
to fix this.
“What if I donated a kidney, would that help her?” I rushed the question.
“She needs a kidney,” the doctor slowly replied. “You would have to go through
medical and mental testing before we could do this.”
“Then let’s do this, I want to do something,” I replied.
“Nick, whoa, back up here, they are going to run some tests on Brian and they
could just as easily use his kidney as well as yours,” Kevin reasoned.
“They won’t be taking anything out of my brother, he is going to live,” I
argued.
~*~*~*~
Terri laid in her bed at the Laurels Prison Infirmary. She had been transferred
there two weeks ago. A television set was on in the corner. She looked away from
it. She was sick of crying. Her life had been ripped from her. All in a year
she lost her job, her money, her father, a boyfriend and her mother. It was
because of one person, Nick Carter. The police were still searching for her
brother Marcus and he was yet to be found.
The blaring on the television set broke her from her thoughts:
Nick Carter from the boyband group, The Backstreet Boys is in stable
condition following surgery where he dontated a
kidney to a good friend who they had met in an online chat over a year ago. The
receipient of the kidney, whose name was not
disclosed was in serious but stable condition and is expected to make a full
recovery.
Brian Littrell, Nick Carter’s bandmate remains in a coma and the prognosis is
bleak for a full recovery.
When we return, the trial is now beginning on Agnes Miller who has been charged
with attempted murder of Brian Littrell and several others.
Terri screamed and threw her bedpan at the television screen.
The End
***