Rebuilding Paradise

Chapter 1: Remembering

If there was any time in my life where I wished I could turn back the clock it was now.  You never ever dream that these kinds of things are going to happen to you.  You read about them in the paper, you watch them on the nightly news, but you barely ever give them a second thought, because in your happy little world it could never occur.  You never believe it can until it does.  And that is exactly what happened to me.

Now I’m living a nightmare.  I have to wake up every morning and have to face it.  It’s like living in a Hollywood drama.  But, in this film there is no pause, rewind or fast forward button.  It will be stuck on play forever.  My boyfriend is in a coma, one of my friends is dead, and another is slowly losing all touch with reality.  And all the while I am trying to keep it together but only feel like I’m falling apart.  I wondered if my life would ever be normal again, if I could ever rebuild the paradise that I had once had only days ago.

I drove to the hospital in my sleek silver Mercedes.  There was hardly anyone on the road at this early time in the morning.  But I hadn’t been able to sleep so I decided to pay Brian an early visit.  Sleep had become something of a novelty the past week.  If I was lucky I could get in an hour or two. And even then it wasn’t sound slumber.  It was always filled of horrible nightmares of the night we been kidnapped.  I would watch Brian get shot over and over again, while a sat helplessly unable to move.  It was like reliving the worst day of my life a million times.

I turned on the radio to try and distract myself from all of the appalling events happening in my life.  I flicked through Orlando’s many stations until I found one that was playing a song I liked.  I stopped when I found Ricky Martin’s "Livin’ La Vida Loca." The song finished and the DJ’s voice came over the waves.

“Good morning Orlando.  That was the hot, hot, hot Ricky Martin.   He will be here in Orlando on his first ever American tour later on in the fall.  We’ll have some of his European hits later on this morning.  But first I’ve got the latest info on the kidnapping of two of the Backstreet Boys.”

I growled and made a move to change the station.  But the DJ’s next sentence caught my attention.

“One of their captors, Rick Bergman, who was being held in a maximum security prison in Vancouver, Canada, has escaped.”

In that moment my heart literally stopped.  I pulled up on the side of the road and stopped the car.  The DJ continued.

“It was six hours ago at around 1:00 a.m. that security guards at the prison realized that Bergman had flown the coup.  It is unknown where he is headed.”

I didn’t need to hear anymore.  I hurriedly opened the glove compartment and pulled out my cell phone.  I quickly dialled Kevin’s home number.  My hand trembled so much that I had to dial three times before I hit the correct seven digits.

“Hello?” a groggy voice answered after about three rings.

“Kev, it’s Lisa.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked hearing the panic in my voice.

“Rick escaped from prison a couple hours ago.”

“Where are you?” he questioned now fully awake.

“I’m about ten minutes away from the General Hospital,” I replied.

“All right,” he said.  “Get there and stay there.  I’ll call the police and be there as soon as possible.”

“Thanks Kev.”

“No problem.”

My hand still shaking as I shut off the phone and once again started up the car.

“How had that bastard escaped?” I thought to myself while trying to concentrate on the road.

I thought back to the night in Vancouver when I’d seen Rick at the hospital.

We all sat waiting for any word on Brian’s condition.  As soon as he had arrived in the helicopter at the Vancouver Bay Hospital they had whisked him away into surgery.  And he had been there for hours.  They were telling us nothing.  I felt so in the dark.  I wished a doctor would come out and tell us something, the waiting was killing me.  This and the fact that A.J. had been murdered only several hours ago were making life unbearable.  The reality of A.J.’s death still hadn’t sunk in.  It was unthinkable.

Then I thought of Rick who was also somewhere in this hospital.  They had had to bring him in to make sure he had no severe head wounds from his little encounter with the lamp.  Apparently A.J. had hit him quite hard.  Frankly I didn’t care if he died from some kind of hemorrhage in his brain.  The fucking bastard deserved it for all he had done.  I hoped he, Jeff and Paul all burned in hell for the pain they were causing the world and us.

I heard commotion going on from behind the double doors.  Rick burst through accompanied by two armed policemen.  He saw me sitting in the waiting room and a look of loathing filled his face.  I tried desperately to ignore his presence but it was virtually impossible.  One policeman went to the front desk to check him out and the other held onto him.

Rick suddenly yanked himself free of the officer’s grip and ran towards me.  I screamed as he grabbed onto my arms and made me look directly into his face.  The look in his eyes was one I would never forget.  It was as though you could see the fire behind him, the anger.  And more then anything you could see the derangement, his eyes blazed wildly into mine.  He was a maniac.

“I’ll kill you, you fucking bitch.  And this time we get to play and there is no boyfriend to save you.”

Then the two policemen grabbed him off me and slapped cuffs on his wrists.  But he looked at me his eyes still burning into mine.

“That’s a promise.”

***

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