Chapter
45
“Mr. Carter?” Nick
looked up to see Dr. Nathaniel, Sammy’s surgeon, standing in the doorway of the
waiting room where he and Megan still sat.
“We’ve moved Samantha into ICU.
Would you like to see her now?”
“Yes, please,” Nick said.
“Okay. If you and
your daughter will just follow me, I’ll show you to her room.” Nick and Megan exchanged glances, and Nick
held out his hand to help her up from her chair. She accepted it and didn’t let go, holding
Nick’s hand all the way down the hall to Sammy’s room in the ICU.
“Go on in,” Dr. Nathaniel said at the door. “You’ll see a lot of equipment around Samantha,
but don’t let it scare you. She’s been
drifting in and out of consciousness, and we have her on morphine for the pain,
which makes her groggy. She’s on a
respirator to help her breathe, so she can’t talk to you anyway.”
Nick nodded.
“Thanks,” he said, and led Megan slowly into the room.
Sammy’s room was dim, lightened only by a dull overhead
light and the glow of the monitors that surrounded her bed, measuring her vital
signs. Nick waited as his eyes adjusted
to the sudden change in brightness and then stepped forward, his gaze never
leaving his fiancée, looking so sickly and fragile in the bed.
He pulled up two chairs next to her bed and sat down in
one, motioning for Megan to sit in the other.
She did so, her gaze fixed on Sammy as well, her eyes wide with
fear. He knew this had to be even harder
for her than for him. He was much more
accustomed to being in hospitals and seeing people like this, especially in the
past seven years. But even before then,
with Brian’s heart surgery and his experiences visiting cancer wards in
hospitals as a Backstreet Boy, he had seen this type of thing before. But when it was his own beloved girlfriend,
it was different.
“You can talk to her, Meggie,” Nick said. “She can hear you, even though she’s not
awake.” Megan nodded, but her mouth
remained closed. “Would you rather me
leave so you could have some time alone?” Nick asked softly.
Megan considered this a moment and then shook her
head. “I don’t want to be alone,” she
said, her voice only a dry whisper.
Nick nodded.
“Neither do I,” he admitted.
“We’re going to need each other to get through this.”
Megan nodded. “I
know,” she said solemnly. Suddenly, the
sad, solemn expression on her face contorted to one of pain and anger. “Why did he have to do this?” she asked.
“Huh?” Nick asked, caught off guard by her sudden question.
“Justin. Why did he
do this?” she asked.
“Honey, I don’t know,” Nick said. “He’s done a lot to us, and I really don’t
even know why. There’s no good reason
for it. He’s just a very bad person.”
“I know,” Megan said softly, thinking back to her earlier
memory. She realized she needed to tell
someone about it. The first person she
would have told was her mother, but she couldn’t do that now. The obvious choice was Nick – her “father”.
“Nick, can I tell you something?” she asked, her voice
small and scared sounding.
“Sure, honey, what is it?” Nick asked.
“My mom told you… about the kidnapping…right?” Megan asked.
“Yeah, she did,” Nick said.
“Well, before she told me about it, I didn’t remember it at
all. I supposedly had amnesia from it,”
Megan said.
Nick nodded. “I
know,” he said.
“Well, earlier, when we were sitting in the waiting room
that first time, I remembered it,” she said.
“The kidnapping?” Nick asked incredulously.
Megan nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “Something
triggered my mind to remember it, and I did.”
“What did you remember about it?”
“Pretty much everything,” Megan said, and she told Nick the
whole horrible event she had remembered earlier.
“It was Justin!?” Nick cried in shock when she was
finished. “Justin Timberlake was
responsible for you being kidnapped?!”
Megan nodded, tears streaming down her face. “It was him, I know it. That’s why I remembered. It was seeing his face again that made me
remember.”
“Oh, my God,” Nick whispered.
“Why would he do that?” Megan said. “How is this all connected?”
“Well…” Nick started.
“Let me ask you a question first.”
“What?” Megan asked.
“Did your mom ever tell you anything about your father?”
Nick asked.
“No,” Megan said.
“Why?”
“Well, Megan, there’s something you should know,” Nick
said, taking a deep breath. He knew this
was going to be difficult.
“What?” Megan asked slowly.
“Well, first of all, some background on Justin
Timberlake. You see, back in the 1990’s,
Justin was in a singing group called ‘N Sync.
They were a group kind of like us, the Backstreet Boys. Anyway, when your mother was sixteen, in the
year 2000, she went to an ‘N Sync concert.
And there, she got raped.”
Megan’s eyes widened in shock.
“Megan, Justin was the one who raped her.”
Megan’s mouth dropped open in horror. “You mean…” her sentence trailed off.
“Justin Timberlake is your real father,” Nick finished
slowly.
Megan’s face went white, and she began to cry softly. Nick said nothing, just wrapped his arms
around her and hugged her. Megan’s arms
drifted around him as well, and she clung to him, burying her head in his broad
chest and crying. When she finally
pulled away, her face was red and splotchy, and his shirt was wet with
tearstains.
“Thanks for telling me the truth, Nick,” Megan said
quietly.
“You needed to know,” Nick said.
“Nick?” Megan asked.
“Yeah?”
“What would happen to me if Mom dies?” she asked in a tiny
voice. “Would I go back to live with my
foster parents… or would I get to live with you still?”
“Well, Megan, I don’t really know. I’m not actually your legal guardian right
now, but I could be, if that’s what you wanted.
But if you wanted to go back with Amy and Doug-“
“No,” Megan said quickly.
“I would want to live with you.”
Nick’s heart melted.
“You would?” he asked.
She nodded. “If you
wanted me,” she said.
“Oh, Megan, of course I would want you,” Nick said. “You’re like a daughter to me, and if that
did happen, I would want you to be my daughter.”
Megan smiled tearfully and hugged him again. He hugged her back. “But that’s not going to happen anyway,
right? Mom’s going to live, and you and
her will get married, and then we’ll be a whole family… right?” she asked
hopefully.
“I hope so, Megan,” Nick said. “I hope so.”
***
