“Where is she now?” I demanded, trying to breathe through my anger. Jumping at Newton across the desk wasn’t going to get me to my mother any quicker, so I clenched my hands into fists and reminded myself I couldn’t take care of this shit if I were behind bars.
Newton only seemed to grow more nervous. She twisted her hands together and tried to put on a compassionate smile, but her lips trembled, making her look like she was being possessed. “Half an hour after being transferred into her new room, Leslie got confused and started screaming at her new roommate. By the time the nurses and orderlies got there, her roommate had her pinned to the floor, choking her.”
“Fuck,” Colt muttered quietly.
My stomach tensed, and I held my breath as I waited for Newton to continue. A thousand questions ran through my mind that I needed answers to, but I couldn’t voice a single one. The dreadful premonition I’d gotten when I first woke up—had that really only been ten minutes ago?—returned, and I felt powerless to stop the avalanche of pain I knew was going to drop on my head when the administrator opened her mouth again.
“The patient was finally pulled off Leslie, but she wasn’t breathing. CPR was performed but…” She swallowed thickly. “I’m so sorry, Miss Murdock.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Colt jumped to his feet. His hands slapped down on the desk inches from Newton’s, making her squeak in surprise and fear. “You transferred her mother to a ward you knew she would react badly to, then were surprised when things got violent? Why wasn’t someone watching Leslie Murdock? Why didn’t you do your fucking job and protect her? And this is the way you tell her daughter? So emotionlessly you might as well have been a damn robot?”
“I-I…I…” Newton shut up abruptly as Colt leaned forward, pushing his face menacingly closer.
“Did you not question the fact that Samson was doing this out of spite and would want something like this to happen?” he seethed. “Do you even fucking care past stuffing your greedy pockets with the money he slips you to comply with his commands?”
I tried to suck in a deep breath, but my lungs were only rewarded with a tiny shot of oxygen. “Where is she?” I asked in a voice that was pathetically weak. “I want to see her.”
“O-of course.” Newton stood, seeming all too happy to be able to move away from the pissed-off biker in front of her. “She’s in the…the…” Her mouth snapped shut, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence for me to know my mother was in the morgue.
--
The room Newton took us to was cold and smelled sterile. My oxygen-deprived brain didn’t understand why it had to be sterile.
I focused on that question as Newton led the way to the gurney where a tiny figure was covered with a plain, white sheet.
The occupants of this room were dead, so why did it have to be germ-free? It wasn’t like they were at risk of catching something.
I felt Colt’s hand on the small of my back as we moved closer, closer, closer to the gurney. The antiseptic smell was starting to turn my stomach. My knees felt oddly weak, but just when I thought I was going to fall, Colt’s arm wrapped around my waist, and he took on almost my full weight as he half carried me to where my mother was sleeping.
Yes, she’s sleeping, I tried to reassure myself. She always did like for her room to be cooler so she could snuggle under the covers. I remembered climbing into bed beside her when I was five, cold and afraid after a bad dream, and we would snuggle under her mountain of thick covers. Mom would tell me some made-up fairy tale about some stupid ballerina who turned out to be a princess. She made it sound so perfect that I’d begged for ballet lessons.
Lessons she’d, in turn, begged Calvin to pay for.
My eyes slammed shut, and I tried to block him out of my head. Calvin didn’t exist. He didn’t deserve to exist.
Colt stopped, and I slowly lifted my lashes just in time to see Newton pull the sheet down over Mom’s face. Vomit threatened to rise into my throat, but I silently pleaded with it to stay where it belonged. I felt light-headed as I took in the bruises on my mother’s once-beautiful face. Now, it was distorted with the cuts on her cheeks from fingernails. Her left eye was swollen with a vivid bruise glowing around it. But it was the fingerprint-shaped bruises on her neck that caught and held my attention.
They were huge, not from a small person at all. Almost as if they were caused by…a man’s hands.
“Who the fuck did you put her in a room with?” Colt snarled at Newton, giving voice to one of my own questions.
“Senator Samson was very specific when he requested the change,” Newton began nervously.
“Lady, shut the fuck up,” Colt commanded, fed up. “You should probably find yourself a lawyer, because I’m getting ours started on a wrongful death suit against you and this facility.” The sound of her gulp echoed in the room. “Get the hell out so we can have a private moment with Kelli’s mother.”
I didn’t hear her leave, didn’t watch her go. My eyes were still glued to the handprints on Mom’s neck. She was so tiny, and those hands must have been massive. Whoever did this could have so easily broken her neck. Was that what killed her? Or did they strangle her? Could this have triggered a heart attack or stroke?
I didn’t know. I had no answers. Just my mom’s lifeless body torn apart by the person Calvin forced her into a room with. He knew this would happen, I knew he did. This was my punishment for turning against him.
For picking Colt over him.
A small gasp left me, surprising me with the tortured sound. I felt strong hands gently grasp my arms from behind as my shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. Tears fell from my eyes, blinding me as I tried to trace the outline of the bruises on Mom’s delicate neck. Calvin took away the most important person in my life because I turned against him. He hurt me the only way he knew how, with the one person I would have done anything to protect.
The one person who should have always picked me, but hadn’t.
The one person I loved more than life itself, but who hadn’t loved me back the same way.
My heart shattered at the loss of everything that had ever made sense, at the same time I hated her for never once choosing me over Calvin.