“What happened?” she cried, then saw the blood on the knife.
“It was stupid, really,” he replied with a strain in his voice as Andy continued to apply pressure to the wound. “My grip just slipped.”
“Will he need stitches?” Susan asked worriedly.
“If I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“I’ll take you guys to the hospital,” Ben offered.
Andy removed the towel to inspect the cut. “Yeah, we need to go. It’s pretty deep.”
***
It usually took Andy fifteen minutes to walk from the house to the hospital. Using Ben’s truck, they arrived in two minutes.
“Do you want me to come inside?” he offered as he dropped Andy and Brian off at the main entrance.
“No, we’ll be fine,” she replied. “It won’t take long. You don’t have to wait for us.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” she repeated as she moved away from the truck. “Seriously, it’s too cold for you to wait here.”
Appearing hurt, Ben mumbled, “Suit yourself,” and drove off.
Later, as Andy stitched, Brian commented on her skill. “You’re really good at this, you know?”
“What, stitching a finger?”
“Well, just in general. You’re a good doctor.”
She scoffed at the compliment. “Thanks, but I’d hardly consider stitching up a finger qualifying me as a doctor.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Whenever I went to the doctor as a kid, all he would ever do is look into my ears and throat and bang my knees with that little hammer. Didn’t seem too difficult.”
Andy laughed heartily. “There are so many other things I haven’t even begun to learn or that I’m too scared to try.”
“Like what? Surgery?”
“Sure. I’ve never cut a person open before. If I ever do, I’ll probably end up killing them.”
Brian cocked his head to one side and said, “Maybe, but if someone gets sick or injured enough that they need surgery, they’d probably die without it, right? All you’d be doing is giving them a chance to live, no matter how small. And if they die, it’s not like anyone can sue you.”
Andy laughed again and recalled Ben telling her something similar. “I know. And you’re right about all that.” Then, sighing, “It’s the act of cutting someone open. Not to mention giving anesthesia first. That’s an entirely separate specialty.”
“See, that’s why you’re a good doctor—or at least you will be one day. You understand what it takes to do something right.”
Andy was done treating him, but they didn’t leave the hospital right away, continuing to chat despite that it was almost as cold inside as outside. The heat was turned on only during the day and only in certain rooms to conserve energy.
“You make it sound like I have a rare quality or something.”
“You do, Andy.” Brian looked down at his bandaged finger, his expression solemn.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He looked back up. “It just feels like everything my friends and I have worked so hard to build is about to fall apart and there’s nothing I can do about it. It makes me so mad that people like Nataliya and Garrett can get away with doing whatever they want and to hell with the consequences.”
“I know. It’s completely unfair.”
“Life isn’t fair, though.”
She cracked a smile. “You sound like my dad.”
“Yeah? Well, he was right.”
“I still don’t understand. Doesn’t everyone see that they do absolutely nothing to help out in this town? This isn’t high school, Brian. It’s survival. It’s about being able to feed yourself, having clean water to drink, and staying warm in the winter. I would gladly make enemies with anyone if it meant that my friends and I could stay alive.”
“I know, but I just wish more people felt the way you do, but as long as everyone is getting what they need, people will continue looking the other way. Just human nature, I suppose,” he added with a heavy shrug.
“Maybe, but I swear to you, if Nataliya or any of them do anything to hurt me or my friends, I’ll fight back. I promise. Going after poor Nathan was bad enough. Going after those I care most about…well…” She raised an eyebrow. “Things would get ugly.”
Brian smiled broadly. Then he started to speak, hesitated, but ultimately continued. “So, if one of them tried to hurt me, you’d go after them?”
“Of course,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Your friends are lucky to have you. And I’m glad you consider me one of them, especially since you already had such close friends when you got here.”
“I’ve known Morgan and Charlie more than five years, but I only met Jim and Ben a few weeks before coming here. I consider them all my friends.” She looked down at her hands and brushed her palms on her jeans. “You’re all so lucky to still have family,” she continued. “I don’t have anyone but my friends. I’m kinda jealous. And now Jim and Morgan seem to be… together.”
Brian examined his bandaged hand and chuckled lightly. “Yeah, and my sister and Charlie hang out all the time, which is a little weird, but she’s almost fifteen, so…”
“See, all six of you are connected now, but I’m still just everyone’s friend,” Andy remarked with regret.
“What about you and Ben?” he asked pointedly.
She blinked, taken aback by the question. “Me and Ben? We’re just friends. Why?”
Brian shook his head casually. “Just curious. You two seem…I don’t know. Sometimes more than friends.”
“Well, we’ve become good friends, but it’s tricky to get beyond a certain point with him. There’s a part of him that he keeps hidden from everyone. I don’t know why, but unless that changes, I don’t think I’ll ever be more than just his friend.”
“But you’ve thought about it? Being more than just friends, I mean?”
She looked down at her boots and smiled awkwardly. “Sure, I guess.” Then, feeling the need to explain further, she quickly added, “I think most girls do that with guys they know. We put each of them into one of two categories. There are the ones you know you will only ever be friends with because you only feel friendship for them, and then there are the ones that you always consider the possibility of something more happening. At least that’s how it is for me. But I haven’t known too many boys my age, so I could be wrong.” She drew her gaze up from the floor and looked directly at Brian, then shrugged as though to say she had no further explanation to give.
Brian started to ask something when a sudden crash erupted outside the treatment room. Being closest to the door, Andy opened it and peered outside. Glancing left and right, she realized what had caused the noise. An IV stand that had been placed in the hallway to the right of the door had fallen over. Confused as to how it could’ve fallen over on its own, her eyes darted in all directions, looking to see if someone was nearby and had knocked it over.
“What was it?” Brian called from behind.
“Just an IV stand that fell over. I meant to move it today.”
“It just fell over by itself?”
“I know. Weird,” she said, and they both shrugged it off before heading back home.
***
New Year’s Day came and went amidst a blizzard that knocked out much of the power throughout Aspen. Brian and Susan were stranded in their home for more than a week. Before, people would have rejoiced at the snowfall and the superb ski conditions it created, but now it was merely a nuisance.
The snow finally ceased during the second week of January, and one day, after the town worked tirelessly to turn the power back on, everyone took advantage of the fresh powder and went sledding on the ski slopes.
After a few hours, Andy began heading over to the hospital. She had a nagging feeling all afternoon that she’d accidentally left the door unlocked to the room where most of the drugs were kept. After finding some had gone missing a few weeks earlier, she’d moved all the drugs to one room and installed a more secure lock on the door, but the lock was useless if she forgot to use it.
Daylight was fading as she walked the now-familiar route to the hospital, and the sun began its descent behind the mountains by the time she arrived. Once inside, she quickly checked the door in question and discovered that she had indeed locked it the day before. Feeling stupid, she unlocked the door and checked supplies inside, just in case. After verifying that nothing was missing, she relocked the door and went home.
***
As twilight turned to dusk, Morgan began pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. Andy had still not returned from the hospital.
By now, everyone had returned to the house, and Brian and Susan were about to head home until it became clear that Andy might be in trouble.
Ben and Charlie went to check out the hospital, but they came back less than an hour later without Andy and without any answers.
“Where the hell could she be?” Morgan cried out.
Jim did his best to calm her down. “She probably just wandered down to Main Street and got caught up talking to someone on her way back. Maybe someone got sick or injured and she went to help them.”
This explanation seemed to soothe Morgan for a while, and Susan and Brian decided they needed to head back home before it got too late.
“We’ll come back in the morning,” Brian said before heading outside.
Morgan managed to fall asleep, as did Jim and Charlie. Ben, however, lay awake almost the entire night, save a few restless hours of sleep. At dawn, he rose out of bed and checked Andy’s room to see if she had returned in the middle of the night. But her bed was empty. He threw on his clothes and went back to the hospital, hastily trampling through the snow while following a pair of tracks that were likely hers from the evening before. The sun was rising off to his right, and the rays of light hit his cheek with sobering harshness. Once inside the hospital, he searched every room and closet he could open, but found no sign of her and headed back home.
About halfway there, Ben noticed on the side of the road, where the curb rose up several inches beneath the snow, there was a dark piece of fabric that turned out to be a glove: a woman’s glove he recognized as Andy’s. A few feet away and nearly hidden by the snow was something small and green. Ben reached down into the hole and retrieved the item. It was a small, empty syringe.
Ben shoved the glove and syringe into his coat pocket as he examined the snow around him. There was a cluster of footprints of various sizes that stopped abruptly in the middle of the road where a few sets of tire tracks crisscrossed in both directions. Ben counted three different boot prints, including those he guessed to be Andy’s.
Minutes later and out of breath, he was home. He went directly to Jim’s room, knocked first, and when there was no answer, he darted down the hall to Morgan’s room and just as he was about to knock on the door, Jim opened it.
“Good, you’re awake.”
“Yeah, we both are,” Jim replied, looking back at Morgan, who was lying on her side on the bed and facing Ben. She held her bulging belly with one hand while using her other to push herself into a sitting position. She looked exhausted. Ben wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept.
“Did you find her?” she asked, her voice heavy with worry.
Looking grave, he shook his head. “No. I think she’s been kidnapped.”
Chapter XIII
A
monstrous headache greeted Andy when she woke. Her ears began to ring, and she immediately wished for her iPod to listen to her mother’s cello music to make it stop. Then she opened her eyes.
She was lying on what felt like a carpet in a darkened room. There was a single window with light streaming in around the edges. When she slowly sat up, she found that her winter coat was gone, as was the sweater she had been wearing beneath it. Only her t-shift remained. Her jeans felt thick and heavy, as did her winter boots. She groped around with her hands until she felt the leg of a chair. Dizzy and disoriented, she pulled herself up. Her legs wobbled, and she fell onto the seat. She closed her eyes until the spinning lessened.
She moved unsteadily toward the windows and pulled aside the thick curtains. Warm air hit her face as she stared straight ahead at a crisp blue sky behind a tall, skinny tree. She blinked once—then twice—with the realization that it wasn’t a snow-covered pine tree.
It was a palm tree.
***
“So you are accusing me of somehow
arranging
for Andy to be kidnapped? Is that what you are telling me?”
Brian, Ben, and Jim had practically stormed into Nataliya’s home, all three of them armed and ready for a fight. They stood in the vast living room, the same room where Ben and Jim met her on that first day in Aspen nearly six months earlier.
Nataliya lounged casually on her plush sofa in an attempt to appear unaffected by either their forced presence or their accusations.
“Cut the crap, Nataliya. Tell us where she is!” Brian demanded.
“Get out of my house right now, or I will call the guards and force you out!” she yelled.
“I’ve already called them.” The voice came from behind. It was Mikhail, descending the staircase with a self-satisfied sneer on his face. “They should be here any minute.”