NICOLE
NICOL E
After my rescue, everything had gone by a blur. I thought I had heard Callum when I first started to come to on the rooftop, but I hadn’t been able to open my eyes. It was like heavy weights holding them closed. I did briefly come to in the ambulance, but he had not been beside me. I was alone, outside of the EMTs who were rapid fire speaking amongst each other about whatever was happening to me.
I almost thought it was the end of me. In fact, as I laid there being poked and prodded, I began to wonder if death would be the worst thing. Thoughts of my mother kept reappearing, and I wanted to badly to reach out for her. If this was the end for me, I’d be there with her which filled me with a great deal of comfort as the sirens wailed overhead on the commute to the hospital.
It also filled me with a great deal of remorse as well. Callum. The very thought of him was enough to spike my blood pressure. The last thing I remember before fading away once again were the two EMTs relaying numbers to each other that I couldn’t focus enough on to understand .
When I reawakened this next time, I was definitely in a hospital room. Even before my eyes opened fully, the incessant beeping from the various machines and monitors were enough to confirm my whereabouts. I did force my eyes to open, but this time with a lot less force than back on the rooftop.
“You’re awake,” the nurse had said to me as she added something to the nearby IV line. “How are you feeling?”
I groaned as even thinking caused my head to throb. “I feel like I have been run over by a bus.”
She smiled at me. “You’ve had quite the ordeal over the last six or seven hours. Do you remember what happened to you?”
I closed my eyes as I tried to think back. At first, nothing came to me outside of cold. Frigid, blustery cold. And pain. The more I tried to remember, the more successful I became. My cheeks and face had stung and I quickly brought my free hand to cheek. While still a bit sore, it was nothing like it had felt before.
“It’s okay if you don’t remember everything right now,” the nurse told me, but I shook my head as determination to remember filled me.
“What happened to me? Like, why am I here?’ I finally asked her.
“You were brought in with several lacerations, but outside of potential bruising, none of them should lead to any permanent scarring.”
“Is that all?” Something was missing, but I couldn’t remember what.
“You’d been given a drug that caused temporary paralysis. Your reflexes are returning to normal so there should be nothing to worry about on that end as well. I do need to let you know that there is an officer outside of this room that needs a statement from you.”
“I understand,” I said. When she mentioned drugs, I couldn’t understand how I had gotten a hold of one that could do all of that .
“Should I send him in?”
“Yes,” I said, anxious to get this over and done with. Once done with the officer, I could call my father and brother, and maybe even my uncle as well.
And Callum. God, I wanted to call him, but what would I even say at this point. He hated me. The voice I thought I’d heard before had to have been my mind playing a cruel trick on me. The hatred I had seen in Callum’s eyes the day at the dean’s office let me know in no uncertain terms what he felt about me.
There was no need to be sad, because he had also done things to me, even if I couldn’t remember what they were right now. I shook my head once or twice, then stopped as a fresh wave of pain washed over me.
“Miss Cortland, I’m Detective Anthony Day with the Chicago Police Department. Is now a good time to talk?”
I knew if I declined that they would just wait outside of my room, so it was best to get it over and done with. “My head is still a bit fuzzy, but I’m fine to proceed.”
“Good,” he said, then looked over at the nurse who smiled apologetically at him before exiting the room. The officer then pulled one of the nearby chairs over to my bed. “Do you remember anything that happened this evening?”
“Outside of being drugged, it’s still jumbled.”
“That’s understandable. You’re very lucky to be alive. Between the drug, your physical condition, and potential hypothermia, I might’ve been having a very different conversation with your next of kin.”
“Can you tell me where I was found? It might help rejog my memory. ”
The officer explained that I was just off of campus at a classmate’s apartment when I was located in an unconscious state on the rooftop. I knew he hadn’t needed me to remember that as it was common knowledge in whatever report he was hastily scribbling things down on. The classmate could only be one person.
“T-Travis,” I croaked out before I started to cough.
“Yes, Travis Harrison.”
“How is he?” I asked, and when I saw the look on the man’s face, I knew. “He shot my partner and stole his gun before taking a hostage on the rooftop.”
“A hostage?” I asked. Was he talking about me?
“Let me see who it was...” he said as he looked down at his report. “Ahh yes, it was Callum Meyers.”
“Callum?” I had heard his voice after all. “Is he—”
“He was injured, but will make a full recovery.”
The knot in my chest loosened, but I had to know about Travis as well. “And Travis?”
“He was killed after engaging in gunfire with another officer.”
“Oh God!” I covered my head with my hands, ignoring the pain as it caused an inadvertent pull on the IV.
“Do you remember anything that happened between you and Mr. Harrison this evening?” he asked me.
I uncovered my hands and tried to remember. As I closed my eyes and focused on my former friend, the puzzle pieces began to click into place. Before I knew it, I had started to piece together everything from the abduction in my parking garage, to waking up in his place. I detailed what I could about how Travis had stalked me, and Callum, and finally finished by revealing how obsessed he had been with me.
When finished, he patted my arm. “Again, you’re very lucky to be alive. If Mr. Meyers hadn’t seen something of yours and insisted that we check outside, you would’ve certainly frozen to death.”
So Callum had seen the sick shrine Travis had of me, and had been the one to save my life. “Very lucky indeed,” I mumbled to him.
“I think I have everything I need for now. When you head clears up, I’d like to get another statement from you just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
“Okay,” I replied, then watched the man as he got up and left the room. I immediately reached for the call button, but before I could press it, my nurse returned. “Can you tell me if someone was brought here with me?”
The officer had mentioned Callum being taken hostage and injured, so odds were that he was here in this very hospital somewhere. I had to find him, if for not other reason than to thank him for what he’d done. As much as I missed my mother, I wasn’t ready to die, and because of him, I know had a chance to live life, even if would be much less of one without him in it.
“There was a gentleman, and he’s a few doors down from this room.”
“Which one?” I asked as I sat up fully in bed.
“Nicole, I must implore you to lay back down. You’re not in condition yet to go traipsing around this hospital.”
“I have to see him,” I told her when my feet hit the floor and I tried to stand up. A wave of dizziness wracked me, and I almost stumbled, and very well would have had she not have been there to catch me.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“You don’t understand. I have to, and I won’t take no for an answer. ”
Used of fading into the background and doing everything that everyone asked me to, this time would be different. While I didn’t have the same power as a Titan, I remembered my mother telling me mine was even far greater. If there was ever a time to use it, that would be now.
“I can bring you to him for a few minutes, but only if you promise to stay in the wheelchair the entire time,” she said as she relented.
“Yes, of course,” I told her, and a few minutes later, she had wheeled me to his room.
She had gone inside to see if he was awake and willing to see a visitor, and that was when the nerves truly started to take over. The last time we had seen one another had been on bad terms, but he had come to my rescue which had to count for something. Callum said he loved me, and I had never believed him. Or maybe I had, but I hadn’t wanted to because what we had could never last.
At least not the way things were with us at the time. Now, the truth was out and there was no need to sneak around in secrecy. We could be together like a normal couple, and express our love publicly.
But what if he no longer wants that?
It was a real possibility, but one I wasn’t willing to accept. A few seconds later, my nurse reopened the door, then slowly pushed me inside of his room. Callum was facing the door, and when our eyes locked in on one another’s, a small sob escaped me.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried out to him just as she pushed me all the way to his bed.
He looked over my shoulder at my nurse. “Would you give the two of us a few minutes in private?”
“Of course, Mr. Meyers,” she said. “Just call for one of us nurses when she’s ready to come back. ”
I didn’t miss the way that she willingly just obeyed his command, but it didn’t surprise me seeing as he was a Titan. Everyone knew about them, and no one dared to question them. Once the door closed with a click, I looked over at Callum.
“H-How are you doing?” I asked, unsure of how injured he truly was.
“I took a flesh wound to the calf, but I’ll survive.”
His voice was strained which also wasn’t surprising considering everything that had happened. “You were shot?”
He shrugged. “Other than canceling my ski plans for Christmas, I’ll be fine.”
“I can’t help but think that this is all my fault. I—”
“It is,” he said which caused me to pause.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how you found me, but I’m grateful that you did.” Not wanting to upset him further, I released the lock on my wheelchair and turned suddenly. Before I could move away, his voice stopped me once more.
“How could you do that to me?”
There was a definite pain in his voice, or maybe I had imagined it because I felt it in my soul. I turned the chair back around and didn’t even try to stop the tears that had sprang to my eyes. “I don’t remember how I got you over there. I was drugged, and everything’s still—”
“Not tonight. I’m talking about the fucking order of protection.”
“I’m even sorrier about that than you’ll ever know.”
“Why did you do it?”
I shook my head wryly, before responding. “Honestly, things ended so bad between us and afterward... ”
“What happened afterward, Nicole?”
“I started to receive threatening pictures and notes. I should’ve known it wasn’t you, and—”
“You should have, because I loved you,” he said, and this time there was no denying the pain in his voice, or on his face.
“I didn’t know that Travis knew about us. There were pictures and a Costa Rican dagger. He knew it all, and I thought there was only one other person that knew. He told me I had to go to the authorities, so I did.”
“You could listen to him, but never to me?”
The tears began to fall more in earnest down my cheek. “We’d broken up and my mother died. Everything was a mess. I was scared—”
“But you should’ve known I would never stalk you. I’d never hurt you no matter what you’d done to me, because I understood you were going through a lot. I wanted to be there for you, but you wouldn’t let me in.”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. I love you so much, Callum, and I have for so damn long. Walking away from you had been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, outside of watching my mother die, and the more time that passed between us, the harder it became to change things. I wanted nothing more than to be in your arms, and I suspected Travis knew it. He had to because he had a—”
“I know what he had at his place. I saw it all.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him once more.
“You don’t have to nothing to be sorry about when it came to him. Hell, I can’t blame him for being batshit fucking crazy in love with you, because I had fallen just as hard, if not more than, he did. The only exception was that I was willing to give you the space needed to work through things if you would’ve only communicated with me. I’m not a monster, Nicole.”
“I know, Callum. These weeks without you have been pure hell. My blind naivety had almost cost you your life and career, but I’m paying the price for it because it has cost me you.”
“I still love you,” he told me.
“And I love you. I never stopped.”
“So, what happens now?” he asked.
Hope bloomed inside of me as I rolled fully back over to him and took his hand in mine. “It’s going to take a while for me to figure out how to forgive myself, but do you think you could ever forgive me?”
“I did the moment I heard your scream come through my cell phone. I knew in that moment that I would move heaven and earth to save you.”
“My hero,” I murmured to him.
“Not a hero,” he quickly replied. “I’m just a man in love.”
“My man” I said, then went to lean in toward him but grimaced in pain.
“And I’m the man who’s going to send you back to her room to rest.”
“I want to stay here with—”
“You. Your room. Rest.”
“Okay. Fine!” I said as I leaned back and threw my hands up in surrender. “We are okay, though. Right?”
“We’re better than okay,” he told me. “I should be getting released soon, so I’ll stop by to see you later. ”
I nodded, then the door opened and my nurse reappeared. “Are you ready to say goodbye?” she asked me.
“Not goodbye,” I said as I flashed Callum a watery smile, “But a see you later.”
He smiled back at me, then I was wheeled back to my room. I now had even more incentive to get better, and as I remembered the ambulance ride here, I now knew I’d been spared because my life wasn’t over as my mother’s had been. I still much more to live, and with the love of my life. I was still smiling as I got back into bed and was hooked back up to all the machines. This was temporary, but love was forever.