Chapter 14
Cole
I’d watched with my heart in my throat as Oakley turned white as a sheet, knowing she wasn’t okay. Her voice had been shaky, barely audible, and then she dropped to the floor, disappearing into the witness box as if it’d consumed her.
“Oakley!” I shouted, jumping up out of my seat as Linda and security run towards her.
I couldn’t get to her from where we were sitting in the public gallery, so I ran with Jasper, Sarah, and everyone else along the row of chairs and out of the room, nearly tripping as I rushed.
Dodging people outside the courtroom as I moved, I pushed through another fucking door as the courtroom was being cleared. Too many barriers were between us. I had to get to her.
The jury and everyone in the public gallery were filtering out through a side door as we reached the entrance that Oakley had used.
The bastard representing Max escorted him out, along with a cop. He was too far away for me to reach. Any closer and I would’ve wrapped my hands around his neck.
By the time I dropped in front of her, I was out of breath from the sudden burst of energy mixed with an ice-cold fear. She was in a bad way.
“Oakley? What’s wrong with her?” Sarah cried.
“Just give me some space,” a guy administering first aid said. He looked into Oakley’s eyes and took her pulse.
“Is she okay?” I asked, staring at her pale face, wishing she would talk to me.
She’d just shut down. I watched as she turned to the bastard…. and the next minute she was out cold. This was a bad idea. Look what’d happened to her.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Jasper asked. “Oakley! Oakley!”
He was right. She’d fainted, so why wasn’t she opening her eyes yet? How long had it been? One minute? Two? Panic pumped through my veins. I ran my hands through my hair, tugging on the strands.
Please, baby.
Another person was on the phone, getting the paramedics here, but I didn’t recognise the voice.
“Did she hit her head?” I asked.
Sarah, crying in my mum’s arms, said, “I don’t know.”
There was a thud when she hit the floor, but I didn’t know which part of her had hit the floor first.
“What’s going on?” I snapped. The feeling of total helplessness so petrifying, I didn’t know what to do with it.
Linda looked up from the other side of Oakley, the first aider still with her. “She’s breathing and she has a pulse. Please try to stay calm.”
I couldn’t fucking stay calm when she was out of it on the floor! She wanted to face her dad, and this was what happened. Why wouldn’t he plead guilty and save her this trauma? Hadn’t he done enough?
“I think it was a panic attack,” Linda said. “The way she gasped for breath.”
That made sense. “Has she had one before?” I asked Sarah and Jasper.
“No… I don’t think so,” Sarah replied. Jasper shook his head.
She might’ve, though. The day she called me. The day she spoke for the first time in eleven years, when her dad had taken her away with the promise of a fresh start, but Frank turned up.
She’d run, escaped their campsite, and called me to help her, saying she couldn’t do it again—it couldn’t start up again. On the phone, she’d been so breathless.
The wait for the paramedics seemed to stretch on for hours but it was only about ten minutes as there’d been an ambulance nearby after finishing another call.
They pushed through a small crowd, one of them carrying a bag. I moved back to let them work, wrapping my arm around Sarah as she sobbed. The guy who’d checked Oakley out first answered the paramedics’ questions and relayed information about her pulse.
I saw her move, her head rolling to the side, towards a paramedic who was speaking to her.
“She’s okay,” I said to Sarah.
I craned my neck and could just about see those perfect blue eyes.
“Okay, Oakley, we’re going to get you on the gurney now,” the other paramedic said.
Together, the two of them lifted her and gently placed her on the bed.
“Is she okay?” I asked, walking beside them.
“She’s doing well.”
“Then, why are you taking her to hospital?”
“She’s just taking a little longer to come around. Out of the way, please… let us through.”
We jogged behind Oakley on the gurney as the paramedics took turnings to the exit. Sarah’s heels clicked loudly on the floor.
Outside, security was keeping reporters back. I, along with my family and hers, kept her covered by walking beside her. Those fucking vultures would print her picture on the front page, declaring the trial too much for the monster’s daughter.
They’d seen us, cameras snapping, but I didn’t think they’d be able to see Oakley from where they were being held back. Questions were fired, but they overlapped, making muddled noise, and we ignored them all.
I had nothing to say to them—nothing that could be printed, anyway.
Sarah hopped into the ambulance right after Oakley.
Fuck no.
“Can I come, too?” I asked. “Please… I won’t get in the way.”
“Sorry, only one,” the paramedic said before he slammed the doors shut, locking me out.
Just before he closed them, Oakley’s eyes found mine.
“Oakley?” I called, but she wouldn’t be able to hear me anymore.
“Come on,” Dad said, clapping my back. “We’ll follow.”
Jasper stared after the ambulance. “Let’s go,” I said, nudging his arm to snap him out of it. Now there was something I could do and that was getting to her as fast as I could.
Mum drove with Ali, Lizzie, and Mia, while I went with Dad and Jasper.
“How did she do it for so long?” Jasper asked as we raced along the road, chasing down the ambulance. “I want to kill him. She spent eleven years in the same house as him… and we had no idea.”
Dad put his foot down, angrily waving someone off as they beeped at him.
“You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking about that, Jasper,” Dad said. “All that matters now is making sure she’s okay.”
“Can you drive faster?” I asked, tapping my thighs.
“Stay calm. She’s going to need you.”
“Why didn’t we see it? She looked terrified. Did she used to look like that?” Jasper asked.
“Don’t do this, man,” I said, looking over my shoulder. “She didn’t want anyone to see anything. Don’t go asking those questions.”
I couldn’t keep thinking of that, it was torture.
Jasper spat out a string of expletives, muttering to himself in the backseat about how much he hated his dad.
There was a lot of guilt eating him up for not noticing.
We shared that. I’d never forgive myself, either.
If I could turn back time, go back to that day she called me, I would have locked Oakley in my car, called Jasper to come and get her, and gone to find Max and Frank there and then.
That way, she wouldn’t have had to move halfway across the world. She wouldn’t have to worry about ever seeing either one of them again. There was so much I wanted to change to protect her. Nothing I wouldn’t do to make sure she was safe.
“If anything happens to her…” Jasper muttered.
“She’ll be fine,” Dad said to him, taking a corner a touch too fast.
Jasper took a deep, ragged breath. “I don’t think she should carry on with the trial.”
“What?”
“It’s not worth this. They’re going down with or without her testimony.”
Dad looked at Jasper in the rear-view mirror. “She may want to.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want Oakley anywhere near that court. If they get off, there are other ways of dealing with it.”
That other way not being something I would discourage.
Dad and I didn’t respond. There was no point because Jasper would just get angrier, and we were almost at the hospital. If Oakley wanted to give up, I would understand completely, but I knew her better than that.
She wanted to do it. She needed to.
Dad flew through the open gate of the hospital and made an abrupt stop in the car park. Jasper and I jumped out of the car and sprinted to the entrance of the huge, grey building. The ambulance was sitting outside A&E, but Oakley must’ve already been taken inside the hospital because it was empty.
The automatic doors slid open as we approached.
“There,” I said, pushing Jasper toward the front desk.
“Oakley Farrell!” Jasper shouted, slamming into the reception desk. “She was brought in a minute ago. I need to find her. Where is she?”
I thought the receptionist might’ve told him to calm down, but she obviously noticed his panic. “Take a left at the end of the corridor behind me. There’s a waiting room you can stay in. Someone will find you when they have news.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking off behind Jasper.
Following the receptionist’s directions, we made our way to the waiting room, where we found Sarah pacing back and forth, waving her shaking hands.
“Sarah!” I called. “What’s going on? Where is she?”
Sobbing, she held her heart and hugged Jasper. “She came round in the ambulance and was talking, but they still have to check her over. They couldn’t tell me much, but with everything that’s going on, it’s not surprising. There’s too much pressure. It’s too much for her. Too much.”
I sat down as Dad joined us.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“She’s being checked but she was awake,” I told him.
We were joined by everyone else minutes later. I sat down on a spongy seat and put my head in my hands.
The clock slowly ticked by on the pale blue wall. I hadn’t been sitting long, but it felt like hours. My chest hurt, like something was tightening around it, squeezing and squeezing. Was that how Oakley felt before she collapsed?
Sarah said Oakley had been talking in the ambulance, but until I saw her and heard her voice, I couldn’t relax.
A doctor opened the door, and before he could even call Sarah’s name, we were all up out of our seats. I looked for any sign that he was about to give us bad news.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s doing just fine now,” he replied with a thick Scottish accent. “She had a panic attack. She’s also dehydrated. When she collapsed, she hit her head against the side of the stand, and she has a mild concussion, so we’ll keep her overnight and see how she’s doing tomorrow.”