THE HOSPITAL

I like to think that we had it all.
We drew a map to a better place,
But on that road I took a fall.
Oh baby, why did you run away?

***

CHAPTER XII

*****

THE ROADS WERE now pitch black, the only thing illuminating the night being Daniel's headlights and the occasional street light that we drove by.

It was also storming badly, making the metaphorical storm cloud hanging over my head feel more real. The only sound that was heard was the sound of rain beating against the roof of the car and the hardworking windshield wipers, clearing the droplets away so we wouldn't get into an accident.

With the way Daniel was steadily stepping down on the gas pedal, accelerating down the wet road, I felt like an accident would be inevitable no matter how hard the windshield wipers worked. I remained quiet though, because I knew that if I was in his place, I would've crashed a long time ago.

The silence had began to consume me, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that there was a second person in the car and make conversation.

“Do you think that...” Daniel didn't look at me, but I knew I had his attention. It wasn't like he could focus on something else anyway. “...that that's the reason why Anna is upset with me?”

“I can't read her mind,” he answered, shrugging. I rolled my eyes and scoffed.

“I know you can't, but... if you were in her shoes, and she believed what you believed, would you hate me?”

“Would you hate yourself?”

His question seemed to have got me thinking. I knew Daniel and I knew if he was in Anna's place, his reaction would be indifferent because that's just how he was. But me? If my best friend, who I had recently sworn to go wherever she went because I loved her unconditionally, lied, kept secrets from me and then just upped and left without so much of a goodbye, would I be pissed?

The answer to that was hell yes.

Even though that wasn't the situation we were in, it was the situation she believed we were in. And Anna didn't know any better because whoever was behind this had everyone fooled. Which brought me to my next question.

Who was behind this?

I refrained myself from asking Daniel that because I assumed he was just as clueless as I was. Plus, the answers we were supposedly about to get was probably for that question anyway.

“What about...” This time he did glance at me, but turned back to the road quickly. “What about Pablo?”

“What about Pablo?”

“Well, how is he? How's he doing?” I asked, rolling my eyes for the second time that night at his uselessness.

“He's fine.”

“Where is he?”

“Doing business in one of the hotels in Spain,” he answered nonchalantly. “I figured it would be best to have him away while I meet you. I just didn't expect for you to come back with me.”

I stared down at my hands, contemplating whether I should ask the next question before swallowing down my trepidation and asking it anyway. “Does he hate me?”

There was silence again where I could only hear the sound of my heart beating rapidly in my ear.

“I wouldn't know,” he finally answered. “He hasn't mentioned you since we found you.”

There was no time for me to ask another question because immediately after Daniel had stopped talking, the car had come to a stop. I looked around my surroundings, only to see that we had stopped outside some place that looked oddly enough like a warehouse.

Daniel cut the engine, making the headlights go off so we were completely surrounded by darkness. My heart stilled in fear and scenarios about him tying me up and killing me filled my head even though I knew they were completely irrational.

“Open the glove box,” his calm and steady voice commanded. I wasted no time in feeling up the dashboard, looking for the glove box before pulling it open. “Take out the gun in there and keep it on you at all times.”

Well at least that was a guarantee that he wasn't here to kill me.

I heard the opening of the door before jumping at the sudden sound of it being slammed shut. Daniel's silhouette jogged around the car until he reached my side and pulled the door open for me. By the time I had gotten out and taken a proper look at him, he was already soaked.

“Come on,” he said, slamming the door shut and grabbing my wrist. He pulled me along with him through the lashing rain, clearly not as annoyed by the water as I was.

Perks of not having kinky, coily hair.

He lead us up to the back entrance door of the warehouse before inputing a code that immediately gave us access. I couldn't help but feel a little confused. Was he familiar with this place? Did he own it?

The warehouse was completely dark, but smelt sort of nice, oddly enough. Like the cleaning product that was used in hospitals. Daniel steered us through different obstacles, past different boxes of cargo with labels I couldn't read in the pitch darkness. The ceiling was high, but the boxes almost toward higher. A probable safety hazard but that wasn't any of my business.

We reached another door where Daniel had scanned an unfamiliar card before pulling the handle open. The hallway that greeted us was dark at first, but immediately lit up after sensing our movement.

I didn't know if he was aware of it, but his hand had slipped perfectly into mine somewhere along the way and he only squeezed it tighter as we both hissed at the assault of the warm glow on our eyes.

There wasn't a place to stop though. We picked up where we left off, letting the door slam shut behind us. We continued down the hallway, passing by many doors before finally stopping at one which, unlike the others, had no window to look into the room.

Daniel pushed the door open for us, finally letting go of my hand to switch the light on. Warm, yellow light flooded the room, almost in an effort to replace the warmth from his hand that I was suddenly missing.

The floor of this room was concrete, unlike the marble of the hallway. The walls were grey bricks which made the room seem colder than it probably was.

There were a couple washing machines and dryers against the wall opposite us, but apart from that, the room was full of clothes. Specifically hospital attire and then I realised where we were.

We were in a hospital.

Daniel made his way to the corner of the room and pulled out a box. He carried it all the way to where I was standing and dropped the box at my feet, revealing to me the folded up clothes inside. I picked out a small dress shirt that seemed to be just my size and held it up.

“Put that and the pants on,” he said, pulling out a white lab coat straight from the tumble dryer. With a pout, I slowly put on the uniform, buttoning up the front before pulling on the black office pants. I frowned at the sight of Daniel, jealous of the fact that he only had to wear a lab coat while I had to put on a whole uniform.

At least it seemed clean.

He hand me a surgical mask to put on before handing me what seemed to be an ID.

A fake ID because I knew there was never a time I worked in a hospital but I wasn't entirely against the fantasy.

“You're a student nurse and I'm showing you around, okay?” I nodded my head at him, putting on my mask at the same time he did before following him out the door.

We went through a pair of exit doors before quickly jogging up the stairs and arriving at the main hall of a busy hospital.

The hospital that I had been taken from two years ago.

I willed myself to not think too much about back then and instead followed Daniel's lead, keeping on a passive face so nobody suspected a thing. I couldn't help but admire Daniel from behind because who knew he would look so hot as a doctor?

Maybe in a different universe, he was one.

I followed him down the busy hallways, nodding back at patients and visitors as they smiled at me. The hallways gradually got less busy the further down we went and after taking a left turn, there was no one there to answer to.

Daniel stopped at a door and turned to me. Even though I couldn't see his smirk through his mask, I could still sense the mischief he was up to. It was because of how he looked at me.

He suddenly barged into the office behind the door, scaring the lady that was sitting behind the desk half to death.

“What the hell?” she almost screeched, glaring daggers at Daniel. “What do you think you're doing?”

Her voice was annoying. I didn't know what I didn't like about it but maybe it was due to the way she was screeching. She continued glaring at me and Daniel before Daniel pulled the mask from his face and her eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“Daniel. What are you—”

“Grant an old friend a favour,” he said, swiftly cutting her off as he took a seat in front of her desk.

She put the pen she was holding down and massaged her temple as if she was experiencing the worst headache to exist. That headache being Daniel.

I took that moment to step away from the door, letting it slam shut behind me which made her jump up and register me for the first time. She swiftly looked back at Daniel with a hard glare and extended her hand as if asking for something.

“Give me my card.”

“This card?” Daniel asked, holding up the key card that had granted us access to the hospital from the back.

“Yes, that card. My boss is on my throat because of it.” Her voice was much calmer this time. Deeper and more soothing so I guess I only really disliked it because she was screaming.

“Give us access to the security footage from two years ago,” Daniel wasted no time in negotiating, making her look at him as if he was crazy.

“You know I can't do that.”

“You can't or you won't?”

“I can't, Daniel,” she hissed, leaning in with a firm glare on him. “I don't have the authority to just show anybody who rocks up the security footage.”

“Would you much rather I call the cops?” he asked, making me raise an eyebrow from behind him.

“The cops?” she almost choked on her own words. “What does the cops have to do with this establishment?”

“A crime took place here two years ago.” She stared at him with confused eyes as he continued. “It's either you let me see it so I can deal with it behind closed doors, or the cops get involved and the name of this hospital is tarnished.”

She looked like she was debating with herself. She stared at Daniel long and hard before looking at me again. All I could do was give her a fake smile even though the surgical mask was still covering half of my face and she probably couldn't see it.

She let out a loud sigh before rummaging through her drawer for something. A couple seconds later, she had pulled out a set of multiple keys that jingled loudly in the tense silence of the office setting. With reluctance, she tossed it across the table to Daniel who picked them up and stood up.

He placed her card down on the table and sent her a mischievous smirk. “Check your account balance.”

“Fuck you and your money,” she muttered harshly, but her words clearly had no affect on him as he whistled an unfamiliar tune and walked towards the door.

I held it open for him to pass by me, quickly pulling down my mask and whispering a quiet apology to the woman before following Daniel on his heel.

As soon as the office door clicked shut, the sound of something hard being thrown at the wall travelled down the hall we were walking down as well as the frustrated scream of the woman.

A part of me couldn't help but wonder what their relationship was like. Clearly, she wasn't as fond of Daniel as Daniel was of her so I wouldn't call them friends. It was almost like she owed him something, so to collect his debt he had taken it upon himself to personally frustrate her life.

I decided not to dwell on it too long. As we drew closer and closer to the security room, I realised I was about to have much more pressing issues on my hands.

***

The disguises weren't a complete necessity, but they helped get a great deal of suspicion taken off us. On the way to the camera room, we walked past many hospital employees - doctors, nurses and cleaners alike - and even though, under normal circumstances they would have stopped us with a million suspicious questions, this time they only nodded and carried on their way.

I guess this wasn't normal circumstances.

We pushed into another empty hallway much like the one where we had found the uniforms we had on. The lights flickered on and the sound of Daniel fumbling around with the key drew my attention to him as he drew nearer to a fire door on the right.

Exactly as he had reached the door, he pulled a specific key out and inserted it into the lock before turning it and allowing himself in with me following suit.

The room in question was dark with grey walls and the only light source switched off. On the far white wall was about ten different TV screens showing footage of different areas of the hospital. In front of those screens was an unoccupied desk chair, giving the impression of a guard sitting there.

Yet the guard seemed to be absent and the room held the coolness of a place that hadn't been visited by a human for a while now.

Daniel took time to take in his surroundings as did I before muttering “fucking bastards” under his breath. It was the first time he had spoken to me in a while and he wasn't even speaking to me.

“Lock the door,” Daniel clumsily threw over his shoulders at me as he turned his back to me to go through a filing cabinet on his left.

I turned to him at the sound of his voice before making my way up to the wide open door, closing it and turning the lock until I heard the satisfying click of it not being able to be opened from the outside anymore.

My actions were stiff and robotic and I found myself rolling out my shoulders, wondering why I was acting the way I was before I looked back at the security footage, watching each screen change to a different angle and tell a different story of what was happening in the hospital.

I was finally about to hear about my story. After years of wondering about it but never talking about it - years of suffering in silence - it was finally going to be out in the open.

“Around this time two years ago,” I heard Daniel mutter, making me turn to him with a brow raised.

He quickly turned around and I diverted my gaze, not wanting to make it seem like I had been staring for long. I was the last thing on his mind though as he walked to what I assumed was the main computer with a silver disk in his hand.

There was some writing on it and even though I couldn't make out what it said in the low lighting, I could recognise the format of a date.

Daniel plopped the disk into the computer before I could ask him what he was doing and the screen of the monitor whirred to life. It looked fairly new but it acted and sounded like something straight out of the nineties as it struggled with the simple task of playing whatever was on that disk.

Daniel, surprisingly enough, was way more patient about it than me. But then again I wouldn't be surprised since he seemed to have spent half his life around technology. He was a tech wizard last I remembered. A geek.

I had only discovered the wonders of a phone two years back.

I found myself zoning out, the closer we got to getting proper answers, the more emotionally distant I became. I knew it was my own form of self-preservation, but what was there to try and protect myself from? The bitter truth of what had already happened?

Or maybe the trauma that I had convinced myself I had already healed from?

With a sigh, I gathered myself up and positioned myself behind the desk chair he was sitting on. I braced my hand on the back rest only to have some sort of support so I didn't fall down.

Daniel skipped a bit of time before stopping at a frame that made my heart pound in my chest irregularly and my breath hitch. The exact moment I had been rushed there.

“That's you,” he said, freezing the frame and zooming into it. I found myself leaning down until my chin almost brushed his shoulder and my breath feathered against the skin on his neck.

In the frame, I was bundled up in his arms, one arm under my knees while the other supported my back. I had a blanket thrown over me and behind Daniel were Pablo and Anna. Nobody else.

True to his word.

I stared at the frame longer than I probably had reason to but there was something about the image that lifted my spirit. Maybe it was because of the fact that it wasn't actually as bloody and as gruesome as I constantly allowed myself to imagine.

Sure, my skin looked way too pale and blood dripped from my nose and mouth in a steady stream, but in the images that haunted my nightmares, I was so bloody, the only thing that was left to do was for me to start bleeding through the pores on my skin.

Daniel continued to play the video at a speed that I knew was faster than real life. He slowed it down again at a frame that seemed random to me, but soon he pointed out the method to his madness.

“You see this place?” he asked, pointing at the frame of a crowd of people casually walking around the hospital. I hummed, nodding my head for him to continue. “This frame is littered with men. Men that work for someone else.”

My mouth hung open in shock and fear as well because they had blended in so well. I probably would've smiled and nodded at one of them if I wasn't just barely clinging onto life.

Daniel wasn't affected by my silence and instead continued to play the clip. “You see they all leave at the same time right after checking a message on their phones through different exits.” The next thing he had said sent a shiver of dread down my spine. “That message is the one telling them that they had you.”

“God,” I found myself withdrawing, wrapping my arms around myself as fear practically reduced me to nothing but a shivering young woman who wanted nothing more than to wrap herself in her blankets and hide from the world.

What a coward.

Daniel got up from the desk chair and turned to me, making me fix my gaze on the ground. I didn't want to see the judgement in his eyes. It was too dark to see anything really, but I felt like looking at him look at my face gave away exactly what he was thinking of me.

“Sit,” he said, his voice softer than I was used to.

I didn't know what sitting was going to do to help me but I couldn't deny how my legs buckled and threatened to give way. Without much of a fight given, I slowly walked towards the desk chair and sat down.

It creaked and strained under my weight but the last thing I had on my mind in that moment was how a desk chair was indirectly insulting my weight.

Daniel's arms came around either side of me to control the computer and I was suddenly trapped between him and the table with no way to escape. As ashamed as I should've been to admit it, I was loving every second if it.

His signature citrus scent filtered up into my nose and I took a few discreet whiffs before leaning back into the chair - almost as if I was leaning back into his chest.

His head was beside mine and in one innocent motion that stole my breath from me, he placed his chin on my shoulder. I would've basked in the joy of having him this close to me if it wasn't for the fact that he had pointed to the thing that I always had nightmares about.

A zoomed in image of Diego; the man that had made me feel like less of a human and then sold me like a piece of furniture. Something in me had changed staring at the screen of the familiar dark-haired man. His jaw was hard and set in the frame and his dark eyes seemed to be trained at something that looked like it caused him great annoyance.

Me, perhaps?

While I usually regarded this man with fear, in that moment, sitting there watching over what had happened to me with one of the most dangerous men in the country doing the same, I couldn't help but feel furious.

Because this time, all that rage could do something. This time I could actually do something; I could actually ruin his life.

“That's Diego,” I said, speaking on my own accord for the first time in a while. “He's the worser of the two that took me. At least the other guy had some atom of remorse.”

“This is the other guy?” Daniel asked, clicking the screen to display the image of the blonde man that had taken more pity on my than his colleague.

Yet not enough to let me go.

“Yes.”

The funny thing was that back then, I was more angry at Daniel than I was at the people who had actually done the dirty work. Maybe it was the feeling of betrayal talking, but he was the only one in the wrong.

Not even Dicky Diego and he had graphically explained to me how they had sucked the remnants of my baby out of my womb - all of which was untrue, mind you. All of my anger was focused on Daniel.

Now I didn't know who to focus it on, because the two men in front of me had carried out the order, yes, but someone had to have given that order in the first place.

Daniel played the clip, keeping his head on my shoulder and his arms on the armrest of the chair I was on. The scene carried on, showing how I had just woken up.

I could remember the fleeting comment I had made about vampires and blood transfusions, but decided not to acknowledge it since I was still trying to forget. That was one of my worst moments and I believed it should stay as a story that the nurses laughed at in the break rooms and nothing more.

The scene continued to play out to the second time I had woken up. The men were still there, unmoving from their positions when I had first acknowledged them. It made me wonder how long I was out.

“Where were you?” I found myself asking, hating the way my voice cracked with uncertainty.

Daniel stayed silent for a while, the only thing that let me know that he had heard me at all was by how he stopped tapping his finger against the arm rest.

He let out a deep breath against my neck which only made me shiver but not from the cold or the fear.

“I was... sorting some things out,” he said, making my brows crease. “The doctor had told me that you miscarried and you had been aware the whole time and kept it from me. I stormed out, Pablo came after me and you were left in Anna's care. While I was away, I was sorting out some things because you didn't want to be with me.”

I frowned, thinking about my best friend. I wasn't going to call her my ex best friend because what we had was too good to let go like that. No wonder she was so pissed at me. It seemed like I had left right under her nose. Like I had just snuck out without letting her know even though I had every opportunity to do so.

I would hate me too.

“I was gone for a couple hours,” he said, drawing me back to the present. “Apparently that was all the time they needed.”

“What were you doing?” I asked curiously.

“I was—”

But then something cut him off and I turned around to look at him before looking at what he was looking at that seemed to have made him speechless without any real effort. The doctor that I couldn't forget no matter how hard I tried - the one that had sedated me twice - was on the screen, preparing the second injection as my face went red from how worked up I was.

I looked back at Daniel, surprised at the sinister smirk that was on his face as he watched the scene play out. “If it isn't an old friend,” he muttered quietly, but his words were still heard by me and it made my heart still for a second.

Slowly, he turned to look at me, nothing in his demeanour giving off any form of amusement even though he was smirking.

“What do you say, sweetheart?” he asked, grabbing a hold of my chin as I stared at him with wide eyes. “How about we pay an old friend a visit?”

My initial reaction was to tell him that it was way too late to pay someone a visit, but I realised then that the visit Daniel was thinking of wasn't the same one I was thinking of; it wasn't a friendly one.

I could sense the danger radiating from him and this time, instead of fearing my attraction towards it, I fully embraced it. I returned his smile and with a soft voice, replied, “It's what friends do.”

*****

This is the first time in a while that I've updated on the actual update day. I just want to thank you all for your patience with me. We've also just hit 5K reads so thank you so much for that lmao I don't really know what else to say.

I'm currently on Easter break so hopefully I'll be able to write a little more than what I already have. I feel like I hit a standstill, but I've just made a plan for the book (because I've finally figured out how exactly it's going to end) so I'm hoping it's only smooth sailing from here.

Anyways, see you guys next week. Stay safe.