Grace was covered in blood. There were cuts all over her chest. She looked up at him and smiled a tiny little smile that barely grazed her lips. “Nick,” she whispered. And then something else. He couldn’t make it out. And then her eyes closed. And her head slipped sideways.
“Grace?” This time, Nick said it louder and there was panic in his voice.
It was time for the professionals to take over. The cop pushed Nick out of the way. “Get an ambulance,” he shouted. Then he hit a button on his flak vest and started relaying information to someone.
More cops arrived and Nick’s attempts to get back to Grace were greeted with, Step aside. You shouldn’t be here. Could somebody get this civilian out of here?
Nick was just about to lose it when he felt strong arms wrap around him from behind. A soothing Southern voice spoke calmly into his ear. “We can do her more good if we let them take care of her. She’s going to be okay. We have to let them do their job.”
Kevin. Train. My brother. Nick turned and looked at him. He tried to talk but could only shake his head. He looked back at the knot of uniforms surrounding Grace’s unmoving form.
“Come with me,” said Kevin and he led him downstairs. Petey and Tammy stood in the lobby. Kevin got on the phone. He didn’t let his arm go from Nick, though, not for a moment. Soon, people arrived. Tammy’s parents came for Petey and Tammy. The limo driver was released, with thanks and assurances that he had maybe saved a life here tonight. The building manager arrived. Jermaine followed shortly after.
The first ambulance took Grace away. She was still alive, after all. The second one took Gary. He was dead. He had bled his life away for Grace, trying to protect her. Nick wanted to go with Grace but was told he couldn’t. Only Kevin’s firm hand and soothing voice kept him from losing it. She was stable, said the attendant, but she was in shock.
No fucking kidding, Nick wanted to yell in his face. But he just picked up her hand and looked into her still and silent face. Don’t leave me, he whispered. He remembered that she had said that to him when he took her to the hospital the day they met. He said it again. Don’t leave me. Please, Grace, don’t leave me.
“I’ll take you to the hospital. Come with me,” said the cop who had helped Nick break down the door. “I can get your statement there.” And he ushered Kevin and Nick into the back of his car.
A third ambulance waited to take Matt, but the police weren’t done with his body yet.
The next hours were a total blur to Nick. He didn’t even remember the ride to the hospital. He answered the police questions the best he could. He said, ‘I don’t know’ too many times, though, for his liking. Why didn’t he know more? Why hadn’t he protected her? Why did she end up like this?
Nick paced up and down the waiting room looking up expectantly at every doctor or nurse who passed by the door. The guys arrived. The women had been left at Brian’s to sit by the phone and pray.
Finally, Nick sat down and put his head in his heads. He felt a hand on his shoulder. A styrofoam cup of coffee was pressed into his hand. He looked up. “Ah, Agnes,” he said and tears sprang to his eyes. “She’s hurt again.”
“I know, Honey,” said the nurse, patting him on the shoulder, “But we’ll fix her up again.”
Finally, a man in green scrubs appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Carter,” he said.
Nick tried to read the doctor’s face. He stood up. Four other men stood up with him. None of them breathed.
“She’s going to be okay,” said the doctor.
It was only Kevin’s strong, steady arms that kept Nick on his feet.
“She has multiple contusions and lacerations.” The doctor could see that Nick wasn’t taking this in. “He beat her up and he cut her.”
Nick’s eyes cleared. I’m going to kill him, he thought and then realized he didn’t have to.
“Some of the cuts are superficial but there were three that were rather deep. Our plastic surgeon, Dr. Paul Ogilvy, was fortunately here at the hospital and he has worked on her. There will be some scarring, but not much.
Scarring? Who gives a shit about scarring? Nick wanted to ask.
“Can I see her?”
“Well, she’s under sedation, right now, and…um…”
Brian picked up on it first. “There’s something else?”
Kevin wasn’t really sure Nick could take something else. He handed Nick off to Howie and AJ and walked with the doctor up the hall. Brian watched the two of them. The doctor talked and Kevin nodded. Then Kevin asked a question and the doctor talked again. Finally, Kevin shook the doctor’s hand and turned back.
Brian followed Kevin into the waiting room. Nick’s long frame was hunched on an orange plastic chair. His head was in his hands. Howie stood behind him, one hand on Nick’s shoulder. AJ stood as still as AJ could, tapping the ends of his fingers together and wanting someone to fix this situation.
Kevin pulled a chair up in front of Nick, so that they were knee to knee. He took Nick’s hand. “Listen to me, Nick. She’s going to be okay. Do you understand?”
Nick nodded. The other three could hear the huge, unspoken ‘but’ at the end of Kevin’s sentence. They weren’t sure Nick had.
“But…?” Nick had heard it. He had been expecting it.
“She’s in shock,” said Kevin. “Who wouldn’t be? They are going to keep her under sedation all night and see what happens in the morning.” He looked up at the others. “She told the police that she doesn’t remember what happened and then she stopped talking. She won’t speak.”
Nick rocketed to his feet. “I want to see her.” He looked wildly around. “Where is she? Grace?! Grace?!” He yelled again and pushed away the hands that tried to hold him back. The guys didn’t know what to do. Nick headed out of the waiting room. He stopped in the doorway when confronted by a stocky, middle-aged nurse.
“Please, Agnes,” he whispered.
The men were surprised to see the nurse take Nick by the hand like a child she was walking to kindergarten.
“She’s sedated. She won’t know you’re there.”
“She’ll know.”
“Five minutes,” said Agnes. “Okay?”
Nick nodded and they walked up the hall hand-in-hand. They both knew that once Nick was able to see her and touch her hand, no one would be able to make him leave.
Nick could barely recognize Grace. One side of her face was bruised and swollen. The other side was so pale as to be almost transparent. Her eyes were closed. Bandages started just below her chin and disappeared under the hospital gown. He could see the outline of them far down her chest. He picked up her hand. “I’m here, Grace,” he said. “I’m here.”
******************************They moved her upstairs during the night. Nick went with her. He sent the other guys away telling them to get some sleep, but he wasn’t leaving. The doctor assured Nick that Grace’s refusal or inability to speak was her way of protecting her mind, of shutting out the horror. She didn’t have the strength to deal with both that and her physical injuries right now and time was what she needed. But Nick knew that the last time she had stopped speaking to shut out the horror, it had been a year before she spoke again.
She was kept under sedation for the next day – pain killers for her physical injuries and sedatives to keep her from losing her mind. Her parents arrived from Ohio. Her mother paced up and down beside the bed, desperate to do something, raging inside at the feeling of uselessness that threatened to smother her.
Her father merely grasped her toe under the blankets at the foot of the bed and whispered, “Baby bird.” Grace’s eyes fluttered open at his touch, but she didn’t say anything and drifted away again after a moment.
The press arrived. The boys made it clear to their publicist that they would kill the first reporter who tried to get near her. The publicist cleaned that statement up a little before release, but privately had a word with some of the reporters and made it clear that any future interviews with BSB were dependent upon their actions during this personal crisis.
The next day, the doctor started weaning Grace from the drugs, bringing her slowly back. She lay in the bed, holding Nick's hand, saying nothing. Grace’s mom brought her a nightgown and some toiletries from her apartment. Nick and Tom Barrett stood in the hall not saying a word to each other while Grace’s mom and a nurse changed her clothes and washed the dried blood out of her hair.
The Boys and their women came and went, the boys standing off with their hands in their pockets, shuffling their feet, the women walking right up to her, touching her hand, whispering to her that she was going to be fine.
Nick turned aside all suggestions that he take a break and get some sleep. Go have a shower. We're here. You're not going to be able to do her any good if you break down. Finally, Howie did the only thing that could possibly work. He called Nick's mother.
Nick's parents had been sitting at home by the phone, keeping in contact with Kevin and following reports of the incident on the news. As much as they wanted to be at the hospital with Nick, they knew that they would be useless and out-of-place. And so they waited. Howie's phone call was salvation for them.
Kevin met them outside the door of Grace's room and briefed them. Grace was in shock. The doctor said she was blocking the incident from her mind. She wouldn't speak. But the boys were concerned about Nick right now.
Nick’s mother held up the bag of fresh clothes. Don't worry.
Jane pushed open the door to the room and took in the sight. Nick looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was grey. Jane looked at Grace and gasped at the sight of her bruised face. She walked over and put her hand on her son's shoulder. "Son," she whispered.
Grace looked up at the sound and blinked at her, trying to place her in the right context. Then she turned her eyes toward the door, where Bob Carter stood. Suddenly, Grace launched herself off the bed dragging the IV stand and the tubes with her. She threw herself into his arms, crying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Over and over again.
People were stunned. But Bob knew exactly what she was talking about. It's okay, he whispered. He would understand. He would be proud.
And then Grace relived the moments.
When Matt had raised the knife and she thought she was going to die.
But he had stopped and looked out the window.
"Well, well, well," he had said, "Looks like we're going to have company. Blondie's here."
And though Grace had reached the point where she didn’t care what he did with her, she wasn’t going to let him have Nick. She spotted the bat beside the desk. She sent her desk chair spinning toward Matt. It surprised him enough that he lowered the knife and she hit him with the bat across the arm, striking out blindly. The blow stunned him and he stopped. He looked at her oddly, as if he didn’t recognize this Grace, this fighter. She swung the bat back from the other direction, catching him a glancing blow on his other shoulder.
“I’m going to kill you,” Matt whispered, raising the knife.
Grace stepped up to the plate and with all her might, she swung the bat, and hit him right across the bridge of his nose. The force of the blow knocked him backwards and he crashed against the windows and then dropped out of sight.
Grace sank to her knees, clutching the bat. “Home run,” she whispered. These were the words that Nick had not been able to hear. “Home run.” And then she retreated to her safe, silent world where she stayed until the one person who could understand the sacrilege she had committed had come to bring her back.
“He would understand. He would be proud.”
Bob rocked her in his arms. No one else moved. And then softly, Grace said the word that told them she would be fine, “Nick.”
