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Howie was woken up well before dawn by the sound of his cell phone ringing. He rolled over in bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he reached for the phone.

His stomach dropped when he saw Detective Overton’s name flashing on its screen. She had given him her personal number to plug into his contacts and told him to call her any time, day or night, if he thought of anything else that might help her track down Nick and Brian. He had asked her to do the same, knowing she would never abuse the privilege. Howie didn’t know what time it was, but judging by the darkness outside his window, it may as well have been the middle of the night. There was only one reason the detective would call him so early: Brian, Nick, or both of them had been found.

“Hello?” he croaked, his voice thick with phlegm.

“Howie?” asked Detective Overton.

He cleared his throat before answering, “Yeah, it’s me. Did you find them?” His heart raced as he waited to hear her response.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up or cause you any alarm,” the detective replied carefully, “but a man matching Nick’s description was discovered on one of the beaches about fifteen minutes ago. He’s being taken to the hospital by ambulance.”

Howie’s breath caught in his throat. “So he’s alive?”

Detective Overton seemed to hesitate. “Yes, but from what I understand, he’s in pretty bad shape. I normally wouldn’t call you before making a positive identification myself, but under the circumstances, I thought you guys might want to get there as soon as possible in case it is Nick.”

“Of course,” said Howie, already climbing out of bed and fumbling around for clothes. “Which hospital did you say it was?”

“Lower Keys Medical Center.”

“For real this time?” Howie couldn’t help but ask.

Detective Overton chuckled. “For real. I’ll meet you in the emergency room.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Howie promised. He hung up, then hurried to wake up the others.

Ten minutes later, he was speeding towards the hospital in his rental car with Lauren riding shotgun, Kevin and AJ in the back seat. Leighanne and Baylee were right behind them in a second car.

Howie followed the signs for the emergency room and found a place to park. He heard three sets of seatbelts unbuckle before he had even turned the car off. He and the rest of the group rushed toward the entrance, reaching it just as an ambulance pulled up with its lights flashing and siren wailing.

They stood back and watched as a paramedic hopped out of the front and ran around to the back, where she was met by a pair of people in scrubs who had emerged from the hospital. “This the cardiac arrest?” Howie heard one of them ask.

The paramedic nodded as she flung open the back door. “We found him in full arrest, being given CPR by a bystander. No idea how long he had been down before that,” she explained, as she helped a second paramedic pull a stretcher out of the ambulance. “We achieved ROSC after about ten minutes at the scene and spent another ten or so trying to stabilize him before we transported, but he arrested again in the rig. Last rhythm was asystole.”

As they lowered the wheels of the stretcher and Howie got his first good look at the patient lying on it, his stomach lurched.

It was Nick.

Howie first recognized him not by his face, which was strangely bloated and so pale it almost appeared to be blue, but by his shoulder tattoos. The lower half of his body was covered by a blanket, but the top half was unclothed. Both his arms had been strapped to the sides of a big, scary-looking contraption that arched over his torso. In the center was a cylinder with a suction cup attached to the bottom which was moving up and down like a piston, compressing the middle of Nick’s chest with a disconcerting amount of depth and force.

Watching the device at work, Howie felt nauseous. He had never seen anything like it before, but he understood what it was doing. The machine was mechanically contracting Nick’s heart, making it continue to pump blood through his body, even though it had stopped beating. It looked incredibly painful, but Nick probably couldn’t feel it. He appeared to be unconscious.

“Oh my god… Nick!” gasped Lauren. She took one step toward the stretcher before her knees buckled. Kevin and AJ caught her by the arms as she started to collapse. They helped her inside and forced her into a chair while Nick was whisked away.

Howie tried to follow the stretcher, but a nurse held him back. “I’m sorry, sir, but you need to wait here while we’re working on your friend,” she said. “One of us will come find you as soon as we have an update on his condition.”

Before Howie could protest, Detective Overton hurried over. “Howie! Did you have a chance to see him?” she wanted to know. “Is it Nick?”

Howie nodded, still reeling from what he had just witnessed. “Yeah. It’s definitely Nicky all right.” Hot tears rose in his eyes as the realization hit him hard: “He’s dying.

The detective gripped his shoulder. “You don’t know that. Let’s try and focus on the positives here. Nick’s been found. He’s not with those people anymore. He’s in good hands here at the hospital, and those doctors and nurses are going to do everything in their power to help him. We just have to hope and pray it’s enough.”

Howie nodded again, knowing she was right. He needed to stay strong and have faith, not only for Nick, but for Lauren and the others. As he looked back over his shoulder to make sure Nick’s wife was okay, Leighanne approached the detective. Her blue eyes shone with tears as she asked the next question on all of their minds: “What about Brian?”

***


Brian had woken up as Dani was wheeling Nick away. Where are you taking him?! he wanted to shout, remembering the horrors he himself had endured the last time Elizabeth took him out of the room. He had already witnessed Dani doing unspeakable things to Nick right there in front of him. What else would she do when she was alone with him? Just thinking about his brother being raped or tortured again made Brian shudder, but the worst part was knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He was still completely paralyzed and utterly powerless.

But as the minutes passed without Dani or Nick returning to the room, an astonishing thing happened: Brian’s body began to awaken.

At first, it was only his little finger, like before. The movement was so subtle, he wasn’t even sure it was really happening. Maybe it was all in his head. But as more time went by, the subtle twitch became a full-on finger curl. Feeling the tip of his pinky touch the palm of his hand, he knew he wasn’t imagining it. He really was regaining control over his right hand.

Before long, the left side followed. It wasn’t just his hands either - as he flexed his fingers, he found that he could also wiggle his toes. To Brian, this proved what he had been suspecting for a while: his paralysis wasn’t permanent. It wasn’t the result of a spinal cord injury, either. And the best part was that whatever drugs they had been using to immobilize his body and make him think it was seemed to be wearing off. As more time passed, more muscles began to respond to the commands his brain was giving them.

The ones in his face were among the last to wake up. When he finally managed to open his eyes on his own again, it felt like gulping down a tall glass of cold water after walking for days in the desert. He stared up at the stark white ceiling tiles over his head, drinking in every detail. He was almost afraid to blink, terrified he wouldn’t be able to lift his heavy eyelids again if he let them fall back down. But after a few seconds of his eyes watering beneath the blinding fluorescent lights, he was forced to shut them. To his relief, they fluttered open without as much effort the second time.

The stiff cervical collar around his neck prevented him from turning his head, and though he tried hard to sit up, his abdominal muscles were too weak to pull himself into a sitting position. Fumbling around, he found the controls to his bed and managed to raise the head until he was upright for the first time in weeks. After lying flat for so long, even being at a forty-five degree angle made him feel dizzy. His head was swimming. He leaned back heavily against the hard mattress and stayed like that for a few more minutes to let his body adjust before he attempted to move again.

Looking down, he was able to see a long hose hooked up to his tracheostomy tube. He would have to disconnect himself from the ventilator if he had any hope of escaping. He wasn’t sure how well he would be able to breathe without it, but he had to try. There was no telling where Dani had taken Nick, but he knew she could come back at any time. He kept his eyes trained on the door and his ears tuned to the hallway, expecting to hear her or one of the others approaching any moment. Meanwhile, he tried to take a breath on his own, fighting the flow of oxygen from the ventilator. Pressing his hand against his abdomen, he felt his diaphragm move downward as his lungs expanded. That was all the proof he needed. Saying a quick prayer in his head, he held onto the trach with one hand to keep the tube in place as he tugged at the hose with the other. With a pop, it pulled right off the end of the tube. He heard a hissing sound as the hose snaked to the floor, oxygen still flowing through it.

For a few seconds, Brian felt like a fish out of water. It was as if his whole airway had been sealed; he couldn’t seem to inhale through his mouth or nose. Thoughts of suffocation flashed in his mind as he fought for his first breath. But once fresh air entered the opening in his neck and filled his lungs, his panic began to subside. The trach tube made it feel like he was trying to breathe through a straw, but at least he could finally do so on his own.

Emboldened by his success, Brian carefully unstrapped the bulky neck brace and took it off. After wearing it for so long, he felt strangely vulnerable without it. His neck was stiff and sore from being immobilized, and his head had never seemed so heavy. He was as helpless as a newborn baby, barely able to hold up his own head. At first, it felt like it was about to flop over and fall right off his shoulders. But after a few more minutes, he had adjusted to its weight and was able to lift his head off the mattress.

He found he could still move the parts of his body below the neck, too, even without the cervical collar to keep his spine in alignment. This was further confirmation that they had been faking the spinal cord injury he had supposedly suffered in the car crash. He felt sick to his stomach at the realization that he’d been held hostage in a hospital bed and subjected to unnecessary medical procedures for no reason, but it made him even more determined to run and find help for both Nick and himself.

He unplugged the IV line from the access point in his left arm and reached under his gown to pluck the electrodes off of his chest. Hearing an alarm ring on his heart monitor, he hurried to remove the rest of the equipment that was attached to his body before someone came in to check on him.

Soon all that remained was the urinary catheter he could feel protruding from the tip of his penis. He was afraid to pull it out by himself, but it was either that or haul a bag of his own urine around with him as he made his break for freedom. The second option disgusted him so much, he decided he had to try and take it out. He peeled off the piece of tape securing a length of tubing to the his inner thigh. Pinching the thin tube firmly between his thumb and forefinger, he sucked in a deep breath through the hole in his neck, squeezed his eyes shut, and tugged. He was met with pain and resistance, but his desperation made him more reckless than he would normally be. He yanked harder and felt something rip inside him as the tube slid out into his hand.

As a fiery pain blazed from his bladder into his penis, Brian opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Clutching himself, he writhed in agony for what felt like forever, too terrified to open his eyes and look down. When he finally did, he saw blood between his legs, but it wasn’t as much as he had been imagining.

Once he had managed to convince himself he wasn’t hemorrhaging to death, Brian braced himself for his next feat: getting out of bed. Finally free from all of the tubes that had tethered him there, all he had to do was put his feet on the floor and pray his legs were still strong enough to support him. He fumbled with the side rail until he figured out how to lower it, then slid his legs slowly off of the bed, turning his body so that he was sitting on the edge. He stayed like that for a few seconds, getting his bearings before he tried to stand. Yet in the back of his mind, he knew he had to hurry - one of his captors could come bursting into the room at any moment. He was surprised he hadn’t already been caught trying to escape. Where was everyone? he wondered. Brian couldn’t believe his luck.

It’s not luck, he told himself. It’s divine intervention. The Lord was on his side. He didn’t understand why he had been forced to suffer what he had in this place, and perhaps he never would, but still, Brian put his faith in his Heavenly Father, as he always had before. His belief in God gave him the strength he needed to stand.

His skinny legs were as weak and wobbly as a newborn foal’s, but they did not buckle beneath Brian’s weight. With his heart beating fast and his whole body trembling, he felt like he had just finished running a four hundred meter sprint - when, really, he was still on the starting block. Fueled by the burst of adrenaline flowing through his veins, he took one shaky step, followed by another. You can do this, he coached himself, forcing his feet to shuffle forward. You need to do this… not just for yourself, but for Nick. Do it for him.

His determination to free himself and find help for his dying brother kept Brian moving toward the door. The further he walked, the stronger he felt. By the time he made it into the hallway, he was able to move faster. He had no idea which way to go, so he turned to the right, clinging to the red stripe on the wall as he rounded the corner and crept up the empty corridor.

At the end of the hall was a closed door. Cautiously, Brian opened it a sliver and put his eye to the crack, peeking through it. He saw what appeared to be another passageway, though it looked nothing like the one he was in. Its floors were carpeted, its walls covered in wooden paneling. He pushed the door open wider to confirm that it was unoccupied before he crossed the threshold. His feet squished into the plush, yet faded, rose-colored carpet as he walked over it. What is this place? he couldn’t help but wonder.

Rounding another corner, he found himself in a huge, open room. There were rows of chairs all facing the same direction, but nothing to see up front but a few dusty wooden tables and plant stands. He hurried past them, breathing hard through his trach tube as he tried to pick up the pace. His head was spinning, but he didn’t dare stop to rest. He continued down another corridor into the next room, which looked like a lobby or reception area. He could see a large front door on the opposite side. To Brian, it represented freedom.

If he had possessed the strength and coordination to run to it, he would have, but he could only stagger stiffly in its direction. Clumsily, he closed his fingers around the doorknob and tried to turn it. Of course, it was locked. Fumbling with the latch, he unlocked it and tried again. This time, to his relief, the knob turned easily in his hand. He tugged on it, and the door opened with a loud creak. Praying no one was around to hear the sound, he crept out onto a covered porch and closed it carefully behind him.

Turning around, he took a moment to scope out his surroundings. A set of steps would take him down to the sidewalk, which led to a quiet street. A large, wooden sign on the overgrown lawn said, in fading letters, Gravel Funeral Home. What the hell? thought Brian, frowning, as a chill went down his spine.

He didn’t stop to dwell on it. Stumbling down the steps, he headed toward the street. It was almost dawn, but the windows of the nearby houses were still dark. No one was outside. He considered knocking at the house next door, but decided he had better put some distance between him and the place where he had been imprisoned before he sought help, in case one of his captors came looking for him.

He hurried around the corner and continued on down to the next intersection, hoping for a car to drive by so someone would see him hobbling barefoot in a hospital gown, clearly in need of help, and come to his aid. He knew he couldn’t keep going much longer; his weakened body was already on the verge of collapse.

His prayers were answered when he heard the rumble of an engine growing steadily louder. He looked up hopefully as a car rounded the corner, coming in his direction. Raising a hand over his head, Brian tried to wave it down. The headlights shining directly into his eyes made it impossible for him to see the driver, but to his relief, the red coupe made an abrupt turn in the middle of the street before pulling up to the curb beside him.

The driver’s side door opened, and a heavyset man hopped out. “Hey, where you headed?” he asked, and Brian’s blood ran cold. It wasn’t until he heard the man’s voice that he realized his mistake.

It was Patrick.

***