Desperate Measures Ch. 02

Then I turned and walked into my old bedroom, shut the door, fell down on the bed and bawled my eyes out. I cried like I hadn't cried in years. I had successfully dammed up my emotions to get through what I had to do in my job, but the stress of Brett's condition and my mother's question had burst that dam.

Mom never brought up the subject again, but she's never been quite as warm to me as she had been before. I don't blame her. It's not easy to think of your baby girl doing the things I'd been doing to pay the rent.

The end came rather suddenly. One night in early February – a cold, drizzly night – Brett woke up gasping for breath, even with the ventilator going.

We took him to the hospital – again – and the doctor told us that his lungs were filling up with fluid almost as fast as they could draw it out.

I looked in on him and his face was contorted with pain, even through the sedatives that they were giving him. In that moment, I made a decision that some might damn me for, but one I knew was right.

It was time to let him go.

I called the doctor over and told him I wanted him kept alive long enough for his family to get there and say their final good-byes, but after that I wanted him taken off the ventilator. He'd fought it long enough; now it was time for him to go to heaven and be whole again.

It was the next morning when they started arriving, and they spent the morning with him. Around noon, they came out and we shared a hug before they went to the waiting room. I walked in with Ashley and we both hugged Brett, told him goodbye, then we stepped aside and let the nurses do what they had to do.

Brett was buried on a cold, but sunny afternoon, and I held my head high as I greeted friends and well-wishers.

I was gratified that many of the clients that I had come to call friends were at the service: Clayton Howell, Owen Hester, Milton Bass, they all came to pay their respects. And, of course, Terry and Betty Sue stood with me the whole way, the same way they had throughout.

After Brett's death, there was no reason for me to whore any more, and I quit, just like that. I sold the house and the van, and moved to a mid-sized town much closer to my hometown. I needed a new life and a new start in some place that didn't constantly remind me of the years of struggle after Brett was incapacitated.

I bought a house in a quiet neighborhood and settled down to rebuild my life after the ordeal of my six years of dealing with the aftermath of Brett's accident. I used some of the money I'd saved up and bought a crafts boutique, and used the entrepreneurial skills I'd learned to make it a success.

Four years of fucking for pay had scratched whatever itch I'd had for casual sex, and thus I was celibate for almost a year after I turned my last trick. I finally started dating some, and some of those relationships did become sexual.

I was determined that if a relationship progressed to the point where they became serious, I would sit the man down and tell him about what I'd done to survive after Brett's accident.

The first two serious relationships I had foundered when I made my confession, but that suited me. If they couldn't take me as I was, warts and all, past be damned, then they weren't for me. I wasn't going to revel in my past, but I wasn't going to deny it, either.

So I was sort of drifting in my personal life, working at my store and watching Ashley grow up, when fate played one final card. It was right after the turn of a new year, not long before I turned 40, when I got a call from someone I'd never expected to hear from again.

It was Owen Hester, and he said he'd retired from the police force and was looking for a quiet place to settle down.

"Truth is, Katie, I've missed you terribly," he said. "I always thought our relationship was strictly professional, but after Brett passed away and you moved on, I realized how deeply embedded you'd become in my life. I think about you all the time, and I want to come up there and see you. I know you want to put that part of your past behind you, and if you don't want to pursue a relationship with me, I'll understand. But I'm very fond of you, and I think I could grow to love you, if you'll have me."

Of course, I told him to come on, and the rest is history. He took an apartment in town and we started spending almost all of our time together. Eighteen months later, we were married in a quiet ceremony at the church I'd joined when I moved there.

Owen still has his high-rise apartment where we stay when we go back to the city, which we do several times a year. We visit old friends and pay our respects to Brett's gravesite. Whenever I run across an old client, I'm sometimes propositioned, until they learn that I'm now Owen's wife. Then they leave me alone.

I truly wish I could have done things differently, that I could have gotten by without selling my body – and the large piece of my soul that went with it – but I did what I believed in my heart that I had to do.

I can't go back and change the past, and if I could, I'd go all the way back and figure out some way to prevent Brett from being hurt. He was my first love, my best love, and I'd give anything to have him back the way he was before that awful night.

But it happened the way it did for a reason, and he's gone now, so I can only look forward to make the best of my life with Owen, and finish raising my daughter the best way I know how.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I made a choice that I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. When that time comes, I'll know whether God has condemned me for that choice or forgiven me for that choice.

Until then, all I can do is pray for salvation and hope for the best.

THE END