Hostile Takeover Ch. 01

I went down to the lounge for a cup of coffee and noticed that there was a flurry of activity going on in the hospital. I asked a nurse what was going on, and she told us there was a big auto accident right here in the neighborhood. A woman going the wrong way down a one way street had lost control of her car and plowed into a retaining wall that was part of the entrance ramp to the freeway. She was going so fast that her car was totaled and they had to use the Jaws of Life to cut her from the car. She was barely alive, and hanging on by a thread. They were doing all they could to locate the next of kin. Even as she spoke to me, my phone started ringing. I looked down at the display and it seemed to be coming from the hospital I was standing in.

"Hello," I said. I immediately thought it was Anna's nurse calling me back to her room. "Is this Mr. Preston Collins?"

"Yes it is," I said. I looked up and waved at Amanda as she came into the hospital and hurried through the door into the emergency room.

"Mr. Collins your wife has been in an auto accident and..." I ran into the emergency room after Amanda.

Amanda was crying as what appeared to be a doctor spoke to her. When I walked over to him and told him who I was he began again.

"We're doing what we can to make her comfortable, but it's really a miracle that she's lasted this long. She was pronounced dead, twice on her way to the hospital. You should go in and stay with her, I'm really sorry," he said. He really did look like he meant it. That is one of the reasons that I could never be a doctor. I don't think I could ever face someone's relatives, and tell them that their son or daughter was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. The second reason was that I'm more of a machine guy than a people person.

Amanda and I stepped into the antiseptic looking room. Charlotte was on a table, with a nurse attending to her. I took her hand and she smiled. There was a huge bruise on her face where she'd hit the windshield. I didn't know why she hadn't been killed on contact. Her forward momentum was so rapid that she'd apparently still hit the windshield even with the airbag. I'd read several reports about people who were either too tall or too short for the bags to be effective. We later found out that Charlotte also wasn't wearing her seat belt so the airbag was less effective.

"Press," she said. Then she coughed up a bit of blood. "I knew you'd come." she looked next to me and then told the nurse. "Get that dried up bitch out of here, she's upsetting me."

The nurse got a funny look on her face and looked at Amanda. Amanda told Charlotte that she loved her, and just wanted to spend a few minutes with her. Charlotte stared coughing up more blood. "You're gonna get yours bitch, whether I make it out of here or not. Get out," she tried to yell, but it just came out no louder than a whisper. The nurse then asked Amanda to leave the room.

"Press, no matter how this turns out. No matter what I did, or couldn't do, always remember that I love you. Nothing will ever separate us for very long," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper and she squeezed my hand with more strength than I thought possible. Her eyes closed and she smiled. Her chest stopped rising and falling and the sound of the machine recording her heartbeat turned from a steady beeping sound to one long beep. I closed my eyes and squeezed her hand one last time. Tears trickled from my eyes, and I had trouble breathing. I guess despite what had happened, I still loved her.

Suddenly, her eyes popped back open and had that fiery intensity they'd always had. She looked directly at me and said, "Don't cry for me Press, I'll Be back, soon. I swear it." Then she just stared ahead and was still.

The nurse and I looked at each other strangely. "I've never seen anything like that," said the nurse.

Both the nurse and I were suddenly pushed out of the way by people running into the room. The doctor and Amanda came after them and pulled me away into a waiting room. "Preston, sign this, now," said Amanda.

"What?" I exclaimed. "Amanda, I can't do this right now. Good or bad, I loved Charlotte with all of my heart. Can't we just sit for a while? My wife just died. Give me a break."

"Press, do you love Annalise?" she asked.

"Yes I do," I said tiredly. "But it's not the same." All of a sudden the weight of the world was on me.

"As terrible as today is, we don't have to lose both of them," said Amanda. "Preston, sign the paper."

I signed the papers and went back to Anna's room. I guess I was in a mild form of shock because I really didn't understand what I was signing. When I got back to Anna's room she was gone. The nurse there couldn't tell me where. I didn't know where to go or what to do, so I reverted to habit. Believe it or not, I went to work. I was a couple of hours late but it didn't matter since I was the boss and part owner. I checked the floor, and spoke to most of the operators and programmers. After a few hours, I guess word had spread, and people started coming over to give me their condolences about Charlotte. That was when the damn burst and I started crying. I went to my office and closed the door, and just cried my eyes out. Myra came in and held me.

"Press, I hated that woman," she said. "But I know how much you loved her, so I'm sorry."

That seemed to be the majority opinion. Most of the people who came to offer their condolences, or comfort me said nearly the same things. They either didn't know Charlotte, or knew her and didn't like her, but they wanted me to know how sorry they were for my loss.

Just when I started another round of tears, my iPhone rang.

"Preston, where the hell, are you?" snapped Amanda. "Preston, do I hear machines in the background? Are you at the plant? God damn it, you're just like him. Preston you need to come back to the hospital. So jump into your noisy little orange car and get over here now."

I was sure that I'd have to do something to help with the arrangements for Charlotte. I felt awful for running out on Amanda like that. As badly as I felt about Charlotte, it had to be worse for her mother. Amanda had needed me, and I let her down."

I walked into the visitor's lounge, pulled out my phone, and called Amanda. "Where are you?" I asked.

"I'm in Anna's room," she replied. "Come on up."

When I got to the room I started apologizing as soon as I saw Amanda. "I'm so sorry, Amanda. I didn't mean to let you down, or to leave you to do everything. I just couldn't stop crying, and I guess I went to where I felt safe."

"You have nothing to be sorry for Press," she said. "Anna should be awake soon, and I wanted you to be here. I'm afraid that I'm the one who should be sorry, because I haven't been very supporting of your feelings either. I haven't taken any time out yet to cry for my daughter, but I suppose that will hit me at some point."

We were interrupted by Anna's doctor who came to give us a report on her condition.

"She's doing great. The surgery went so smoothly it was as if everything was designed to fit. How do they say it about computers? Plug and play. She should be able to go home in about four days barring complications, and except for the anti-rejection drugs, she should be ready for a normal life."

My head was spinning. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I looked at Amanda and she just nodded her head.

"Press, Anna is going to be fine. Her color is already much healthier and she hasn't even awakened yet. They did all of the testing and I was certain that since I was nearly a match for her that Charlotte would be too. But Charlotte was a nearly perfect match," said Amanda.

"I still don't understand," I said.

"Preston, Amanda needed a kidney. Charlotte died of a closed head injury. Her kidneys were fine. We transplanted one of Charlotte's healthy kidneys into Amanda. My daughter's death wasn't for nothing. Some good has come from all of this. We also donated the rest of her organs to others in need. That was why I had you sign those papers."

We went into Anna's room, and all of the machines monitoring her vitals were humming and beeping briskly. We sat down in the chairs near her bed, and spoke quietly about the arrangements we'd have to make for Charlotte. Amanda had checked Charlotte's email and accounts and had found out that Charlotte had been communicating, as we'd suspected with Ellington. She'd also had several very large cash expenditures over the last two days that we couldn't track and couldn't account for. But we'd deal with al of that later. As of that moment, Ellington had been neutralized. One of us would control Charlotte's stock so the company was secure. So despite the tragedy of Charlotte's death, things were looking up.

We both felt very sad about Charlotte's dying but it was also kind of a relief. It's the same feeling you get when you're boarding up your house before a hurricane. You know the storm is coming and you want to be prepared for it. You board up all of your windows and tighten up everything you can. You buy lots of water and survival necessities, and then the wind changes and there's no storm. That's the kind of relief we felt.

I felt Anna squeeze my hand and looked over at her as her eyes tried to open. First one eye and then the other slowly opened and she yawned and struggled to focus. Amanda got up and went out into the hall to get a nurse just in case.

Anna's eyes looked around the room and settled on me. She smiled a very big smile that just didn't seem right. Suddenly I was back on edge, but I didn't know why. Besides the overly big, overly bright smile, there was something wrong with her eyes. Her eyes were still brown, but the soft deep warm soulful brown, had very intense green flecks. How had I missed that? In all the time I'd spent looking into Anna's eyes how could I have missed those green flecks. I realized then that I hadn't, they hadn't been there before.

Then she spoke and I realized that I was in trouble. I had to be going crazy myself. This just couldn't be happening.

"Hi Press," she said. Anna had never called me Press. Not once. I missed the charming and very clipped, Press...Ton, the way she usually said it. The quality of her voice was so different, so much sharper and much less compassionate than Anna's voice had ever been. "I told you I'd be back," she said sitting up to look at me. "Did you miss me?"

To be concluded...