Rebecca Hillary . net

Making sure hat their clothes were straight was a pointless exercise, especially as everyone knew what they had been up to. Instead they chose just to make sure that they were actually wearing all of their clothes. They stepped back into the room to find Damon and Devon gone and Miro lying asleep, ashen-faced on Donna’s bed.
Abby brushed a hair back from her face, made a mental note to get a haircut, and sat down on the floor by the bed. Miro groaned in his sleep, but didn’t even flinch when Abby out a hand to his forehead. She wrapped her fingers round his hand, and it just hung there, lifeless and cold.
“How long as he been like this?” Dan asked, trying to break the somber atmosphere but failing dismally.
“Since just after the two of you left.” Donna sobbed. “I hope the two of you were having fun while I was in here scared and alone.”
“Yes we were, as it happens. I’ve just had the best sex of my life, and I wouldn’t say no to doing it again.” Abby retorted. She stood up and placed herself in front of Dan, who hissed “Abby, what are you doing?” but Abby wouldn’t answer. “Don’t even dare to try and tell me that this is my fault, Donna, don’t you dare!”
“Well I notice that you don’t seem too cut up about it. Surely you should be feeling a little bit more morose right now than you seem to be.”
“How can you possibly know what I’m feeling? I know Miro is a fighter, and he won’t let this get him overpowered. Now if you don’t mind, I think you should stop yelling.”
“You are unbelievable, you know that?” Donna shrieked. “I don’t suppose you happen to have told lover boy here about you and Miro, huh?”
“What the hell are you waffling on about?”
“You. And. Miro.” Donna spluttered. “I don’t suppose I have to spell it out for you, Mr. Levine? They spend almost all of their time together, they far too close. It’s pretty obvious to me what’s going between them, and you shouldn’t have to be taken for a ride like this.”
“Donna, you have absolutely no, idea what you are talking about.” Abby turned to Dan. “Do you trust me?”
“Always. If you say that you haven’t done anything then I believe you.”
“Oh, please.” Donna scoffed. “Spare me the soppy sideshow.”
“Donna, it would be against human nature and the Holy Bible for me to do anything like that with Miro.”
“Oh yeah? And why would that be then?”
“Because he’s my brother!” Abby yelled. She composed herself, and sat a very shocked Donna down on the sofa. “Look, I know there’s a lot I haven’t told you recently, like about me and Dan, and now this, but you have to realize that it was for the best. Secrets have to be kept in order to protect our interests, and I felt my interests were in need of protection.”
“You knew?” Donna asked Dan.
“First I’m hearing about it.”
“Look, I’m sorry, both of you, but he made me promise not to tell anyone.” Abby looked into her lover’s eyes. “Dan, you must be able to appreciate that. He’s not the only one who has asked me to lie to my friends.”
“I never asked you to lie.”
“Maybe so, but you did ask me not to tell them the truth, which rather amounts to the same thing.” Abby indicated. “And Donna, you’ve asked me to keep your fair share of secrets, so you can’t complain either.”
Donna murmured something, which sounded very much like “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Now what matters at this second is what we do about Miro.” She looked down at her brother’s frail and ghostly form. “I lost him once, and I’m buggered if I’m going to lose him again.”
Donna stood up and gave Abby a consolatory hug. “You could have told me, you know. I would have been discrete.”
“I know, honey, but he asked me not to, so I had to respect that, and honor his wishes. Forgive me?”
“Of course.” Dana said, wiping her eyes and giving a friendly smile. “Anyway, you came back and I just snapped at you. You never even got a chance to ask where everybody is, did you?”
“That is a good point!” Abby laughed. “Would you care to tell us?”
“Yeah, as soon as Miro collapsed, Mr. Hartley went down to the medical wing to find Bailey, and Devon went up to see Pascal. You know I really think that there’s something going on between those two. You know that’s where he was all morning, don’t you?”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No, not really. I have other things to worry about. Like Miro’s baby, for example.”
Abby stared at Dar, Dan stared back, and then they both looked quizzically at Donna. Abby spoke. “I’m going to be an aunty?”
“Yes.” Donna gulped. “That’s why I need to know that he’s going to be ok. I couldn’t bear to lose him. I mean, he’s an idiot and likes to muck about, but he’s really sweet, and he’s looking forward to being a dad. I can’t imagine this baby being born without him around.”
The three of them stayed as they were, not speaking, not moving, watching the seconds tick by on the ‘Hello Kitty’ wall clock.
“So how does it work then?” Dan ventured. “You being Miro’s sister I mean. You have completely different names, so where does the family thing come in to it?”
“I was adopted when I was six.” Abby explained. “I’d been sick, and my parents couldn’t afford to pay my medical bills. A British family agreed to adopt me, and I became Abigail Horton.”
“So what’s your real name then?”
“Sabina Resnik.” Abby said, not really thinking too much, focusing all her energy on her brother. “After I got well again, I could hardly remember anything from my old life. The one thing that was always in my mind though was my childhood playmate. An older boy, he looked nothing like me, I was sure, but I remembered him all the same. As I got older the memories started to fade, but I could always see his face. By the time I was eighteen, I had given up the hope of ever finding him, and I came out here when Amanda Donavan offered me a job. I was happily going about my business, getting promoted quicker than I thought possible, and then there he was, just smiling at me in the corridor one day, and I knew instantly that he was the boy I’d dreamed about for so long. I didn’t know who he was though, and it irritated me that I couldn’t work out why I knew him. It was then that he explained everything, and told me that he’s my brother.”
“So you don’t know your real parents?” Dan asked. “I remember Miro mentioning once that his parents had been killed in a car crash. That must have been pretty hard for you to take.”
“It was for a while. He didn’t tell me until just over six months ago. I have to be honest, when I came to stay with you that night in Leeds it was only because I needed somebody to talk to, and I was feeling sorry for myself.”
Donna and Abby looked at each other and said grinningly in unison “Just like Chandler and Monica.”
Dan was faintly amused by this. He’d watched a few episodes of Friends, but it still failed to register in his mind why women, especially the younger ones, always seemed to find it pertinent to ally storylines from American situation comedies with what was happening in real life. It had creased him up though when he had first hired Miro as bartender and asked him to make a G and T. Miro had looked at him blankly, and then said, in a perfect impersonation of Moe from The Simpsons, “Gin and Tonic? Do they mix?” Dan knew then that he and Miro would get on well. With something as influential as The Simpsons in common they could never be enemies, and had often shot random quotes back and forth as they passed each other in corridors.
Without warning the door opened and Damon walked back in, closely followed by Bailey. Pascal was following sheepishly behind them, and he inclined his head in greeting before evidently finding something extremely interesting about his toecaps.
“I was right, Donna.” Bailey grinned. “Pascal just has malaria. Unless there are any rogue mosquitoes in the hotel, which I highly doubt, there is nothing to worry about for you two.” She turned searchingly and looked at Abby. “I’ll need to speak to you privately in a moment. As for this handsome young man,” she gestured towards Miro, “is any one of you aware that he practices self-harm?”
Everyone in the room looked around at each other. Then every eye turned to Donna. She shook her head. “I see cuts on his arms quite a bit, but he says it’s just because he’s clumsy and keeps dropping glasses after his shift.”
Dan confirmed her version of events. “Yes, there are about five times in the last month or so that he has been to me to tell me about breakages. Everything is always accounted for, so I never really thought much about it.”
“He came to me twice last week for the same reason.” Abby agreed.
“Well, Doctor Blake managed to get hold of Miro’s medical records, and found out that he spend two weeks under observation in a secure psychiatric facility shortly after his parents died. The theory is that he couldn’t cope with having to say goodbye to his younger sister when she was adopted ad then losing his parents just two months later.”
Abby felt tears coursing, unbidden, down her cheeks. Miro had never told her. All this time she thought that he had been able to play with their father and be comforted by their mother, but as it turned out he had never had much more time with them than she had.
“Anyway,” Bailey continued, “due to the fact that he’s still self-harming, it seems that he has toxic shock syndrome from when I took his blood. We’re going to have to get him down to the medical wing straight away and get him on an IV. Doctor Blake is getting the place set up, we just have to get him down there. Deandre and Damon will have to carry him down on the stretcher, and the rest of you can wait here.”
Abby looked at Dan, and Donna looked at Abby. Dan looked at Bailey. “You can’t make the girls stay here. They have a right to be with him.”
“May I ask why? There’s really no room down in the bay for
everybody.”
“Look, Abby is his sister and Donna is carrying his baby, so you may say there is no room, but this is my hotel and I’ll tear down a wall to make room if I have to, so let them go.”
Bailey hated being shown up by her uncle, and it was with a great deal of reluctance that she agreed to let them go. “You have to go down in the elevator with me though.” She added. Despite him having overruled her, Bailey had to admit that she was rather looking forward to seeing him try to tear a wall down. “Pascal, you go back to your room and rest. You can come down and visit Miro shortly if you like, but only once there’s space down there.”
Bailey, Abby and Donna waited until the men had left the room and then proceeded down the corridor to the lift. The gold doors made a light ‘hiss-chunk’ sound as they closed and Bailey turned to Abby.
“I know about you and my uncle, and I want to warn you about him.”
Abby wasn’t surprised. When a young woman starts dating an older man there’s always somebody who takes it upon his or herself to ‘warn’ the girl about him. She was slightly shocked that it was somebody no older than herself, but she had been braced for this conversation for ages.
“I don’t suppose he’s told you about his other sev…”
“His other seven children? Yes, he told me about them, and told me their names, and I’ve seen photographs of them all. He’s not the complete prick that you seem to think he is, you know.”
Bailey frowned. This girl was good. She’d have to break sooner or later, but she was a tough cookie, and Bailey was determined to make her crumble. “We’ll come back to that in a moment. Did you know that you’re carrying his child?” She watched for the flicker of shock behind Abby’s eyes but there was nothing there.
“Yes, I do know that.” Abby announced so confidently that Donna gasped. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? To tell me that he’s a player and that I’m pregnant?”
This was infuriating. Why wasn’t she budging even an inch on this? “What if I were to tell you that he doesn’t have seven children, and that baby you’re carrying will be the ninth?”
“Would that be something you’d be likely to tell me?”
“If it’ll make you listen to me, then it would be, yes.”
“Ok, I’m listening.”
“I’m his daughter, not his niece.”
“And that would mean that he got your mum pregnant when he was how old?”
“Fifteen. Or there about, anyway. I was born early so we can’t be sure exactly how old he was, but fifteen would be about right, maybe fourteen. My mum was sixteen, and she hadn’t planned on having a baby. He never helped her, not even once, and you should know what he’s like, so that you can judge if you want to keep that baby or not.”
“Of course I want to keep this baby. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Did you even listen to a word I just said?”
“Yes, I did.” Abby said with an air of distinction. “I heard you say that your mother ended up pregnant with you after having sex with an underage boy.” Bailey’s face was blank. “Did you ever stop to think about that?”
“I…”
“How many other of Dan’s girlfriends have you gone and told this story to?” Bailey said nothing. “You told them all, didn’t you? Every one of those children’s mothers has heard your sob story, and always when it was too late. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“They had a right to know what he did to my mother.”
“You told them all about how he left your mother with you, and they all got stuck with his kids after they chucked him. But your plan didn’t quite work, because he still sees those children, and I’m not stupid enough to fall for your trick.”
“It’s not a trick.”
“In your little chats with Dan on the way out here, did he happen to mention that I studied law as a hobby when I was in school? Never mind if he did or not, because it makes no odds. He knows I did, and I know I did, so that’s by the by. See the thing is that if he was fourteen or fifteen, and your mother was sixteen, then that means that she was over the age of consent, but he wasn’t.”
Donna grinned. She loved it when Abby got into this mode, because she could blind people with any facts she wanted, and although she liked Bailey, Abby was clearly in the right here.
“Do you know what that means?” Abby raised an eyebrow expectantly. “No answer? Well, I’ll tell you. It means that she had committed statutory rape. Even though he consented, in the eyes of the law he was to young to make the decision himself. She was in the wrong. That’s why she never got anything from him. She knew that to go through the proper channels to get child support payments would mean admitting what she did. Chances are that he doesn’t even know that your mother was ever pregnant. In fact I think she probably dumped him when she found out she was pregnant.”
Bailey was dumbstruck. She had planned on breaking this girl down like a toy, but she had had no chance from the start; Abby seemed to be one step ahead at every turn. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t even bothered now.
“So what are you going to do now, Bailey?” Abby asked. “Are you going to go home with your tail between your legs, are you going to tell him what you told me, or are you just going to admit that you made the mother, father and dog walker’s second cousin of all monstrous cock-ups?”
Bailey’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.
“I’m going to assume that you were trying to say ‘the last one’, am I right?”
Bailey’s eyes were like fire, but she nodded her assent.
“Do you want me to tell him about you being his daughter?”
She shook her head.
“I thought not.” Abby said, satisfied with the outcome as the lift doors opened. “So that’s it, no more trying to split me and Dan up, ok?” Bailey nodded. “Because I’m sure we can be good friends if you stop trying to ruin my life.
As Bailey led the way to the medical wing, Donna held Abby back so they could talk quietly without Bailey hearing them.
“How long have you known that you’re pregnant?”
“Since after Dan and I made love earlier. He rather idiotically chose not to use any protection, and my pill ran out last week. I figured I’d check what the state of play was. I kind of half expected that I was, but I decided that if I was already pregnant then it wouldn’t matter, but if I wasn’t then I could come down to the med wing and get the morning after pill.”
“You really are always one step ahead of the game, aren’t you? How did Dan take the news?”
“I haven’t told him. She’s going to have to do it, because she has to make a full report to him and Doctor Blake.” Abby said, a self-satisfied smirk crossing her face.
“You have a plan, don’t you?”
“Always, my dear, always.”