Chapter 2 - The Departure
By four in the afternoon, the private room was filled with the crisp, efficient sounds of medical personnel who did not ask questions because they were being paid three thousand dollars an hour not to ask them.
Two flight paramedics from the Swiss-registered Medevac team—dressed in dark navy flight suits with red Swiss crosses stitched onto their shoulders—were methodically securing Lucia’s monitors to a specialized carbon-fiber transport litter.
The floor nurse, Evelyn, stood near the door, holding a clipboard with the transfer forms already countersigned by the hospital’s chief medical officer. Ara’s money had moved with the speed of an incoming tide; Presbyterian’s administrative board had not even blinked when the wired funds cleared within twenty minutes.
“Your leg is stabilized, Miss Sinclair,” the lead flight paramedic, a quiet man named Thomas, said in a thick Swiss-German accent. “We will administer a light sedative for the ride to Teterboro. Once we are at cruising altitude, you can sleep all the way to Geneva.”
“No sedative,” Lucia said, her voice clear. “I want to be awake.”
Thomas looked at her, saw the immovable granite behind her pale gray eyes, and nodded once. “As you wish.”
Evelyn walked over, carrying a small, clear ziplock evidence bag. Inside it was Lucia’s purse, her passport, her driver’s license, and the small black velvet box that held her wedding ring. Evelyn had retrieved it from the stainless steel basin after surgery and boxed it herself.
“You left this behind,” Evelyn said quietly, offering the bag. “Aren't you going to put it on? It’s... quite an item.”
Lucia didn't look at the ring. She looked at Evelyn’s tired, kind face. “Keep the box in the bag, please. I don't want to touch it.”
Before Evelyn could zip the bag, the heavy wooden door to the VIP suite swung open without a knock.
Arthur Vance, Caleb’s personal executive assistant, stepped into the room. He was forty years old, perpetually impeccably groomed in charcoal bespoke three-piece suits, his leather briefcase held like a shield against his thigh. He was a man who handled Caleb’s private affairs, Caleb’s NDA payouts, Caleb’s mistress rumors, and Caleb’s real estate acquisitions with the same bloodless efficiency.
Arthur stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes took in the two flight paramedics, the specialized transport litter, the IV bags marked with Swiss labels, and Lucia, dressed in dark cashmere lounge pants and a loose wool sweater that had been brought from her private locker, her face pale, her gaze pinned directly on him.
“Mrs. Blackwood?” Arthur said, his rehearsed composure cracking for a fraction of a second. “What... what is this? What is happening here?”
Lucia looked at him from the bed. “Call me Miss Sinclair, Arthur. We’ve known each other three years; you should know my name.”
Arthur swallowed, stepping further into the room, his eyes darting to the medical team. “Mr. Blackwood asked me to come up and check on you. He’s... he’s still tied up with Miss Reed’s doctors down in the neuro-trauma suite. There were complications with her thoracic scans—nothing fatal, but she became hysterical, and Mr. Blackwood needed to stay and calm her down. He asked me to bring you these.”
Arthur reached into his coat pocket and withdrew an envelope bearing the crest of the Harvard Club.
“He also sent these from the corner florist,” Arthur added, gesturing vaguely toward a junior assistant who was lingering in the hallway with an enormous, vulgar arrangement of white calla lilies.
Lucia didn't look at the flowers. “Take the flowers to Miss Reed. I’m sure her room has plenty of space beside the window.”
Arthur’s face stiffened. “Lucia—Mrs. Blackwood—Caleb is deeply concerned about you. He was planning to come up the moment Miss Reed’s brother arrived from Boston. He specifically instructed me to make sure you had everything you needed for your recovery here. We’ve already booked the suite for two weeks.”
“I don't need two weeks,” Lucia said.
She reached out her right hand, took the clear bag from Evelyn, unzipped it, and pulled out the small black velvet box.
She didn't open it. She simply held it out toward Arthur.
Arthur stared at the small box as if it were an unexploded grenade. He didn't raise his hand.
“Perhaps you should speak with Caleb first,” Arthur said, his voice dropping into a desperate, hushed tone. “You know how this looks. The press is already downstairs. If someone sees a private transport litter leaving through the service bay, if the *Post* gets hold of this—”
“Take it, Arthur,” Lucia said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it had the weight of an iron vault door swinging shut. “I have spent three years speaking to Caleb. I spoke to him when I waited for him at the gallery openings he skipped. I spoke to him when he forgot our dinners. I spoke to him across the corridor yesterday while I was bleeding into my lungs and he was holding Khloe’s hand.”
“He was in shock, Lucia,” Arthur argued, his voice pleading now. “He was trying to manage an impossible situation—”
“He managed it,” she said. “He chose. And now I am choosing.”
She dropped the velvet box. It hit Arthur’s polished Italian leather shoe with a soft thud and rolled onto the carpet.
Arthur looked down at it, his face losing all its color. He slowly bent down, picked up the box, and slipped it into his breast pocket. His hands were shaking.
“Where are you going?” he asked, looking up.
“To a place where my existence isn't measured by how quietly I can disappear,” she said. “Thomas, we can move now.”
The two paramedics stepped forward. With practiced, seamless teamwork, they transferred Lucia onto the transport litter, strapped the secure belts across her chest and hips, and raised the side rails.
Arthur stood frozen by the doorway as the litter was wheeled past him. “Lucia, wait. If you leave like this, Victoria will... the family will consider this an act of open defiance. Caleb won’t forgive this kind of public embarrassment.”
Lucia looked at Arthur as the litter entered the hallway. A faint, razor-thin smile touched the edge of her bruised lips.
“Arthur,” she said softly. “You still think I care what Caleb Blackwood forgives.”
The hallway was quiet, the carpet muffling the rubber wheels of the litter. They moved toward the service elevators at the end of the corridor, past the private luxury suites reserved for donors and board members.
As they passed Suite 312, the door was half-open.
Lucia didn't mean to look, but the angle of the corridor forced her eyes toward the interior.
The room was bathed in the warm, amber glow of an expensive floor lamp that someone had brought in to replace the harsh hospital lighting. Khloe was propped up on a mountain of goose-down pillows, wearing a pale lavender silk bed jacket. Her face was clean, her hair brushed and falling over her shoulders in soft, artful waves.
Caleb was sitting on the edge of her mattress.
He was still in his rumpled dress shirt from yesterday, his tie undone, his dark hair falling across his forehead. He was holding a small porcelain cup, blowing softly on the surface of the tea before holding it to Khloe’s lips.
“Just a little more,” Caleb was saying. His voice drifted through the door, gentle, intimate, filled with the infinite patience he had never once offered Lucia. “You need your strength, Khlo. The doctor said the headache will pass by evening.”
Khloe took a sip, then lowered her head against his shoulder. “Maybe you should check on Lucia,” she murmured, her voice sounding small, fragile, perfectly calculated. “Arthur said she was taken to surgery alone. Caleb... what if she hates me?”
Caleb reached up, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from Khloe’s forehead.
“She will be fine,” Caleb replied, his tone so certain, so utterly unconcerned that it made the skin on Lucia’s neck prickle. “Lucia is resilient. She doesn't break. You are what matters right now.”
The elevator doors at the end of the hall chimed.
Lucia closed her eyes.
She didn't look back. She didn't allow her breath to hitch. She let the heavy metal doors slide shut between them, severing the sight, the sound, and the memory of the man she had loved for a thousand useless days.
Down in the basement loading dock, an unmarked Mercedes ambulance was waiting. The transfer was rapid, professional, and shielded from the cameras of the two paparazzi lingering near the public driveway.
Within twenty minutes, the ambulance was on the highway, cutting through the autumn drizzle toward Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
Lucia lay on the litter, watching the streetlamps of the Meadowlands blur past the tinted rear window.
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
A text message appeared on the screen:
**Caleb:** *Arthur told me you were awake. Stop being dramatic with the hospital staff. Khloe feels responsible for everything, and your coldness is making her recovery ten times worse. As soon as I finish speaking with her neurologist, I’ll come down to your room. We need to go over the press release Victoria sent you. Be ready.*
Lucia read the message once.
She didn't reply.
She didn't forward it to her lawyer.
She simply tapped Caleb’s name at the top of the screen, selected *Settings*, scrolled to the bottom of the contact card, and pressed:
*Block this Contact.*
Then she pressed *Delete Contact*.
A second later, she did the same to Victoria Blackwood.
And Khloe Reed.
She handed the phone to Thomas, who was monitoring her saline drip.
“Could you remove the SIM card and break it?” Lucia asked, her voice even.
Thomas raised an eyebrow, looked at her face, and saw the utter absence of hesitation. He took the phone, used a small medical pin from his kit to pop the tray, snapped the gold-plated chip in two between his thick fingers, and handed the empty shell back to her.
“The plane is on the tarmac, Miss Sinclair,” Thomas said. “We will be airborne in twelve minutes.”
“Thank you,” Lucia said.
May you like
She leaned her head back against the gel pillow as the ambulance turned into the private airfield, leaving the lights of New York behind her like a skin she had already shed.
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