Princess & the Player

thirty-seven: darkness falls

Maggie's POV:

We arrived at the hospital at almost the exact same time as Nana Scott. Laurie jumped at me in the parking lot. At 50 pounds and 4 feet tall, she was WAY over my limit . Marco quickly moved in and picked her up. Scottie ran out and called to Nana Scott and we all scampered after.

It was bad. 

We could hear Britty and Jacob being worked on. They were calling for medical things and shouting numbers and calling for rooms and specialists. The EMTs were rolled the gurneys back past us. They were covered in blood.

Nana Scott started wailing loudly, "Jacob!! My baby!! Let me see my baby!"

I felt like I was standing in an alternate reality.

Two police officers spotted us and jogged over. They asked questions but I couldn't understand. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the sensation of being under water. Then I felt Marco's hand in mine. 

I caught my breath. "Grandma? Is there somewhere you can take Laurie?"

"I think we know the way to the cafeteria by now," Mary agreed, holding out her hand to my sister. 

Scottie had his arms around Nana Scott, "It's OK, Nana. They're doing the best that they can. This is a Level 1 Trauma Center - they have everything they need here to help Dad."

Nana turned in his arms and hissed at one of the police officers, "You catch that bitch! Do you hear me? YOU GET HER!"

Another police officer jogged in through the automatic doors and spotted us immediately. 

"Maggie Scott?"

"Helgen," Marco and I corrected him at the same time.

"You're Eileen Scott's daughter?"

"Yes."

"Have you been made aware..."

"JACOB!!!!" Nana Scott jumped forward. They were wheeling Jacob down a hallway.

"They are taking him to a surgical unit, Nana. It's all right," Scott explained.

"Miss? Maggie? Do you have any idea where your mother would be headed?"

"No," I shook my head. "Wait. Maybe." I had an idea.

"Maggie?"

"Jeb. He might know."

"He's on the run with no phone..."

"Jeb's run away from camp?" Scottie was surprised.

I pulled out my phone and logged out of my gmail account. Then I logged back in with Jeb's account. Wrong password. 

Shit, he changed it.  

I looked up, "Jeb uses Ariana Grande songs for passwords plus his birthday."

"What was the last one?" Marco asked.

"IntoYou320"

"Does he go in order?"

"No. Just his current earworm. Or if he likes a video."

"Try Side to Side?" Scottie suggested.

"This is ridiculous! Acting all sweet when you're just a demon inside!" Nana Scott growled. Her face was red as she took a step in my direction. "YOU did this! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!"

"NANA!" Scottie pulled her back. 

"She doesn't belong here!! Arrest her! Take her away!"

"Nana! You're saying nonsense, now. We have to help the police catch Eileen, remember? It's Eileen that did this!"

Marco turned me away from Nana Scott. "What about Let Me Love You?Break Free? What about Problem? That's getting some replay lately."

I remembered what I was trying to do and looked back down at my phone. I typed Problem320. It worked! Taking a deep breath, I started spinning through Jeb's account. 

"You think your mom would email Jeb her location? That seems a bit...roundabout... considering the situation. No guarantee Jeb would even see it."

"Mom is old school. She doesn't do whatsapp or Kik or SnapChat or anything. She emails or instant messages with Jeb through Gmail. I know Jeb's not supposed to have a phone at camp but he never leaves his iPod Touch. I bet he has it and I bet he's been checking it all the time."

"But he wouldn't want contact with Eileen, right? Not after what she did," Marco shook his head.

"Is there anything your mom could do to make you stop loving her, Marco? Jeb may already look like a teenager to everyone but he's just a kid, OK? And if Mom reached out to him, yeah, I think he'd go."

"And you're OK with that?"

"Why would I not be?" I turned to Marco. 

"She tried to kill you," Scottie groaned.

"And good riddance if she had!" Nana Scott growled.

Scottie patted her back, "Nana, you don't mean these things..."

She shoved him away and began pacing. 

I pushed away the sense of being wronged. Of having been misunderstood and accused. Just because I defended my mother and took care of her didn't mean I condoned her behavior. Was is SO HARD to understand that this was the only mom we had? She could be mean and she had a temper but she was Mom. This had been the reason I'd gone insane when Jeb had been taken into foster care. Family is family. 

"Maggie...I just want you safe. All of you." Marco looked over my shoulder at the screen.

I went through the emails that were grayed out as having been read. There were tons of recent spam-looking emails and I clicked each one just to make sure it wasn't mom with a new email address. Checking the instant messages from my phone was harder because it didn't load the history. This was just a different account I was accessing. I tapped my screen, thinking. What I needed was a laptop - that would show me all of Jeb's history on a single screen including maybe what he'd deleted. 

"Miss?" The police officer got my attention. "You think your mother may be meeting your brother?"

"He knows the address of the new apartment," Marco explained. "So if she's really looking for Nana Scott and Maggie - Jeb would be helpful."

"I don't buy this." Scottie argued. "Whatever you think about the love of a mother, Jeb isn't that gullible. Plus Eileen is drunk so she can't exactly be diabolical." 

Marco and I both turned to Scottie in disbelief. 

"If you could give me that address, we can have someone standing by there," the officer held out a pad of paper and a pen.

"Oh, of course. Uh..." I wrote out the address for them.

A nurse came out with a very serious expression. I could see Scottie and Nana Scott bracing themselves. "Mr. Scott has internal bleeding. They are working on it now. Then they will address his other injuries - there are multiple broken bones."

Scottie looked thoughtful. "Blunt aortic disruption?"

The nurse nodded. "We don't know the extent, yet. Someone will be out to tell you more when they have an update."

"YOU SAID HE WOULD BE STABLE!" Nana exploded at Scottie, slapping his arms. 

The officer jumped in and restrained her. 

"What about Britty?" I asked the nurse as she turned to leave.

"The family has asked that we not reveal her status to anyone." 

There was a sudden outbreak of fresh wailing as a middle aged woman sunk to the floor in front of another nurse. A man was trying to console her. My chest felt squishy because I thought I recognized them from the TV appeal. It wasn't good news for Britty. 

What if Mom killed someone?

My phone chirped in my hand. 

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Cliffhanger! OMG! -bella