INTERTWINED PERFECTION {Currently Editing}

CHAPTER 52

It’s been three months since Ivan’s hospitalization and two since Rufi’s kidnap. Still the same old news.
Ivan seems to be getting worse with Rufi still in the den of her captors.

Everyone was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of the Nigerian police force.
They were all doing their background research without letting the other parties know. Since Rufi could be kidnapped within the hospital anything could happen.

Callie was doing her FBI thing and she sensed she was close to getting the perfect evidence.
Ana-Blaire who is the most affected by this bizarre occurrence sat by her father as she cried.

Someone was keen on destroying her family. As she looked at the man who had been there for her all her life tears flowed freely from her.

She remembered the first time she saw him, little as she had been it was clear to her the moment she opened that door that he had come to stay.
To complete their family.

She smiled as she remembered their first secret
She remembered the numerous surprise party she’d help him plan for her mother.

She remembered the nights she’d snuggle between them on the couch to watch movies.
The nights she’d run into their bed for warmth and comfort.

Their laughs.

Their fights

Their baseless argument

Their love

Their bond.

Her perfect family was about to be ripped apart. Her father’s health deteriorating. Her mother nowhere to be found.

She was alone at last. No amount of love from her aunts and uncles would compare to those of her parents.

No one deserved to have a perfect family like hers and then stand a chance to loose them.
Who even knows for sure her mother was still alive.

Her mother could be dead.

Her father could die

She could became and orphan.

All alone.

Her father started jerking again. It was a regular occurrence since her mother was kidnapped.

Papa please hang on

“Rufi!” he gasped

I have to do something. There has to be something I can do to save papa.

She couldn’t watch her father die.

The alarm went off. He had been returned to the ICU since his relapse.
Doctors and nurses came rushing in as a strange sound came from the heart monitor.
Ana-Blaire had watched enough soap to know the meaning of the sound.
Her father is dying.

One doctor yelled for a defibrillator, the other yelled for the oxygen bag.
Callie and Maria shoved the nurses who tried to stop them out of their ways.

Ana-Blaire covered her mouth to smother her wails as she watched her father struggled with death.
The doctors set to work.
Ana-Blaire watched placing and lifting of the bar on her papa’s chest with agony.
It wasn’t making any difference. She knew there was a limit. A maximum amount of trial after, they would give up.

At the third lift the machines “pim-pim-pim” filled the room.
He survived.

Her aunts let her go and she ran to her father.
“Papa” she cried in relief “you did it”

Doctor Jane whom Ana-Blaire just recognized as the one who held the defibrillator was also crying. Everyone was crying.

Tears of relief.

Tears of joy.

Ivan survived.

* ***********************************
“Ivan!" she snapped our of her sleep, something was wrong with Ivan and she could feel it.
Her pulse was racing at an alarming rate, she felt chocked. She tried to calm herself but it was futile.

Then suddenly if left.

Coolness hit her.

Calmness.

“What the heck!”

Since when did she have hot flushes? Phew!
Being a captive can cause so many things.

The now familiar sound of the security being disengaged told her she had company.

“Over there” Diana told someone.

She wasn’t alone?

In Rufi’s two month of being here Diana had been her only visitor.
Now what?

The sound of two pairs of heels told her the visitor was a female.

“And how is the numb skull?
Teresa?
The English woman stood in front of her looking flawlessly beautiful yet dangerously deadly.

“Hope you’re enjoying” her phone rang “your stay here”

She moved away from Rufi signaling to Diana to keep her quiet.

“Hello” she went pale “what!"

Rufi sat up. Ivan?

“Is he ok? Oh my son”

She had felt Ivan. That feeling that woke her was not hot flush.
The calm that followed death? Or relieve?

“I’ll be right there” she ended the call.

“Ivan had a heart attack” she told Diana before leaving.

What does that mean?

"Did he survive?"

"The fact that you’re still breathing means Ivan is still alive. If he had died Teresa would have killed you."

“If anything happens to him you’re dead” Diana announced to Rufi

She looked sadly at the food Diana opened for her.

Her husband just survived something deadly and here she sat with food from the same person who got her husband into the current state he is.

* *************************************
Callie ended the call to her mother smiling triumphantly.
If she’s lucky the location she just tracked would be-or lead her to Rufi's location.

Did Teresa really think Callie would call her to say Ivan survived an attack?
“You fell to you death mother”

She wrote down the location, and then placed her call.
“Sharon, its set”

“We’ll arrived in three days”

“Alright thanks, I know this cost you a lot”

“Anything for you dear”

“I appreciate”

“Bye, love”

Sharon is the mother Callie never had in Teresa. She met her on her tour to the US when she was sixteen, Sharon had been thirty-one then.

Callie smile knowing this whole issue would be resolved in a matter of days, her smile disappeared the moment she saw Ana-Blaire isolated and crying.

“Ana-Blaire” she crotched before her.

“My papa is going to die isn’t he?"

“No, he won’t”

“Why are you so positive, I know he stands a greater chance of dying than living? Mama used to be his strength now she’s gone."

Callie did not want to disclose thing to anyone much less a little girl. Anyone could access information from her.
“Your mama is alive and because of that your papa survived this morning, OK Cherie?”

Ana-Blaire hoped so.