Just An Ordinary Girl ~A Johnny Depp Story~

Babies And Brawls

"So...Alice's pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Alice...is pregnant?"
"Yes."
"As in...having-a-baby pregnant? Alice?!" Orlando repeated, in the same high-pitched tone of shock, his brown eyes huge and wide in his pale face.
"Yes, Orlando, what other kind of pregnant is there?!" Keira snapped, her slender fingers gripping my hand tightly as I moaned in pain, resting my head against the plush leather seat of Johnny's abandoned sports car.
"Breathe," She murmured softly to me, her voice calm as I groaned in agony, though her hand was squeezing mine more tightly than ever.
"I'm sorry, I just...I don't...understand? How? When?!" Orlando stammered, as he frowned at the road, swerving expertly between other cars as we raced towards Ed's clinic.
"How? Well, let's see...when a man and a woman love each other very much, they have a very special cuddle..." I managed to grin teasingly, as I breathed deeply, and Orlando and Keira too cracked a grin, despite my predicament.
Though I was mocking Orlando, I was actually extremely grateful to him. After I had instructed him to pick up Johnny's car from my garage at the drop of a hat, pick up Keira and then finally collect me from the café to drive me to the doctor's, he had come running without even asking a single question or beginning to object, probably detecting the note of desperate urgency in my voice. But now it seemed that, after I had finally admitted that I was, quite literally, about to have a baby, all of his questions had been blurted out in one go. All of them, apart from the one which I was dreading.
"Forget when, and how! Who's is it?" Keira demanded, asking the very question as though she had read my mind.
I glanced up at Orlando, and I saw his eyes meet mine for a split second, before he turned his eyes back to the road, looking thoughtful. He, unlike Keira, had known about Johnny and me, and now his brain was ticking away, thinking over things...and wondering if it could indeed be possible. Neither of them had seen Johnny in months after all, since he had jetted off to L.A. with Vanessa without a second glance. In fact, only I had seen him, and that had been for less than half an hour, until he had pulled another vanishing act.
I bit my lip, unsure how to answer, but thankfully I was cut off by Keira's shriek of "Orlando!" as he almost smashed into the car beside us in his distraction.
"Oh, son off," Orlando snapped irritably through the car window as the driver beeped his horn several times in fury, as Orlando pulled across him to pull into the driveway of Ed's clinic. Thankfully, Keira's question was forgotten.
When we had at last stopped, she and Orlando promptly stepped out of the car, each taking one of my arms as I feebly moaned, "Ow, ow, ow!", and the three of us burst through the entrance doors of the clinic, ignoring the open-mouthed elderly men and women who gaped at us in utter surprise from the waiting room, all of them pointing and muttering between themselves. Reaching the reception desk, I slumped on it in pain, gasping and out of breath as Orlando and Keira shouted for Ed, who appeared from his office, looking extremely startled and disheveled. He blinked with wide eyes at me, before snapping into doctor-mode as he hurried towards me. Unfortunately, doctor-mode seemed to fade as quickly as it had come when he spotted who I was with.
"Orlando! Hi," Ed smiled softly, his eyes skipping over Keira and I, drawn automatically to our handsome friend, much to his bemusement.
"Uh, can this wait? I'm kind of having a baby here!" I hissed through clenched teeth, almost doubled-up in pain. Ed blushed tomato-red, turning his eyes back to me. I saw him quickly glance to the empty space beside me and my two friends, his expression falling somewhat.
"No Johnny yet?" He whispered in my ear as he led the three of us down to a private room at the end of the corridor, the elderly patients in the waiting room still staring after us and speaking in hushed tones about 'kids these days' and the like. I gave a tiny twitch to gesture that the answer was no, distinctly aware that Orlando was watching me out of the corner of his eye.
We all stepped inside the room, and I felt another jolt of pain, a different kind to the stabbing pains in my stomach as, upon looking around, I registered this was the room in which Johnny had resided in after his accident. This pain was more of a terrible aching in my heart, and pang of utter sadness, as I averted my eyes to the floor. There would be no opportunity to mention this to Ed though, who seemed somewhat oblivious of the situation; Orlando was still watching me insistently with his piercing gaze.
Ed looked down at me as I settled onto the bed, still gasping for breath.
"You've still got a while yet. Your baby is coming almost a week early, after all. I'll take you to the delivery room in the next hour...for now, you'll probably be wanting time alone with your friends," Ed smiled quietly, backing out of the room politely, but as he reached the door, I found myself exclaiming, "Wait, Ed!"
"Yes?" He asked curiously, turning back towards me, the door half-open.
"You're a true friend, too," I smiled, and any other time I would have blushed at my cliché words, and expected a cuttingly sarcastic retort and laughter from Ed himself, but somehow at this moment, the two of us simply beamed at each other as Orlando and Keira looked on, holding each others gaze for a few moments before Ed cleared his throat and excused himself, the door gently closing behind him.
There was a comfortable silence in the room, as Orlando stared peacefully out of the window, and Keira perched on the end of my bed, fiddling with the sheets with her long fingers. All good things come to an end however, and Keira eventually broke the silence.
"Alice...I understand that possibly you don't want to talk about it," Keira began, and I winced, knowing she was about to question who exactly the father of my unborn child was once again.
However, I was taken aback as she asked instead, "...Why aren't you and Johnny best friends anymore?"
I hesitated in my surprise, unsure how to respond. It had been the first time anyone had ever questioned the fact that Johnny was absent in my life, said the words out loud, so blatantly yet so innocently. Keira continued however, without waiting for my response.
"It's just...the two of you used to be inseparable, especially on the set of Pirates, and after the Oscars! You were all Johnny ever spoke about, Alice this, and Alice that...there was even a point when I thought he might have...well, a little crush on you!" Keira smiled, and I saw Orlando wince by the window at Keira's sheer obliviousness, his shoulders raised in tension. I still said nothing, uncertain how to answer her all too complicated question. This seemed to suffice however; by this time, Keira was almost talking to herself.
"I mean...he obviously knows about the baby, of course you would have told him, even if you didn't tell us...he's your best friend, for Christ's sake! So where is he?" She demanded, her cheeks growing pinker and pinker, as her voice began to raise in anger. I had never seen her like this; her voice was shaking with emotion, she was shaking from head to toe, her face flushed, her dark eyes flashing.
She continued on furiously, without even drawing a breath.
"He calls himself a friend, yet he doesn't come rushing to your side!" She exclaimed, her voice growing even louder. I bit my lip, and opened my mouth to interject, but Keira would not be silenced.
"It's disgusting, it really is!"
"Keira..."
"Where is he?! Where the hell is he?!"
"Keira..."
"It's absolutely ridiculous! It's ludicrous!"
"Johnny's the father, Keira! This is Johnny's baby...it's Johnny's..." I burst out desperately, before Keira could say another word, my heart pounding in my chest. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Orlando's lips form a tiny, sad little smile, and he didn't need to say a single word for me to know that he had suspected this since the first moment he had known that I was pregnant, though his eyes were solemn and full of concern. My eyes were however drawn away from him to Keira, who had not yet said another word; her eyes were huge and bulging in her shocked face, her mouth hanging open in an 'O' of surprise, her body rigid as though paralyzed. Quite suddenly, she swayed once, she swayed twice, and on the third time, she keeled right over, crumpling to the floor as Orlando and I let out a gasp of horror.
"Oh shit! Nurse! Nurse!"
It turned out that Keira, in her sweet, oblivious innocence, had never even considered mine and Johnny's questionable relationship, never contemplated that there could be a deeper element to our friendship, not even when she had on so many occasions seen him hanging around my apartment inexplicably. And as she stirred feebly in a concerned Orlando's arms, after passing out in sheer shock from my recent revelation, it struck me just how successfully secretive Johnny and I had managed to be about the two of us...and how ridiculously secretive also. We'd got to such a point that even one of our best friends, Keira, was unaware of the relationship, and to me that just seemed all wrong. Besides, now that I was about to have the baby with only a little while remaining, according to the doctors, everyone would know the truth soon enough anyway. There was, however, no time to dwell on this, as I became distracted by Keira propping herself up eagerly as a male nurse who could only be described as rugged came to inspect her after her little fall, and the souvenir bump on the head she had received from it. She perked up immediately, until he left the room seemingly satisfied that she would recover, and after watching him leave forlornly, she immediately turned back to me, her eyes grave.
"I trust Johnny doesn't know?" She asked quietly, still looking dazed.
"No...no, he knows...he found out today," I replied softly. She frowned in surprise.
"Where is he then? He should be here, with you! Where is he?" She asked slowly, her eyes moving around the room expectantly as though she was hoping that he would appear on the spot. I shook my head sadly at her.
"He..." I began, but I faltered, my voice cracking as I turned my face away to hide my expression, realizing that she was right. Where was he? It was too painful to defend Johnny. It would mean having to relive the way he had abandoned me in the café this morning, the false promises of 'I'll come back', echoing in my mind.
"Lets...lets turn the TV on," Orlando interrupted the silence brightly, looking exhausted. He switched it on, and we all breathed a sigh of relief to hear the blare of the program flood the room to replace the empty, awkward atmosphere. However, I continued to stare out of the window sadly, ignoring what appeared to be the news, as an apparently dramatic story began breaking at full volume. I closed my eyes slowly, sinking back into my pillow and trying to maneuver myself into a comfortable position, with great difficulty due to my slight bump-
"Oh my God!"
I snapped my head up in shock as Orlando and Keira peered at the television screen, exclaiming in unison.
"What?! What?!" I demanded in confusion, before gasping as I joined the two of them and stared at the screen. Or rather, what was showing as the top news story at the moment, live.
On the TV, a camera was shakily focusing on a man, the words 'Live in London' emblazoned at the bottom of the screen. It was Johnny Depp, our Johnny, stalking across what appeared to be a slightly grotty little car park towards a block of flats, much to the shock of the passers-by, all of whom were gasping and pointing. He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing this morning, only now, he appeared slightly worse for wear, his hair tousled and unkempt, his clothes rumpled, as though he had traveled a long distance in a very short amount of time. A small crowd was gathering now, as Johnny's figure disappeared from the screen into the tall, gray building, and after a few moments he reappeared, only this time he was not alone. In fact, his hand was tightly gripped around the shirt collar of another man, a man who he was dragging roughly out of the building, a man who was apparently most unwilling, struggling to no avail in Johnny's firm grip. The camera zoomed in shakily, and I felt a jolt of shock to see an unfamiliar expression of fury dominating Johnny's face as he threw the other man to the ground, and an even bigger jolt when my eyes finally fell upon the man's face, as he raised his blonde head from the pavement, looking slightly dazed.
It was Luke.
With matching wide eyes, my two friends and I stared helplessly at the screen, though only I knew the identity of the man Johnny was staring down at, my breath coming out in sharp gasps of shock, and within a few seconds a full-blown fight had broken out in front of our very eyes. Luke rose unsteadily to his feet, and a couple of muffled, barely audible shouts passed between the two men, lost in the shouts of the crowd as Johnny raised his fist and punched Luke right in the face, hard.
At this, a few onlookers rushed forward as Johnny swung his foot repeatedly into Luke's stomach, and it struck me that he looked positively deranged, his dark eyes wild in his handsome face. His teeth were gritted, his jaw locked tight with rage,as two other men from the crowd hauled him off a scowling, bleeding Luke, Johnny thrashing furiously in their grip, struggling to break free, eager to throw another punch at my groaning ex-boyfriend as he writhed on the ground in pain. Eventually, Johnny's struggles grew weaker, and he resigned himself to glaring at the man on the pavement, his expression livid as a police car pulled promptly up to the sidewalk, and two officers stepped out of the car and approached him. The scene changed to show a news reporter, though the footage was still running in the background behind him, and I saw Orlando and Keira swap horrified glances.
"...We do not understand Johnny Depp's violent actions at the present time," The newsreader was saying, his voice raised in slight excitement, his round face flushed due to the situation which had just unfolded behind him. "The A-List star was simply seen striding through the area a few moments ago, where he entered the building, dragged the other man out, and ruthlessly began attacking him-"
The man's words faded into significance, as I simply squinted at the barely visible image of Johnny behind him, trying desperately to read his lips as police ushered away the ever-growing crowd of people. The two police officers were now talking to him, and Johnny was responding almost earnestly now, calm, cool and collected, as though the incident I had just witnessed had not truly happened, raising his hands innocently, before pointing towards Luke, then towards the building, still shaking ever-so-slightly with rage. I saw the police officers look at each other, before nodding towards Johnny and hurrying off towards the same block of flats, as Johnny folded his arms firmly across his chest.
"...Wait...one moment! I'm just getting reports that...yes, it's not clear, but Johnny Depp appears to be claiming that his actions are in the defense of his Pirates Of The Caribbean co-star, Alice Cross!" The newsreader piped up in excitement, and I felt shock flood me as Keira and Orlando turned their eyes on me in bewilderment. I merely shrugged, just as confused as them.
"Yes, the film star seems to believe that the man he attacked is somehow involved with the scandalous newspaper stories released about Miss Cross several months ago!" The newsreader continued, clutching his earpiece desperately, and I simply stared at the screen, still utterly nonplussed. Yet it was all to suddenly become clear.
My eyes fell once again on Johnny in the background, and I squeaked in horror to see that another officer was now beside him, peering down at the items Johnny was holding out to him with solemn interest. They were quite unmistakably envelopes clutched in Johnny's hand. My letters, the threatening ones I had carefully hidden from him, and I dimly recalled the night that Johnny and I had had the argument, and the strange, thudding noise I had heard from the next room, the noise which was now very obviously the drawer in which I had hidden the messages being slammed. Running over my memories of that evening in my head, everything suddenly made sense; Johnny's face had been so pale, so shocked, when I had returned to the room...he had discovered the letters and scanned through them, and had been horrified by what he had read. Someone threatening me. I vaguely remembered seeing the rectangular shape of the envelopes in his pocket where he had hastily stuffed them out of sight, and I closed my eyes in horror at my own stupidity for not realizing this sooner.
Yet...something didn't add up. Where had Johnny gone, upon discovering the letters?
"Oh...oh my goodness!" The newsreader exclaimed loudly, and I tore my eyes away from Johnny as the camera moved around to show several police officers emerging from the building hastily, bringing with them another person. A woman this time, a petite woman with a bowed head whom the officers were encircled around until they reached the camera crew, at which point she lifted her face for the first time from under her curtain of hair and looked straight into the camera with her huge, green eyes...
"Bitch!" Orlando whispered in awe, speaking for the first time since the news story had captured our attention, as the three of us stared into the expressionless face of Johnny's girlfriend, until she finally lowered it once more away from the camera, without speaking a word in her defense as she was marched past an equally stony, cold, disgusted Johnny and led into a police car, along with a still groaning Luke. Johnny did not tear his dark eyes away from her face at any point, though she refused to look at him, turning her face away from the window as the car pulled away through the large, confused crowd.
So Johnny had immediately recognized the handwriting on the letters, as of course he would; Vanessa had been his girlfriend for almost ten years after all. Vanessa, caught up in the drama of the moment, had obviously, foolishly, not bargained on Johnny ever seeing the letters; she knew me well after all, for she had rightly suspected that I would not show them to him. She had been the one who had sold my story to the newspapers, and Johnny, remembering this after regaining his memory, had recklessly tracked her down, finding not only her, but Luke too. Yet Luke was not smart enough to dish the dirt on me; he didn't even know about my past, and I winced quietly as I suddenly recalled telling Vanessa myself on the day of her arrival in the Caribbean about Jude's knowledge of my past, and the name of the café in which we had both worked. It had been all too easy for Vanessa to track her down, and Jude would have quite willingly introduced Luke to her also, for the sheer glamour of it all. Perhaps Vanessa would have even befriended her to get the information she needed...they were, after all, very similar, so alike, in agreement on so many things, and one thing in particularly. Their shared loathing of me. And as shocked as Orlando and Keira seemed to be, I however, felt nothing. I had almost suspected Vanessa all along, though even I had not imagined she could be so spiteful...all in pursuit of Johnny.
At last, the truth, the answers I had been waiting so long for, all of them flooded me at once. Relief spread through me like a strange warmth as I sank back into the plump white pillows of my hospital bed, all of my questions answered...save for one.
I knew why Johnny had left me today, I knew why he had left me the night he had discovered the letters; both times, it was simply to confront Vanessa. But when he had returned to my house temporarily, just before his accident...why had he been so utterly furious? This was the only mystery that still remained unexplained.
Suddenly, as my mind dueled on Johnny, though the pain of his abandonment had now ceased, it was replaced with another blinding pain, this time in my stomach, and I knew that this was beyond contractions. I saw Orlando and Keira leap out of their seats in shock as I let out a cry, and I distantly heard my own voice shouting desperately out for Ed, begging for him to come now as Keira clutched my hand and Orlando shifted helplessly from foot to foot, also shouting for my doctor, who burst into the room, his expression controlled and calm as he hurried me out of my room and along to the Emergency Room. And then it was my turn to pass out.