Plum Blossom | Completed

Chapter Seventeen

"I want to see her. I want to see my baby," Mellisa said, jumping out of her seat.

"I can take you to her now, if you would like." Emily guided a catatonic Mellisa out of the hospital, as everyone watched.

In an opposite room, Dr. Perez was a mess as well. He had collapsed from overwhelming shock.

The hospital was rife with speculation from staff, patients and visitors alike. Wild stories spun all around, but nothing even remotely close to the truth. This continued on for the rest of the week. Mellisa hadn't returned to the hospital since, and Dr. Perez still lay unconscious, having gone into cardiac arrest.

As she had promised, Emily took Mellisa to Amanda without a word. Mellisa had hugged her oblivious daughter to death, never letting her out of her sight. Amanda knew something was seriously wrong, but she didn't bother asking what had happened. She was just glad to have her mother constantly by her side.

Amanda also knew that Alex was gone and never coming back. But she didn't know what had happened to him either. No one did, other than Mellisa and the law enforcement teams.

Just as Emily had said, the police and FBI had surrounded her home, waiting for Alex. He had been shot down as soon as he opened the door.

Fortunately, Amanda hadn't witnessed any of it. She was sound asleep in the locked room, only waking up when police officers had broken down the door to collect her.

From then, till her mother arrived, Amanda had quietly stayed with two officers, sipping from the juice box they had given her. The officers had commented on how well behaved a child she was. Amanda had rewarded them with a heart-warming smile.

Even when she saw her mother, Amanda had daintily gotten down from her seat and reached her mother, but not before thanking the officers for keeping her company.

"Mommy! You're home early. Does this mean we can spend more time together today?" she asked.

Mellisa knew her two-year-old didn't know how to read the time as yet, but she humored her anyway. "We have all the time in the world, baby girl. Just you and me." Mellisa wrapped her daughter in a tight hug.

"Alex is gone," she muttered.

"And he's never coming back."

For the first time in a long while, Mellisa felt like she could breathe freely. But her troubles were far from over. She still had to go through several legal procedures, and she had just learnt that her bank account had been frozen. Turns out, Alex had managed to turn it into a joint account. Mellisa had no idea how he had done that, but Emily had already told her that Alex was an extremely intelligent psychopath. Okay, so maybe she hadn't called him a psychopath, but she had definitely implied it.

Mellisa was to receive a stipend till she could regain access of her bank account. But the stipend wouldn't be enough for her to take care of Amanda and repay Alex's debt. She contemplated telling the FBI about this predicament, but she was unsure of what the consequences would be, and she wasn't willing to risk them. Not when her daughter's life was at stake.

But she would worry about all that later. Her brain hurt from all the information that she had learnt earlier that night, and she was exhausted from her ordeal. Emily told her to catch some sleep, and that she would come see her first thing in the morning.

"You really can't catch a break, can you?" was Emily's way of greeting Mellisa when she showed up the next morning, Connor in tow.

"Connor! Oh, how I missed you, you handsome boy!" Mellisa hugged Connor, ignoring his mother. She continued to fuss over this boy whom she hadn't seen in months. Both mothers knew that Mellisa was stalling.