The Debt 2 (8 page)

Raven would’ve wilted under the doctor’s withering stare, but Jake didn’t even move a muscle.
 
“I’m assuming she’s going to need a biopsy,” Jake said.
 

“Yes, they’ll need to biopsy the mass to check for malignancy.”

“Then she needs to get in now so we can get results back yesterday,” Jake said.
 
He was on his cell phone and walking out the door, leaving the doctor and Raven and Skylar alone in the exam room.

Dr. Stieglitz sighed.
 
“Sometimes people get a distorted notion of how things work when they’re so used to not having to wait.
 
But this really is the best we can do.”

Raven nodded.
 
“Okay, thanks, Doctor Stieglitz.”

“I’ve given Skylar the information about her gynecologist.
 
All she needs to do is show up the day after tomorrow and the rest will take care of itself.”

He ushered them out of the exam room and wished Skylar luck, but he didn’t tell her not to worry, he didn’t say that the mass was probably not malignant.

In fact, Raven thought that he was very pessimistic about it—as if he already knew that Skylar had cancer.

When they got out to the waiting room lobby, Jake was nowhere to be found.
 
“Do you think he got mad and left?” Skylar asked.

“Don’t worry about Jake,” Raven replied, but she was searching for him as well.

There was no way he would just leave like that, would he?

But then again, she didn’t really know anything about him.
 
It seemed like Jake was capable of just about anything, and not all of it was good.

“I’m not going to die, am I?” Skylar asked.

Raven looked at her friend’s pale, frightened face.
 
“Absolutely not.”

“I have this awful feeling…”

“You’re scared, that’s totally normal, Sky.
 
But it doesn’t mean anything bad’s happening.”

“I don’t have insurance,” Skylar told her.
 
“If something’s wrong, how am I going to pay?”

“Don’t worry about that right now.
 
You need to take care of yourself, and that means not stressing out about things before they even happen.”
 
Raven put an arm around her friend and hugged her tightly.
 
“Let me worry about all of that.”

“You don’t even have a real job, you’re a temp!”

True, Raven thought, but that thirty grand might come in handy if Skylar really was sick and needed money for medical bills.

She couldn’t tell Skylar any of that, though.
 

Finally, they spotted Jake on the phone outside the front doors.
 
He turned to the window and waved at them.

Raven’s heart leapt as she saw that he hadn’t gone anywhere.
 
He was staying right there, he hadn’t left in a fit of rage.
 
He wasn’t just going to wash his hands of them like that.

When they got outside, Jake seemed in good spirits.
 
“Listen, I was able to get in touch with a friend of mine at Sloan Kettering in New York.
 
We’ve got an earlier appointment, so you won’t need to wait until the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh my God,” Skylar said, her eyes filling with tears.
 
“You got me an appointment tomorrow?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Jake said.
 
“I got you an appointment tonight.”

“Tonight?” Raven said, shaking her head.
 
“I don’t get it.
 
New York is hours away and its nighttime.
 
Gynecologists don’t work in the middle of the night.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jake said, glancing at Raven with a trace of a smirk.

“Oh, Jake.”
 
She felt the emotion welling up again and had to take a moment so as not to break down in tears.

But Skylar threw her arms around him.
 
“Thank you.”

He hugged her back, looking at Raven all the while.
 
“Come on,” he said.
 
“We have a helicopter to catch.”

***

Raven was flying in a helicopter high over Manhattan.
 
She couldn’t believe it.

She was strapped and buckled into her seat, wearing a helmet with a headset to communicate, because the noise volume of the motor, wind, and propeller was so loud that she wouldn’t have been able to hear anyone otherwise.

Next to her in the back, Skylar sat looking out her window.

In front, Jake sat beside the pilot, who occasionally told them about some of the landmarks they were passing as they flew through the night sky.

It was absolutely beautiful, and the skyline was lit up like a million tiny stars sprinkling across the earth.
 
They were getting closer and closer to landing, and the helicopter started to slowly descend.

She was scared, as she’d always possessed a healthy fear of heights.
 
But at the same time, seeing Jake up front and hearing his voice come through her headset seemed to calm her nerves yet again.

He and the pilot had been trading jokes most of the way.
 
“Okay, I’m going to bring ‘er in, folks,” the pilot drawled, and suddenly they were dropping rapidly enough for Raven’s stomach to feel like it went into her throat.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the seat, trying not to panic.

“Hey, looks like you bored Raven to tears,” Jake laughed through the microphone.
 
“I just looked back and she’s knocked out asleep.”

“Oh, well in that case,” the pilot said, “let’s wake her up!”
 
And then he began taking them down even faster, so fast that Raven and Skylar both let out screams.

Jake was laughing like this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
 

The pilot was chuckling too.
 
“Okay, okay, that was some pilot humor,” he said.
 
“I couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, I won’t be recommending you to my friends,” Skylar told him.
 
But she was grinning now too.

“We’re landing at Pier 6 right on the water,” the pilot stated.
 
“I hope you had a nice flight.”

“It was great up ‘til that last part,” Raven said.

And then the pilot brought the helicopter down and landed it without further incident.
 
They got unstrapped and got out, and Jake spoke for a minute or two with the pilot before they left the heliport.

There was a car waiting to take them to Sloan Kettering hospital nearby.

 
As they got in the car and were whisked away from Pier 6 to the next destination, Raven couldn’t get over how lucky she felt.
 
Maybe all of these horrible things that had happened—all the things that had gone on since being tricked into signing that contract with Club Alpha—maybe everything had been for a good reason.

Now that it appeared as though Skylar might really be sick, having met Jake Novak seemed like just about the best thing that could’ve happened.

And Skylar already seemed to be doing better.
 
At one point during the car ride, she turned and whispered in Raven’s ear.
 
“Jake Novak might just be the most amazing man I’ve ever met in my life.
 
I feel like he’s somehow going to make this all okay, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Raven answered honestly, feeling a tingle in her belly as she looked at Jake, sitting in the front passenger seat, chatting with the driver of the car.
 
Even the sound of Jake’s voice had the capacity to calm her frayed nerves.

He was relaxed, at ease in his own skin, knew he could get things done.
 
He refused to be backed down by someone else’s authority, like how he’d told that doctor in Boston that they needed to get Skylar seen sooner.
 
And then he’d gone and made it happen.

Jake didn’t even know Skylar and he hardly knew Raven, yet he was there taking time out of his schedule to help them.
 
He’d been through a grinding concert performance and was likely exhausted, but you’d never have known it based on his actions.

How had she misjudged him so badly?
 
Why hadn’t she been able to see that there was much more to him then the little slice she’d seen at the party and in his hotel room?

Well, the truth was that he’d kept that part of himself from her.
 
Jake hadn’t seemed to want her to know that there was more to him.
 
It was only this emergency that had brought it to the forefront.

They pulled up to Sloan Kettering and were let off out front, where a shorter woman in an overcoat greeted them just outside the entrance.
 
She had brown curly hair, a long, narrow nose, and her smile was genuine.
 
“Jake?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, “and you must be Dr. Lara.”

“That’s me.”

“I really appreciate you coming here at this time of night to help us.”

“Listen, I hadn’t even taken off my makeup yet,” she laughed heartily.
 
“Not to worry.”

Raven wanted to say,
not to worry?
 
You’re not annoyed at being dragged from your home in the middle of the night just because some celebrity snapped his fingers?

But this was no time for looking a gift horse in the mouth, so
Raven
didn’t say a peep.

The doctor turned to Skylar and Raven, and upon seeing Skylar’s expression, seemed to instantly realize that she was the patient.
 
“Skylar?”

Skylar nodded anxiously.
 
“Yes.”

“Hi, I’m Dr. Lara.
 
Let’s get you right inside, okay?”
 
She smiled and then led them into the hospital, where she acted as their personal escort.

Raven had never seen anything like this.
 
Usually, when she’d gone to a new hospital, she’d been made to fill out all kinds of forms and answer questions, give proof of insurance, all sorts of things.
 
It typically also included a lot of waiting around.

But Dr. Lara simply brought them up the elevator herself, walked them past the nurse’s station and to a private room.
 
“All right,” she said, turning to Jake and Raven.
 
“We’re going to do an examination of Skylar now, so I’ll need to ask you to wait in the waiting room.”

Skylar gave Raven an anxious look, and Raven nodded to her, trying to appear confident and unafraid, but in truth she was far from that.
 
As Dr. Lara brought Skylar in to be examined, they wandered back down the hallway to the small but empty waiting room.

Raven couldn’t sit still, so she stood and stared out the window into the darkness of the city outside.
 
Jake came up next to her.
 

“You okay?” he asked, glancing at her.

“I’m scared.”

“I know,” he said.

She turned and looked at him.
 
“And I can’t figure out why you’re suddenly being so nice to me.”

He chuckled.
 
“Am I really that big of an asshole?”

She nodded.
 
“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well maybe you don’t have me all figured out just yet.”

“I guess not.
 
But I still don’t understand.”
 
A shiver ran through her and Raven folded her arms and tried to warm herself.

“I have certain limitations,” Jake said, looking down.
 
“There’s thing’s that’ve happened in my life…I don’t really want to go into details.
 
But the things that happened, they make it so that I need to live the way I live.”

“Now it’s all so clear,” Raven replied sarcastically.

“Don’t bust my balls,” he told her.
 
“I’m telling you that it is the way it is for a reason.
 
I’m
this way for a reason.”

“I can’t find fault with you tonight, not after what you’ve already done for Skylar.”
 
Raven looked at
him,
saw the pain etched in his face.
 
“And what you’ve done for me, Jake.”

He looked back at her.
 
“It’s for you,” he said.
 
And then he walked over to one of the chairs and sat down heavily, as if admitting how tired he was for the first time that night.
 
 

They waited for what seemed like forever, but it wasn’t actually that long, all things considered.
 
It was actually sort of a miracle that Skylar was even being seen at this time of night, let alone by a top doctor at one of the best—if not the best—cancer treatment facilities in the country.

Dr. Lara came out to talk to them in the waiting room.
 
Her face told the story before she even explained what she’d found during her examination.