Shooting Stars

It’s been 6 months since that day. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what happened to me in the warehouse. And there’s a reason for that.
5 months and two weeks ago
“Morning, Sophie. How have you been?” my doctor asked me for my regular checkup that happened to be every two weeks now. They were worried about my “mental” status or so they said. I felt fine, for the most part, I was mentally stronger now than I was a few weeks ago anyways.
“A little queasy, but other than that, nothing unusual,” I answered honestly. My doctor was a woman because besides my father, brother, and the Blackhawks, I haven’t felt comfortable around men at all. She was in her mid-fifties and I had been seeing her for almost my entire life.
“Well, it’s been two weeks. We would like to do a full run of tests. Do you mind?” I looked into her nice green eyes. I could only nod of course.
“I don’t have a choice, Doctor Johnson. Let’s just get this over with,” I practically demanded. She gave me a bunch of papers to fill out and sign waving things. She had cut her hair since the last time I was in. It was beginning to naturally grey out and so she decided to go short instead of her shoulder length hair that was that of the past.
I read the papers thoroughly before adding my John Hancock. I made sure to check the box that said, “Any chance you are pregnant or may become pregnant.” The hospital had given me one of those days after pills, but I’d been raped multiple times and multiple days, so you never know.
“Here,” I handed the papers back.
“Great, let’s start with a urine test.”
She led me to the bathroom and gave me a cup. I did what I had to do and put it in the designated area. Next they pulled blood from my arm and sent that to a lab. Then I went through an x-ray, CAT scan, and MRI. I returned to Doctor Johnson’s office when the technicians finished with me.
“Sophie, your parents are on their way here,” Doc Johnson said as she reentered the room.
“Why?” I was confused about why my parents would be coming. I have come to each appointment by myself since the day I got out of the hospital and they never needed to come.
“I have some news that I think you’d want them to hear with you,” she replied.
“Tell me now, I’ll tell them.” I was just really nervous. Maybe they had found something that could make me die or something. Or worse, I could be pregnant.
“You are pregnant, Sophie. That’s why you’ve been queasy. You are a perfectly healthy, pregnant seventeen year old girl.”
“You call being a seventeen year old pregnant girl healthy?” I started to hyperventilate. She started to calm me down when a nurse knocked on the door.
“Doctor Johnson, you have an urgent phone call,” the nurse said before disappearing. Doc Johnson left my side where I was finally calming down to answer the phone on the desk in the room. She picked up and listened to the other person.
“You are positive?” she asked. She shook her head and hung up the phone. “Sophie, come on, sweetie.” She led me out of the office and across the halls to the hospital ER wing of the building.
“What’s going on?”
“Sophie?” an officer asked as we approached. I nodded, unsure why the officer knew my name. “We need your positive identification.”
He pulled back a curtain and my parents lay on beds next to each other, covers up to their necks. Only their heads were showing and they were full of blood. I started to cry and fell to the ground.
“Sophie, there’s one more,” Doc Johnson said. She led me down the hall, slowly since I could hardly walk from the grief. We got to a private room and my younger brother lay there hooked up to millions of machines with a thousand different colored tubes.
“Joe,” I gasped. That was when I completely lost it. My family was gone. Joe was going to die, I knew it. He was hooked up to every machine possible in a hospital. There was no way he could make it through this. I didn’t know if I could make it through this.
“Do you want me to call someone for you?” Doctor Johnson questioned. I nodded and handed her my cell phone.
“Jackie,” I managed to whisper through the tears and sobs.
“Hello, Jackie? Yes, this is Doctor Johnson. I’m here with Sophie and we are at the Milton Hospital. Sophie needs you to come here as soon as you can. How fast can you get here?”
Doctor Johnson hung up my phone and put it next to me. I clutched my stomach and cried my heart out.
A nurse came to bring me to my own room to try and control my breathing. They didn’t want me to harm my baby. They hooked me up to oxygen and an IV. I started to calm down and just as Jackie walked in, I fell asleep.
Five Months ago
“Abby, Patrick, you are so kind to let me stay here. I just don’t have anywhere else to go,” I explained to the Sharps’ that late January morning when I entered their suburbia home. It was rather large, not that I expected a professional hockey player to have a small home necessarily. The outside was brick and some siding, but was gorgeous. The interior was great too.
“Sophie, we understand. You don’t want to stay with Jon and Jackie; you are going to be fine staying here.” Patrick stated. We were currently standing in the foyer. I had handed Abby my coat seeing as it was still cold in early February here in Chicago. The some of the team was getting ready to leave for the Olympics, but Patrick was not one of them.
“I just can’t believe I’ve lost everyone except Jackie. I mean, I have other family, but none that I’m comfortable with.” It is probably as open as I have been with anyone but Jackie and Corey since the day my parents died.
“We understand. Would you like to see your room?” Abby asked coming back from hanging up our things. I nodded and Patrick picked up my bags before leading the way to the bedroom I would be staying in until I could get my own place. I didn’t really pay attention to the rest of the house’s interior. I was more ready to see my room and get settled.
“It has some baby stuff in it, just ignore that. It’ll be gone by the end of the week.”
“Baby stuff?” I questioned. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” Abby looked uncomfortable when she had said baby stuff, but I didn’t think much before speaking.
“I’ll leave you ladies to talk,” Sharpie said and disappeared into unknown parts of their house after depositing my bags on the bed.
“This is your room. The bed is newer, my sister got it for her college apartment, now she lives with her husband, so she doesn’t need it anymore. She only used it for like a year.” I took a moment to look around. It was a room painted a light beige color. The comforter was a pretty orange color. There was only one dresser and a small night stand in the room besides the closet for my clothing.
“It will work,” I said as I sat on the bed. I melted into it. It was more comfortable than any bed I had ever been on, especially in the last few weeks.
“The closet is this door here. The other door is your own bathroom. We are working on getting some dressers from one of the guys. We just never got around to furnishing this room the way we planned.” Again, Abby looked saddened when she mentioned furnishing the room. I stored the information away for when I would have a chance to talk to her after we had gotten to know each other a little better.
“It’s okay. I don’t have much.”
“Well then, we are going to have to fix that. We are going shopping. How long until you can be ready?” she asked.
“I would like to change into jeans, but other than that, I’m ready.”
“Great, change. I’ll make a few phone calls; see if Kelly Keith wants to join us. She’s one of my best friends and loves to shop, if that’s okay?” she looked happier now. I liked her happy face. I haven’t seen many in the last couple weeks and so it is refreshing.
“That’s fine.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into Kelly and Duncan’s driveway. Their place was lesser than the Sharp’s but still beautiful. I would be glad to say I owned either one. A beautiful blonde woman exited the house and joined us in the backseat of the car.
“Morning, Kel. This is Sophie; she’s staying with Pat and I for a while. She needs some clothes, I figured you and I could help her out.”
“Sure can kiddo. Start at the usual,” Kelly directed Abby.
Abby drove for another twenty minutes, with the two making small talk that I stayed out of, and we pulled into a small boutique’s parking lot.
“You aren’t the Sophie the whole team has been going on and on about, are you?” Kelly asked me as we got out of the car and started towards the storefront.
“Um, yeah, that’s me.”
“You are the one who was kidnapped?”
“Yeah,” I murmured as I opened the door for them both.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. It must’ve been terrible,” she replied.
“Yeah, it was.” I started to browse the selection. This place had adorable clothes. I started a pile in my arms and when it got too heavy, I asked to try them on. They showed me to a room and I tried everything on. Some things were too tight, some way too big, others weren’t flattering, and some were just plain ugly. Few were just perfect.
I bought the ones I liked and we moved on from that store.