Saturday, October 14, 2000 (11:30 PM)

       Someone, vowed nineteen-year-old Joseph David Hardy, is going to pay and pay big for this.

       The six-foot-tall, blonde-haired college sophomore walked grimly along the path that would bring them to the quad and eventually to Eldridge Hall, anger and terror warring for supremacy within him.  He had given over care of Frank to Connor, trusting Frank’s roommate to get Frank to Eldridge while Joe half-walked, half-sprinted to the side of his girlfriend.  The phone call from Frank had come just a few minutes before and Joe raced out without even hanging up the phone in his room.  He was out of the dorm before he realized he had forgotten to put his shoes on and the cold concrete ate through his bare feet.

       Tossing his blonde curls back again he continued grimly forward, ignoring the discomfort in his feet and the complete lack of warmth in the rest of his body.  The cool kept his temper from flying into a rage.  He had to get to Vanessa and help her, as best he could. 

       “Joe!” Mandy called out as he got near Eldridge and he saw his twin sister standing just outside the entrance into Eldridge, her face pale and her cobalt eyes filled with fear and worry.  “Thank God you made it.”

       Mandy hugged him and shivered when she stepped back.  She frowned when she saw Joe’s bare feet and sent one of her friends into her room to get her slippers.  They wouldn’t really fit his size twelve men’s feet but she said she didn’t care.

       “What happened?” Joe asked numbly, the rage giving way to fear and worry when he saw Vanessa lying still and cold on the ground near an ambulance.  His cerulean eyes fixed on Vanessa’s pale face.  Two paramedics worked with her as well as two of the campus medics.  Joe saw a small pool of blood by her head and he felt himself start to swoon a little.  Mandy forced him to sit down on one of the benches in front of the Hall.  The stone on the bench was more cold than the air outside seemed to be but Joe was grateful for the contact with the stone.

       Vanessa had a neck brace about her neck already and a large gash on the side of her forehead, too close to her temple for Joe’s comfort.  Her left leg was twisted at right angles from her body and one of her arms looked, for lack of a better word, mangled.  Joe felt his breath catch in his chest and he shivered again.

       “A car came out of no where when Vanessa was out at her car getting her graphics book out,” Mandy said in a shaking voice.  “It didn’t even stop, Joe.  It just hit her and kept on going.”

       “Did you see it?” Joe turned to his twin and put his arm around her when he saw her shake as badly as he.  “Mandy?  Did you see the car hit her?”

       “Yes!” Mandy exclaimed.  “I walked out here with her and stopped in the lobby a minute to talk to Cherry.  She got hit on her way back from the car.  I saw the car hit her – she rolled over the top of the hood and slid back down again and the guy swerved around her kept going.”

       Joe shivered again and continued to stare blankly at Vanessa’s still form on the ground.  Tears streamed down his cheeks unchecked and he prayed, silently, that she would live, that she would be all right.  She had to be all right. 

       “Put these on,” Joe looked up and saw Frank holding something out in front of him – Joe’s running shoes and his jacket.  Joe slid them on, unable to even work up the energy to tell Frank thanks and he turned his attention back to Vanessa.  The jacket helped with the shivers but he knew part of them were shock.  Vanessa!

       “Mandy, did you see what happened?” Frank asked and Mandy took Frank through what she saw, again.  Joe ignored them, his attention completely focused on the too motionless form of Vanessa.  He willed for her to move, for her to do something to let him know she was alive.     

       “Did you see the car?” Frank asked.  “Do you know what kind it was?  Anything about it?”

       Joe stood and walked away from them, unable to concentrate on Vanessa when they were talking in both of his ears.  He felt the presence of Connor behind him, knew it was Connor merely by Connor’s sheer height and presence.  At six-foot-three, Connor was a foot taller than Mandy and three inches taller than Joe.  His eyes, as blue as Joe and Mandy’s, were calm.

       “She’ll be all right,” Connor said.  “She has to be.  We know that.”

       “We don’t know that,” Joe said hotly, more hotly than he meant but the anger rose within him as a tidal wave.  “We don’t know that she has to be all right.  Look at her, Connor!  How can she possibly be all right?”

       “Because she’s a fighter, like all of us,” Connor said.  “She’ll fight this to the bitter end and she’ll make it.  Don’t give up on her yet.”

       Joe turned to him.  He wanted to hit Connor as hard as he could.  He wanted to knock Connor into next week, just to shut the older man up.  He didn’t.  He turned back away and went closer to Vanessa, his advance impeded by a police officer that told him to stand ‘away from the victim.’

       “She’s my girlfriend,” Joe insisted.  “Vanessa Bender.  I have to see her!”

       “Just stay back,” the police officer insisted, almost rudely.  “You’ll get in the way of the paramedics.  Now stay put!”

       Joe growled and stepped back.

       “I’m riding with her,” Joe said.  “To the hospital. I’m going with her.”

       Connor nodded, as if taking that for granted.  Joe stayed where he was until the paramedics rolled Vanessa first onto a backboard and then lifted her with the utmost of care onto the gurney parked next to them.  They strapped her down carefully to it and then lifted the gurney up into the ambulance.

       “I want to ride with her,” Joe told the ambulance attendants.  “She’s my girlfriend, I’m riding with her!”

       The attendants agreed, probably because of the expression on Joe’s face rather than a desire to let him in the ambulance with them and Joe climbed up with Vanessa, holding tightly to her good hand, as tears streamed unchecked down his cheeks.  He saw Frank and Mandy and Connor and Samantha all standing near the ambulance as it drove off and he waved to them once, before turning his attention back to Vanessa.

 

       Joe paced the floor of the emergency waiting room, stepping past the crowd of people gathered there for things from sniffles and coughs to more immediate things like abdominal pains and broken limbs.  His blue eyes swept constantly over them, seeing them and not seeing them, the pain on his face caused only by the fear of not knowing.  Was Vanessa still alive?  Or had something worse happened to her?  When he had been forced to leave her to come to this room she had not once regained consciousness and she lay as if dead on the bed in examining room.  Nervous tension raked through Joe’s body as he jumped up and down and tried to calm down again.  He was ready to explode at any minute.

       Joe looked up gratefully when he saw Frank, Mandy, Connor and Samantha walk into the waiting room and Mandy crossed immediately to hug him.  She held onto him for a moment and the twins communed silently, not talking, not exchanging words or even emotions, but simply comforting and holding.  Joe’s tears began again and he buried them in the top of Mandy’s hair. 

       “You have to be strong, Joe,” Mandy told her twin.  “You have to be strong and hold on.  You know you’ll be all right, you’ll both be all right but you have to hold on.  Promise me, Joe.”

       “I will,” Joe whispered to her, his voice catching in his throat.  “But Mandy, she was so still.  She didn’t wake up, not once.  What if… what…”

       Mandy pulled Joe’s face around and Joe found himself eye-to-eye with his twin.  In a looked that needed no words she told Joe to stop giving up so soon and told him to fight like Vanessa was fighting.  A moment later Joe backed away and nodded, the shock that came over him the moment of the phone call finally fell away.

       “You’re right,” he managed a small smile for Mandy.

       “I’m always right,” Mandy returned the small smile.  “You just keep forgetting that.”

       They turned to the others and found seats in the same area of the crowded waiting room as Connor.  Joe leaned his head on his twin’s head and saw her take Connor’s hand as she leaned her head on Joe’s shoulder.  They sat quietly for some time while Joe worried and fumed and vowed, once again, to find whoever tried to kill his girlfriend and make her pay.

      

       “Joe!” they all looked up when they heard that anxious and frightened voice and Joe stood to run over to Andrea Bender.  “Joe, my God, Joe, what happened?”

       “Vanessa was hit by a car, Mrs. Bender,” Joe said to Vanessa’s mother, Andrea.  “A hit and run driver.  The doctor hasn’t told us anything yet.  Let me go with you so you can tell them you’re here.”

       “I already did,” Andrea said shakily.  Her eyes were already rimmed with red.  She probably cried all the way to the hospital. “And they told me that a doctor would come and find me when they knew more and that I had to come and sit here.  But why… why would a car hit Vanessa?  I don’t understand.”

       Mandy motioned to Connor and he stood and assisted Andrea into the chair he just vacated and Mandy took one of her hands.  Always calm in a crisis, that was his twin, Joe thought and felt another small smile on his lips.  He saw Frank with Sam across the waiting room, cushioned between two large individuals.  Frank stood once when Andrea came but sat back down, pulled into place by Samantha.  Good move, Joe thought with approval.  Andrea didn’t need everyone crowding her.

       “We don’t understand either, Mrs. Bender,” Mandy explained to Andrea as she held onto Andrea’s hand.  “It just happened.  She was on her way back from her car, she just got a book out of it, and the car came from nowhere.”

       “What car though?  Did you see it?  Did anyone see it?” Andrea fired off questions as fast as Joe and Frank and Mandy’s detective father would have. 

       “I did,” Mandy said softly.  “A blue-green Audi, New York license plates.  I didn’t get the number and I only caught the plate because one nearly ran Frank and Samantha down at the mall earlier…”

       “The AUDI!” Joe exclaimed as he leapt to his feet and grabbed his sister by the arm, a little more harshly than he meant to but he didn’t let go of her.  “The Audi is the one that hit Vanessa, Mandy?  Why didn’t you tell me earlier?  Of all the…”
       “I didn’t tell you because we got separated, remember?  And you got up when I was telling Frank,” Mandy pulled against Joe’s grip.  Connor stood up but Mandy waved him away.  “Joe, let go!”

       “But you didn’t tell me!” Joe exclaimed again, stunned and hurt.  “Mandy!”

       Mandy rolled her eyes at him and he turned away.  He wanted to not be angry with her but he was.  He knew it was reaction to what happened and could not help himself.  Why hadn’t she told him?

       “I really didn’t get a chance,” Mandy said softly as she went to sit on Connor’s lap.  “I’m sorry if you feel hurt or betrayed but I didn’t get a chance.”

       Joe nodded and took a breath to steady himself.  He must not be angry with her.  He must remain calm, rational, without fear.  He had to be calm or he would tear himself into a million pieces with his agitation and anxiety.  He had not been this worried when Frank had been injured bad enough to cause his blindness or when he himself had been hospitalized – three times – in the period of a few days. 

       “Alright,” Andrea Bender said as she stood and motioned to the chair she vacated.  “Sit down, Joe.  You don’t need to be angry with your sister or with yourself.  Neither of you are responsible for what happened to Vanessa.   Whoever did this, that’s who’s responsible.  Now tell me more about this Audi.”

       “We don’t know much about it,” Frank’s arm was around Samantha’s shoulders and he continued to smile that mystical ‘I’m in love’ smile that sometimes nauseated Joe.  “It nearly hit us in the parking lot at the mall.  Sam saw it just in time and got us both out of the way.  We haven’t had a chance to really figure out who it belonged to, but I can promise you that we will, Andrea.”

       Andrea shook her head vehemently.  “I don’t want either of you getting hurt again because of this, Frank.  Just tell the police and let them deal with it this time.  You’ve been through enough, the both of you.”

       Joe would have exchanged a look with Frank then but there was no need, even if Frank could have seen it.  Joe smiled again at Andrea, calm once again.  He had a clear-cut idea of what to do next and where to go.  He would do it.  He would find the owner of the green Audi and feed the man his liver.  Or woman. 

       “I’m serious, Joe,” Andrea said again and she bore down on Joe, a look that Joe saw often on Vanessa when she was about to get her way on Andrea’s face.  “I want you to leave this to the police and stay out of it.  I want you to promise me!”

       Joe shook his head and scratched at the back of his neck.  He kept his hand there to rub at some of the tension in his neck muscles and pulled his hand away when Mandy began to give him a neck rub.  He sighed and looked back up at Andrea.

       “I can’t do that, Andrea,” he said.  “I can’t promise you that I’ll stay out of it.  If I did, I’d be lying.  I’m not about to let anyone get away with what they did to Vanessa.  I could leave it to the police but I’d hate myself forever if I did that.  I am going to find that Audi and I am going to clean the clock of whomever owns it.  That’s the only promise I can make.”

       Andrea started to protest again but a nurse at the door of the waiting room called her name.  She turned to go and speak to the nurse, Joe right on her heels as she went to the door.  His stomach clenched into knots that he couldn’t release and he waited for the news from the doctor, good or bad.

       “Mrs. Bender, I’m Dr. Parkhurst,” a female doctor motioned to a nearby chair in a small room located near the waiting room.  “Dr. Olivia Parkhurst.  I’ve been treating your daughter since they brought her in.”

       “How is she?” Joe interrupted.  “How bad is it?”

       Dr. Parkhurst shot Joe a look that would have curdled metal and Joe sat back in his chair and fixed a glare on her.

       “Your daughter,” Dr. Parkhurst continued.  “Is in critical condition Mrs. Bender.  She has sustained a serious head injury and while we’ve been able to alleviate the pressure from a small hematoma, the truth to the matter is that I don’t know if or when she will ever wake up again.  She has, besides, a very badly injured arm and her right leg was broken in three places. She will be going to surgery later to have the leg pinned and casted and her arm will take at least two surgeries to repair.”

       Andrea paled with each word the Doctor spoke and Joe put an arm around her shoulder as he fought off the urge, again, to cry.  She had to wake up!  She had to wake up and she had to be all right, Joe thought.  That was the only thing that could happen.  That was the only explanation and thing he would accept.

       “She is being moved to surgery now,” Dr. Parkhurst said after a pause.  “As that will take at least two hours, I would recommend that you try and get some sleep.  She won’t wake up any faster with someone staying with her.”

       “I have to stay here,” Andrea said.  “For her.”

       “I do too,” Joe vowed.  “I’m not leaving her.”

       Dr. Parkhurst shook her head in denial.  “One of you can stay but both of you can’t.  I’ll arrange a place for you to sleep, Mrs. Bender, but you’re the only one who can stay.”

       Joe scowled at the doctor and liked her less now than he had a few moments ago.  He clenched his hands together tightly and relaxed them before he turned to Andrea and he touched her on the shoulder.  He would go, if only to find something to hit.

       “Tell her,” he said, softly, his voice breaking huskily.  “Tell her I’ll be here to see her first thing tomorrow.  And tell her to hold on.  She has to come back.”

       Andrea squeezed his hand and nodded.  Joe stood and went out to his friends and family.  He told them what the doctor had said and watched his sister’s face pale and watched Samantha bury her head in Frank’s shoulder.  Connor wrapped an around about Mandy and pulled her to him.

       “She’ll be all right,” Mandy whispered over and over.  “She’ll be all right, she’ll be all right.  She’ll be all right.”

       Joe shook his head.  He didn’t know that for sure.  The doctors didn’t know that.  He was torn between wanting to believe it and not wanting to get his hopes up.  He turned away and said,  “Take me home before I go crazy.”

 

       The heat on the window in Frank’s room told him that the sun was shining outside and that, regardless of it being mid-October, warm weather returned again to Bayport, New York.  Frank slept heavily when they first got back to the dorms last night but woke early this morning and tossed and turn, unable to go back to sleep.  He really should get ready for church.  If ever a day called for praying, today was it.  Frank had not dressed, however and stood at the window, one hand placed flat against it as he thought of the events of the night before.  Frank worried for Joe, worried that Joe would lash out irresponsibly, or he would act irrationally.  Joe went to his room the night before with demure, walked there by Connor but said nothing, either to Frank before he left or, according to Connor, spoke to Connor on the way to his room.

       There was, in Frank’s mind, too much to worry about.  Ever since he and Joe began to solve their own cases, Frank became used to a certain degree of danger in his and Joe’s lives.  Yet this year, since the beginning of the school year in September, their lives had been more and more tumultuous.  The attacks on him by Doctor Rich or Doctor Rich’s cronies, the attacks on Joe by Jason (Jase Aleman) Rich and Anna Phillips; they weren’t normal.  And now, now it was all bleeding out to their friends.  Vanessa didn’t deserve whatever animosity was being leveled toward them now. 

       Frank knew that the attack on Vanessa was aimed squarely at Joe and at himself. 

       Frank leaned his forehead against the window and closed his eyes again.  His visual memory was still dead-on though he sometimes thought details slipped away from him.  It was to be expected, he had been told in one of his classes.  The memory held onto visual references for only so long until the reference slipped away and became clouded.  Frank reminded himself morning and evening of his family members, of Samantha and Connor and Chet and all of his friends, what they looked like, how they sometimes wore their hair or what style of clothing they wore.  It kept his memory of how they looked alive in his mind, alive so that he remembered always.  If he lost those memories, he thought he might never feel like himself again. 

       Then again, his subconscious, especially late at night in his dreams, didn’t allow him to forget.  No, instead he remembered, usually things he wouldn’t mind forgetting.  The day that the bomb tore apart their yellow sedan, taking with it the life of Iola Morton, Joe’s first girlfriend.  That memory haunted him even now, sometimes waking him with more frequency than it did Joe, if only because he felt he hadn’t done enough.  The bomb had been meant for Joe and for him.

       Frank shook his head and fought back the memory of flames and smoke racing up into the sky and of having to hold Joe back from trying to kill himself by running to the car.

       Frank turned from the window a few moments later when he heard Connor moving about on his bed.  Some mornings called for silence between the two roommates, to allow each of them a chance to wake up at their own pace.  Connor’s ability to sleep through just about anything often came in handy.  Frank could tap away on his laptop until the wee hours of the morning or early in the morning without any fear that Connor might wake up from it.  Frank chuckled when he thought of it.

       “What’s so funny?” Connor asked sleepily and Frank imagined him rubbing the sleep from his eyes.  Blue eyes.  Frank still remembered blue.  Then again, it had only been a month and a half since he was blinded.  Six weeks like this give or take a few days. 

       “You are,” Frank admitted. 

       “Gee, thanks,” Connor grumbled and Frank heard the bed give a massive creak as Connor presumably stood and walked across to their bathroom.  Frank chuckled again and turned back to his window. 

       Blue-green Audi.  Frank remembered blue-green.  Some called the color sapphire, others called it teal and others called it turquoise, depending on what color of blue-green people were talking about.  If the color was as rare as Frank hoped he should be able to locate it quickly in the police databases, if he could get Con to cooperate.

       Frank sighed and ran a hand through his long, dark hair and rubbed it over his eyes. 

       “We’d best get ready for church,” Connor called out from the bathroom.

       “I know,” Frank called back. 

       Frank wanted to go to church, often enjoyed it when they did go and listen to the sermons or go to Sunday School for bible study but this morning, he kept replaying the night before.  His date with Samantha, the pleasure of knowing that he had surprised her and made her happy, the fear for Vanessa and for Joe. If he was honest, he didn’t feel like going, yet he would, for the others.

       “We have to keep up with normal duties, right?” Connor asked.  “And we have to find that car that keeps trying mow you or us down.”

       Frank nodded and, using his cane, cautiously made his way back over to his closet.  He reached inside, starting at the left of his closet, until he found his blazer.  By the feel of the material it was the one he wanted, the dark blue one.  He felt until he found what should be his white shirt and his blue slacks.

       “Did I get them this time?” he asked Connor.

       “If by ‘it’ you mean blue blazer, white shirt, blue slacks, yes,” Connor said.  “I’ll dig some matching socks and shoes out for you while you’re showering.”

       Frank ducked into the shower and showered and forced himself to focus on what he was doing, rather than worrying about Vanessa and Joe.  For instance, if he didn’t focus, he sometimes tried to put conditioner on his hair first, rather than shampoo.  Taking a shower when you were unable to see what you were doing took concentration and trust in your roommate as well.  If they moved things around on you, for instance, you might never find them again.

But concentration was short come. Joe kept coming back to him and Frank knew that this had to be eating Joe up inside.  Joe considered it his duty to protect ‘his women’ as he jokingly called them on occasion.  Vanessa and Mandy were as close or closer to him than Frank was and Frank worried that Joe wouldn’t get over this.  And he didn’t even what to consider what would happen if Vanessa didn’t make it.

       It didn’t bear thinking about.

      

       Connor MacKenzie sighed as he squeezed Mandy’s hand and felt her inhale sharply next to him, her focus not on the pastor of their church but on a window located to one side of the church’s auditorium.  This church, unlike some of the older churches, did not sport anything in the way of a stained glass window, but rather plain but decorative windows that allowed sunshine to add additional light to the auditorium.  Decorations for the church ran along the outer aisles, hanging from the walls in the forms of very decorative banners.

       Mandy was staring out a window to one side, though Connor had no way of knowing what, exactly, she was looking at.  Her eyes were filled partially with tears, however and Connor knew without asking what she thought about.  Vanessa and Joe.  Joe had left early that morning, according to his roommate Eric, to go and see Vanessa.  None of them expected anything different from him. 

       Connor squeezed Mandy’s hand and she turned to him, a wan smile highlighting the features of her face.  She leaned her head over onto his shoulder again and he placed his arm about her as they waited for the end of the service.  When it came, only ten or so minutes later, they all filed out slowly, stopping long enough for the pastor to express his condolences and reminders that he would be praying for Vanessa.

       Connor squinted as they stepped out into the bright sunshine of the day and he held up his hand over his eyes to shield them for a moment while he fumbled for his sunglasses.  Succeeding in that, he turned back to see what was going on with his friends.   Samantha and Mandy were both digging in the monstrous bags that they dared to call purses and searched within for something; both eventually came out with their sunglass holders and put them on as well.  Connor smiled at that.

       “Let’s get over to the hospital,” Mandy said.  “I want to see how Vanessa is doing.”

       The others agreed and they all made their way to Connor’s Blazer. 

       Something whizzed by them a few moments later, causing Mandy to let out a startled screech.  When Connor looked up he could see an arrow embedded in the trunk of a nearby tree!

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).