Karma

Blaine stood anxiously, watching the doctors through the glass doors as the they did their best to resuscitate both women who lay on the ER beds side by side.

A team of doctors surrounded Ariel, almost blocking his view; another team of doctors surrounded the minister’s wife, completely blocking his view.

His head swam with questions. 

So this had not been an ambush after all. Ariel had really been in danger, dying, and she had called him? 

Why him, her enemy?

He paused. 

Who else could she have called though besides him and Kan? Ruby had suddenly disappeared, and the woman was not in contact with her father.

His heart suddenly squeezed in sympathy for her. But he turned, and began to walk away quickly. 

He would not let himself be fooled again. The only connection between him and her was his child. She had betrayed him once, worse, she had betrayed his grandfather too. The man who had loved and trusted her more than his own family.

He saw an old man hurrying past him towards the E. R and then stop outside the glass door. 

Blaine turned, halting to watch him.

The man was looking into the E. R anxiously, and Blaine wondered whether he worked for the Sullivan’s or the Inuoes.

He frowned, the man looked too invested though. His hands were shaking as he continued staring into the room, and his eyes were as red as coals.

“Who are you?” Blaine could not help asking. 

The man turned to him, his lips trembling as he said,

“That’s my girl. Are you the man who saved her? They said a man saved her.”

“Your girl?” He frowned, suddenly feeling disgusted. 

This man too? What the hell did Ariel have with old men? She was just twenty-three now, and he and her Sullivan husband were near forty.

Now this.. This man who looked like he was close to the grave. 

The man hurried towards him, and clutched his hand. “Thank you.” He bowed. “Thank you for your kindness.”

His guards began to crowd him, ready to push the man off, but Blaine raised his hand. “I guess there is no need for me to be here anymore.” He said, cold disgust twisting his insides. “You can take care of your girlfriend.”

The man recoiled. “That is my child in there. Ariel is my daughter.” he said, and Blaine’s world stood still.

This was the man who knocked Ruby up all those years and dipped? Leaving him, Blaine, to care for her and her baby like a fool, convinced that she had been his child. 

This was the man who had Ruby’s heart, so she could not really love anyone else.

Karma was such a goddess. It pleased him to see the man looking like this. It pleased him so much to see the man looking ancient and haggard, although they were in the same age group.

“You punk.” He gripped the man’s shirt and punched him, his punch packing all the twenty-three years of humiliation and anger he had had to carry around.

Everyone was shocked at the sudden violence. Even his own guards.

The man fell flat on the floor, holding his mouth and groaning in the pain. 

“Who the hell are you to treat anyone like this?” The man was staring at him with shocked and hurt eyes. “What have I ever done to you?”

“I am Blaine Tucker.” He thundered, looking at the wretched thing of a man on the floor. 

He saw the light of realization dawn in the man’s eyes as the words registered.

The old man stood up, and to Blaine's utter surprise, the man gripped his collar and punched him back. 

Pain exploded on the soft inside of his cheek, blinding him. He turned in disbelief to look at the man who was heaving from unpacified anger.

He looked like he would have loved to punch Blaine some more still. 

Blaine had to hurriedly bark at his guards to stand down.

“I have always said I would kill the man who did that to my daughter the day I saw him.” The old man shook his fist at him. 

Blaine was aware everyone was watching now. He had no doubt that someone might just be recording this to upload it on the internet.

Same thing that happened when Ruby came to confront him in the office for getting Ariel pregnant.

“How could you?” Her father shouted now. As livid as her mother had been that day, many months ago. “Could you not just stick to women your age? She was just a girl. She came here to work.”

The man broke down there in tears, painful tears that shook his body and made his voice hoarse.

Blaine stood frozen watching the whole scene, unable to move.

As frozen as he had been when his ex-girlfriend stormed into his office and said the girl he slept with months before, who was now pregnant for him, was her daughter.

“How could you get her pregnant and then abandon her?”

“I never abandoned her.” He yelled finally, and the hallway went still. 

He knew the hospital would have kicked them out already if they were ordinary people. “I agreed to marry her before she ran off overnight for another rich man.”

His heart was squeezing even as he thought about it. 

That little social climber. 

She dared to run away with his son in her belly, and marry his worst enemy. The same family that has been their enemies for three generations.

“And you are one to talk?” He closed the distance between himself and her father. “You abandoned Ruby, leaving me to almost raise the child that was never mine, like the little fool you thought I was.”

“Is this your revenge then?” Ariel’s father flamed. “Why not face me and Ruby? Ariel was the baby, she had nothing to do with it.”

“What the hell are you on about?” Blaine fired back, almost blind with anger now. “You all ruined my life. You partly succeeded the first time, and then trained your brat to come finish the job.”

Ariel’s father closed in and punched him. “You will speak of my child with respect.”

Maddened with rage, Blaine raised his fist for a knockout punch, but someone held his hand from behind. 

He turned around like an enraged bull, only to see Kan standing there.

“Touch my father-in-law one more time and that will be the last time you have hands.”