The Three by Sarah Lotz Read Free Book Online Page B

like a miracle. They were prepping him for a CAT scan, and I knew I only had a few minutes.
    The doctors hovering around his bed weren’t happy to see me, and Pankowski stuck to my side as I approached his bed. He looked really fragile, specially with all those cuts on his upper arms and face, and sure, I felt bad about questioning him so soon after what he’d been through.
    ‘Hiya, Bobby,’ I said. ‘My name is Ace. I’m an investigator.’
    He didn’t move a muscle. Pankowski’s phone beeped and she stepped back.
    ‘I sure am glad to see you’re okay, Bobby,’ I went on. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
    His eyes flipped open, looked straight into mine. They were empty. I couldn’t tell if he was even hearing me.
    ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Good to see you’re awake.’
    He seemed to look right through me. Then… and listen, Elspeth, this is going to sound as hokey as hell, but they started to swim, like he was about to cry, only… Jesus… this is hard… they weren’t filling with tears but with blood.
    I guess I musta cried out, because next thing I know Pankowski’s at my elbow and the staff are buzzing round the boy like hornets at a picnic.
    And I said: ‘What’s wrong with his eyes?’
    Pankowski looked at me as if I’d just sprouted another head.
    I looked back at Bobby, stared right into his eyes, and they were clear–cornflower blue, not a trace of blood. Not a drop.

From chapter two of
Guarding JESS: My Life With One of The Three
by Paul Craddock (co-written with Mandi Solomon).
    I’m often asked, ‘Paul, why did you take on the full care of Jess? After all, you’re a successful actor, an
artiste,
a single man with an erratic schedule, are you really cut out to be a parent?’ The simple answer is this: just after the twins were born, Shelly and Stephen sat me down and asked me to be the twins’ legal guardian if anything should happen to them. They’d thought long and hard about it–Shelly especially. Their close friends all had young fam ilies of their own, so wouldn’t be able to give the girls the attention they deserved, and Shelly’s family wasn’t an option (for reasons I’ll go into later). Besides, even when they were tots, Shelly said she could tell the girls doted on me. ‘That’s all Polly and Jess need, Paul,’ she’d say. ‘Love. And you’ve got buckets to spare.’
    Stephen and Shelly knew all about my past of course. I’d gone off the rails a bit in my mid-twenties after a severe professional disappointment. I was in the middle of filming the pilot for
Bedside Manner
, which was being dubbed as the UK’s next hot hospital drama, when I got the news they were cancelling the series. I’d won the part of the main character, Dr Malakai Bennett, a brilliant surgeon with Asperger’s syndrome, a morphine addiction and a tendency towards paranoia, and the cancellation hit me hard. I’d done months of research for the role, really immersed myself in it, and I suppose part of the problem was that I’d internalised the character too much. Like so many artists before me, I turned to alcohol and other substances to blunt the pain. These factors mixed with the stress of an uncertain future caused an acute depression and what I suppose one would call a series of mild paranoid delusions.
    But I’d dealt with those particular demons years before the girls were even a twinkle in Stephen’s eye, so I can honestly say they really did think I was the best choice. Shelly insisted we make itlegal, so off we popped to a solicitor and that was that. Of course, when you’re asked to do something like this, you never think it’s actually going to happen.
    But I’m getting ahead of myself.
    After I left that horrible room where we’d been funnelled by the inept Go!Go! staff, I spent the next half-hour in that airport pub just staring up at the screen as Sky’s rolling banner repeated the terrible news over and over again. And then came the