The Long Haul Home

By Danie Girl

Ali Rea has had many adventures as a lady truck driver, but the nightmare she faces on this trip will change her and her family's lives forever. After her husband has a serious accident at work, it falls to Ali to carry the family's financial burden. So she leaves them and continues working as an over-the-road driver. But a chance encounter with another driver will mark the beginning of her long haul home. Thomas Malloy has desired Ali since he first saw her and devises a plan to make her his own. Building a cage for her in his truck, he carries this fantasy out, taking her from the life she knew and thrusting her into a terrifying year of captivity and his version of school. Will she see her family again? Or will he keep her as his own?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640827318

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The Long Haul Home

Danie Girl

Copyright © 2018 Danie Girl

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2018

ISBN 978-1-64082-730-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64082-731-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Part 1

The Accident

Chapter 1

It was a cold January morning—the tenth of the month, to be exact—and the fog lay low over the road as she drove to her destination. It was quiet at this time of the morning. All the people from the bars were already home, tucked in their warm beds. This was where she wanted to be at that moment. But she had a job to do. As the saying goes, the mail waits for no man, or woman, in this case.

The phone rang on her hip. As she grabbed it, she thought, It’s Mike calling from work to say, Hi, hon. I love ya! How’s work tonight? as he always did about this time every morning. Mike and Ali both worked the graveyard shift, and they often talked through the night.

But this was the night that would change their lives forever.

Is this Ali Rea? the officer asked when Ali picked up the phone.

Fear coursed through her, chilling her to the bone. What? Who is this?

There’s been an accident, he said.

Wait, what are you saying? said Ali.

I am Officer Bradford with the Oregon State Police. There has been an accident at your husband’s work. Mike Rea is his name, correct?

Ali said yes, that that was his name.

Your husband has been taken to the hospital.

What happened to him, Officer? was all she could say.

Well, it seems he was at work and had a very serious fall. We believe he fell about thirteen feet off a truck he had been loading. That’s really all I can tell you except that he has been taken to OHSU. It’s in Portland. Do you know where the hospital is?

Yes, I know where it is. Thank you. I will get there as fast as I can.

She hung up the phone and immediately called her boss and told him the news. He told her to take the truck to the yard and that someone would finish her run and he would pray for Mike. She was scared, but she knew she couldn’t just stop since she was driving an eighteen-wheeler, so she continued on.

As she pressed on, she said a little prayer. Please, God, don’t let Mike be hurt too bad. I pray that you are there with him in his time of need and that you will hold him steady as he waits for me to get there. Please, Lord, help him through his pain and this struggle to come home to me and our children. Amen.

Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital, or OHSU, is perched precariously high atop the hill, overlooking the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. The hill is called Pill Hill by the locals. To get to OHSU, there is a winding two-lane road that one will have to carefully maneuver up through a forested hillside. Twenty-mile-an-hour corners that are so blind the road crew positioned giant spot mirrors on trees so that when one is climbing the hill, he or she can see around the corner and know if a car or bus is coming down; that way, one can hug the mountain a little tighter if it’s too scary.

She knew he would be okay; he was a tough guy. Mike was six four and weighed in at 215 pounds. He had the most beautiful brown eyes that she had ever seen—she sometimes thought he could see into her soul. He had dark-brown hair cut short because he was a National Guardsman. He had a world-weary appearance to his face, even though he had only been to a few places outside the Pacific Northwest. He was well-built from years of being a warehouseman. Then he moved on to being a truck driver. Like Ali, he loved driving; the freedom of not having someone standing over his shoulder was liberating to him. Now the job he did kept him in the warehouse as a graveyard supervisor and truck loader. Mike had told Ali he really liked not having to get in and out of the truck all the time, because he was notoriously catching a cold.

Ali thought to herself, I wonder what kind of fall Mike had for the police to call me. Why didn’t Mike just call? Unless he had been knocked unconscious. I will have to wait and find out when I get to the hospital. He probably just got a great big goose egg on his forehead and will whine about it for days, if not weeks. And then she chuckled to herself. She turned the truck around and headed to the yard, where her car was waiting.

It was dark and raining as she drove down the highway, which now modeled how she was feeling. The wipers were sweeping the rain off the window, the rhythm that they played soothing her a little. The sky was lit by a half-moon, with clouds lazily moving across the light, causing it to seem like a movie playing in front of her as she watched from the sidelines. As if she were reading a good book and getting so involved that it seemed like she were part of the story.

She listened as the big tires on her truck cut through the water puddles in the ruts of the road. It all seemed so surreal. Ali flashed back to when she met Mike, when she was just fourteen and babysitting for her brother Carl and his girlfriend, Brook. Mike, Carl, and Brook were going out for dinner and had asked if Ali could watch Carl and Brook’s daughter, Melanie. Mike came to the door as Ali watched him through the window. Ali thought to herself, I am going to marry that man.

She came back to herself when she heard a horn next to her. It seemed she had drifted a little too far to the left and scared a car when she ran over a few of the white lines. Okay, focus, she told herself as she pulled into the lane that would take her off the highway and down the ramp to her yard. Someone would be waiting there to take her truck. She decided then that she would just leave her lunch and all but her purse in the truck; picking it up later would be better than taking the time now.

When she pulled in, she was surprised to see it was a friend of hers, Jerry Daily. As she set the brakes on the truck, she unlatched her seat belt, and Jerry walked up. I hope he will be okay. Don’t worry about your stuff. It will be fine. I might eat your lunch, though, he joked.

Jerry always liked the cookies and cakes she would sometimes bring to work.

She chuckled a little at that and told him she had made it just for him. He smiled a sad smile as Ali hugged him. Then she ran through the mud and puddles to her mom’s car. It was as slick as the slush on a road when it had warmed up and was beginning a slow melt. She almost lost her balance as she slid to a stop beside the driver’s side door of the little green Escort. Ali called the car the Little Green Gremlin, but its bark was worse than its bite.

She put the car in gear and headed out. She was only minutes away from the hospital, and as she drove, she saw the beauty of the city almost anew. The colors of a rainbow seemed to unfold before her eyes. The leaves were all gone on the leaf-bearing trees, but the evergreens were glorious in all the different shades of green.

As Ali pulled up to the hospital, she got a bad feeling about being there. She looked at the huge building and felt a foreboding that she just couldn’t place. She never liked hospitals, even though her grandmother had worked in one as a housekeeper for as long as she could remember. Jenna used to take Ali to visit her grandmother at the hospital all through her growing up years. Ali knew it very well but only liked going there because she got to visit her grandmother and see what she did at her job. Even when both of her grandparents fell ill and then subsequently died in Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin, Oregon, she didn’t like having to go see them there like that. This hospital wasn’t any different.

Ali parked the car in the parking garage across the emergency department and fought off the urge to run in. She had to stay strong, no matter how big or small Mike’s injury was. So she walked tall and strong like Mike would if he were the one now coming to see her there. She glanced down the walkway and noticed a man in a cowboy hat and boots standing there, watching her and smoking a cigarette. Her hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she got a cold shiver that ran down her back. Who is that? she thought to herself. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. She shook it off and continued down the walkway.

Ali walked in through the tall ornately designed glass doors that slid open before her. She was overwhelmed by that familiar smell of cleaners and God and Grandma only knew what else. She looked around as she slowly walked forward. There were a few people in the waiting room, and she seemed to be the most interesting thing, now that all eyes were trained on her. The floor was a black-and-white tile in the shape of diamonds. The walls were a starch white with a few decorative pictures. The waiting room had rows of chairs and a few couches. There were a few pots with faux plants and grasses in them. Ali guessed that the staff thought the plants added a little color to an otherwise-dull area.

Ali walked up to the desk and saw a very sharp-looking woman who appeared to be in her mid to late forties, who was on the phone. The woman was wearing a deep-blue jacket over a pale-pink blouse. A hospital ID hung from a little chain clipped onto her collar said her name was Melinda Brooks. She was also wearing a pair of glasses perched high on her nose that looked like the kind Ali saw in the pictures of her mother when her mom was a kid. Ali waited for a few minutes, but when it became clear the woman was on a personal call, what with all her Yes, I love you toos and I can’t wait to see you either, Ali cleared her throat and got a rather-angry look from the woman, who, for a minute, looked as though she wanted to throttle Ali for the simple crime of being there.

Finally, the woman said sharply, Yes, can I help you? as she hung up the phone.

Ali said that her husband had been brought to the hospital and she would like to see him. The woman told Ali she would have to wait and fill out the paperwork first while the doctors worked on her husband. Ali said irritably, I would just like to know how bad it is. Can you call back for me?

Fine. What was his name? Melinda said in exasperation.

His name is Mike, Mike Rea, Ali said.

Melinda was still a little irritated that this woman had interrupted her call. For goodness’ sake, it’s not every day you get invited to dinner by only the most handsome doctor in the hospital! she thought. But then again, it gives me another reason to talk to him, even if it’s to find out information for this annoying woman.

When Dr. Peter Jackson heard the phone ring, he stopped, something he wouldn’t have normally done, but he made the split-second decision. Not seeing anyone else to answer it, he picked it up. Melinda asked if there was any news on the fall injury out of Tualatin, a Mr. Rea.

Peter looked silently at the phone and said, He is just arriving. I was on my way out to meet him when the phone rang. She told him there was a woman in the waiting room being annoying about finding out how he was. Peter said, Well, she must have been close to the hospital to beat the ambulance, which is coming in code blue.

Code blue was lights and sirens, running fast, and it meant things were bad.

Melinda changed her attitude when she realized just how bad this was. She called Ali to come over to the desk. Ali put down the National Geographic magazine she had just started to read and walked up to the desk. When Ali saw the look on Melinda’s face, she became very hesitant, her blood running cold. Melinda asked her in a voice filled with concern if there was anyone to call. Ali froze. She watched the television show ER, so she knew it was not going to be good. Her mind went blank, and all she could say was his parents were out of town and would take a while to come back and that he had three brothers and their own children.

Melinda said, Then we need to call them now.

What Ali didn’t know was that Dr. Jackson had told Melinda that it didn’t look good,