by Melissa Yi
God damn it, Kevin.
"What was that?"
Did I say it aloud? I was pretty sure not, but even Chris was staring at me now. I pushed my martini out of arm's reach, across the smooth oak table, and said, "I can't talk to the press."
"Sure you can. You're doing a fine job of it already."
"Jonathan, shouldn't this go to your Ottawa colleagues? You're horning in on their turf." The words spun out of my mouth. My head felt light and airy. Definitely a welcome change from previous paranoia, but still rather disconcerting.
Mitch wandered back with a small plate of salsa, nacho chips and a menu, which he slid in front of Summer.
Chris gulped from his bottle of Keith's Pale Ale while staring at his phone. I could not imagine getting jiggy with someone like that. His head would always be somewhere orbiting the planet.
I told Jonathan Wexler, "Sorry." Not sorry. I hung up.
When the phone rang again immediately, I pressed Decline. If he kept calling, I'd have to block him. It was easier than trying to rig up a new cell phone number before Christmas. And I still wanted Tucker and Ryan to get a hold of me ASAP.
"You're a popular girl," said Mitch, popping a nacho in his mouth.
"Not really." Because I'd touched my phone, I'd have to wash my hands before I ate any nachos, or figure out how to drink without using my hands. That might be kind of fun.
Summer pretended to pout. "Sure you are. It's hard to get attention around you."
I couldn't help glancing at the relatively gigantic special attractions under her low-cut sapphire shirt, and she laughed.
I blushed. Now even the females were teasing me. But I felt bulletproof. No wonder Denis had cautioned me about falling into drugs and alcohol. I'd told my counsellor, "Dude, I don't even drink coffee, unless it's iced Vietnamese coffee, and even then, it's only been twice."
Shots were better than Vietnamese coffee. Way better.
My phone buzzed again. I smiled at Ryan's name and then read his message.
Where are you?
I picked up my phone and crowed, "The last time this happened, I found a dead body!"
Mitch leaned over the table toward me. Too close, but instead of withdrawing, I patted his hair. The curly ends were soft, and he smelled like beer, which is normally gross, but I didn't lean away. He said, "Who's that?"
"Ryan."
"Your boyfriend?"
I nodded and wondered if I should explain about Tucker. Wonder-Tucker. Tucker, my love. I wanted to break into a mournful song, like a beagle howling at the moon.
Did Roxy howl? I started to text back, I'm here. I was trying to be responsible and quickly answer the people I loved. Unlike Tucker.
Mitch said, "What about the guy who was in the hostage-taking with you? His name wasn't Ryan."
Damn, these guys were smart. Too smart. I hiccupped and covered my mouth. "Tucker. He's my boyfriend, too."
"You have two boyfriends?" Summer leaned in my face. Her skin was so pale. I reached up to pat her cheek with my non-phone hand and said, "You're pretty."
"What, you want a girlfriend, too?" said Mitch.
"No." I tried to speak with dignity. "I can appreciate beauty without wanting to hit it." Oh, another violent image. Damn. Well, I was drunk. I didn't have to censor myself.
"I dunno," said Mitch, grinning at me.
"I do. But you are pretty," I assured Summer. I managed not to look at her breasts. It must be even harder for straight men to resist the lure. I pressed send on my text. "Whoosh," I said fondly, listening to the noise of it reaching its target, before I remembered to add, Petra. I gave up on the apostrophe. Too much work.
"Where's Tucker?" Mitch wanted to know.
"In Montreal."
"Why isn't he here with you?"
I could feel my face stiffening. Congealing. The alcohol couldn't protect me from this. "He needs more surgery."
"Why?"
I didn't answer.
Summer touched my arm. It felt like a warm weight, and I stared at her pale skin against the red fabric shirt. "What happened to him?"
My face flushed. I said, "You can probably look it up in the news. The Montreal papers covered it pretty thoroughly."
"I want to hear you say it," she said, dipping her head, and for a second I understood what it must be like to be a guy, when a pretty girl asks you to do something, and you're like, Dooooh, okay.
"The first shot hit him in the chest. Got his right lung. It collapsed, and the lung cavity started filling up with blood. A hemothorax and a pneumothorax." My hands clenched. I'd wanted to jam a chest tube in him, but I hadn't had the tube, God damn it. I had the knowledge and the capability but no fucking chest tube, and the officers had yanked me back from trying to install one with my bare hands.
"The second shot got him—" I took a deep breath and forced myself to continue. "—in the left lower quadrant of his abdomen. It hit his small bowel and nicked his sigmoid colon. The circumference of the wounds weren't big—they did a primary repair—" Even drunk, I could tell that they weren't following me, so I said, "They stitched the holes in his colon back together. I was so happy. He's young. He's only 27. Healthy guy. It should've healed together perfectly. He said he was going to go home and move in with me, since we were both on sick leave." My eyes filled for a second, but I blinked that back and made my voice hard. "But I knew something was wrong on post-op day five. He was nauseous, and then he sent me out of the room because he started puking. We got a scan, and it turned out his sigmoid was leaking. They tried to repair it, but he ended up having a sigmoid colostomy. It's temporary, until he heals up, but … "
They were all silent for a moment. Well, Chris was always silent, but he put down his phone.
Mitch dropped his chip without eating it.
Chris spoke for the first time since ordering his beer. "What does that mean?"
"It means his bowels were shot up and they sewed them back together, but it got infected, and right now, he has a bag that collects his stool hanging outside his body." I grabbed my martini glass and emptied it. Fuck my iPhone hands. This called for serious drinking.
Summer tried to hug me. I held myself rigid, counting the seconds until she pulled away. She smelled like orangey perfume (I know that's not a real smell, but it reminded me of spray tans and Snooki, if you know what I mean) and a little bit of sweat, which wasn't terrible, but wasn't what I wanted, either.
Tucker's story was in the newspapers and radio and TV, at least in Montreal. He was a hero, and that meant we were everybody's business now. It wasn't a secret. I just didn't like to talk about it, or think about it. Neither did he. We pretended that nothing had changed, except now we were together.
"It's not the end of the world," I said. That was what we kept telling ourselves. But it did suck. No two ways about it. No one wants a bag of shit affixed to their bellies. The background music, still on a Tragically Hip kick, softened to "Ahead By a Century."
"They're trying to hook him back up again, but he went septic, he was on antibiotics for weeks—" I didn't want to think about it. It made me want to carve into the table with my nails, until my blood marked the wood. "They don't dare discharge him on home care now. He's stuck in the hospital."
This is what bites about being a hero. Everyone likes the pretty part, the defeat-the-monsters-and-get-the-girl part. But no one wants to end up with one lung collapsed and bleeding and a left sigmoidectomy before they hit 30. A guy with Crohn's Disease who'd gotten an ileostomy at age 21 suggested that Tucker might look at message boards for veterans, not to be an imposter, but to find other people who'd been injured at a young age, because on Facebook, everyone seemed to dance around him, saying, "You're so awesome! We value your sacrifice!" but in real life, they're like, "Ew. A colostomy."
Not that it stopped Tucker. Not really. My entire body heated up, remembering what we'd managed to get up to.
"That blows," said Mitch. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
I
shook my head. "He's doing better. Now he's waiting for the leak to stop so that they can reattach him. I was going to stay with him, but … " I borrowed Summer's drink, swirling the glass to make sure I got a good amount of alcohol with each sip. "It was time to start our next rotation. There was no way he could work, physically, but he really wanted me to go. He said I was mouldering and I had to get out."
Summer raised one well-groomed eyebrow.
The alcohol burned my tongue and made my eyes sting. "At first, I thought we could do a research block. We'd write a paper on trauma, or hospital security, you know? We could do it together. No one would stop us. We'd get a pass. But he'd, like, fall asleep over the articles, or he was a bit foggy on what he'd read the day before, and all of a sudden, he was like, 'Nope. Look. I'll keep going with this, and you go do a formal research block. I've got contacts. I'll set you up.'" It was terrible, seeing him so vulnerable. I'd taken it for granted that Tucker was always quick on the uptake, with a joke per second, but post-op and post-fistula and post-op again, he was neither.
"Yeah, I get it," said Mitch. He looked more serious than I'd ever seen him, almost noble in the dim light of the bar. "No one wants to be seen like that."
Summer turned on him. "There's nothing to be ashamed of. He saved her life!"
Chris glanced down. I realized my nails were cutting into my palms, so I slowly unclenched my fists while Mitch said, "That makes it worse. He went from hero to gimp. I'd send my girl away too. Better for her to come back and find me whole."
"He is whole," I said, and when they all looked at me, I realized that my teeth were locked together. "I'll take any part of him I can get. But he won't let me in right now." He said, I love you, Hope, but I don't want you to see me like this. Get out of here. I'll tell you when I can see you again.
I was so pissed off, I left him like that.
And when he called me after we found Lawrence's body, when he let me know he was watching me, but not letting me close, I wanted to make him suffer.
So his payback was ignoring me for the past 21 hours. Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when we cannot give reprieve.
Summer squeezed my hand. "I feel so bad about this. Seriously, how can we help?"
I looked at them each in turn. Chris met my gaze, steady and straight. I couldn't read anything more in his dark eyes, but I didn't get a malignant feeling from them.
Mitch leaned back, holding the edge of the table. After a second, he nodded at me.
Summer had tears in her eyes and wouldn't let go of my hand.
I said, "Well, I know it's sick, and it has nothing to do with Tucker, but I still want to know how Lawrence died. Will you help me?"
And one by one, they nodded.
Chapter 15
"Is there some way we can get the security footage?" I asked the Scoobies, a.k.a. Summer, Mitch, and Chris. I know "Scoobies" is a weird name, but that's what Tucker called anyone who helped me with my cases, named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer's cohorts. And Scoobies seemed kinder than lab rats, which is what my med school friend Ginger affectionately nicknamed her lab colleagues
Summer and Chris shook their heads.
Mitch said, "Well, maybe. I know one of the security guys. We're always saying we should go out for a beer."
Summer wrinkled her nose. "That doesn't mean he'll let you look at the footage. The police will want to see it, right?"
Mitch nodded. "As long as we sweeten the deal for him, he might be willing to play it for us like a movie. Hell, he could tell his boss he wants to review it, and that way he gets paid to watch it, and I'll bring the beer."
He reminded me a bit of Tucker in that he knew everyone, regardless of status, and he was willing to bend the rules. It worked to my advantage for now, but I'd have to keep an eye on him.
"It'll help if you come, though," he said to Summer. She pulled a face. "No."
"What? He's a nice guy."
"You mean the one who's always sucking on his cheeks? No. No way."
"Harold's a nice guy."
"Harold should stick to other sixty-year-olds."
"I'll go," I found myself saying. If Harold liked Asian girls, I could use that to my advantage. And Mitch would be there. It wasn't like I'd be stuck with a nasty old letch by myself.
"We'll all go," said Mitch. "Summer's being a pain in the ass."
She threw him a filthy look. "Just because he's not staring at your ass."
"Maybe he is." Mitch stood up, arms in the air, and did a shimmy.
"Stop!" She shoved his butt away.
Chris drank his beer and ignored both of them.
Okay, they were a bit nuts. But so nice. (The obligatory Canadian compliment.) I found it tough to believe that they'd kill anyone, and I needed to trust people. "All right. Let's meet Harold. The sooner the better, because the police will be coming for the tapes, if they haven't already."
"I'm on it." Mitch picked up his phone.
Summer stared at him. "You text Harold? I don't believe it."
"Naw. I'm going to call security and see if he's working. He does a lot of evenings. He's always complaining about it." Within minutes, he was winking at us. "Hey, Harold, it's your buddy, Mitch."
I glanced at my still-silent phone. I wanted to call Tucker, but not while all this was going down.
"Not much. Hey, do you think a few of us could come visit you tomorrow morning? See how the other half lives?" After a few minutes, Mitch said, "Yeah, she's coming. She wouldn't miss it."
Summer stuck her tongue out at him.
"How about 10 a.m.? How's that sound?" He glanced around the table, and we all nodded. I wanted to be in the lab enough that Tom thought I was a hard worker, especially in the first few days, but this was too good to miss.
Summer was about to buy a round of shots when I felt laser eyes land between my shoulder blades. I stopped laughing and spun in my chair.
Ryan.
Even from across the room, I felt a shock wave radiate up my chest.
My face flushed, studying him. Again. Always.
He was letting his hair grow out. Not a lot, but enough that it touched his collar in the back, and it wasn't as spiky on top. His eyes were still the same: clear sclera, brown irises almost as black as his pupils. Straight nose, medium brown skin, a pointed chin. And lips that looked as good as they felt. Somehow, it added up to sheer excellence.
Ryan cut past three girls trying to line dance. He swept around a server with a full tray of drinks. He moved toward me like a shark. Silent. Gorgeous. And hazardous to my health, given his set jaw, tight shoulders, and those dark eyes that electrified me from twenty feet away.
"Who's that?" Summer finger-combed her hair, her chest thrusting forward. Then she glanced from me to him and back again and said, "Is he yours?"
"Ryan is mine," I said, unable to keep the pride out of my voice, especially when he arrived and slid both hands on my shoulders.
"Hi, Ryan. These are my friends, Summer, Mitch, and Chris."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Ryan," he said, but when Summer asked him what he was drinking, he shook his head. "I'm driving. And so are you," he added, when I opened my mouth.
"You could drive me," I said, raising my eyebrows to make the double entendre clear.
"I've got Roxy in the back."
"That never stopped you before," I murmured in his ear, kissing his cheek for good measure.
He half-smiled, but every time I angled for a drink, he blocked me. Like cock blocking, only for alcohol, to the point that my pleasant haze evaporated in less than half an hour. I sighed, zipped up my coat, and bid my new friends adieu.
Ryan pushed the door closed on Nickelback's "Rock Star" while we stood in the wind at the foot of the stairs and I fumbled for my gloves. My left pocket zipper was stuck. I sighed.
"Why are you drinking, Hope?" Ryan said.
I waved at my new friends through the glass in the door. Summer twinkled her fingers in response. Mitch raised his beer stein at us ironical
ly.
The cool air on my cheeks felt good, even though I was almost sober now. I got my gloves on and twinkled my fingers at him, like Summer. "They're going to help me figure out who killed Lawrence."
Ryan stopped tugging me up the steps to Elgin Street. "You don't even know them."
"Yeah, but they knew their colleague. It was Dr. Lawrence Acayo, who worked in the next lab over. Mitch is friends with a security guard. We might be able to take a look at the card swipes and video tape and see who was in and out of both labs yesterday."
Ryan lowered his voice, but it still echoed in the stairwell. "Okay. And how is drinking going to help you figure out how Dr. Acayo died?"
I shrugged. "Um, bonding?"
He didn't smile back. "Weren't you the one who told me that 75 percent of people with PTSD can end up as alcoholics?"
I sighed. I could hardly remember the study myself. "Only the ones who were abused or had violent trauma—"
"Did you have violent trauma?"
"I guess so." My buzz officially withered and died. Good-bye, martinis. Farewell, shots. I can't have a relationship with you because I like you too much.
"Babe." Ryan swept my bangs out of my eyes so he could see me. "You scared me. I don't want anything to happen to you."
I sighed. "Fine. I'll hold off on EtOH until I'm not a human wrecking ball. Happy now?"
He shook his head. "I'm not happy until you're okay. But when the coroner drags us in for questioning—"
"Us?" I'd texted him about my call. He'd sent back sympathy, not mentioning any summons.
"The secretary called me afterward. I was going to tell you in person. They want to see me tomorrow. It's cutting into my work, Hope."
I twisted my hands, which felt very cold. The staircase seemed to capture the wind, whipping it into my eyes and creating turbulence out of my hair.
I knew his work was important. He'd tried to explain the software things he did, and he'd even showed me some hacker tricks like using Metasploit, but all I really knew was that he loved his work.
Ryan took my hands in his, sandwiching them between his warm palms. He couldn't stand to see me cold. We looked into each other's eyes. "What's going on with you, Hope?"
