by A. J. Downey
“Where are you taking her?” the officer who had waited with our stretcher asked.
“Trinity Gen.”
“Cool, we’ll bring the brother.”
“Thanks,” I grunted and checked her. She was sliding again already.
“Johnson, haul ass, we gotta get her another dose.”
“Can only go as fast as the elevator, man.”
“Claire, come on. Talk to me. Look at me.”
Her head lolled on her neck and she dragged her eyes open. She let go of her necklace and reached up to touch the side of my face. I captured the hand and brought it back down.
“I wished for you,” she murmured, and then she was out again. The Narcan was working; she was breathing, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Sometimes it took more than one dose. It was a miracle drug, for sure, but it had some limits.
We rattled onto the elevator and I stared at her necklace, a bullet, wire wrapped around its base and hanging from the black cord. My heart ached. Apparently, she had never forgot about me, but why didn’t she come find me?
We rode down in silence, I kept checking her vitals and she lay, her eyes closed, head faintly rolling back and forth. She was coming back, but she wasn’t quite here, and as soon as I passed her off through the doors at Trinity Gen, I was going to lose her all over again.
Not this time. You have a last name and you have connections.
I swallowed hard and loaded her into the back of our rig, climbing up behind her. Johnson, to his credit, didn’t say a word about it. Just closed us in and hopped in the driver’s seat, radioing ahead to the hospital while I went to work on Claire.
She would be okay. We had got to her in time. Still, it felt like the stakes were incredibly high for me. I sat in the back of the rig, calling out the info the hospital needed for Johnson to relay, while I started an IV and dosed her with another shot of Narcan to counteract whatever she’d taken.
I leaned in close and said, “Claire, mi alma, I need you to tell me what you took and how you took it.”
“Pills,” she mumbled, and I called it out to Johnson.
“Where’d you get them, hm?” I asked but there was no answer. She just lay there, eyes closed, but her breathing and heart-rate were good, oxygen saturation a little lower than I would like, but rising. I thought we’d got to her in time to stave off any permanent damage, which I was grateful for.
I whispered to her in Spanish, encouraging things. Johnson didn’t know the language, and I didn’t think Claire did either, but where she was, between life and death, she didn’t need to know the words, she just needed to feel safe, which I could provide if only for a fleeting moment. We pulled into the ambulance entrance outside Trinity Gen’s emergency room doors and I was about to lose her again.
Only for the moment. I reminded myself.
Before Johnson came around to the back, I lifted my bullet from around her head and stuffed it quickly into my pocket. I would give it back. It just wasn’t something I think they’d let her keep and I didn’t want her to lose it forever, because I would see her again. I had to. Fate wouldn’t have put each other in our respective paths during these moments in our lives if we weren’t meant to be.
I’d prayed and God had given me her when I needed her the most. I didn’t know if she prayed. I didn’t know if she was a believer, but I couldn’t chalk it up to coincidence that I had been the one to respond to this call. Out of every rig in Indigo City and the surrounding area, it was mine to come to her rescue.
“Angel, don’t go!” she cried, grabbing onto my hand where it gripped the rail of the gurney, as we passed her into the emergency room team’s care.
“Don’t worry, just get well, I’ll see you again soon,” I promised her and Georgia, one of the emergency room nurses, gave me a funny look. I gave her back a meaningful one and she nodded.
Anything to keep the patient calm, right?
I stood in the brightly-lit hub of Trinity Gen’s emergency room, and I had already started plotting and scheming as to how we would meet again. I was about to break some hardcore ethical rules.
“Okay, bitch. You know I can’t do that.” Pasquale glared at me from across the two-person booth at the 10-13.
I held out my hands, helpless and said, “I’m begging you, you’re the best ‘in’ I have at Trinity Gen. I just need you to pass her a note. I’m begging you, Pasquale. I just need to get her my number. She can do the rest. Please.”
“Oh, no. Not until you tell me why.”
I gritted my teeth and he sat taller, crossing his arms over his narrow chest and raising an eyebrow. He had on a blonde wig and was rocking a retro-fifties look, complete with breasts this time. He was drag-queen-fabulous and wasn’t about to give me an inch. I let out a breath that turned into a sound of defeat.
“Okay, but you have to swear not to tell Golden.”
He perked up at that and asked with genuine interest, “Since when have you started keeping secrets from your twin, Sugar?”
“Since if he found out about this, it’d probably destroy how he looks at me and what he thinks of me forever.”
Pasquale’s posture eased as he searched my face and finally his arms came down. He hung up his usual biting sarcasm and said, “Okay, talk. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
I gave a reluctant nod, and told him how Claire and I met. He stared at me, dumbfounded, and said, “Baby, that ain’t nothing to be ashamed about. We all go through hard times, believe me.”
“I know, but…” I trailed off and looked out into the restaurant, and sighed. I shook my head and refocused on Pasquale’s heavily-made up face. The only thing thicker than his make-up was his expression of concerned empathy.
“It was three years ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about her since. I don’t think a single day has gone by. I don’t want to lose her again and not try.”
He huffed out a breath and stared at me, the internal debate raging in his eyes and written in the unhappy lines of his face. This had the potential to be a huge HIPAA violation and it could cost him dearly. I wasn’t asking for a small thing here.
“Gimme what you got,” he demanded, snapping his fingers at me and holding out his hand, waving his fingers at me to hand it over impatiently.
I handed him a 6x9 manila envelope with a note and her necklace in it, and a piece of paper with her admit date and first and last name. He looked over the paper and squeezed the envelope with his long, perfectly-manicured nails.
“What’s in here?”
I told him.
“Motherfucker, and if she hangs herself with it?” he demanded.
“She won’t,” I said with dead certainty.
“She is in there for a suicide attempt.”
“She won’t, Pasquale.”
He sighed and dropped his shoulders.
“A deal. I’ll show her the necklace, then I’ll bring it back to you. She can get it from you herself when she gets out of there.”
“I wish you could get me onto the ward to see her,” I said grimly.
“Baby, ain’t even family allowed to see her. She is on a seventy-two-hour hold. Probably longer if she don’t open up and share her problems. She almost succeeded in offing herself, yeah?”
I nodded and said, “Got there in the nick of time.”
“Honey, I don’t doubt that. You are as your name implies. Look, I said I would do this thing for you and I will. I’ve done rotations on that ward and I can get in. I’ll bring whatever message I can out, but then you are on your own, and I don’t ever want to hear this spoken about ever.”
“You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours,” I said honestly.
“Oh, you can count on that, baby. You narc me out I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.”
He picked up his pink martini and downed it in one swallow and gave me a contemptuous look. “I cannot believe what I do for y’all, sometimes. It is unreal.”
“And appreciated,” I said leaning back in my seat. “You have no idea how much.”
/> He shook his head and said, “You fuck me, I better at least get the courtesy of a reach-around.” I nearly choked on my beer and he gave me a flat look and raised a slender hand calling, “Waitress, can we get some napkins please, honey?”
2
Claire…
I was sitting, curled on the bed in the single-occupancy room. I’d graduated today to real clothes. They’d given me a set of blue hospital scrubs and a one-size-fits-all grey sweatshirt with the hospital logo emblazoned on it. The sweatshirt was something like four sizes too big for me, but I liked it well enough. I put it on and pretended that it was Angel’s, which was ridiculous, I know. A fit of drug-induced wishful thinking. There was no way he was the medic that had brought me here.
I was emotionally exhausted and still felt like shit from my suicide attempt. I’d talked to the social worker, and the doctor on this floor, and they’d taken me back to my room. I hadn’t been locked in, but it still felt like a jail. The door was big, and grey-painted steel, set with those windows with the chicken wire in them in two panels, one high and one low. I could see the nurse’s station through it, the nurses in a bubble of more glass and chicken wire. The med carts were secured there.
I was embarrassed more than anything, now, and I just wanted to go home. Well, back to my brother’s. Home wasn’t exactly something I had.
The night I’d met Angel, over three years ago now, I had been offered a deal with the prestigious Night Circus. I had been a champion gymnast all through high school and college and had skipped out on a final run at the Olympics in order to join the Night Circus as one of their aerial tissu performers.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime, traveling all over the world, and as much as my soul had connected with Angel that night, I didn’t want to give up on my dream. I should have stayed. That dream had become a nightmare.
I looked up sharply from where I sat, curled at the head of my bed, when the door to my room opened. An orderly, no, a male nurse came in and closed the door behind himself and stood with his back to the windows.
“Christ on a cracker, I cannot believe I am doing this,” he said as he slipped a manila envelope out of his scrub pocket. “Hurry up, now, and give me back that necklace. I can’t leave it here with you.”
I frowned and took the envelope, tearing it open and upending it. My bullet necklace fell into my hand and my eyes widened. I hadn't thought I would ever see it again. I looked up sharply.
“Who are you?”
“A friend of a friend, sweetheart, and I have got to go.” He held out his hand like ‘Gimme’, his nails acrylic and with a nice burgundy sparkle polish on them. I bit my bottom lip, trying to decide. I handed the necklace back, and he said, “Don’t get caught with that,” stabbing one of those manicured nails at the envelope in my hands. “Hide it until I’m the only one at the desk.”
I nodded and he went back out, shoving my necklace into his pocket. I tucked the envelope behind my back, under the pillow. I had spotted a sheet of paper in it and I was dying to know what it said.
The nurses worked on a rotating schedule serving up medication to their patients while one always remained at the central desk. It was run efficiently, like a prison, and thoroughly creeped me out, being here. I couldn’t complain, though. I had legitimately given up and tried to take my own life. I belonged here, but at the same time I felt like I didn’t. Now it was just follow the plan set forth by the good doctors in white coats and get out.
The bald man with the nails looked up from his post, down his nose at me, and gave me an imperious nod. I pulled the envelope out from under my pillow and the single sheet of paper out of the envelope.
Mi Alma – Claire –
Please. Call me when you’re better. I’ve thought about you every day since that night and never gave up hope our paths would cross again. I’ve saved countless since that night, but you’re the only one that’s mattered.
–Angel
It had his phone number under his name and I swallowed hard and quickly hid the envelope and message. I met the nurse’s eyes through the wire cage in the thick glass of my hospital room door and gave a single nod. He cracked his first genuine smile, and gave a single nod back.
It had been Angel to save me.
I reeled slightly from the information and yearned to talk to him again. The only problem was, I was trapped in here while he was out there. I had to put my time here to good use, and so I just sat there to think.
3
Angel…
My phone rang and I set the beer I had in my hand down on the railing of my porch. I answered it without really looking, my eyes locked on the boat traffic passing on the Chesapeake as my houseboat bobbed at the end of its dock. I’d moved in at the beginning of the summer.
“Hello?”
“Hi, um, it’s me.”
My heart stopped.
“Claire?”
“Yeah. I memorized your number, asked to call my brother… I hope you don’t mind me calling like this.”
“No! No, mi alma, I don’t mind. Why would I mind?”
She sniffed, and her voice came hesitant and broken over the line as she whispered, “I’m so sorry…”
“Claire, don’t be. I’m the last person who can judge on that score.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and I knew it wasn’t about the ‘no judgement’.
“Baby, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been there. Thank you. You have no idea how many lives you saved that night. Shit, hundreds. Hundreds, all alive because of you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“God, everything got so fucked up, and just hopeless and there wasn’t anyone, you know?”
I wanted to tell her, ‘Yes, there was. I was there, I was always there…’ but it wouldn’t help anything. It wouldn’t serve any purpose except to pile on the guilt and make her feel worse about herself.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.
“Um, yeah, just, not now, not while I’m here. I’m trying to get out. Doing everything they say…”
“How long does it look like they’re going to keep you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A few more days, maybe? I’m not sure where I’m going to go. I don’t have a home and my brother… God, he’s so angry with me.”
“One thing at a time, mi alma. Work on you, work on getting better. You can’t take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself first,” I reminded her.
“Okay.” There was a long pause while she considered what I said and finally she said, “Angel?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad it was you.”
“I thank God it was me,” I whispered and she gave a slightly-broken laugh. I didn’t think her faith was intact, but that was okay. She didn’t need to believe in God. He believed in her and had done his miracle-working already. It was my turn, and I only hoped I could live up to the task He’d put before me.
He never gives you that which you cannot handle. It may not be easy, but you can do it. I reminded myself.
“I have to go, another patient wants to use the phone.”
I tried not to feel bitter about that; she’d only just called.
“Okay, call me again when you have a release date, and Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you again.”
“Promise?” she asked, and she sounded so fragile.
“I promise.”
“Okay, bye.”
“Bye for now,” I said, and it killed me.
I hung up and heaved out a huge sigh of both relief and trepidation at what lay ahead. I leaned heavily on my porch rail and stared out over the water and prayed.
I prayed fervently, as hard as I’d ever prayed before in my life.
4
Claire…
“I don’t even know who you are, anymore, Claire.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and felt that black hole of hopelessn
ess open up underneath me. Carter had never understood me. Of the two of us, he had always been the rock while I’d always been the free spirit. It’d put us at odds before, but now, I was afraid my rash decision had absolutely broken us.
He shook his head and heaved a giant sigh weighted with emotion. I felt despondent. I could see the silent rage in my brother’s eyes and it wasn’t good. The therapist gently interjected.
“Claire, what would you like to tell your brother?”
“I don’t know what I can tell him other than what I’ve already said. I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.” I crossed my arms over my chest as much to shut everyone out as to hold myself in. I felt gutted, like everything was spilling out onto the spotless linoleum floor. Carter just kept shaking his head.
“Carter, you seem angry.” The therapist gently prodded and my brother seethed.
“You’re damn right, I’m angry. What if Gracie had found you? What if it’d been your niece or my wife, Claire? Jesus, you have to stop making these selfish decisions!”
“Like what? What else, Carter?” I demanded, scowling. Okay, I’d fucked up this time, but I was genuinely confused now. What was he trying to say?
“Like leaving in the first place. You didn’t even ask. You literally showed up, said you quit the Olympic team and were joining the circus. The goddamn circus, Claire!” He threw up his hands and dropped them to his khaki-covered lap with a meaty ‘Thwack!’
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I needed your permission, Carter!”
“You can’t make a living at art, not a reliable one, at least. You need to get your head out of the clouds and –”
“I make over a hundred thousand dollars a year! Is that not enough for you?”
“And you live out of a fucking suitcase! You crash at my place any time you come through town and you tried to kill yourself, Claire!”
“Okay, I’m going to stop you,” the therapist finally interceded. “There’s a lot to unpack here…”
I stopped listening, my brother and I staring each other down. I’d never seen him like this, so angry with me. I mean, I’d pissed him off before, sure, but never had I seen him so enraged. It was scary, and I suddenly felt like I was on shaky ground. Panic began to take hold. Had I fucked this up past fixing? A sudden dark welling of emotion surged angrily to the surface. Angry at myself for not finishing the job, I closed my eyes and clung to Angel’s face, my niece Gracie’s, my brother’s, the other performers who, despite how hard life was at the Night Circus, had become my family.
