Toxic

by Nicole Blanchard

  “Dinner’s ready,” I say calmly and plate the steak, mashed potatoes, and organic green beans. Habit is the only thing that kept me from charring the meat and overcooking the beans.

  I shouldn’t have bothered because Vic doesn’t spare the food a second glance.

  “You’re late again,” he says, his voice deceptively calm.

  “There was a lock down in one of the cell blocks.” I try to keep my own response just as calm and matter-of-fact, so he won’t hear the lie in my voice.

  “Is that so?” But it isn’t a question.

  Tension rises, and my mind goes to the steps I’ll need to clean up dinner. First, I’ll have to gather the dirty dishes and put away any leftovers.

  “Yeah, there was another fight today, I think. We were pretty swamped.”

  I’ll rinse the dishes in the sink and leave the worst of the lot to soak while I pre-wash and load the rest in the dishwasher. Once that’s finished, I’ll scrub the oven and countertops and the sink until they gleam.

  “Uh-huh,” is all he says.

  I nudge his plate in his direction and turn to make two tall glasses of tea. The moment I turn my back, I know he’ll make his move, and I’m not wrong. I’m only sad he didn’t begin in the living room where I secreted a gun underneath a side table for the moment I gathered enough courage to leave him.

  His hand whips out, and his fingers tangle in the long line of my hair, yanking back and tearing strands right from the root. I cry out in surprise and pain as my body comes in contact with his.

  “I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into you, but it’s going to stop now.”

  I tilt my chin up in a silent invitation for him to do his worst. “You’re right about that, Vic. I want a divorce.”

  Everything hurts.

  My arms, my legs, my head, even my hair throbs with each dull thud of my heart. There isn’t a spot on my body that doesn’t ache, but I pull myself out of bed anyway. It’s only the thought of leaving that keeps me moving. Like a lodestone, it calls to me.

  Now take a shower, it says. Wash your hair, do your face, and get dressed.

  They are all things that will convince Vic I haven’t changed one bit. No doubt he still believes the thorough beating he gave me last night was enough to quell my small, ineffective rebellion. If anything, the aches and pains only serve to firm my resolve. He thinks he convinced me to stay. He couldn’t be more wrong.

  Vic left by the time I enter the kitchen. I half-heartedly consider the fact that I’ll never see him again. The thought is less concerning than I imagined it would be. Mostly, I just feel tired. How can someone my age feel so damn tired?

  I check my reflection in the rearview mirror as I wait for the car to heat up. At least he stayed away from my face this time. I can’t say the same for the rest of my body. My arms are so black and blue that I wear a long-sleeved Henley underneath my scrubs to hide them. I learned my lesson. The last thing I need is for Gracin to see what he did to me. I don’t know what he would do, and I have no interest in finding out.

  My goal today is to keep my head down, do what little work I have to do, get home to pack and get the hell out.

  It takes an eternity for me to even get to the infirmary since the cold makes my sore muscles ache even more. I feel like one big throbbing bruise by the time I get there. Luckily, the pathologically punctual Gracin hasn’t arrived yet. As soon as I turn on the machines, an officer radios for me to meet them in the main hall. At the same time, shouts come from outside of medical.

  “Get the fuck down!” the officer is shouting. “Nurse!”

  Adrenaline spikes, allowing me to move with relative ease. When I see what’s waiting for me in the hallway, however, I want to run right back to the infirmary and hide.

  Three officers have an inmate between them, but he’s fighting like hell to get free. I recognize him from a few weeks ago. I’d stitched him up when I first met Gracin. It takes a few minutes for his name to come to mind: Salvatore. I sigh mentally. I’m already exhausted and the day hasn’t even really started. Damn it all to hell, of course I would have an emergency the one day when I need a reprieve.

  I watch, horrified and a little removed, as the officers finally manage to subdue Salvatore as he laughs as if it’s all a big game to him. Like he doesn’t realize he’s in prison, seemingly the lowest of low. What must it be like to have that much certainty? I damn sure don’t know. There isn’t a single thing in my life at this moment that I’m certain of, aside from the fact that I’m in completely over my head. I’ve been like a piece of dandelion fluff floating on the wind, my only direction coming from the whim of the winds.

  I gulp in deep swallows of air, trying to regain my sense of detachment and calm, but it’s useless when I realize I’ll see Gracin soon.

  As though thoughts of him have summoned him from the bowels of the prison, Gracin appears at my side, and despite the way my life feels like it’s unraveling around me, his mere presence soothes my nerves somewhat. He and the prisoner lock eyes, and a silent conversation passes between them. Salvatore growls, and energy snaps around Gracin like a livewire. Do they know each other aside from the first meeting when I stitched Salvatore up?

  “Follow us to the infirmary,” one of the officers bites out before Salvatore throws his weight again, trying to free himself from the officers’ hold. He has bandages, some bright red with fresh blood. Was he the one Gracin got into it with? “Damn it, you big bastard, calm the fuck down.”

  Grateful for the distraction, I follow the team of officers as they wrestle Salvatore through medical and onto a gurney. My fingers shake as I push them through my hair. When had my life spiraled so spectacularly out of control?

  Salvatore calms down by the time we reach the infirmary. He allows the officers to muscle him over to a hospital bed where he sits as though it's his throne. Gracin follows silently behind me, and I gesture for him to get my kit from the storage closet as I snap on gloves.

  “You all right here?” one of the officers asks as the others shackle the inmate to the bed. When he sees Gracin coming back from the cabinet, he starts shouting.

  The doctor who oversees both medical and the infirmary and the nurses blows in as he often does when he remembers to do his job. With cold precision, he swipes a wipe over Salvatore’s shoulder and then presses the needle into his skin. Salvatore tries to fight the sedative, but he’s no match for its potency and succumbs within a few minutes. The doctor gives me instructions to check on his previous wounds, bandage the new ones, and monitor him for any change until he can be dismissed.

  The officer waits in the doorway until I look up from checking the bandages. “Yes, I have it handled. You can go,” I tell him.

  “You sure?” the officer asks, his eyes going to Gracin’s intimidating form at the bedside.

  I roll my eyes as I strip off an old bandage to replace it with a fresh one. “I’m sure. Let me do my job.”

  When we’re alone again, I turn to Gracin and meet his gaze over the unconscious inmate, the words bubbling free of their own accord. “What do you want from me?” I ask. “Since we’ve met, you’ve turned my life upside down. I want to know why. What’s your endgame here?”

  His body goes preternaturally still. How does he do that? How is he in such phenomenal control when it feels like I’m falling apart?

  “Tessa,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “I think we both know why.”

  I busy myself with cleaning the blood from Salvatore’s brow so I don’t have to answer his question. Then I say, “Help me turn him so I can change these bandages.”

  I don’t want to ask why he won’t just leave me alone. I don’t want to get involved. The questions are burning me up, but I bite my tongue to keep them from demanding an actual answer out of him. As I clean and bind Salvatore’s wound, I repeat over and over in my head that it isn’t my business. Do my job, get out. Do my job, get out. Once I’ve patched Salvatore up, I’ll keep my head down and finish out my sh
ift. Then I’ll be free.

  “Can you throw these away for me?” I say absently and thrust a handful of soiled bandages in Gracin’s general direction. My mind is so thoroughly focused on the task, I don’t realize that he hasn’t moved to do what I ask right away. When I look up, ready to reprimand him for not doing his job, I freeze.

  At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s as though the connection between my eyes and my brain is experiencing a disconnect. Gracin, who had to move to the other side of the bed to help me flip Salvatore, is holding a pair of medical scissors in his right hand. The blunt tip is pressed into Salvatore’s neck and a bead of blood forms, spilling down the side of his throat and into the shadows toward his back.

  What seems like hours pass, and the weight pulling on my neck and shoulders lifts, allowing me to meet Gracin’s eyes. I’d seen them closed down before, like the day I first met him in this very room. But this expression is worse. My first instinct is to run. To get as far away from danger as fast as possible, but I can’t leave my patient. Part of me, the part that submitted to his touch, can’t leave him, either. Not without understanding.

  “What are you doing?” My breath is harsh, and my head is roaring. “Get your hands off him.”

  Those same hands that brought me such pleasure are steady as a surgeon’s and prepared to kill. I can’t let him do it.

  I wait for him to say something, make demands, beg, but he does nothing except stare at me with an unreadable gaze. His body telegraphs his intent before he ever moves a muscle, but I’m not fast enough to stop him from plunging the scissors into Salvatore’s neck in one efficient, deadly strike.

  A screech tears free, and I lunge forward to staunch the bleeding, but there’s too much, and it’s coming too fast. Asleep as he is, Salvatore doesn’t so much as twitch as Gracin rips the scissors away and his life slowly slips through my fingers. Seconds tick by before Salvatore jerks once and then goes still again, significantly still.

  With dark red smears of blood covering my hands and seeping into my scrubs, I stumble backward. All I know is that I need to get away. Away from what just happened, away from Vic, this place, Gracin. Just away.

  I spin, intending to do just that when Gracin comes up behind me and braces me against his chest. “Not so fast,” he says into my ear, and I shiver against him, feeling both too cold and too hot at the same time. “We’re not done yet.”

  “Please don’t kill me,” I say. I guess Vic hasn’t beaten all the begging out of me after all. “Please, just let me go. I won’t say anything.”

  “Oh, I know you won’t.” His hands cinch down around my arms. “You’re gonna stay real quiet-like while I take care of our man here. If anyone comes in, you tell them you’ve got it handled, just like you did before. Can you do that, little mouse?”

  My insides turn colder than the ass-crack of a Michigan winter morning.

  “You bastard,” I seethe.

  “Awe, now, don’t be so upset. Just do as I ask, and no one else will get hurt.”

  If I had something in my hands, I would have thrown it at his carefully blank face. My thirst for revenge quiets when I hear the squeak of sneakers against the tile floors and all the blood drains from my face. Someone’s coming. I shove my feelings aside and try to figure out how the hell I’m going to get out of this mess.

  “Hey, Tessa, are you okay?” Annie’s voice calls from down the hallway.

  My shoulders are tight and I blink rapidly as my mind races for an exit strategy. As if he can sense the direction of my thoughts, Gracin’s arms tighten.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “Get me out of here, and I won’t have to hurt anyone else.”

  “Out of here?” I say around a gasp.

  “Blackthorne. Get me out of Blackthorne, and I won’t hurt her. Get me out without tipping off the guards or getting us caught, and I won’t tell your husband what you did with me. How you wanted to scream for me.”

  “Fuck you.” I try to buck away from him, but his arms band tighter around me.

  The sound of footsteps is just outside the door when he says, “Make up your mind, little mouse, or this all ends here.”

  “If I do this, you won’t hurt her.” I don’t trust him, but I can’t take the chance he’ll kill anyone else, especially someone like Annie, who doesn’t deserve it.

  “I won’t. But you’ll need to get rid of her before she suspects anything, or I’ll have to take care of it.”

  I don’t want to know what “take care of it” means, so I shove out of his arms, and this time, he lets me go. Before Annie can round the corner and enter the room, I throw another blanket over Salvatore’s still body and hope it will cover most of the blood on his body. There is nothing I can do about the floor, so I can only hope she doesn’t look down. There also isn’t anything I can do for the blood on my scrubs, but I wipe off most of it from my hands with a towel and toss it behind the bed just as her concerned face comes into view.

  “Hey,” she’s already saying in a rush, “I heard you scream and wanted to make sure you were okay . . . ” Her voice trails off as she takes in my bloody scrubs and Gracin towering just a few feet away. “Tessa?”

  “I know, I’m a mess, right?” I try to laugh, but it sounds more like I’m choking. “They just brought this guy in with a hell of a knife wound.” I jerk my finger over my shoulder at the prone Salvatore. “Bled like a son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll say,” Annie says slowly, as though she can’t quite get a handle on the weird feeling in the room or why I’m acting so crazy. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

  “Absolutely. Just a hell of a mess to clean up.” When she doesn’t leave after another pause, I add, “Thanks for checking, though. I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t know you were working this morning, too.”

  She pauses, her eyes flitting back and forth between Gracin and me. “I had to work a double,” she says, and I note the dark smudges under her eyes. “You sure you’re all good here?”

  “All good,” I glance over my shoulder at Gracin’s unreadable expression. “He was just about to help me clean up,” I say as though he didn’t just kill a man with a pair of scissors and then threaten to kill her and possibly me, too.

  She must read something in my eyes, some emotion I can’t control because she makes a move to run, to call out for help. Before I can warn her to stop, before I can even turn in Gracin’s direction, he’s across the room with his hands wrapped around a stunned Annie’s throat. His arms flex and tears leak from her eyes as she struggles for breath. The fact that I let this man touch me brings bile to the back of my throat.

  I manage to look up into Gracin’s eyes, startled to realize the same eyes that I’d found so alluring now seem as dead and as hard as the ice slicking the gravel outside.

  His nod is little more than a jerk of his head. “Get me out of here, and I’ll let sweet little Miss Annie run along home.”

  “Fine,” I almost shout. I would do just about anything if it meant him getting his damn hands off her.

  Gracin releases Annie and murmurs to her words that I can’t hear, but I can guess. Her face pales, and I send her a pleading look, hoping she knows that he really will kill both of us if she doesn’t do what he says. If I make it through today, I may just kill Gracin for this. The only thing that keeps me from going crazy is imagining all the different ways I could do it.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” the devil himself warns as another set of footsteps draws closer to the room.

  Surprisingly, Annie manages to compose herself just as the footsteps come to a stop. Whatever Gracin said to her must have been effective, because the only evidence of her distress is the redness circling her eyes and suffusing her cheeks. I hope my control is as absolute as Gracin takes a seat on one of the hospital beds.

  “How is everyone doing here?” the officer asks, finally peeking his head in. If he notices anything off about the three of us, he doesn't say anything. His eyes
merely skitter across the room without actually seeing anything before he nods to the bed Salvatore is in. “Doc give the all-clear for him to get out of here?”

  In the end, I don’t even have to think twice about what I’m going to do. The action feels as natural as breathing. I guess I’ve gotten better at lying than I thought.

  “I’ll need to keep him for observation. Those guys really did a number on him. He might have a concussion.” I’m pleased to find that fear doesn’t cause me to stutter. I sound as bored and impatient as he did.

  The officer shifts, visibly uncomfortable, either from the mention of the sound beating they gave him or the fact that he’ll have to take shit for not bringing the prisoner back. “Sergeant didn't say anything about observation. He's supposed to go back to the cell when you're through with him.”

  I have to rally all of the resolve I didn't know I had when I say, “Do you want to be responsible if he sustains further injury because you were too impatient? Let me do my job. You do yours.” Then I wait because I’ve learned it makes people more uncomfortable when there’s a tense silence, and they will do just about anything to avoid it.

  “You’re the boss,” he says, shifting a hand through his hair and taking a step back toward the door. “No skin off my teeth. He's all yours.” He pauses, perhaps finally sensing the tension rolling off Annie and me in waves. “Are you sure everything is okay here? If you want, I can have another officer come—”

  “No, there’s no need, we’re okay,” I say shortly. My tone is sharper than I intend because he doesn't know how on the mark he is.

  The officer, no doubt irritated by my interruption and tone, lifts his hands. “Whatever you say,” he says and backs away.

  Heart in my throat, I turn to Annie to offer an explanation or plead my case, but she backs away, her movements so quick and instinctual that she nearly trips over her own feet.