Beneath the Cracks

by LS Sygnet

  "It's a damn good thing they did, too. If help hadn't arrived when it did, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

  "They couldn't have shown up a minute earlier?" I grumbled, but felt an enormous wave of relief that Billy conveyed the message where I went. Why hadn't I waited for them to arrive? Why couldn't I seem to trust anyone at my back?

  Only one reason, conscience pricked the growing delusion of being part of something more than my own agenda. You let these people get close to you, and just think how disappointed they'll be if the truth ever comes out. Do you really want that on your plate too?

  "Where's –" I clamped my mouth shut before the word Johnny slipped from my lips.

  "Where's what? Would you like some ice chips?"

  "No thank you. What's taking so long with that pain medicine?"

  I felt Maya's eyes boring into me and turned my head away.

  "Helen, what were you gonna ask me?"

  "I told you. Why are you here? You should be resting, not sitting here holding my hand."

  "I'm returning the favor. They're letting me go home tomorrow."

  "God I wish I was going home too."

  The nurse arrived with pain medication and heard the remark. "You'll be here a few days, detective. I'm giving you morphine right now. It's going to make you sleepy. Don't fight it. Your body needs the rest."

  Warmth suffused my veins. I heard the voices drifting away from me; the last thing registering was the nurse insisting that Maya go back to her room and rest too. Good. She needs her strength more than I need someone on death watch over my bed.

  The next time I woke, I at least remembered where I was and how I had gotten here. The room was still dark. I had no concept of time. Just awareness…and I was not alone. "Maya?"

  Someone plucked at the fingers of my right hand. "No, but I can go get her for you if you like."

  My head turned toward the voice. I could barely make out his features in the dark. It was him – he'd come after all. "Johnny..."

  "How do you feel?"

  "Like I got shot."

  "That's not funny, Doc."

  "When did you get here?"

  "You don't remember; of course you don't remember."

  "I know I was at Uncle Nooky's and Kim Jackson shot me with a .44 caliber Smith and Wesson double action revolver. Frankly, I didn't expect to wake up." My dry voice cracked, and I coughed. A low moan of discomfort soon followed.

  Orion moved away for a second. "Open up," he said. He spooned a tiny bit of slushy chunks of ice onto my tongue.

  It felt oddly intimate.

  "Thank you."

  "I'm feeling pretty torn up right now, Helen," he said, each word slow and deliberate. "On one hand, I'd like to kiss you stupid. On the other, I feel like screaming at you for doing something so reckless."

  Apparently he decided fast enough which path he'd take.

  "What were you thinking? You had to know what the Jacksons were capable of the second that you figured out the link between the police impersonator and them. Did you think they'd just chuck you on the shoulder and say, aw shucks ma'am; you caught us? When I saw you hit the floor..."

  I felt his lips press against my temple. Okay, scold first, kiss later. The pecking order had been established. His words picked that moment to register in my groggy brain.

  "I thought he killed you."

  "You shot Kim Jackson."

  "Yes."

  "You killed him."

  "I thought I saw him murder you in cold blood." Orion's breath fanned my face. He was so close now; I could see the blue in his eyes like they were lights in the room. "Do you have any idea what that did to me?"

  "I'm guessing it wasn't the greatest experience you've ever had."

  "Don't be flip."

  "My hero."

  "Do you think I'd have reacted any differently if it had been any other detective – or any cop at all for that matter?"

  "I guess I'm hoping you wouldn't be keeping vigil at a bedside talking about being torn between kisses and scolding."

  "You know exactly what I meant."

  I changed the subject. "What time is it?"

  "Around seven. You got out of surgery three hours ago."

  "Have you been here all night?"

  "…Yes."

  I struggled to lift my right hand, finally got it high enough to touch Orion's face. "You shaved."

  "It'll grow back. It's already got a good start." He clasped my hand and pressed it to his lips, then held it over his heart. "You scared me, Helen."

  "Back to the scolding, huh? When do we get to the kissing part?"

  His lips brushed my forehead. "Better?"

  It wasn't, but it was getting clearer. He cared – in a platonic sort of way. Maybe Johnny was tired of my methods, or as he called it, evasive tactics, and ready to call it quits now. I sighed. "I guess I should call for that nurse again. My shoulder hurts like a son of a bitch."

  Orion nodded, laid my hand on the bed again. "You rest. I'll go find her."

  I was alone the next time I woke. The room was painfully bright. I fumbled for the call light on the bed. My mouth felt like it had been packed with cotton, and my shoulder ached so badly the fingers on my left hand felt numb.

  A different nurse appeared. "You look uncomfortable."

  It was the obvious over-statement of the year. My face pinched into a frown. Maybe it was a grimace.

  "If ten is the worst pain you've ever felt –"

  One word described my response: obnoxious. "Twelve thousand," I interrupted. "Where's the pain medicine?" It was churlish and irritable and probably scored twice that many points with the nurse on the asshole patient scale, but I didn't care. I wanted the good stuff that other nurse brought, the kind that knocked me out and kept reality away for a few more hours.

  "I'll give you some more fentanyl, but the next time you wake up, we need to get you moving out of the bed. I'll take out the Foley catheter. You need to start using the restroom. If we're gonna get you home on Saturday, we've got a long way to go."

  "Saturday..." it was a euphoric little sound that escaped my throat while the opiate washed my pain and all the rest of reality away.

  Nurses are like any other profession. Some are kind; some are not. The daytime nurse cared less about my pain than she did the regimented schedule she followed. Fortunately for me, Maya showed up before I was ready to kill for more fentanyl and took care of the problem. The next time I woke, it was dark, and my room was empty.

  During a lucid moment earlier, the few seconds where pain medication wiped away my agony but hadn't yet knocked me out cold, Maya explained the plan. "I'm going to stay with you during the day and Johnny will be here with you at night. We're not leaving your side, Helen."

  Opiates washed away my natural inclination to argue. Instead, I nodded weakly and drifted away into la-la land where nothing hurt, and genocidal maniacs weren't grinning at me over the barrel of Dirty Harry's weapon of choice. The first thing I did the next time pain jerked me into the unpleasant world again, was push the call light for the nurse.

  "Why didn't you give me one of those nifty patient controlled administration things for my pain? Maya got one." I recognized the nurse as Ginny, one who had cared for Maya during her early post-operative period.

  She shrugged, "Different surgeon. We want you waking up for therapy, Helen."

  "That's simply unfair. How am I supposed to move when it hurts too much to breathe?"

  "We're going to try a different medication for your pain. I want you to tell me if this helps."

  "What's it called?"

  "Toradol. It's a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug."

  "Just give it to me already. This hurts like you wouldn't believe."

  Ginny fiddled with my IV tubing. There was no euphoric wave, but the pain abated enough that I drifted off to sleep again. The next time I woke, the throbbing wasn't as bad. I pushed my call light again.

  "You slept several hours that ti
me, Helen. How do you feel?"

  "Maybe a little less miserable. But I'm afraid."

  "I know." She pulled another needless syringe out and twisted it into the IV tubing. "Think you can stay awake for a little while this time?"

  "I don't know. Do I have to start therapy in the middle of the night?"

  She shook her head and smiled. "Someone arrived to see you when you called for more pain medication. I suggested he wait until I could assess whether or not the Toradol helped you more than the fentanyl has been."

  "I see."

  "Would you like him to come in? He was here earlier but you weren't awake."

  "If it's official police business, I don't feel –"

  "It's personal," Johnny announced from the open door. "And I'm not leaving you, Doc."

  Chapter 37

  The kiss, whose absence I felt so keenly the first time Johnny sat with me, finally arrived. My heart quickened, even though it didn't last as long as I would've liked. "No," I whispered when he pulled away.

  Johnny laughed softly and thanked Ginny for taking care of my pain. He settled into a chair beside the bed and tangled his fingers with mine. "Wanna hear about your case?"

  "Sure," I muttered. Maybe sulking would encourage more kissing.

  Maybe the narcotics had warped my brain. What was I thinking? Bits and pieces of why these people needed to be held at arm's length started swimming to the forebrain.

  "Jessica Blake and her brother Jason are both in custody…protective custody, I might add, while Crevan and Tony are out rounding up the group I suppose we'd call a militia –"

  "They're terrorists, Johnny. It was no accident that Kim Jackson used Denton's lab so he could engineer a more lethal cassava root. I believe that if we ever gain access to Denton's computer, we'll find evidence of the plan to introduce that plant into the cultures that use cassava as a food source."

  "I don't doubt you at all, Helen. Uncle Nooky quickly surrendered and was arrested at the bar after the shooting. He's singing like a canary. His involvement seems to be related to the drug distribution aspect, which he freely admitted wasn't as lucrative as it should've been for him or his cohorts. He said that his brother, the smarter of the two, kept sinking the money into something else that would pay off better in the end than money. He also says that his brother was a little off in the head. I suppose that's a low blow coming from someone who insists being called Uncle Nooky. As for the Blakes, they were basically coerced into cooperation when Kim Jackson told them he'd kill their brother Lucas if they didn't do exactly as he said."

  Johnny's warm fingers made my nerves tingle from hand all the way up my arm. I squeezed gently. "When did you get back?"

  "About an hour before you were shot. Crevan called me in a panic while the plane was still taxiing."

  "You saved my life."

  "Yeah," his voice dipped low. "I thought I was too late, Helen."

  "Please don't yell at me again. I know what I did was incredibly stupid, but when I realized why the cassava root had been engineered to make it remain poisonous, I was incensed."

  Johnny lifted my hand to his lips for a lingering kiss. "One of the many things I love about you is that all of this matters to you, Helen. You didn't have to come here. You didn't have to care about our murdered girls and a bunch of dead homeless guys or a cop who died doing his job. You didn't have to protect a Greek restaurateur who was being abused because of his ethnicity. You do these things because you are a good person."

  "Don't," I whispered. "You don't know that, Johnny."

  "I do know it. What I can't understand is why you don't believe it."

  Bitterness crept into my voice. "I have my reasons."

  "Would they have anything to do with nature versus nurture?"

  The gossips of Darkwater Bay struck again. Whether it was Darnell and my FBI file or Briscoe and Conall from my confession, I would probably never know. Someone had told Johnny that Wendell is still alive.

  "Hard to deny that I'm screwed no matter which way you look at the proposition, Johnny. His genes. His influence during my formative years."

  "I don't believe that anyone is pure evil, Helen. Well, except for Kim Jackson maybe."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yeah, and I see how you turned out."

  My eyes started burning. The sensation migrated south into vocal cords. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  Johnny rose and hovered over me. "I love you, Helen. I'm not the only one. What you did on this case, it matters. Do you have any idea how many lives you probably saved because you figured all of this out and were willing to put yourself on the line to stop Jackson?" Warm lips pressed against my forehead. "Please stop blaming yourself for what your father did. This is gonna sound strange coming from a cop, but I'm sure he had reasons for a lot of the things he did that weren't about being a bad person at all."

  Tears streaked down my cheeks in a molten river. "How can you say that? Nobody even knows for sure all the crimes he committed."

  "He raised you, and it might've been the only truly good thing he did, but he did it right."

  "Johnny…" I sniffled, and he plucked a handful of tissues from a box by the bed.

  He held them to my nose. "Blow."

  I was too tired to argue. "Where were you all day?"

  A crooked smile spread across his face. "Homeland Security showed up when it became obvious that Kim had big plans for his genetically manipulated cassava roots. We've had a lot of help busting up this drug ring. Apparently, Jackson had used the majority of his drug profits to fund more than his own aggressive tactics."

  Thoughts of David inevitably suffused my mind at the mere mention of federal involvement. "Did anybody call David?"

  "Shh," Johnny soothed. "He knows you were injured but expected to make a full recovery. I had Chris call him before you went into surgery."

  "He didn't come?"

  Johnny's forehead crinkled. "No, I think Chris said he was out in the field on some big case. He'd come if he could be here, Helen. Is it really that important to you?"

  "Don't be jealous. I didn't mean it that way."

  Finally, something elicited a deep kiss. When Johnny pulled away a fraction of an inch, he murmured against my lips, "Thank you. I needed to hear that."

  "Can you stay?" My eyes scanned his face. "You look tired, Johnny. Maybe you should be home resting."

  "I'm not leaving you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not even when they finally send you home. In fact, I don't think you should be alone for a minute until you're at 100 percent again."

  "That's a little extreme, don't you think?"

  Johnny grinned. "There's the woman I know and love. No, I don't think it's extreme. You're going to be wearing some sort of sling for a few weeks if the nurse knew what she was talking about. Hey, at least he hit your left shoulder, huh?"

  "And here I thought you were so observant," I snorted. "I'm left handed, Johnny."

  "All the more reason to stay with me."

  "Oh, no," I shook my head and quickly winced at the jarring motion to my damaged shoulder. "If I have to have a babysitter, it'll be from the comfort of my home, not yours."

  "Fair enough. When you get out of here on Saturday, consider me your new roommate."

  "Johnny –"

  "No arguments."

  "It's not that. Get me out of here before Saturday. I can't stand being in the hospital that long."

  "Close your eyes and rest now. We'll see how you're feeling tomorrow first."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "What day is this?"

  Johnny brushed the hair away from my forehead. "It's already Tuesday, sweetheart. Saturday isn't all that far away."

  He was right – this time. By Wednesday, I felt stronger, but the struggle to get out of bed precluded my discharge from the hospital. At least until I got used to wearing the immobilizer that kept me from damaging the repairs that had been made to my shoulder.

  When I wa
s finally lucid enough for the surgeon to deem an explanation appropriate, he detailed the damage to my body. Apparently, Jackson's aim was nothing short of inept – at least if the goal was to kill me. The bullet shattered my left clavicle bone before its trajectory sent the lead at a slightly downward angle through my scapula where it exited my body. I was astounded that no major vessel was transected during the bullet's path through flesh and bone.

  The hardware in my shoulder included pins and wires aimed at piecing together bone fragments until they mended. The good news was, I'd only be in the immobilizer for a few weeks. The bad news was that intensive therapy couldn't begin until the joint was stable, and would probably last as long as the healing process before full range of motion could be regained. I was looking at three months of handicap.

  It seemed to suit Johnny just fine, the thought of me needing help for that long. My emotions were a little more mixed. On one hand, his TLC for one night had been a welcome respite from the stress of a day on the job. On the other hand, the idea of having my privacy disrupted for so long soured my mood. Johnny developed a nasty habit of asking what I was thinking whenever I drifted off into contemplation.

  The surgeon discharged me Friday, one day earlier than planned. I grouched and cursed and muttered wishes that Kim Jackson was still alive so I could shoot him while Johnny tried to gingerly help me up into the passenger seat of my Expedition.

  The immobilizer that Johnny insisted on calling a sling was a belt around my waist that fastened my left arm into position across my abdomen and prevented all movement of the shoulder joint. It screwed with my balance doing something as simple as sitting down in a chair.

  His hands spanned my waist and lifted me into the car after my third failed attempt to do it independently. "At least I don't have to worry about you hopping in the car and disappearing in the middle of the night," he grinned.

  "This isn't funny. How am I supposed to survive for five weeks in this stupid thing? I won't even be able to pee without help."

  Johnny shot me a leering grin.

  "And there will definitely be none of that, either."

  "None of what?" Innocence definitely wasn't a natural look for Orion.