Death's Echoes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “So she almost gets killed saving me. Why doesn’t that give me the warm fuzzies?”

  “Get your head out of your ass, Patterson!” the Chief snapped at her, to no effect. She sat still as a statue, her eyes contemplating Gianna’s blood on her pant legs, now turning a rusty red-brown color and becoming stiff and hard. “She was doing exactly what she was trained to do. She protected you and she neutralized the threat,” the Chief said. “Same thing she did at Metro GALCO.”

  “But if she hadn’t pushed me out of the way—”

  “You’d both be dead,” the Chief snapped again, then turned and began to stalk away, not getting very far before returning. “Who’re they sending to cover this?” he asked.

  “What?” Mimi asked, looking momentarily confused before responding. “I don’t know,” she said, unaware of the looks the cops were giving her. She was still looking at Gianna’s blood, at how much of it there was. She’s lost a lot of blood, the paramedic had said. Maybe too much?

  “Haven’t you called Carson?” the Chief asked, and when she shook her head his look turned to concern and he sat down next to her. “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t work there anymore.”

  “Why not?” he asked again, and she told him. All of it.

  “Does Gianna know this stuff?” Eric asked.

  Mimi nodded. “I told her over the weekend. I didn’t know when I told her that she might be about to die,” Mimi said, choking back the sob that had been building in the back of her throat ever since Gianna had been wheeled through those swinging double doors into surgery.

  The Chief slammed his palm against the wall. “She’s not dying, goddammit!” And this time when he stalked off, he kept going.

  Eric stayed with her, not talking, his eyes following hers, from the swinging doors leading to the trauma surgical suite, back to rest on her blood-drenched legs. Then he did something he’d never done before: He took her hand and held it between both of his, so surprising her that she didn’t resist.

  “He was right, you know—about Gianna doing the right thing in protecting you. That’s what we’re trained to do. And he was right about the other thing, too—the dying thing. She won’t die, Mimi.”

  “You can’t know that, Eric, and he can’t, either, despite the fact that he thinks he knows everything.”

  “I’ve known Gianna a long time.”

  “Since the Academy. Yes, I know. So?”

  “She waited a long time for you. She’s not about to die and leave you!” And with that he stood up and headed for the door, but walking, not stalking.

  “Eric!” He stopped and turned when she called his name. “Thank you.” He smiled, saluted, and went to find the Chief, who could be heard raising hell as soon as the ER door swooshed open. Everybody in the parking lot could hear him

  “The whole damn town will know before breakfast that your lawyer is a wife beater! And don’t tell me to calm down!” But he calmed down and listened for a long minute, walking back and forth, his head down, one hand in his pocket, jiggling coins. Then he nodded his head several times and disconnected the call. “Patterson shouldn’t be alone, Ashby, so if you want to stay here—” He stopped talking and looked where Eric was looking—at Beverly and Sylvia and Freddie and Cedric, running across the parking lot toward the ER.

  “She won’t be alone, Chief,” he said, “and she’ll call us as soon as she has news.”

  The Chief nodded and the two cops went back to work—the Chief to his office to manage the firestorm that was coming, and the sergeant to the scene where his boss and good friend had, not quite two hours ago, shot and killed a fifteen-year-old boy in the front yard of her lover’s home. Good thing, he thought, that Mimi Patterson had quit her job and therefore had not called her editor to send reporters to the scene. Or to the hospital where the head of—they’d have to give this new unit a name soon—was in surgery fighting for her life because another cop had ordered the fifteen-year-old to assassinate her. Who would believe this shit? He could barely believe it himself.

  “I don’t believe it!” Freddie Schuyler said.

  “This can’t be true!” Beverly Connors said, a horrified look contorting her lovely face. “It’s not believable!”

  “It’s true. Believe it,” Mimi Patterson said to her best friends.

  “Go change your clothes, Mimi,” Bev said, pushing the travel bag she’d brought from her own home with fresh clothes and a towel, washcloth, and soap. Mimi gave the bag a strange look: It wasn’t hers. She transferred the look to Bev. “Your house is a crime scene, Mimi. They wouldn’t let me in the front yard, to say nothing of the front door.”

  “Oh fuck them!” Mimi grabbed the bag’s handle and pulled it behind her down the hall to the bathroom, feeling relief with every step that she’d soon be free of the blood-soaked clothes. That Gianna’s blood no longer would be soaking into her own skin.

  Her dearest friends watched her retreat; then they looked at each other, worry undisguised in their eyes. “She’s not right,” Freddie said.

  “Of course she’s not right, Fred!” Cedric chided. “Her clothes are drenched in Gianna’s blood and she watched it happen!”

  Freddie shook his head. “It’s more than that. There’s something else.”

  Beverly nodded. “You’re right. She’s changed.”

  “Oh, Bevie, don’t shrink her!” Sylvia said gently. “They’ve had a rough time lately, both of them.”

  “I can’t shrink her unless she talks to me, which she has steadfastly refused to do.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Sylvia said. “I wouldn’t want to talk about all that ugliness, either—not even to you, my sweet love, because no amount of talking will make it any less ugly.”

  They were a glum-looking group. United as they were in their love for Mimi and Gianna, and in their desire to see them both through the crises they were facing, the reality was that they were powerless to help and they knew it. Beverly and Freddie gave each other hopeless, helpless looks. They’d known Mimi the longest, and they agreed that something had shifted and changed deep within her in the last couple of months. She had, without feeling the need to explain, declined invitations to see both of them and had stopped returning their calls. As her ex-lover, Beverly had, unfortunately, experienced Mimi not at her most charming. As UCLA classmates, Freddie had only known her as his “girlfriend” as they blithely double-dated with their respective lovers, hiding their secret in plain sight. As Beverly’s current lover, Sylvia knew that Mimi had hurt her deeply; she also knew that Mimi had worked hard to repair the damage and that Bev had forgiven her and welcomed her back into her life and her heart. Cedric only knew Mimi and Gianna as Fred’s dear, wonderful friends who had quickly welcomed him into their lives and who loved him because Freddie did. “We must do something! We must help her! We can’t just sit here looking morose!”

  Cedric, “pronounced Cee-drick,” was British and a professor of poetry, and usually took a good-natured ribbing about his speech patterns. But not today. Nobody was in the mood.

  “We can’t help her unless she allows it, Cedric,” Bev said.

  “People don’t always know what they need,” he responded, and got to his feet. He saw Mimi’s return before the others. She and Bev didn’t share wardrobe sensibilities, and Mimi was a couple of inches taller and less well-endowed of butt and bust, but they both were fond of starched white shirts and well-worn Levis, which is what Mimi now wore. She gave Bev a wan smile and a brief hug and thanked her for the clothes, a thank-you hug that included Sylvia, whom she had come to love almost as much as she loved Bev.

  “I know you’ll want to stay here with Gianna tonight, Mimi, but if they’re still treating your place as a crime scene, you know you can stay with us,” Freddie said.

  “Or with us,” Sylvia said.

  “They can keep the damn house! I won’t live there ever again! All that death in my front yard! I’m moving in with Gianna. If she’ll have me,” Mimi said, giving
voice to thoughts and feelings that became a decision the moment the words left her mouth, but it was the right one and she knew it. She could no longer live in a place where two young men had died in the front yard—men who had come to kill her for the same reason: Stories she wrote exposing the evil they did would cost them their freedom forever.

  “We think Gianna will have you,” Sylvia said with a wide grin, “with open arms!”

  Then everybody stood up as a doctor wearing bloody scrubs came their way, a petite young Asian with spiky hair. The doctor who had operated on Gianna. She looked exhausted but not as if she were about to deliver a death notice. She stood directly in front of Mimi. “Okay if I talk in front of everybody?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Mimi said.

  “The short version: She’s going to be fine.” The group exhale was audible. Mimi started to thank her, but the doctor raised a hand to stop her. “But it’s going to take a while. She lost a lot of blood, Ms. Patterson. A lot. Almost too much, especially after what she just went through. A body can only take so much, even a strong, healthy body.”

  Mimi heard the words and the meaning behind them: Gianna had almost died, and she swayed. Freddie’s strong arms encircled and held her and she leaned into him. “Is she conscious? Can I see her?”

  “No and yes. She’s going to be out of it for a while. Repair of the artery was tricky. Whoever tied that belt and packed the wound saved her leg—and her life.”

  “My neighbors,” Mimi whispered. “A retired nurse and a retired Marine.”

  “You owe ’em,” the doctor said, “big time. You can come with me; the rest of you can’t, I’m sorry.”

  Mimi started to follow the doctor, stopped and turned to face her friends. “I just want to see her, and then I’ll be back, OK?”

  Tears filled Beverly’s eyes and she reached for Mimi. “More than okay.” Then she was smothered in a group hug as they all piled on.

  “We’ll wait right here,” Sylvia said, holding Bev tightly.

  Mimi had to trot to catch the doctor, who moved really fast for such a small woman, she thought, then remembered the tiny young physician was also one hell of a trauma surgeon. She’d operated on Mimi when she’d been attacked by a lesbian-hating nutcase in the lobby of the newspaper; she’d operated on Cassie when she’d been assassinated by a Muslim-hating nutcase; and now she’d operated on Gianna, who’d taken the bullet that was meant for Mimi herself. Could one consider an ER trauma surgeon one’s primary care physician?

  The ICU suite was busy, with lots of people moving around doing life-saving things with fast efficiency, none of those whose lives were being saved aware of the purposeful activity on their behalf. Gianna lay in one of the glass-enclosed spaces surrounded by beeping, data-gathering-and-reporting machinery. Blood dripped into one arm, clear fluid into the other. Her left leg was heavily bandaged and slightly elevated. A cap of some kind covered her beautiful hair, and her beautiful eyes were closed. She was chalk-white. Mimi looked at the doctor. “Are you sure she’s—”

  “She’s had a tough time but she’s going to be fine.”

  “She looks—”

  “Like she’s had a tough time,” the doctor said. “And she’s going to sleep for a while.”

  “I need to tell my friends—” she waved her hand at Gianna, “then I’ll be back,” Mimi said. Then, “I can come back, right?”

  The doctor nodded. “You’re the next of kin. You can stay all night if you like.”

  Mimi had a small smile working when she left the ICU suite. It faded when she saw that her editor—her former editor—was with her friends. She wasn’t thrilled to see him, but it helped that he carried her purse and satchel. Now she had a laptop and a cell phone and their chargers and her keys. But not her car. Damn. “Tyler,” she said by way of greeting.

  “How’s Gianna?” he asked, and she was able to tell all of them how Gianna looked, if not exactly how she was. She wasn’t going to die. That’s what she had to hold onto at the moment. But she’d had a tough time, the second tough time in a week.

  “Do you want us to stay with you or get out of your hair?” Cedric asked, and Mimi hugged him.

  “Well, there’s your answer,” Freddie said, and he hugged her, too. “You know we’re just a phone call away if you need us.”

  “I know, and thank you,” Mimi said. “All of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you, and that’s the truth.”

  They all hugged her and took their leave, Beverly last. “Please, Mimi, let’s talk?”

  “I don’t have any words right now, Bev, but when I find some, I’ll need to talk to you.” And Bev walked away, having heard more honesty from Mimi Patterson in that one sentence than she’d heard in fifteen years of friendship. And it frightened her.

  That left Tyler. “The Weasel is gone—fired or quit, not really sure which. The lawyer is gone—fired. Ian is gone—fired. And I’m promoted. I’m the new Weasel, though I hope you won’t call me that.”

  “Congratulations, Tyler. You deserve it. But I won’t be calling you anything because I won’t be there. I quit, remember?”

  “We can talk about that later—”

  “Nothing to talk about. Really. I mean that. And thanks for bringing my things,” she said, reaching for her bags.

  “Your job is waiting for you, Mimi. Come back when you’re ready,” Tyler said, and walked away. She followed him, but only so she could go outside and use the phone. She called the Chief first and said she’d call again when Gianna woke up. Then she called Eric and told him the same thing, only with more detail. Then she called Tommi and repeated what she’d told Eric. Then she did something she didn’t remember ever having done before: She turned off the phone. Off—not on vibrate or in airplane mode. Off. And she went back inside the hospital, back to the ICU suite, back to Gianna who was still alive, no thanks to Mimi.

  “I’ve never seen her like this, Chief. I think she means it. She’s done with the newspaper.” Tyler was a pitiful-looking mixture of fear and sadness.

  The Chief paced a few steps away from the editor and the reporter, deliberately not making eye contact with either of them, and it wasn’t a power play on his part. At least not totally. The real reason was that he didn’t want them to see how rattled he was at Tyler Carson’s proclamation that Mimi Patterson probably would not be returning to the paper. “So that means I’m supposed to trust Zemekis here on your say-so?”

  “He’s done a lot of good work lately, much of it while working closely with Mimi—”

  “Who spent a lot of years earning her position of trust with me,” the Chief said, finally looking at Tyler and Joe. “So I’m supposed to automatically transfer that trust to Mr. Zemekis here? I don’t think so. Let him earn the right to my trust.”

  “I think I’ve earned your trust over the years, Chief,” Tyler said.

  The Chief nodded. “Yes, you have. You were a good reporter and you’re a good editor, and I believe you earned your promotion. Congratulations, by the way. But so what?”

  “Look, Chief. Every good politician needs a reporter he can trust—”

  “I’m not a fuckin’ politician!” the Chief thundered, and he had to work not to laugh at the expressions on the faces of Tyler and Joe. Of course he was a politician—one of the best Tyler had ever seen. The man would be unstoppable if ever he ran for office, which he never would. He hated the elected version as much as he hated perps and dirty cops. Speaking of which . . .

  “We’ve gotta do a story on Davis and Diaz and their sergeant, what’s his name, Joe?”

  “Berry,” Joe Zemekis answered. “Mike Berry.”

  “We’re going to do the story, Chief, on the dirty cops—and on the clean one: Lieutenant Maglione, who risked her own life cleaning up behind the dirty ones. And it’ll be a much better story with your input than without it.”

  “How the hell can you do it without me?” the Chief growled.

  “I haven’t forgotten how to be a reporter
any more than you’ve forgotten how to be a cop,” Tyler said, and watched with satisfaction and relief as he saw that he’d won the man’s cooperation.

  “I’m only agreeing to talk to you because Maglione deserves it,” he said.

  Tyler didn’t care why, as long as he cooperated. Joe was wondering how to get Mimi to cooperate and talk to him since Lt. Gianna Maglione couldn’t.

  “Here’s a fact I’ll start you off with: It’s Captain Maglione now.”

  Gianna woke up the first time, saw Mimi, smiled, and returned immediately to sleep. She awoke the second time and remained awake long enough to hold Mimi’s hand and eat a few ice chips before drifting off again. The third time indeed was the charm. She was still groggy but she really was awake. And hungry. Mimi left the room when the doctor entered to examine her patient, and she returned to hear the news that Gianna was being moved to a private room. That meant the doctor really and truly believed she was out of danger. Mimi believed it, too, until Gianna gasped and moaned when she was transferred to the bed in her new room. Her face went that chalk white color and she closed her eyes for a long moment. Mimi stood over her, watching and waiting and wondering why the nurses didn’t seem concerned. Gianna was in pain, dammit! But they were all cheerful efficiency. One of them frowned slightly when she checked the dressing on Gianna’s leg but said nothing, so when they all left the room, Mimi lifted the sheet and looked at Gianna’s leg and saw spots of blood on the dressing.

  “What are you looking at, Dr. Patterson?” Gianna asked lightly.

  “Just making sure everything is as it should be, Captain Maglione,” Mimi replied, trying for light and almost stumbling over the “captain” part, which she wasn’t used to yet.

  “You’re here with me so everything is as it should be,” Gianna said.

  “Is it all right if I move in with you?” Mimi asked, and had to laugh at the look on Gianna’s face.