by CD Reiss
When I walked out of Jonathan’s room to get his father, I had absolutely nothing on my mind but making sure some motherfucker put a new heart in him. I did not ever want to see that again. I never, ever wanted to get used to it. If I went to jail for killing someone who was already pretty much dead, fuck it. I could be cool with that.
Declan paced the lobby, phone pressed to his ear. Even as exhausted as he must have been, he looked clean, energetic and calm. This must be a Drazen thing. Only Leanne in her general slovenliness and Sheila in her constant backbitten rage ever seemed a tick to the left of perfect. And Theresa, who looked buffed and polished when I’d met her before, had looked like she’d run a marathon in pumps when she came to the hospital. Maybe they were all human after all.
Except, Declan of course, who had been described as less than human, yet somehow had shown me only a vulnerable face. He saw me and held up a finger for me to wait. I didn’t have time for him. I scribbled —Room 7719 NOW— in one of the last blank pages in my notebook, tore it out, and slapped it in his hand. I walked away before he had a chance to answer. I had to assume he’d go up. I didn’t have time to baby him, and I certainly didn’t want a verbal cat and mouse.
I took the stairs to the fourth floor and strode to Dr. Thorensen’s office. He was going to assure me Jonathan was at the top of that list and I wanted an update on Paulie Patalano’s health. A cleaning cart stood outside the open door. He wasn’t there, but his screens were flashing and blazing with some twisted circle in the City of Dis, frozen in time, characters halted mid-action, a puzzle half-done. On the smallest screen, off to the right, a blinking text box with nothing in it, and above it, a list.
I couldn’t help myself. I looked. Each item on the list was the word PATIENT followed by a long string of letters and numbers. A location. A gender. A blood type. A colored box. Red. Orange. Yellow. It was all red at the top of the list, and the number two patient was in Los Angeles, California. He had AB negative blood. Jonathan. A fucking alphabet soup string with a red box at the end. My lover. My husband. Patient KJE873KP7988. M. LA, CA. AB-. Code red.
“Excuse me?”
A short lady in soft shoes and maintenance gear stood in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her hands were covered in yellow plastic gloves.
I didn’t belong there.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just leaving.”
I walked past her before she could ask me what new horror I’d seen.
CHAPTER 35.
MONICA
He was home. What a nerve. Sitting in his house on a hill with his manicured garden of native plants and his refinished wood porch. He’d been sorry he hadn’t gotten close to me sooner, well, let’s just see how he felt about meeting me at all.
“Monica,” he said when he opened the door in sweatpants and t-shirt. I’d banged on the doors with both fists, not caring if I woke him from a dead sleep or mid-video.
“Is he going to die?” I demanded.
“Can you come in?”
“No. Tell me. Is he getting a heart or not?”
“I have no way of knowing that.”
“Why is he second on the list?”
He held up his hands as if he was fending off an attack. “What are you talking about?”
“I went to your office and saw the list and he’s second. Which means he gets the second heart that comes.”
“First of all—“
“Yes I’m sorry I went into your office I was looking for you but, to be honest? Not sorry.”
He stiffened like he’d been hit been frozen in place. “It’s Sunday. You can call my Doheny office after 9am to make an appointment, but I’m booked until January.”
He didn’t exactly slam the door, but he closed it, and I looked through the leaded glass side windows to see him go out to the backyard. I stood still for a second, maybe ten, before I walked over to my house.
Not my house. Not my mother’s house. Not the bank’s house. J. Declan Drazen’s house.
It looked like I was going to have to move anyway. If I lost Jonathan, and that looked more likely with every passing hour, I couldn’t stay here. He’d married me so I’d have the means to avoid his father. The foolish manipulations of a sick man.
I passed the car and walked up to my porch. I didn’t go in the house, though I could have used a shower and the love of a toothbrush, but walked the floorboards where we’d stood as he put his pussy-soaked fingers in my mouth, and sat on the swing where he’d left me to protect me from ruination. Looking out into the street, I thought only of what I had to do next. Jonathan was talking to Declan right now, a stressful situation I’d put him in, and then Declan would create an opening for me to murder Paulie Patalano. But what was the use if he was second on the list? If they were shipping that bloody muscle mass to someone else, what was the possibility I was committing murder to save the wrong man?
I could have implored Brad to do something, anything, pull a string or ten, but I’d invaded his privacy. Should have known better.
My own heart started pounding as I wondered which of my fuckups was going to kill Jonathan. I played with the rings on my finger, both heavy with commitment to my course and my love.
A curtain moved in Brad’s house. He could see me, I knew that much. I also knew I didn’t want to be seen. I was thinking evil things. I might as well have been naked, in ready position on the porch.
Yes, I was thinking, evil, desperate thoughts and I knew they were all over my face. If Paulie’s heart went to someone else, at least I’d move Jonathan to the top.
I got in my car just as Brad opened his front door, taking off before he could catch me.
CHAPTER 36.
JONATHAN
I felt him come into the room. Even through the doctors and nurses, running around, poking, squeezing, barking orders at one another, his presence was a needle at the base of my spine.
“Son,” he said.
“What do you want?”
I didn’t look over. My scenery was the ceiling. If I lived, I was going to start a fund to put art on hospital ceilings for patients who were too fucked up to turn their head. No one should die looking at crusty paint and vinyl venting.
“I wanted to talk to you. To, ah, how do I say it?”
“Before I die. You want to live in peace.”
“Am I that selfish?”
I swallowed. I felt myself slipping into the shattered state of semi-consciousness that so often overtook me. Getting married had required more energy than my body could reserve. The last thing I should be doing was speaking to my father. I guessed, if I got one act to complete as Monica’s husband, it should be to make her happy. I wished she’d picked something easier. Like swallowing an elephant.
The room quieted, and a nurse whose voice I recognized as a woman named Lettie said, “We’re monitoring you closely, Mister Drazen. Is there anything you need?”
“No.”
“We’ll be in and out,” she said, patting my shoulder before leaving me alone with my father for the first time in ten years.
“Mom’s going to be here soon.”
“That was what I wanted to bring up.”
“Do it quick.”
He sat in Monica’s chair, and I didn’t have the energy to tell him to get the fuck up.
“I know what you and Carrie think of me. I know you think I’m a monster. Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I am. I’ve always known I was different, but I want you to consider this. I’ve never done anything in a rage of emotion. I’ve never been ruled by what I don’t understand. I’ve never deceived myself into thinking my actions were anything but self-serving. However, I do want things. I do need things.”
I reacted. It was half laugh, half groan, but I was so focused on staying together I thought nothing showed on my face. But everything must have been there. Disdain. Disbelief. Disgust.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you.”
“In my life,
I know I’ve done everything I could to keep this family together. Nothing is as important to me. And when I see it breaking, it...troubles me.”
Even Dad had a safe place, apparently. I knew I smiled at the thought, but I felt out of myself.
“And me here reminds you of how you fucked it all up?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
Lettie bustled in, checked my tubes. “You have visitors,” she said. “Do you want to see them?”
“Five minutes.”
She took her time, tapping into a computer, taking notes. When a man came in, doctor or nurse, I couldn’t tell, they spoke briefly in medicalese, the one language I didn’t know, and left soon after.
“You’re close to the end, you know,” Dad said.
“See you in hell.” I was being obstructive, because it was easy.
“You’re making this hard for me.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
I heard him shift in his seat, flashed movement from the corner of my eye. “I want your mother. She’s entrenched in her position. She can’t forget the past. I need what’s left of this family to work before...well, before.”
“Your philandering isn’t her fault.”
“I need you to talk to her. She won’t ignore your request.”
I wanted something from him, something big, but I had nothing to threaten him with, nothing to ensure he’d keep his promises. What was I supposed to do? Plead? I was already flat on my back.
“Stay away from my wife.”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“Sell that house. Hello and good-bye. That’s it.” I couldn’t go into longer explanations of all the things I didn’t want him to do. Touch her. Tell her jokes. Communicate with her unsupervised. Entangle her business. Go to her second wedding. Breathe her air. Exist on her planet.
“Promise it,” I said, feeling the futility of my demand. What was I going to do? Hold my pinkie out for a good twist or make him swear on a stack of Bibles? What was the devil’s promise worth without a blood guarantee?
“You’ll speak to your mother?”
“Yes.”
“If you convince her, you have a deal.”
“If not?”
“Then, not. I’m sorry. My promise is contingent on the actions of a third party.”
“I despise you.”
“What if I told you I loved you?”
“You don’t have the capacity.”
I may have said that, or something else, but the space around me fell into a dream with disembodied voices and floating lights, with a touch of pain, just to keep me from sleep.
CHAPTER 37.
MONICA
I waited in the cafeteria, alone. I wrote a little, some verses about murder that could probably be used against me in a court of law, with the judge unmoved toward leniency by the fact that they were atrocious, puerile, on-the-nose.
Whatever was going on, it was taking too long. I went up to Jonathan’s floor and found Deirdre staring at a magazine that couldn’t have been of interest to her, and Sheila pacing like she wanted to carve a ditch in the floor. His mother stood, as usual, next to the chair closest to the hall leading to his room, which was by the elevator. So, she caught me first, and I thought of something I hadn’t before. She was my mother in-law. I wasn’t calling her Mom. No way.
“Hi, Eileen.”
She smiled a smile so fake I could have bought it at Nordstrom’s on the sale rack. “Monica. I hear congratulations are in order.” She indicated my left hand with its borrowed engagement ring and jury-rigged wedding band.
“Thanks. How is he?”
Her face darkened. “They’re constantly in there...” Her eyes got wet. The coldness of her expression when I entered had hidden the fact that she was breaking apart. She cleared her throat and straightened her neck. “A heart will come. I know it. I can feel it.”
“I can too.”
Her hand slipped into mine and I squeezed it. All our bullshit fell away for a second. This was her son. We loved the same person. She wouldn’t be easy to deal with, but we were bound by him, whether we liked it or not. Then she smiled a couture smile, and even kind of warmish, as if something happened between us that had meaning to her. I promised myself to never again forget that her goal was to protect him. That was worth something.
I gave her hand a squeeze and sat next to Deirdre.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she replied. “You got married last night.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded.
“I would have married him anyway, you know.”
“I do.” She flipped through her magazine.
“I think you’re mother’s pissed about it.”
“There wasn’t a pre-nup. Jonathan doesn’t believe in them. Neither do I.”
“Ah, I hadn’t thought about that.”
She shrugged, still mindlessly going through the magazine. “Neither does God.”
I’d never engaged Deirdre for such a non-antagonistic string of sentences, but that was all I was getting from her. She settled on an article and for all intents and purposes, read it. I cupped my tea and gave the television my attention. It was set too low to hear, but the talking head with the perfect hair had a floating box next to him, and in it, Paulie Patalano, mob boss, philanthropist, murderer, drinking wine with his wife in a picture captured in happier days. The ticker described him as brain dead, as if I needed the reminder, and placed him in an unknown location. The picture flipped to three mug shots. I didn’t recognize but one face. The brown eyed man who had come in with Theresa. Even in the mug shot he was handsome, angry, with a knowing grin that frightened me.
My newly-minted mother in-law didn’t see the television, as her gaze stayed in the middle distance. Sheila was on the phone threatening someone, and Deirdre was into her magazine. Declan was either seeing Jonathan, or making arrangements for me to kill someone. I’d need to be ready. It was time for me to see Paulie Patalano in his undisclosed location.
I excused myself and took the elevator to the second floor. I scoped out the stairwell, wondering if I should take it next time, then more complications presented themselves. First being, how would I find him? How would I do it once I got there? How could I be sure Declan’s job was done?
Who did I think I was?
In pacing, and beating the hell out of myself, I rounded a few corners, trying to look for something I’d never defined, only finding ignorance and a lack of expertise in the simple skill of murder. I had a scattered entry plan and a slight hope I’d only get caught when it was too late to do anything but harvest Patalano’s organs. After that, just confess and let Jonathan’s family talk him into annulling my marriage. But he’d be alive. I could deal with the rest if he lived.
The squawk of a police radio made me look up before I crashed into the uniformed cop. He was in his thirties, and seemed to take up more space than humanly possible. A female counterpart stood nearby.
“Staff only,” he said, blocking my way to the narrow hall.
“Uh, okay?” I peered past him. The hall looked like every other one, except for the lack of flitting staff and the presence of three old Italian women in black. This was the hall.
I made note of the location and walked away.
I knew Brad had said he’d be in his Doheny office, but I checked anyway. He was just my neighbor, and he meant nothing to me, but I’d stepped on him in a way guaranteed to offend him. I didn’t want to leave things like that.
He was there, on his way out the door, clipboard in hand. He slowed when he saw me, which I took as a good sign.
“I know you’re busy.” I said. “I just wanted to apologize.”
He kept walking. “I want to explain how serious what you did is, but I have a meeting.”
“I know. I have reasons, but not excuses.”
He pulled me to the side, out of the hall traffic. “I only have a second. I don’t want to make you feel better, because I’m still pis
sed off. But first of all, the list doesn’t work the way you think. Geography is important. The state of the patient. The gender. It’s not like a line for coffee. But second, you’re not getting away with it. When this is over, you’re sitting with me and I’m explaining to you the ten ways you fucked up.” He was taller than me, and used to being in charge. He had the arrogance of a cardiologist, and the authority of a man not called by his first name. But when he looked at me, I knew he wasn’t half as pissed as his words let on.
“All right.”
“Over dinner.” He must have seen me turn to ice. “Platonic. If you knew me better, this wouldn’t have happened. That’s all I want.”
“I guess I owe you.”
“You do.” He walked away. Had he just asked me out? Yes and no. Jonathan wouldn’t be thrilled, but Brad didn’t expect Jonathan to be around, did he?
CHAPTER 38.
MONICA
I had to see him once again before I did this thing and they dragged me away. Just put my fingers on his lips before I faced what I had to face. I wasn’t going to tell him what I was doing, because he’d be an accessory if he didn’t stop me, and suicidal if he did. I was going to stand with him clean, as his mate, if even for an hour.
I got out of the elevator on Jonathan’s floor, and made a right instead of a left, to check the placement of the stairwell closest to Patalano’s room. I stopped at the turn as if a brick wall was in my way.
Margie and Will Santon stood in a corner, too close for friendship, too far for intimacy, hands up, Margie pointing and accusing, Will’s in supplication. Their words were inaudible, but their faces shouted rage, hurt, and frustration. I’d have to check the placement of the stairs on the little map by the elevator, because I wasn’t just strolling past them. I turned and walked away.
