My Black Beast
Page 10
“The doctor! I’ll go get the doctor.”
The nurse smiled down politely as she continued taking his blood. He had a lot of questions. Mostly about how common insane dreams were during a coma or whatever he’d been in. Marka’s face flashed in his mind and a pain rose in his chest. He reached up against the pain and grabbed for his locket. It wasn’t there. He let out a ragged sigh.
“End, huh?”
He huffed a sad laugh.
“Sorry?”
The nurse looked concerned until he shook his head and gave her a fake smile.
“If you need anything, the button is right here.”
She patted the bed next to him and left with her cart of needles and vials. It was a sunny day, strange as that was in Seattle. The blinds were down and he was glad for that. There was a small click as the nurse closed the door behind.
The hospital room was a private one and weirdly spacious. It probably had room enough for two. Weird that he’d get one. He didn’t have insurance that he knew about. He felt a sudden urge to wiggle his toes, just in case he was paralyzed. They worked. That was good.
The door latch clicked open again.
“Your mom’s really going apeshit out there.”
It was Emily’s voice. He looked over to see her walk in carrying a wax plant. He wanted to laugh. They were sort of a pain in the ass to take care of because they needed a lot of light, but he’d insisted she start carrying them because he liked their little star shaped flowers. She hadn’t wanted to but it was basically the only thing he’d ever asked her for.
She walked over and put the plant down on the table beside his bed. She’d always worn her hair long, but she’d cut it short while he was gone.
“You look good.”
She almost jumped when he said it.
“Fuck sake, Lowell. Like I want to hear that from a guy covered in bandages.”
He tried to laugh but ended up coughing. She moved across the room, dropping an orange messenger bag into one chair and sitting down in the other.
“So what the hell happened?” She crossed her legs.
“What do you mean?” His throat was dry and sore already.
“Yeah, okay. Some ancient city comes up in the middle of Puget Sound and floods basically everything within a quarter mile of the water and you’re oblivious.”
It wasn’t a freaky coma dream. He wasn’t sure whether to be sad or happy.
“There was a girl.”
“Oh, romantic?”
“No, she was young. And in trouble.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. I think I helped her. What about all the people?”
“In the city? They were fine. The place was completely dry, however that works. The news has gone pretty insane with the whole thing. Said there were some monsters or something, even. Cops want to talk to you, too. Guess the doctors said there was no way that was happening until they checked you out after you woke up.”
Lowell laid his head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.
“You okay?” She walked over to the bed and laid a hand on his. It was warm.
“Nah.” He remembered Marka’s smile. “I don’t know, maybe. I don’t know.”
Emily smiled down at him. “Well, you look fine. Relatively.” She laughed and Lowell smiled.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay, I think.”
“Good. Running the shop by myself is a pain in the ass.” She walked over and grabbed her messenger bag off the chair. “Speaking of, I’ve got to get back to it. I wasn’t exactly expecting you to be awake. I’ll come back after I close up.”
After Emily left it was a parade of questions. His mother, doctors, police, local news people, national news people.
He learned more from their questions than he’d known the entire time he was there. The language that they were speaking had been some corruption of an old European language, Frankish or something. There were other Elders. The city was a few hundred years old and was similar to one that had been excavated in New Mexico sometime in the fifties. Each of them in turned treated him like something different. A case study, a liar, a spectacle, a crazy person who was just on a boat when the city came up.
He couldn’t think of a good reason to lie about any of it, whatever the reactions might’ve been. It seemed like the police really wanted a reason to arrest him for something, but nothing ever materialized. It was weeks after he left the hospital when everyone finally started to get distracted by other things. The government had locked down the island and quarantined everyone who lived there. It wasn’t every day that a group of displaced weirdoes comes floating up on a two mile stretch of land.
After a month or so, he found his way back to work at the flower shop. His muscles were a wreck for a good long time and he had more than a few broken bones, but he couldn’t stand being idle anymore. He couldn’t really say why. Something about sitting around the apartment just felt uncomfortable. He’d tried to get a pass to visit the island, but he was denied. The government lady seemed really kind of torn up about it.
It was winter now. It was too cold to want to go outside but not quite cold enough for anything fun like snow. The sun had been down for hours and Lowell was taking flowers into the back of the shop to put the ones that needed it under lights. Emily was at the counter going over the day’s receipts. She’d taken to working with him when he came back, insisting that he was probably going to get himself killed if there wasn’t someone around. It was probably true enough for the first month or so, but she’d just never stopped coming in. She’d spent a lot of time helping, even at his apartment.
“You changed, you know,” she said as he came back into the main part of the shop.
He chuckled. “It happens, I guess.”
She was quiet for a minute, looking down at the receipts and tapping her pen.
“That girl you helped. What happened to her?”
“She left.” He put on sad sort of smile.
“Oh… sorry, I didn’t…”
“It’s fine,” he said, waving away the apology. He picked up another pair of flowers and headed toward the back of the shop. “She wanted me to stay.”