by Pamela Clare
“Days?”
“Tops,” he repeated. I rocked my head back onto the bed in frustration and immediately regretted it as my head throbbed in retaliation.
He turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said, and he looked back. I’d been hesitant to bring her up, but he was my only source of information. “Have you seen Shelly?”
His eyes flashed briefly before they chilled. “No,” he said, like ice. He paused at the door, sighed. “Room 504,” he muttered before slipping out.
I could have laughed. Why have her room number if he wasn’t going to see her?
I was sure everyone thought I’d be comfortable enough here. Colin and Philip and even the cops probably thought it was a favor that I was here and not in jail, but I’d have preferred that. This room upturned too many memories. The smell, the thin, rough fabrics, and, when I forgot myself and looked up, the same bumpy ceiling tiles.
I fell into a fitful sleep and woke up huddled against the cold plastic railing, drenched in sweat. The clock said it was morning. Muffled footsteps and voices came from outside the door, doctors and nurses bustling about their day. I got up and used the bathroom, then wrapped the sheet around me like a robe.
I poked my head out. The guard stood up when he saw me. The skin on his face was as smooth as Bailey’s bottom. He had to be around my age, but he seemed so young. Had I ever been that wide-eyed?
“Hi,” he said. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”
“Actually,” I said in a low tone, and he leaned forward. “I need you to go and get me the morning-after pill.”
“What?” he practically squeaked. He glanced to the nurse’s station, which was empty.
“Yeah,” I said. “There was a little accident last night.”
“But”—he swallowed hard—“shouldn’t the doctors be the ones to…you know…”
“They could,” I said. “But they’d ask all sorts of questions. I figured you wouldn’t want that. What with—well, considering it was your colleague and all.”
His eyes bulged. “My colleague?”
“What did his badge say?” I pretended to think. “Sham. No, Shaw.”
His mouth worked, but nothing came out.
“Yeah, so I just figured you guys wouldn’t want that going around. About a cop and all. Well, it’s up to you. I’ll just be inside.”
I shut the door and waited five minutes, then poked my head out. He was gone.
With my sheet trailing behind me like a robe, I strode through the hallway. So long as I looked like I knew where I was going, no one would bother me. I passed a few people in regular clothes and scrubs, but they only spared me a glance, despite my hospital gown and bare feet.
Room 504.
I slipped inside and saw why Philip may not have stayed, if he’d come by at all. Detective Cameron sat on the bed, his hair mussed and suit rumpled.
He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“How is she?” I asked, letting the door fall shut behind me.
He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “She’s doing well. Unless she gets an infection, she should make a full recovery.”
I nodded, hanging back near the door. He was a cop. He might just send me back to my room. “That’s what they told me.”
“Here,” he said. “You can sit.”
He got up and stood by the window. I went to stand by the bed.
Shelly lay there, sleeping. Her skin was pale, with a flat, grayish tint. The only movement was a slight rise and fall of her chest under the blankets. More blankets than I’d had, and I supposed she could thank her cop for that.
Shelly had fallen for a cop. And if the way he looked at her was any indication, he’d fallen right back. It stung that she hadn’t told me, but I understood. What a match. A modern-day tragedy.
The chair behind me felt too far away. I climbed in beside her. The hospital bed groaned ominously, but it would just have to deal with it. I wrapped my arm across her from atop the blankets. Her body felt so slight, almost childlike. I rested my chin on her shoulder. She slept on.
Wind whispered across me, followed by a blanket, and I was covered up too.
“Thanks,” I whispered, without turning my head.
He grunted his welcome, then pulled the chair around to the other side of the bed and even farther away, and sat down. Somehow he knew he made me uncomfortable. More than that, he felt inclined to help me, stepping away so that I could be near Shelly without fearing his proximity. He was a strange one, this cop.
I rested that way, calmed by the scent of Shelly’s peach shampoo and the steady thump of her heartbeat. A nurse came in to check Shelly’s machines. She started to ask me to move, but Cameron cleared his throat, and she worked around me. Then it was the three of us and the machinery, steadily beeping away.
“Shelly said you had a problem with a cop,” he said.
I tensed. The smell of alcohol and sickness. Rough hands pulling, prodding.
“She said someone threatened you. I’d like to hear what happened if you’ll tell me.”
Ah. She’d told him about his partner, or the gist of it, anyway. Not that.
Still, I wasn’t sure I could. It was too raw, too related.
Maybe Colin or Shelly, maybe. I trusted them, but I barely knew this guy. He seemed nice enough for a cop. And the way he’d been with Shelly, that counted for something. But trust was a rare and precious thing, like a jewel. When I found it, the thing to do was lock it up tight, where it would be safe. The very worst thing was to lose it. It would have been better not to have it at all.
He stood slightly and took off his jacket, then draped it over the back of the chair.
He removed his jacket and pulled out his notepad. Then he came to stand by the bed.
Shelly whimpered in her sleep, and I realized I had tightened my arm around her. I loosened it and moved it close to my body, resting at her side.
“It will be okay,” he said. “I just want to help.”
“That’s right. I can help you.”
I shuddered.
What would happen if I told? It was such a foreign idea.
Almost like thinking, what if I jump off a cliff and try to fly? After all, it might work.
I opened my mouth to tell him nothing happened or, hell, to tell him the truth about his partner, but something else came out. Everything.
I told him how I’d grown up riding in the cab with my dad. While my dad was in the bathroom, one of the other truckers called me a “little lot lizard.” I’d thought it was funny, but when I’d told my dad about it, he’d beat the guy up. I didn’t know then it meant a hooker.
I told him I’d met Jacob in third grade. This one boy had kept picking on me. It even got physical, pulling my hair, pinning me down. Well, I’d always been small. One day at recess Jacob shoved a handful of poison ivy leaves down the boy’s pants. Jacob ended up getting the rash all over his hand, and he got detention too, but the other boy never messed with me after that.
I kept talking, lost in my own world. I said what Jacob had done. What the cop at the hospital had done. And then finding out about Bailey. How I’d raised her, and how Shelly had helped me do it.
I talked about Colin and that first night. I’d have blushed if I’d been thinking, telling this guy about our sex, but I wasn’t thinking, I was talking.
I told him about how Jacob came back and my fear and about Colin and Philip and, finally, about Detective Shaw. All the way up until last night. I told him everything dark and shameful, and probably even incriminating.
It wasn’t really a conscious choice. Something about this place, this cop, my fear for Shelly, had destroyed my barriers. The dam had broken, the one that was supposed to keep me from spilling my soul to people I didn’t know and who didn’t care.
Maybe also it was a kind of therapy. I’d wondered before how people ever talked. How did someone share something dark, something secret, with a stranger? No
w I knew. When the time was right, it just came spilling out, unstoppable.
It did help. He hadn’t given me any psychobabble or cop talk. He hadn’t said anything throughout my monologue of a regular girl’s life, but it had helped to let it out. Someone knew now. Someone knew it all. I felt lighter, like I’d given a bit of it away.
When I got the courage to open my eyes, his head was in his hands. I thought he might have fallen asleep. It would be for the best. I almost giggled, that’s how giddy I felt.
He looked up, and his bloodshot eyes looked haunted. My spirits fell. Of course I felt lighter. I’d just dumped it on him. He’d only asked what had happened with his partner, and I’d given him my life story.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he said. “I just—I think that might be the saddest story I’ve heard.”
Then I did laugh. “I know a better one, but I’ll spare you for now.”
It was quiet. I drifted into a dream state. I’d lost everything, at least for the moment: Bailey, Colin, almost Shelly. I was stuck in a hospital room with a cop—a nightmare if there ever was one. But somehow, strangely, there was peace.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke up to the soft sounds of the nurse fussing over Shelly’s bandage.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Shelly said quietly from beside me.
I rubbed my eyes. I’d fallen asleep in Shelly’s bed and had one hell of a crick in my neck. I glanced around the room. Her detective was gone, his jacket missing from the chair. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I don’t think these beds were made for two.”
“I’m glad you came, though,” she said.
She looked better. Still wan compared to her usual self, but it seemed the indomitable Shelly could bounce back from even a bullet.
I slid from the bed and wobbled on my feet.
Shelly snickered softly. “Nice ass.”
I waved my hand at her, leaving my hospital gown to gape open as I shuffled to the bathroom and shut the door. I only came in to use the toilet, but now that I was here, a shower seemed even nicer. I should probably have gone back to my own room, but walking was so hard today.
I stood under the hot spray for a long time. Just how big was the water heater of a hospital? It was a question that needed an answer, I decided. So I stood under the steamy spray even longer, letting the warmth seep into my bruises.
The hot water hadn’t run out when I heard voices murmuring outside. A knock sounded on the bathroom door. I shut off the water and wrapped myself in a thin towel small enough to be a hand towel for Colin.
Ah, my jailer, come to cart me back to my cell.
He stared at my body. His gaze lifted, paused, drifted down, then snapped up to my face. Red bloomed across his smooth cheeks when he saw me watching him.
“I, ah, Detective Cameron told me you were here,” he stammered. “And…I thought you might need this.” He waved a small brown bag, presumably containing a morning-after pill I didn’t need, but just as quickly withdrew, as if realizing the proximity of his hand to my almost naked body.
It was cute, really, but I yearned for Colin’s unshakeable composure. “Thank you. I’ll also probably need clothes.”
I took the bag from him. “Bye, Shelly.”
“Bye, hon.” She waved me away.
I walked through the hospital halls in the thin, short towel. My personal cop danced attendance behind me, making strangled sounds of protest at my state of undress.
Inside my room I paused, forcing myself to appear steady. A bag lay on the side table, one that hadn’t been there before. Rape Victim Advocates, it said. Gee, what rape victim wouldn’t want to carry this around? At least the puffy shape of the bag meant it contained clothes.
“Ask and you shall receive,” I said to him where he hovered at the open door. I held the bag up to show him.
His cheeks flaming red, he shut the door just before I let the towel drop.
I dressed in the oversize sweats from the bag, trying not to let the memories take me. My little therapy session with the good detective had helped, but it wasn’t magic.
After a meek knock, the cop outside my room, still looking a tad pink, informed me I was to be released. A credible witness had come forward and accounted for my whereabouts in the hours before the blast, though not directly during, which means I likely did not set up the explosion. I refrained from saying I’d already told them that, because it appeared that credible meant someone not affiliated with Philip.
Linda wrapped me in a big bear hug before I could even process her appearance. Her perfume gripped my lungs in a vise even as her arms squeezed my body, but I welcomed it all. When she finally pulled back, I gasped. And then coughed as I inhaled a fog of perfume.
She wore a wine-colored suit with a rose-blush blouse and matching heels. Her hair had been pulled back into some sort of updo and topped with a maroon cap. Between her clothes and her makeup, she exuded glamour, like some sort of old-fashioned movie star.
“You look fabulous,” I said. “Don’t tell me you got all dolled up for me.”
“Of course not,” she said as she ushered me down the hallway. She lowered her voice as if to impart a secret. “It’s the policemen, dear. I know it goes against all those liberation ideas you young girls have, but sometimes you have to work what you got.”
Linked arm in arm, we took the elevator down. “How did you know to come get me?”
“A little birdie called and told me to go down to the station and make a statement. He told me who to talk to, what to say, and he was very specific. After that I came here to bring you home.”
A little birdie named Detective Cameron was my guess.
The sliding doors opened, and we entered the parking lot. Her necklace glinted in the sunlight, almost blinding me. “Are those real diamonds?” I asked, gawking at the rocks the size of dimes.
“Of course,” she said. “I told you William did well doing elevator service. When he died, his company had contracts with all the big skyscraper buildings and just a whole bunch of employees. I sold it then, of course, but he did real well for himself, he did.”
I could only laugh at that. Done well, my ass. Maybe it was, like she’d said, a happy story after all.
On the ride home Linda said, “Let me tell you a story.”
I shot her a dubious look.
“Now, now,” she said. “Don’t you worry. This story does have a happy ending. It’s not even a real story, it’s made-up. Like a fairy tale, only shorter.”
“All right,” I fake grumbled.
“So one day there was this fox, see, and a scorpion,” she said.
I groaned. I knew this story already. And it did not have a happy ending.
“Hush, now,” she admonished. “Well, the scorpion, she wants to cross the river, but she can’t swim. So the fox, being a gentleman fox, offers to take her across. But he’s worried, you know, because she stings. But she says, now, you’ll be doing me a favor by taking me across, so why would I sting you?”
She paused the story to accelerate through a yellow-red light. I gripped the leather seats, probably leaving permanent nail marks.
“So the scorpion gets on the fox’s back,” she continued. “And they’re going across the river, when the scorpion stings the fox! And the fox says, why did you do that? And she says, because I’m a scorpion. And every day after that the fox knew what to expect from the scorpion.”
I stared at her.
She smiled.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” I said, “but that’s not how the story goes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The fox dies, Linda. And the scorpion. They both drown—that’s the ending.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “If they drowned, then how could the fox ask the scorpion a question?”
“Well.” I considered. “I suppose it’s as they’re drowning.”
“
As they’re drowning,” she repeated indignantly. “How long could it take? And why is the fox using his energy chatting when he’s about to drown? Besides, if he died, how could the fox learn his lesson?”
“It was just right then, in those moments, that’s when he—you know what? Never mind. I’m sorry. I think you had it right.”
“Damn straight,” she said as she gunned the accelerator.
It had taken me a minute to catch on, but I hadn’t been lying. I thought Linda had the right of it. It wasn’t the original version. It was better.
*
Linda barely pulled into her driveway when I jettisoned from the car, raced across the lawn, and into Colin’s house. Bailey shrieked, and I cried as I scooped her up into a bear hug of my own. It had only been sixteen hours since we’d parted, but they’d been a hellish sixteen hours, and I never wanted to repeat it.
I breathed in her baby scent and didn’t complain one bit as she ran her sticky hands all over my face. Linda came in for one last group hug before she patted both our heads and left. I collapsed on the couch with Bailey and smothered her with kisses. One for every hour I’d been away seemed reasonable to me.
In my rush to find Bailey, to hold her, I’d barely registered that Colin was in the room. Now I looked over at him, to find him watching us intently. He didn’t look away—which was good, right?—but he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t read him. I usually could, at least a little, but now his eyes were frozen over, so cold, so remote, like they’d been on that very first night in the club. He’d been a stranger, then. He looked like a stranger now.
“Colin?” I asked.
Only the slightest twitch of his eyebrow as acknowledgment.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re freaking me out. I know you’re angry. That’s okay—you can be angry. But I’m home, and that’s…that’s good, right?”
A long pause, then he said, “Yes.”
I hadn’t necessarily been expecting a parade or anything, but what a welcome.
