by Lynn, JB
I texted Angel and waited, holding my breath.
The door to the room opened and he waved me inside.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” God said.
“Neither do I,” I admitted, slowly getting out of the car. “You can stay here if you want to.”
The lizard ignored me and jumped from the dash onto my outstretched elbow. He ran up my arm and patted my cheek with his little foot before diving into my bra. The cat, too, decided to come along. I had no idea what the three of us were walking into, but I had a bad feeling about it.
18
Fighting the sense of trepidation that was sloshing around inside me, I grudgingly climbed up the motel stairs.
“Be smart,” God urged.
“I’ve got your back,” Piss meowed softly.
I appreciated both the advice and the support, but neither made me feel any better.
Angel had disappeared back into the room, which meant I had to walk the length of the building without him in sight. It was a little thing, normally something that wouldn’t have bothered me, but not having him as an anchor made the trip feel like I was walking the plank of a pirate ship.
The door was open when I reached it, and I hesitated at the darkness inside. “Hello?”
“Come in, Maggie,” Angel called.
I crossed over the threshold and paused, trying to see into the shadows, trying to determine who else was there.
“Close the door,” Angel ordered.
Piss shot into the room to make sure she wasn’t shut out.
I moved slowly, not wanting to close the door. Knowing that when I did, I would be plunging the room into total darkness. I had the distinct impression I would be plunging myself into total chaos.
I hesitated, my hand on the knob. “I could just leave this for you,” I began.
“I need your help,” Angel said, the strain in his voice obvious.
I glanced back at the parking lot, wondering if Patrick Mulligan was out there watching me.
I didn’t notice anybody watching the area, but then again, I wasn’t supposed to be able to see Patrick if he was doing that kind of work. I took some comfort in the idea he was out there—that meant that if something went wrong, he’d probably come in and save me.
Probably.
I slowly swung the door shut, plunging us into darkness. A split second later, a light clicked on and I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the shadows.
Angel was sitting on the bed, his shoulders slumped. A quick scan of the area seemed to indicate we were the only human occupants of the room.
“Are you alone?” I asked, letting myself relax.
“Not now that you’re here,” Angel said. With that, he collapsed backward onto the bed, letting out a groan of pain.
“What’s going on?” I asked, slowly moving toward him.
Piss leapt onto the bed to check him out.
“You operated on the bird,” he said. “I need you to operate on me.”
I was so startled by his announcement that I dropped the bag of rubbing alcohol. On my foot. Dropping a gallon of liquid on your foot is painful, so I let out a yell and began hopping around grabbing my toes.
“Now who has sensitive skin,” God mocked from my chest.
“There’s a lot of blood, sugar,” Piss remarked.
I stopped my histrionic jumping and moved a little closer to the bed to see what she was talking about. The side of Angel’s Navy T-shirt was stained.
“Is that blood?”
“Well, it’s not like I need you to do laparoscopic surgery,” Angel said through gritted teeth.
I tried to let his sarcasm go, knowing it was a result of the physical pain that he was in. But considering that he had asked for my help, I thought he should have been a little nicer, maybe even grateful.
“What happened?” I asked. Kneeling on the bed, I slowly pulled the shirt away from his wound. A long jagged cut sliced through the skin, oozing blood.
“I cut myself shaving,” Angel said.
I hopped back off the bed. “Look,” I said, “I’m no Florence Nightingale. I don’t operate on human beings. Especially ones that are being a jerk.”
I turned to leave the room, deciding I would just call Delveccio and tell him to come pick up his nephew, but Angel’s hand shot out and he grabbed my wrist tightly.
“Please, Maggie,” he begged. “I really need your help.”
I hesitated.
“And I’m not asking you to stitch me up, I just need you to disinfect it and maybe help me get bandaged up.”
“It looks like you need stitches.”
“It’ll close on its own.”
I looked down at where his fingers were curled around my arm. At least he still had some strength left.
“What happened?” I repeated.
He released me and said, “I made a mistake.”
“Most of the mistakes I make don’t result in physical injury,” I muttered.
“Says the graceful woman who takes tumbles with alarming regularity,” God mocked.
Angel’s gaze flicked to the location of the squeaking emanating from my chest.
Not wanting to explain, yet again, about God, I demanded to know, “And what do you want the rubbing alcohol for?”
“To disinfect it,” Angel said. “In fact, we should probably do that sooner rather than later.”
“Why didn’t I think of that,” God asked from his hiding spot.
Angel rolled his eyes at the noise but made no comment.
“Okay,” I said, “I can do that for you, but I can’t…” I trailed off, waving my hand over his wound, there was no way I could help him with that. “We could call you an ambulance.”
“No,” Angel said emphatically. “Absolutely no ambulance, no hospital, no police.”
I narrowed my gaze and stared at him, wondering what trouble he’d gotten himself into.
“Your uncle—” I began.
“Not him, either,” Angel interrupted on a pained gasp. “You can do this, Maggie. I believe in you.”
“I don’t believe in myself,” I told him, turning to pick up the bag of rubbing alcohol. While doing so, I surreptitiously scooped the lizard out of my bra and placed him on the floor.
“Uggh,” the little guy complained. “I hate the feel of synthetic fibers.”
“It bothers his sensitive skin,” Piss teased.
Straightening, I took a bottle out and twisted the cap off, the sharp stench stinging my nose. “Do you have any idea how much this is going to hurt?”
“I can handle it,” Angel promised.
I stared at the former sailor, with the ridiculous muscles, and wondered if that was true. “Pain does strange things to people,” I warned.
“It’ll be okay,” he promised.
I frowned, not feeling reassured. “Do you want to scream into a pillow or something?”
He shook his head. I raised my eyebrows. The macho act could only go so far. He was human and this was going to be agonizing.
“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll take the pillow.”
I walked around the bed and grabbed a pillow, then pushed it into his arms. “If they hear you screaming in the next room, somebody will call the cops,” I warned him.
“I understand,” he said. “I won’t let that happen.”
Nodding, I grit my teeth and raised the bottle over his wounded side.
My cell phone rang. “Hang on a sec, I have to get that.”
19
“Are you kidding me?” Angel groaned.
I glanced at the screen of my phone. “It’s Templeton.”
“Let him wait,” Angel said. “I’m dying here.”
“If you’re dying, you should really go to the hospital,” I told him.
“Pour it, and then you can call him right back,” Angel insisted.
“Okay.” I re-raised the bottle. “Prepare your pillow.”
God had climbed up the headboard and was pee
ring down, examining the patient. “This doesn’t look good.”
Angel covered his face with the pillow, pressing it into his mouth with both hands. Gritting my teeth, I poured the clear liquid along the length of the wound. The pillow muffled his guttural scream of agony. But I hadn’t counted on the fact that he’d practically convulse from the pain. He shot up, smashing his forehead into my chin. Stunned by the blow, I stumbled backward. And fell on my butt, sloshing rubbing alcohol everywhere.
He’d hit me so hard that my pain radiated through my jaw. I was so stunned by the assault, and my own pain, that I didn’t realize what was happening to him.
Then, as though it was happening in slow motion, I saw Angel start to pitch forward toward the motel room floor carpet.
I tried to catch him and tripped over Piss.
She let out an ear-splitting yowl.
Meanwhile, my phone was still ringing.
I attempted to right myself enough to catch him, but I was too late. He fell on top of me, pinning me to the ground. It was my most intimate embrace with Angel Delveccio, and under other circumstances, I might have found it quite thrilling. But with the breath knocked out of me, my jaw aching from the smack to my chin, and the equivalent of a dead weight grinding me into the dirty carpet, I was not happy. “Get up,” I gasped.
Angel did not respond.
“Angel’s fallen and he can’t get up!” God announced worriedly from his vantage point.
“Seriously,” I said, feeling like my ribs were going to break under his weight. I shoved at Angel, desperate to breathe, and he slowly slid off me, facedown.
Scrambling up to my knees, I tried to gently roll him onto his back to get the wound off the dirty carpet, but he’s a big guy, muscular, heavy. So I ended up having to give him a pretty hard shove to get him to roll over.
I leaned against him, breathless from my fall and the effort of maneuvering him.
God scampered off the bed and onto Angel’s chest. “I’ll monitor his vitals,” he offered.
“He’s been watching too many medical shows,” Piss remarked. “I already determined that he’s still breathing, what else are you possibly going to do?”
I took a deep breath, doing my best to not snap at them for bickering when I was in such a stressful situation. “What do you think we should do?”
“What should we do?” God mocked. “The question is what are you going to do?”
I put my fingers against Angel’s throat, wanting to see if his pulse felt steady. I was alarmed by how cold and clammy his skin was. “I should take a first-aid class,” I muttered aloud.
“You should take up running. You should take up self-defense classes, and yes, it probably wouldn’t hurt to take a first-aid class,” God lectured. “Or at least learn the basics from Doc.”
“You’re not being helpful,” Piss purred. “Just take a breath, sugar. Take a breath. Calm down a little. Just think.”
“Or you could slap him,” God suggested.
“What?” I asked, startled by the suggestion.
“Slap him,” God said. “See if that wakes him up.”
“Is that what they do on your medical shows?” Piss mocked.
“Do you have any better suggestions?” God retorted.
“Guys,” I sighed tiredly, “could you please—”
“I know what to do!” God yelled excitedly.
I leaned back, trying to prepare myself for whatever his next brilliant suggestion was.
“Call Gino,” the lizard suggested.
I shook my head. “He was very clear; he doesn’t want his uncle involved.”
“But technically, you don’t have to involve his uncle,” God said. “If you call the mobster’s bodyguard and tell him you need someone who can provide emergency medical care but can’t go to a doctor’s office or hospital, I can almost guarantee he’ll have a name he can send you to. He’s connected like that. If you know what I mean.”
I looked at Angel’s unconscious body, unsure of what to do.
“He might be right,” Piss opined. “Gino probably knows exactly who you should call, I bet the kind of doctor he knows makes house calls. Or in this case, motel room calls.”
“And how am I supposed to pay somebody like that?” I asked.
“Maybe Gino can convince them to do it on credit,” God suggested.
I frowned, not really liking the idea, but it was the best we had to work with.
20
Before I could call Gino, my phone rang again.
“It’s Templeton,” I told the animals.
“You should answer it,” God said.
I looked at Angel, who was out cold on the floor. He probably wouldn’t appreciate me dilly-dallying with Aunt Loretta’s fiancé instead of getting him the medical assistance he needed.
But God had a good argument to make. “Griswald knows that you went out to help Angel,” the lizard reasoned. “If you don’t answer your phone, and Templeton goes back and tells him, he’ll think you’re in trouble. Then he’ll come looking for you, and that’s the last thing you want to happen.”
“He has a point,” Piss meowed grudgingly.
I answered the call. “Hey, Templeton.” I tried to sound light and cheery, like I wasn’t sitting on the floor of a motel room with a passed-out man.
“There’s another wrinkle,” Templeton said without even bothering to say hello.
“Different than whether my mother, who lives in a nut house, is eligible to vote?” I massaged my aching chin.
“Mental health facility,” God corrected. It’s one of his pet peeves with me. That he can never get me to say that my mother’s suffering from a mental illness. I prefer to just say she’s nuts.
“Somebody suggested that the kids have a vote,” Templeton said in a voice that suggested this was the worst thing he’d ever heard.
“The kids?” I asked, slowly figuring out what he was talking about. “You mean Katie?” I love my niece, but I didn’t think she was old enough to have any understanding as to the repercussions of what her vote would be in this situation.
“So, they’re voting on whether or not to let the little kids vote,” Templeton said hurriedly. “You have to tell me how to cast yours quickly.”
“No,” I said.
“No, you won’t tell me, or your vote is no?” Templeton asked.
“My vote is No,” I told him. “Little kids shouldn’t get to vote on this stuff.”
“I don’t think the adults should be voting on this stuff,” Templeton remarked dryly.
“Well, how else would we decide?” I asked.
“It’s Herschel’s home, he should decide,” Templeton said. “Everyone seems to forget that he’s doing them a big favor by having everybody stay here.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. He actually made a good point. “Was there anything else?” I asked.
“No, that’s the issue of the moment,” Templeton said tiredly. “I’ll tell you when the next one comes up.”
“I’m sorry that I’ve put you in this position,” I told him.
“It’s the least I can do,” Templeton said. “It’s just that this family…”
“At least you always have the option of running away,” I teased.
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” he said. Then he disconnected the call.
I checked Angel’s pulse again while I waited for Gino to answer his phone.
“I need help,” I said before he could even speak.
“I’m glad you called,” the mobster’s bodyguard said. “Tell me where you are and what you need.”
“You know where I am,” I said. “I know you track my car.”
“Only because we care,” Gino said. “Is this about Angel?”
“I think it would be better for everyone involved if we didn’t talk about Angel,” I said carefully.
“Okay,” Gino replied slowly, taking the hint. “Are you in your own kind of trouble?”
“I’m
not the one who’s in trouble,” I said.
“But you said you need my help.”
“Yes, I need to get in touch with a doctor or medical professional who could render some medical assistance.” My words sounded stilted, but I was trying not to reveal Angel’s secret and not put Gino in an uncomfortable position with his boss.
“Yeah, okay,” Gino said. “But it’s not for you?”
“Not for me,” I confirmed. “I need somebody to come to where I am,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
“Okay. I can arrange for that,” Gino said. “I take it you don’t want me to come.”
“No!” I said a little too sharply.
He was silent for a long moment. “I’ll send you what you need.”
“And one more thing,” I hurried to add. “I don’t have any cash—”
“I’ll take care of that, too,” Gino assured me.
“I appreciate that,” I told him. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”
Gino chuckled. “You’re never trying to be difficult, Maggie. You just live a unique life. Just wait where you are, somebody should be there in a half hour.” With that, he disconnected the call.
“Nobody says goodbye anymore,” I complained to the animals.
Angel stirred uncomfortably on the floor.
“Angel,” I called. “Can you get up? Can you get up on the bed?”
His eyes fluttered open, and he seemed to struggle to focus on me.
“You’re going to be okay,” I promised him. “I’m getting you some help.”
“No hospital,” he begged.
I shook my head. “I didn’t call an ambulance,” I promised him. “But I can’t handle this on my own, so I’m having outside help come in.”
I don’t know what his reaction was to that because his eyes rolled back into his head and he once again lost consciousness.
21
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the motel room door.
