A chair set beside her bed. I put the happy turtle on her nightstand and sat in the chair.
The only sound in her room was the sound of machines helping to keep her alive. The humming and periodic beeping were a little hypnotic. I sat for a full five minutes before I noticed the hum of the machines was making my eyes heavy. I didn’t want to fall asleep, so words began falling out of me.
“I don’t know if you can hear me. I brought you your turtle. I’m sure it’s against the rules, but I put him where the curtain kind of hides him.” My voice was unsteady, “Your doctor is a hottie. If I were you, I’d pretend to be in bad shape for as long as you can get away with it. But if you want to wake up early and get out of here, I got his card.”
The babbling continued for several minutes until the words I needed to say rushed out of me. “I’m going to find this guy. I promise you, I’ll find him.” My hand took hers: it was cool and a little clammy. I rubbed her hand using both of mine to try to warm it up. “You need to keep fighting. I need for you to get better.” Reaching across the bed, I took her other hand in mine and did the same thing. “I promise if you get better, I’ll never give you a hard time about rent again. We can get another roommate, so you can live in the house for free, okay? You’re never going to shark again because of rent or food. We’ll figure out a different way to pay the bills, I promise.”
The tears that rarely came even in the worst situations were now cascading down my cheeks. My voice was unintelligible, but I choked out the words anyway, “I can’t go back home if you aren’t there. It isn’t home without you, Libby. So wake up.” The sobs took over as I bent forward and rested my head against her mattress. “Just wake up. Don’t leave me.”
Unsure how long I stayed in this position, a nurse gently shook my shoulder. I had stayed well past the ten minute limit. I nodded to the nurse and gave Libby one more sorrowful look. I leaned down to her ear and whispered, “Keep fighting.”
I returned the scrubs to the used laundry hamper and left the ICU. The waiting room which had been nearly empty last night was full of long faces and tears. I didn’t want anyone’s comfort, but it felt better to be around others in as much pain as I was.
I found an overstuffed chair away from the others, by a window looking out across the city. My stomach growled. No matter how hard I tried to stop the memory, the events from last night crashed in on me as I fell into a fitful sleep in the waiting room. I woke up abruptly, looking around the waiting room in a daze. The reality of where I was, and the events of the last twenty-four hours poured over me. I stood up and stretched. I felt awful. My watch told me I’d been asleep for nearly two hours.
The light from the window that I had fallen asleep beside was diminishing. It was going to be dark soon. I needed to get back to Mrs. Bavcock’s house and get some real sleep.
Chapter 11
The fine hairs at the nape of my neck prickled. Someone was watching me. There was a policeman posted on the ICU floor, positioned behind the same desk as the nurse who had welcomed me when I arrived. He hadn’t been here earlier, so I wondered if he had been assigned here along with the patrolman on my street. I turned in a complete three-sixty, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me in the waiting room. I felt eyes watching, but from where? I was still groggy from my nap and needed more sleep. I had caught a quick nap between 9 PM and midnight last night, and a couple hours just now, but I had been on a two-day stretch before that. In the last forty plus hours, I had had just shy of five hours of sleep.
That had to be what I felt. My body was overreacting to all the stimuli. I had once stayed awake for almost three whole days and nights. Remembering that it had taken days to recover afterwards, my body was telling me it needed some down time. I didn’t want my body to melt down like that again, but I wasn’t confident that I could calm myself enough to sleep anytime soon.
Larry was sitting in a chair on the other side of the waiting room, but he hadn’t been paying much attention to me. As I made my way over to him, he looked up and seemed glad to see me. “I just woke up. Has anything changed?”
“No. No change.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I left for a little while early this morning, but when I got to work, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, so I came back. I must have been in the cafeteria when you came in.” I had never thought much of him when the two were dating: he gave off clingy vibes or something, but in this moment I started to think he might be okay. I was glad he was here for her. If she gets better – scratch that, when she gets better, if Libby decides to let him hang around, I’ll do my best not to get annoyed with him so easily.
Light from the window was nearly gone. The short days of winter were here; it was dark most days before 6 PM. I needed to make my way to Mrs. Bavcock’s guest room. With any luck, when I woke up tomorrow morning, I would be able to stomach school again. I had already decided I would park two streets over on Maple and walk through the easements to get to Mrs. Bavcock’s house. I didn’t necessarily expect either Dave or the shooter to come back to my street, but as much as my car stuck out, I wouldn’t tempt fate, either.
Even though Dave had known me in high school, he knew little about where I hung out now or who I spent my time with. From what little I had known of him, he didn’t have any big ties to this area, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities for him to skip town – especially if he was on the run from the police. A shiver shimmied down my spine: how had he so easily gotten out of police custody?
Assuring Larry I would be back in the morning, I said my good-bye and made my way down the hall. I stood in front of the elevator door, watching the illuminated number above it. When it arrived on the eighth floor where I stood, the little metal car was already full. I let it go without trying to wedge myself in. After the doors closed and it began its descent, I reached to press the elevator call button again. To my right was a sign for the stairs. Going down the steps wouldn’t be bad; it wasn’t like I’d have to do any climbing. Maybe being off this floor would get rid of that nagging feeling that I was under surveillance.
Halfway to the seventh floor, the feeling of dread went from a dull annoying feeling to a sharp fear that I was being pursued. “This is silly,” I told myself aloud. I could hear someone walking down the steps a few floors above me. My stomach cinched tight. Whatever these weird vibes were, I needed to be in a public place, not in a lonesome stairway. I pulled hard on the seventh floor door and emerged in front of the same elevator I had stood in front of one floor up.
I pushed into an overfilled elevator, not even apologizing for likely taking the car over its maximum capacity. My car was in the parking garage across the street, and I liked the idea of walking almost the whole way to my car in a brightly lit skywalk. My departure must have coincided with a shift change at the hospital because a steady flow of people were walking with me to the parking garage.
I got in my car and waited while several eager cars darted passed me before I could back out. Luckily, the nurse on Libby’s floor had validated my ticket, so I wasn’t scrambling for any loose coins in my purse to pay. I had considered going to Bank Shot to talk to Chris but decided I needed a clear head, and sleep was the only way that was going to happen. I began driving toward Maple Street. The radio played a favorite song; something about the familiar melody soothed me, and I was finally settling down from the weird feeling I had had in the hospital.
A light up ahead turned yellow; stepping on the clutch and easing my foot off the gas, I tried to be extra careful because I could see the shimmer of the icy pavement ahead of me. I came to a stop at the red light and began fiddling with the radio, trying to avoid the commercial that had cut off the song I liked. The last thing I needed playing in my head was a catchy jingle about new carpet.
Absently I looked in the rearview mirror – Dave’s face was staring at me. I screamed so loud that the windows should have shattered. My foot slid off of the clutch, the car’s engine an
d transmission jerking to a stop. Dave didn’t flinch, his voice was smooth, “I’m sorry. I needed to talk to you. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
I scrambled for the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Dave’s hand had reached around my shoulder from the backseat and was holding the manual lock on the car door down. I was trapped. “How did you get in here?”
He held up a bent metal coat hanger in answer to my question. I had gotten into the car the same way lots of times by sliding one through the closed window and pulling the manual lock up with the end, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that he, too, had a master key. The street was clear, no pedestrians to hear my scream, and no cars behind me to see I needed help. His voice remained calm when he asked a second time, “Candy, what’s going on?”
I put on a brave front that I wasn’t feeling. “What’s going on? You and your friends are trying to kill me.”
Incredulously he stammered, “Kill you? Why would I want to kill you? And who was that guy at your house today?”
That’s the same question my mind had had on constant replay all day. Why would Dave want to kill me? He had been so sweet to me at his garage this morning, yet right afterwards he’d come to my house after me. The light turned green, but I didn’t move. I stole a glance at the passenger side door. I could slide across and run back to the hospital. If I timed it right, I could easily have a ten second head start. I ran three days a week and could outpace almost everyone I knew. “You tell me. He let you in,” I spat.
Dave’s brows came together as his forehead wrinkled in irritation. “He thought I was someone else.” His eyes narrowed when he asked, “What happened in your house? It looked like someone butchered a deer in your living room.”
My breath hitched as the memory of seeing my living room this morning returned. I saw a sincerity in his eyes I didn’t expect. “That guy who let you in my house? He attacked Libby last night.”
His eyes widened, “The cops who brought me here talked about a woman being in the ICU. They didn’t say who. I was waiting for dark to leave when I saw your car pull into the garage. Is she. . .I mean. . .that was a lot of blood. Is she going to be okay?”
I wanted to scream, “Yes,” but I didn’t know if she was going to be okay. I didn’t know if she would ever wake up, or if she did, what kind of brain damage she might have. “They induced. . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. What was he saying? He didn’t know Libby had been attacked? What was he doing at my house if he wasn’t meeting the psycho stalker? Instead of finishing my answer, I asked him, “He thought you were someone else? Who?”
“I don’t know. When he figured out I wasn’t the guy he thought I was, he started shooting at me. What have you and Libby gotten yourselves mixed up with?”
“He let you into my house. What were you doing there?”
Dave’s left hand still held firmly to the door lock, precluding my exit, as his right hand eased onto my shoulder while he leaned up toward my seat. His eyes remained fixed on mine through the rearview mirror. “I’d never seen the guy before. I went to your house looking for you. I thought you were inside because your car was out front.” The hand on my shoulder squeezed me gently when he added, “I didn’t know what to think when you left my place this morning. I was worried.”
Was he on the level? Was it possible he wasn’t involved? I wanted to believe the earnest expression that held my gaze, but I couldn’t be gullible, not after everything that had happened. I had seen Dave at Bank Shot last night. He obviously knew Teddy. The guy who shot at me and attacked Libby last night knew Teddy, too.
He must have read the doubt in my eyes, because his voice spoke softly, “I could never hurt you. Ever.”
Turmoil erupted inside me. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be able to trust someone. After everything that had happened, I couldn’t pull off this strong façade much longer. I was close to losing it. Maybe my initial conclusion this morning was correct: he had a multiple personality disorder and truly believed he didn’t know these people. That would explain a lot. From what little I knew about the disorder, I believed that as long as he stayed with this personality, I would be safe. But I had no clue what the trigger might be that would make him switch to the personality from the bar last night – the dangerous personality.
Dave’s expression was solemn, as if I were hiding the truth from him, “Who was he, Candy?”
“I don’t know,” I flared. I took a deep breath, silently wishing I could know whether to believe him or not. “You’re sure you don’t know him?”
“Never seen him before. You left my garage so fast I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to see if you were okay. You didn’t answer the door, so I started looking in windows to see if you had collapsed on the floor or something. Your Chevelle was parked in front of the house, so I was sure you were inside. When I saw him through the window, he waved me toward the front door.”
“So you came over to my house and some strange guy let you in? You didn’t think that was odd?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t seen you in a while. For all I knew he was your roommate or boyfriend or something.”
Still skeptical I asked, “At what point did you figure out that something wasn’t right?”
“It was weird. As soon as he let me in, he started talking to me like we were old friends. He said he hadn’t expected to see me there and told me not to get pissed, he was doing Teddy a favor.” Dave paused for a minute, as if he were still trying to make sense of what had happened. “You had asked me about a Teddy this morning, too. I meet a lot of people at the garage, and the way he was talking like he knew me, I didn’t know what to think and was trying to place him. When I came up empty, I didn’t want to be a jerk and ask who he was, so I asked him where you were.”
Dave’s eyes darted away from where they had held mine through the rearview mirror. “He said, ‘Unfortunately, still alive. I’ll take care of her as soon as she comes back from across the street. You better go before this goes down.’”
That awful sinking feeling grabbed my stomach when I asked, “What’d you say?”
“I don’t remember. I saw red. Whoever the guy was, he wasn’t a customer, and he had just told me he wanted to kill you. I attacked him, which is when I realized he had a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. We wrestled around for a minute, somehow he got loose, and he tried to shoot me as he ran for the front door.”
“Then why did you chase him up the street?”
Dave must not have realized I had watched most of what had happened from Mrs. Bavcock’s window. He shook his head as if he didn’t know the answer to my question either. “I didn’t know what to think. The only thing my mind processed was the part where he said he wanted you dead. I sort of snapped.”
Dave was wearing a coat, so I couldn’t see the bandage on his arm. It wasn’t the same coat he wore earlier: this one was a brown and black ski parka. The police had said they were taking him to get stitches. To confirm what they had told me, I asked, “But you got shot?”
His smile was warm, “Yeah, talk about contender for worst day ever.”
I startled from the sound of a car’s horn behind me. I wasn’t sure how many green lights we had sat through. No longer convinced I needed to escape, but still not certain I believed him, I restarted the car and eased it into a brightly lit convenience store parking lot. With what Dave had just said, I started to question my multiple personality theory. He was adamant that he wasn’t there to hurt me. For some strange reason, I believed him. If Dave wanted me dead, he could have easily done it in the garage or here from my backseat. He had had every opportunity; instead he was trying to get his mind wrapped around what had happened. Everything he described seemed logical. What was I missing?
There was something in Dave’s eyes, an honesty – a genuineness. He must have noticed that my fear was ebbing because his enormous legs and body crawled over the bench seat from the backseat into the front passenger side. When
he was situated and looking into my face with the glow of the convenience store lights lighting his features, he asked, “Start from the beginning. Who was the guy in your house? What was he doing there?”
I shook my head, “I’m not sure. One of my neighbors had seen him looking out the windows before I got home. When I parked my car, she didn’t let me go in.”
“And you had never seen him before?”
I chewed my lip for a second, “He robbed me last night at the gas station. He tried to shoot me after I gave him the money, but I was behind bullet-proof glass.”
Dave thundered, “He tried to kill you last night and then came looking for you?” Dave’s eyes were full of alarm as his hand gripped my arm.
I eased away from him, trying to fade into the door. I stammered, “Not exactly, I mean, yes.”
Dave saw his outburst had frightened me because he eased back toward the passenger side door, crossed his arms, and took a breath. “From the beginning.”
“Libby and I were playing pool at Bank Shot last night. She bet this Teddy guy and won. He didn’t want to pay up, but,” my voice trailed off. This was the part that I didn’t want to say, because if I were wrong and Dave did have multiple personalities, this might make the Mark guy come out.
Dave asked, “But what?”
“This guy who looked like you was there. He made fun of Teddy for Libby beating him, then said something about being respectful of ladies when Teddy threw her winnings on the floor. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but when I got to work a few hours later, the guy you met at my house showed up. He told me Teddy had been gambling with his money, and he wanted his money back. I gave him money out of the cash register, and that’s when he told me he had already attacked Libby.”
“Wait. The guy in your house this morning robbed you last night and attacked Libby?”
His Frozen Heart Page 12
