“You can go.”
I ran like hell.
CHAPTER 45.
JONATHAN
It was bright. The people around me had voices that spoke like robots to each other and in fake kindness to me. They narrated what they were doing, but all I knew was, I was strapped to a gurney, staring at the ceiling, with no way to see what was happening around me.
“Okay,” said a man somewhere behind me. “I’m Doctor Chen? How are we doing today?”
“Ask yourself half the answer.”
“Right. Okay. I’m going to put this mask over your face. You need to just breathe and count backwards from ten.”
“Wait.”
He bent over to look at me. Asian guy. Mid thirties. Cap. Hissing gas mask in his gloved hand.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Uhm...” He seemed put-upon by the question. “Three.”
“Exactly three?”
“One minute til.” He started to lower the mask again.
“Wait.”
I looked around the room as far as my position would let me. Five people stood around me in the light blue uniform of doctors and nurses, hands up with the palms facing toward their shoulders. More scuttled in the background.
“Unstrap me,” I said. “One hand.” I didn’t think it was loud enough over the ambient noise of the room. Dr. Chen, cleared his throat, and exchanged some silent communication with the other doctors.
“Mister Drazen—“ he began.
“Please.”
“You shouldn’t be moving, now—“
“Please!” The plea came louder than I thought I was capable of.
Dead silence followed. The clock ticked, and though I couldn’t hear or see it, I was aware of it in the beating of my fucked up heart. I had, maybe thirty-five seconds.
“Mister Drazen,” said Dr. Emerson. “You need to calm down.”
“I’ll calm down. Just do it. Please. Half a minute.”
I couldn’t see his face past the mask, but his eyes stilled, and he glanced at an instrument before turning back to me. “No flailing.”
“No. No flailing.”
He nodded to someone, and I felt movement at my left wrist. I didn’t realize how tense I was until they let it go. Overwhelming gratitude flooded me, and a helix of fear unwound from my torso, though my limbs. When it reached my fingertips I slowly raised my hand.
“Can you tell me when it’s exactly three?” I asked Dr. Chen.
He looked at the wall clock, and I noticed the rest of them standing, in silence, all looking in the same direction.
Chen counted down. “In four, three, two...”
I put my fingertips to my lips.
CHAPTER 46.
MONICA
I couldn’t sit in that room any more. I was used to dealing with pain and worry by myself. I wasn’t accustomed to group stress. When Dad died, Mom withdrew, aunts and uncles took off and I basically dealt with it myself. Having these sisters, who were mine only by dint of a forced union, wasn’t the dream come true I’d imagined. They had personalities, and needs I didn’t know how to meet, and I didn’t know how to ask them for what I needed, because what I needed was to be alone.
So I quietly withdrew. Declan wasn’t in the cafeteria any more, but upstairs with the women, sitting by his wife, not touching her. They spoke sweetly to one another, which all things considered, was an improvement.
I felt hopeful. They did nine of these a year. That was good. It was a lot, apparently. He was going to walk out of this hospital and we’d figure out what to do. I walked into the back parking lot, just seeking an open space under the sky, with a spring in my step, a little dreamy, hoping he’d want to stay married and move into the same house with me. The heart would last ten years, but maybe we could squeeze in another two, and maybe another one would come and buy us twenty years together. It seemed like forever. I saw Jessica’s Mercedes, then her, lowering the trunk. She saw me and waved, but went for the driver’s side door, the wave was all I was getting. I got to her just as she was pulling out.
“Hey!” I tapped on the window.
She lowered it. “Yes?”
“Thanks.” That felt ridiculous, thanking her for telling me how to kill someone. “For helping.” Still ridiculous. “I got a call on the way out and I put the tube back the way it was.”
She just looked at me like I was nuts. “He have a heart or not?”
“He’s in surgery. Do you want to stay? I mean, not for me, Lord knows. The family? They kinda consider you one of them.”
“No, but thank you.”
The window crawled up, and I stepped back as she pulled out.
I heard the squawk of police radios behind me, shocking me out of my reverie. Close. Coming for me. I turned around and found three uniformed cops running toward me, laden at the waist, fists on holsters.
I put my hands up.
A black and white came for me, sirens on. I put my palms on my head and got on my knees. Okay, they knew. I’d tried to kill Paulie Patalano. Fuck. Okay. Okayokayokay. Just submit. Just shut up and let them take you in and call Margie and let her work on it.
Right.
The car stopped, and the three cops blew past me, practically knocking me over. I cringed. There was yelling. Get out of the car.
I wasn’t in a car.
Obviously.
I slowly took my hands off my head and opened my eyes.
One cop had his gun trained on the driver’s seat of Jessica’s Mercedes. Another opened the door. More stood behind car doors. One cop stood over me, the woman who had guarded Paulie Patalano’s hallway.
“Not today, girlie,” she said.
“I was just—“
“Save it. Nothing to see here.” She shooed me.
I got up and backed away slowly, then quickly, walking fast, head down, navigating a newly-formed crowd when I ran into a man who grabbed my biceps. It was Will Santon.
“What was that about?” he asked. “You kneeling.”
I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted what I almost did in that room to disappear forever.
“I grew up in the ghetto. That’s what you do when the cops run after you.” He seemed to accept this, and released my arms. “But it was Jessica,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “What could she have done? My God.” Maybe they thought she’d been the one who twisted the catheter then fixed it. Maybe she was going to take an attempted murder rap for me. It made no sense, and I had to consider for a moment, would I let her?
“We’ve been working on this for weeks.” He whispered it and smiled. “Once we stopped having to follow you around.”
“It wasn’t her,” I whispered back.
“Yes it was,” he said with satisfaction all over his face. “She killed Rachel Demarest.”
“But...?”
“Swapped out her antibiotics. Trust me. We’ve been chasing her for weeks.”
I watched as Jessica had her hands cuffed behind her.
CHAPTER 47.
MONICA
More waiting.
I felt like I’d spent the past weeks doing nothing but waiting.
The cafeteria was quiet, for once. I stared at my tea, trying to absorb Jessica’s arrest. That had been Jonathan’s plan. it had been what my curiosity had kept him from executing. It seemed so petty now. I looked at my watch, checked my texts for word from Margie, and took out my notebook.
I opened it to the last page, the only one left blank. Much of what I had in there wasn’t even suitable to be put to music. I had drawings and staff notes, compositions for multiple instruments with no idea if there was even a possibility of matching words.