“I just told you.” I managed to sound genuinely annoyed. The balance came back easier now. Soon I’d graduate to bitchy and be back to my normal self. Well, maybe not so fast.
“Fill this out,” She said and shoved the clipboard at me. I took it and the pen attached with a chain flopped over the side and hung there like a suicide. All eyes in the waiting room were still on me and I didn’t care.
The forms asked for name, address, insurance information. Very little I knew off the top of my head. I wandered back to the bays where small flocks of doctors crowded around the new arrivals. I saw an older black woman wheeled out from behind a curtain and left in the hall to wait while some real excitement took place. She rolled to a stop facing the wall and didn’t bother to move herself, just sat hunchbacked and staring at a taped up flyer about parking validation.
They put Blake on his stomach, shirt off and a bright light aimed at the entry wound in his lower back. I heard someone call for a chest tube.
Marjorie earned herself two teams, the arm team and the leg team. Already the forceps were out and a nurse smeared lidocaine around the wounds to numb her up a bit before they began spelunking, looking for buried treasure inside each of her three entry wounds. Good thing Sam hadn’t unleashed Marge’s own Smith and Wesson on her or there would be matching exit wounds and her chances would be, as Daddy used to say, “Whitman and Theresa. Slim and Nun.”
I stood by, frustrated and angry that I could do nothing. I hadn’t been able to help Marjorie, I’d gotten Blake shot twice. I had no idea if Lucas was dead or alive. I hadn’t even managed to kill the bad guy, or girl, when I had the chance.
I’d been living a life of disappointment in myself for a few years now. Ever since I took the first envelope of money from Calder and Rizzo’s guy. If I’d been in high school the level of self loathing I felt would have made me bulimic at the very least. Lucas’ ability to balance out my self hatred should be proof enough we all need a little yin and yang, give and take in life.
Standing there in the ER with a clipboard full of forms I didn’t even know how to fill out may have been my low point. I’d fucked the whole thing up from square one. Granted, it took me a while to even catch on to what the hell was happening, and by then the wheels were on motion. I had no time to think, let alone think rationally. For Christ sake, I don’t think I managed a truly rational thought for two and a half years other than saying yes to Lucas when he proposed.
At least during my tenure with Calder and Rizzo I never felt helpless. I still did my job—the real one—the DEA, catching the bad guys one. I did that and did it well, when I wasn’t spending my time undermining my own job. And I’d fooled myself into thinking I could quit taking the dirty money any time. Doesn’t everyone though?
I guess I always thought I’d have some opportunity to set things right. Helping Lucas put away Calder and Rizzo had been my plan. Fucked that one up good, didn’t I?
“Miss, is that your car?” The same annoyed nurse who handed me the clipboard stood with her hands on the hips of her unflattering scrubs.
“Sorry.” I handed her back the blank forms as I went back through the staring waiting room to Blake’s car still idling in the Emergency lane. I sat in the driver’s seat and the blood had grown thicker, stickier, colder. A shudder ran through me.
I pulled forward and parked in the small lot for emergency room visitors. I turned the car off and sat in the quiet. I tried to think of how to make this come out okay. Very quickly I stopped fooling myself. This could never be okay. I sat and tried to think of how to make this a tiny bit less fucked.
I felt a heat behind my eyes. Small, but there. I ignored it for a minute, but when it didn’t go away I realized: Her. Watching. Listening.
I turned the rearview mirror and looked into my eyes. Her eyes.
“I think your money is gone,” I said. Not sure why I even felt the need to say it out loud. She’d know if I thought it, right?
“Think he’s dead too?” she asked. Her voice came across in a bad connection. If it were a cell phone call we would have dropped it and tried again. With this weird mind conversation, we knew it was the best to hope for.
“I hope not,” I said.
“What about Blake? Is he dead?”
“No. He’ll be fine.”
“Damn.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Through and through. Hurts like a motherfucker but nothing Marjorie’s medicine cabinet couldn’t fix.”
“When is this gonna end?”
“When Lucas is dead.”
“What for?” I almost started crying. “Let it go. No one is paying you anymore.”
“I can’t help it. Now it’s in my brain and I can’t get it out. Like a bad song. He’s like We Built This City On Rock and Roll. I fucking hate it but now it’s stuck in my head and will be for days. You know how this feels. I can’t control it. I need to do it.”
“I’m gaining more balance. I sped on the way over here.”
“Look out, miss Bonnie Parker is in town.”
“I know you’re feeling it too. Tell me about Blake. You’re a better shot than that.”
“He was moving.”
“Not very fast.” She got quiet and the heat in my head flamed higher. I hit a nerve.
“You see, if you all hadn’t spent so much time trying to stop me, maybe I wouldn’t be so angry.”
“And if you kill Lucas, what then?”
“I don’t know.” I could feel her staring at me through my own eyes. Frickin’ creepy. “You don’t know either.”
She was right. I didn’t know any more than her, and I felt no more in control.
Something in the car moved. I jumped and took my eyes away from the mirror. Something small. A mouse? It happened again. Electronic. A buzzing.
Blake’s phone, wedged in the cushion of the front seat where I dropped it. I lifted it out.
An email. From Lucas.
WHEN YOU SEE IT YOU WILL…
Made it out. C&R dead. Back @ homebase.
I stared at the phone, reading it again, taking it in. Lucas was alive. Calder and Rizzo were not. Did it make a difference? Not to her.
“I guess I know who gets my twenty million,” Sam said. “Those Tiburón fucks.”
“Can this be over now?” I asked.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Maybe get Lucas back? Stay on track with the marriage.” I didn’t think anything of the sort. I figured on twenty-to-life. “Not a goddamn chance. Excuse me now, I’ve got to go kill Lucas.”
With a blast of static our connection cut off, like she ripped her fist out of my skull.