One Life With Him

by CD Reiss

  He loved me because he thought I was good. Would he love me if I ruined myself for him?

  The fire alarm stopped. The silence was overwhelming. I heard the forced breaths, and if I listened closely, I heard the fluid running through the catheter and the beating of a superfluous heart.

  “Do it,” Jessica whispered.

  Do it and risk my own life. Do it, recognizing that Jonathan hadn’t done it to Rachel because he must have believed something bigger, deeper, more spiritual lived in our bodies. Do it, and lose Jonathan even if he lived.

  With a bend of my knee and a twist of my wrist, I kinked that thing, and the fluid running through it stopped.

  “Run,” Jessica said and was gone.

  I became aware of voices, the squeak of gurneys, the rustle of human activity. I backed out of the room, watching that tube fill up. In my ignorance, I hadn’t silenced my phone. When the bloop of a message came in, I jumped to turn the thing off. When I did, I saw it was from Brad.

  —We have a heart. Coming from

  Ojai. One hour.—

  Like a kid diving for the piñata candy, I went for that kinked catheter and smoothed it until the liquid flowed. I ran out as though I was coming back from a fire drill, slapped open the stairwell door, which was packed with people coming back from the drill, and backed into a corner, breathing in gasps as if my soul had been saved at a minute’s notice. I waved away anyone who looked concerned. I just needed a moment to collect myself. Breathe. That was the scariest thing I had ever done.

  “Ma’am?” Two police officers, the woman and man I’d seen outside Patalano’s hall, approached me.

  “Yes?” I answered.

  “Can you come with us?” the lady cop asked.

  My heart sank. They’d come for me. Despite unkinking the catheter, I’d tried it. Attempted murder. Someone had seen me and pointed me out. When they unraveled everything, they’d see my prints all over the place. The video. My seemingly meaningless appearance in the hall the previous night. Of course.

  I was finished.

  Chapter 43

  JONATHAN

  I heard a fire alarm, but apparently it was on a lower floor. Nothing to panic about. My family laughed with relief, even my father, who I believed didn’t actually understand levity. I stayed still and silent because I didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything else. A room crowded with people who loved me, and I’d never felt so alone. I wanted Monica to come back. I felt childish wanting her so badly, but I felt scraped down to a nub without habit or discipline, no expectations or social cues. Just the core wants and revulsions unfiltered by a personality built up by half a lifetime’s worth of experiences.

  I was scared to die.

  My body was uncomfortable.

  I wanted Monica.

  Past those three overwhelming sensations, I had only sensory inputs and petty feelings. Even the slight excitement that followed the end of the fire drill didn’t move me. There was some happy news amongst my family, like an unlikely Dodger win or an upcoming wedding. People scurried in wearing sage green and pink, shouting orders. My mother came to me, smiling, and kissed my cheek. She stroked it until Dr. Emerson, the silver-haired one who came in and out of my room seventeen times a day, pulled her away. Her face was replaced with his.

  “We have a heart. It’s a match. We’re prepping you for surgery.”

  They handled my body like a jacket they were mending, and I felt humiliated and shut down but hopeful.

  “Monica.” I choked the word out to a nurse I didn’t recognize. She looked up and past me to someone I couldn’t see. There was a conversation I couldn’t make out.

  She said to me in a voice designed for clarity, “We’ll let her know.”

  “Where is she?”

  “We don’t know. Just keep still now.” She lifted my head and strung something around my neck. It was happening too fast. I’d already let Monica walk out of the room. I’d let it happen because I was weak, and now I’d lost control of the situation entirely. That couldn’t happen. They couldn’t wheel me away and cut me open again without me seeing her. They’d done it last time, and look what happened.

  “No!” I swung my arm. It must have been truly pathetic because they just strapped it down as easily as if I was made of bone and rag. I said her name to myself over and over, but she didn’t appear.

  Chapter 44

  MONICA

  I tried not to fidget even after they took my phone.

  I was raised to think cops believed fidgeting meant lying. I wasn’t lying much. I wasn’t with the mob or associated with any kind of underground business, which was what they kept implying. I didn’t know anyone they asked about. I was just me. One of the thousands of tall, skinny, struggling artists in that intestinal tract of a city.

  “I wanted to look at him,” I said. The guy cop tip-tapped into a laptop, and the lady cop leaned her elbows on the table. The break room stank of stale coffee, non-dairy creamer, and sugar glaze.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because my husband’s up on four waiting for a heart transplant. This guy’s brain dead with this nice heart, and I just wanted to say a prayer that he died. I know that makes me a bad person.” I left it there. That was about as much lying as I thought I could get away with. I could have told the truth, but they weren’t looking for someone who’d screwed with his catheter. Their questions told me they were looking for a true assassin.

  “That your ring?” she asked.

  I held out my hand. “The diamond is his sister’s.”

  “The other one’s unusual.”

  “Quickie marriage to a dying man who I’d really like to see.”

  “Wait outside, please.” They led me to a row of chairs they’d set up for people they were questioning. A stocky guy with black hair went in next. Fuck, how long could it take? I couldn’t stop fidgeting. After twenty minutes, I looked at the clock.

  Ten minutes to three a.m. Did the morning count? I waited for ten minutes, hands still, suddenly not fidgety at all. When the second and minute hands hit the twelve, I closed my eyes and put my fingertips to my lips. I don’t know how long I held them there. They pressed my skin until the lady cop came out and handed me my phone and ID.

  “You can go.”

  I ran like hell.

  Chapter 45

  JONATHAN

  It was bright. The voices around me spoke like robots to each other and with 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?”

  “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 wearing the light blue uniform of doctors and nurses, hands up with their palms facing toward their shoulders. More scuttled in the background. I didn’t think I could be loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise. “Unstrap me. One hand.”

  Dr. Chen cleared his throat and exchanged some silent communication with the other doctors. “Mister Drazen—”

  “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. 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 anymore. 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 alone. Having 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. 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 anymore. He was upstairs with the women, sitting by his wife but 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 would walk out of that 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. I was a little dreamy, hoping he’d want to stay married and move into a house with me. The heart would last ten years, but maybe we could squeeze in another two. Or 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 lid. She saw me and waved but went for the driver’s door. The wave was all I would get. I got to her just as she was pulling out.

  “Hey!” I tapped on the window.

  She lowered it. “Yes?”

  “Thanks.” Thanking her for telling me how to kill someone felt ridiculous. “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 as though 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, fists on holsters.

  I put up my hands.

  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.

  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 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.

  The woman who had guarded Paulie Patalano’s hallway stood over me. “Not today, girlie.”

  “I was just—”

  “Save it. Nothing to see here.” She shooed me.

  I got up and backed away. Walking fast, head down, I navigated a newly formed crowd until I ran into a man who grabbed my biceps.

  “What was that about?” Will Santon 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 that and released my arms. “But it was Jessica. 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. That made no sense. I had to consider for a moment if I would let her.

  “We’ve been working on this for weeks,” he whispered 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...”

  “Play with enough tubes, and someone in that condition’s getting pneumonia. 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 as though 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. I 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 the notebook wasn’t 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.

  “Monica.” Brad sat across from me with a prepackaged yogurt cup and plastic-wrapped toast.

  “Brad.” I closed my notebook. “Thank you for that text. It was...it saved my life.”

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” He unwrapped his toast. “You’re off the hook for dinner, you know. But I hope we can still be friends?”

  “Of course. You still need to yell at me for what I did.”

  “I’ll give you an earful.” He bit the toast, wrinkled his nose, and went for the yogurt. “What are you doing here?”

  “Margie said she’d text me when he got out.” I looked at my phone, checking to make sure it was on for the hundredth time.

  “How long has it been?”

  “Six hours, give or take.”

  He stirred his yogurt. “That’s long.”

  I took a second to absorb what he said then snapped up my phone and texted Margie.

  —any word?—

  “If she forgot to text me, I’m going to beat her senseless,” I said more to myself than Brad.

  A text came back.

  —Dr came out an hour ago. Issues with

  the aortic valve. Clusterfuck—

  “Fuck.” I didn’t say good-bye to Brad.

  Chapter 48

  MONICA

  That fucking waiting room, the same as every other I’d seen when they wheeled him from unit to unit. As I exited the elevator, I realized what a home they had become with their greyed colors and worn seats. I knew that no matter what happened, that would likely be the last day I spent in a waiting room worrying about Jonathan.

  They were all there, like a red-haired baseball team. Even Fiona had stopped blowing by long enough to hold her mother’s hand. They looked at me, eyes shaded from green to blue and back, as I stood by Margie’s seat.

  “Sorry I didn’t text you,” she said. “I have other things.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Did you hear about Jessica?”

  “Yeah.” She waved it away as if she couldn’t care less. Her mouth was tight, and she looked drawn and panicked. I never thought I’d see Margie so flustered.

  Next to her, Deirdre stood. They all stood and looked at a set of swinging doors. Through the window, I saw an older doctor with silver hair take off his cap and pull down his mask. He turned to another doctor, a woman, and opened the swinging doors. Another followed. An Asian m
an, snapping off his gloves.

  Three of them. One. Two. Three.

  They came to us, and the older doctor put his hand on the woman’s shoulder in a gesture of…what? Condolences? Professional commiseration? The Asian guy cleared his throat. What was that? Gathering strength?

  Hope dropped out of me and flowed down an emotional drain, leaving black despair in its wake. Shit. Three doctors. If one took a blow, the other held the family member down, and the third called security.

  Wasn’t that how it was? I glanced at Declan. He must have seen the panic on my face because he smiled. Then I became that sister.

  ---TWO YEARS LATER---

  Chapter 49

  MONICA

  The crowd wasn’t for me that night. There was a relief in that. No pressure. I fluffed my dress and tucked my hair into place, fixing the web of pins and curls. The lights on either side of the mirror washed out my face, but I noticed it was rounder, healthier, happier than even that morning.

  The dressing room at the Wiltern Theater wasn’t the cleanest I’d been in during the previous months, hardly the most glamorous. The table was new but had the same half-eaten fast food crap that I’d known musicians to eat my whole life. The couch was worn but not ripped, the mirror was clean, and the counter had been wiped and replaced some time in the last decade. But I wasn’t there for the dressing room. Darren blew in, sweating and panting.

  “What the fuck?” I shouted. “You’re in the middle of a show!”

  “We’re between sets. I had to make sure you were here.” He pinched half a dozen French fries and stuffed them in his mouth.