Girl Watching You

by J. A. Schneider

  They need me out of the way. “For his sake, honey,” a uniformed woman says.

  I slide further back, huddle shaking against the wall just feet from where bloodied Chrissy sits, her head flopping sideways, her open, glassy eyes glaring. Her gun’s still in her hand. Someone in white pants, white booties, photographs her.

  I stare down at my bloodied hands, the front of my red-soaked white bathrobe.

  The EMTs kneel, work furiously. They have an oxygen mask over Peter’s nose and mouth; an IV going. “Pneumothorax,” someone says. Someone else shakes her head, murmurs in a voice I’m not supposed to hear about his blood pressure dropping. “Fast,” she says.

  And someone else steps on the photo of Peter in sunset, holding his little boy, teaching him to fish.

  I half crawl to pick it up, hug it to me, bow my head. It has lost its frame, is smeared with blood. Tension and grief intertwine; suddenly my body goes into spasm and tears burst from my eyes. I grip the blanket around me and the photo, and for moments I’m blinded. I feel someone kneel and hug me one-armed, try to comfort.

  It’s Hall, the young detective.

  I raise my face to him.

  His eyes plead I’m so sorry, please, please, try to get a grip, and it brings me back…enough to let him help me to my feet, blanket and all. “Can you stand?” he says, steadying me.

  “Briefly,” I whisper, leaning against the wall.

  He winces at my shiner. “That’s looking worse.”

  I say nothing, crane back to where they’re working on Peter. “I can’t see him,” I weep. Navy-colored uniforms are in the way. I try to step toward them. Hall stops me: “They need room. Gurney’s coming.”

  Hall’s partner Weber comes up, her radio blaring. They urge me back over gray, bloodied shower curtain and settle me on the bench; try to take my statement.

  Uncooperative, clutching the bloodied photo, I lean again trying to see Peter. “What are they doing?” I beg.

  Hall says something about “chest tube” and “sucking wound,” and “try to re-inflate the lung.” I drop my head sickly, tears spilling. Nausea grips me.

  Weber’s small gloved hand touches my arm. “Hang on,” she says. “He needs you to hang on.” She jumps up and grabs a small towel, wets it at the sink. I watch her come back and wipe blood off my hands, scrub, scrub. “Gotta get you out of this robe, too,” she says.

  She finishes, tosses her towel, but there’s still blood under my nails…like Chrissy’s ketchup.

  Worse nausea. I struggle it down.

  Wheels crank, and I look up again. They’re starting to move Peter onto a gurney.

  “I’m going too,” I say, and get painfully to my feet. Hall nods, tired, and helps me. Weber also rises and pulls my drooping blanket around me.

  They’ll have to wait for my statement.

  I grip the photo as we edge past the gurney. Navy-colored backs are turned to us, bent, strapping Peter down. Then I see him, and my heart dies.

  He’s shirtless and bandaged, under a tan blanket. Above his oxygen mask his eyes are closed; his skin is deeper blue.

  Faces over him are solemn.

  Hall turns away to talk to someone. I stop breathing. Weber helps me out to the bedroom.

  On the bedside table, I see the photo’s copy: Peter fishing with little Teddy…safe, framed, and unbloodied.

  Weber helps me to it. I hold it; breath whooshes back into my lungs. Shuddering, crying, I throw the bloodied photo to the floor. Weber looks at the unscathed one, tears up a little too and says, “beautiful.” Then tucks it into my duffle.

  In the wide, walk-in closet she half closes the door and helps me change into clothes I brought: jeans, Nikes, a wine-colored sweater. I grimace in pain but hurry; throw the horrid, bloodied bathrobe to the floor. Police voices and radios come from the bedroom and hall outside, and the stairs. When Weber opens the door, they’re just wheeling the gurney through.

  Peter, his eyes closed, limp and deathly.

  Fury strangles me.

  Weber helps me into my slicker, grabs my duffle, and we follow. Descend gingerly behind them, to the foyer and out the front door. The rain has stopped, the night air is raw. Emergency vehicles fill the street, and flaring lights, squawking radios. Onlookers watch; their sorry faces turn red, then blue, then red. A galaxy of cell phones flash.

  Weber helps me into the ambulance, to a bench beside Peter. He lies under blankets, an IV in his arm strapped to a board. I want to touch his face, but don’t. I want to lay the photo of him and his child on his chest, but I don’t. The EMT across from us checks his vitals and radios the hospital; an urgent exchange. Detective Hall leans in, says something to Weber, and closes the double doors.

  The ambulance pulls out. I feel it traverse narrow Charles Street, then veer onto Hudson. I watch the glistening, clear-fluid IV bag swing. My insides wail along with the shrilling siren.

  Weber pats my hand, says something meant to encourage.

  I say nothing. Delayed shock, maybe…but my mind is busy.

  Something nags.

  Long moments pass and then, like thunder, it comes to me, belatedly penetrates the fog.

  “Chrissy said she killed her brother,” I say feebly. “She told the police he wasn’t there but he was, only he’s dead.”

  Weber’s eyes widen, and she raises her phone to her ear.

  I say nothing else on the way to Bellevue.

  54

  Peter’s in surgery. I’m in the drab waiting room outside the surgical suite. Beige walls, old magazines, a weeping, older couple sitting across from me. I wish I could comfort them, but inside I’m frozen. Still barely breathing.

  Quietly, Hall and Weber are taking my statement. I must seem slow and wooden to them, voice barely a croak.

  Chrissy’s the shooter, I confirm. She faked helpless, stalked Peter’s girlfriends, used Uber to get around, shot Darcy and Chloe. Forensics is fast; they’ve already matched the shell casings from all three crime scenes.

  “Her brother knew?” Hall asks, leaning closer because my voice is weak. Weber scribbles.

  “Yes.” I shift in my seat. The aches are bad; no way to get comfortable. “She hated him trying to control her, keep it all a big, terrible secret. She used their apartment’s back stairs to come and go.”

  I lean forward, again press the ice pack a nurse gave me to my eye. Every ten minutes for ten minutes, she said. Incredible, I think: another ice pack in just a few days. “He must have caught her coming back one night,” I add. “Maybe that’s why he spent time in the breakfast nook.”

  Minutes ago a young surgeon came from the O.R. to tell us they’ve extracted the bullet. It splintered a rib and then fragmented; they’re still trying to find pieces.

  Find pieces, what horrible words. I see scalpels, bloodied gloves and transfusions; feel heartsick.

  Hall has asked me something that I missed. It’s an effort; must keep trying to cooperate.

  “What?” I ask feebly.

  “How did Chrissy know where you’d be tonight?”

  I look down at ugly, beige industrial carpet.

  “She’d been coming to Peter’s while he slept; read his phone, knew who he talked to, put a GPS in his car.” I remove the ice pack, place it in a bowl the nurse put on a side table. “After Nick attacked me” - I stare into the bowl – “she must have just watched Peter on her GPS, run down while we were answering your questions in my kitchen.”

  “Sick.” Weber shakes her head, flips a page, and then trades looks with her partner.

  They tell me that the police have found Nick Jakes, dead from what looks like a .22 to the face.

  “Sprawled on their back stairway,” Hall says. “Must have arrived at Fifth before our detectives came the first time. Chrissy saw him drunk with knuckles scraped admitting he’d gone after you, and she must have snapped, lured him out there, probably faked running down herself. It looks like she pushed him backwards down the stairs, then went and shot him point blan
k.”

  I grimace and shudder, then tighten again. “Did the children hear?”

  “No, they slept. A .22’s shot is like a pop. Thick walls anyway, and it happened half a stairwell below.”

  I think for a moment, trying to process, keep up.

  “What about…the housekeeper Mary?” I ask. “Chrissy went from complaining that she was controlling to calling her dumb.”

  Weber shakes her head, reads from notes she’s taken from detectives calling in.

  “Not dumb. She just bought Nick’s whole story that Chrissy was super fragile, had to be monitored so she wouldn’t hurt herself. She got hysterical when they found Nick and told her what happened. She’s been questioned, will be again, but it looks like there’s nothing there.”

  I’m shaking my head as Weber finishes, feeling tears prick again. My heart grieves for those two children. How to explain? What’s ahead for them?

  I fumble my phone out. Incredulously, the time reads just ten after eleven.

  Impossible to think that barely three hours ago, I was in Chrissy’s chauffeured car hearing how oh so timid she was about coming up. And when she called after Nick’s attack - how well she faked horror: My God, I just heard! What happened?

  Getting her intel…deciding what to do next, probably even pulling her jacket back on as we disconnected.

  I was so wrong, so taken in. Chrissy the depressed shut in! How she fooled everyone; it takes my breath away.

  Well, the detectives have their statement. Weber checks the time too, goes out to the polished hall to talk to a nurse. Hall, sitting back in his chair, watches me swipe my phone, inhale, and look away despairingly.

  “You’re all over Twitter,” he says sympathetically. “Both of you. That crowd outside Greer’s…”

  “I saw them flashing away,” I sigh. Across from me, the older man peers at my shiner. A kid has joined them, looks about sixteen, and seems thrilled. He’s been watching the three us – both cops with guns strapped to their ankles; me groaning and injured - then swiping away at his phone, reading, gaping avidly back to me.

  I’m his entertainment. I try not to glare at him.

  Hall notices, raises his shoulders in a shrug. “No escape, huh?”

  “No. Phones everywhere.”

  He gets up, excuses himself, and walks out to the hall too.

  I go back to my phone. Seven voicemails are waiting: two each from Joe, Mel, and Renata; one from Alex. I listen to some of them, and blow out a huge breath. Hysteria abounds.

  Weber’s back, carrying a blanket and pillow. I’ve managed to curl up in my chair, so she smiles and wraps the blanket around me like a papoose; reminds me that she’d grabbed Peter’s Aleve from the sink and put it in my duffle. I never noticed, but thank her.

  Then Hall’s back with a sandwich and coffee from a dispenser, apologizing that it isn’t from Le Bernardin.

  I feel my face snicker. “I hear it’s overrated.”

  They smile, and I thank them again. They have my number, say they’ll be back “when Peter wakes,” and leave.

  I breathe in.

  Return those calls?

  In a bit, I decide. They’ve seen pictures of me getting into the ambulance. They know I’m not dead.

  I unwind my body and Weber’s blanket, and reach down to my duffle. She left the fishing photo on top, and I pull it into my lap; hug it; resume feeling terrible for Peter’s children. Poor kids…they’re just little kids…

  The same young doctor comes out, looking more positive than he did the first time. He says things are “better in there,” and starts waving his arms trying to describe the “left main bronchus” and “upper lobe” and “even though the bullet just nicked the lung…and the fragments, the fragments, but we got ‘em.” He also describes the indwelling chest tube Peter will need for days, to drain air and fluid that can threaten to collapse the lung all over again.

  “It will look scary but it’s vital,” he finishes. “On his left side, so keep people away from that side of the bed.”

  I thank him, he leaves, and again I see scalpels and whooshing tubes and bloodied surgical gloves. Long moments pass before I draw a full breath.

  Then, with the fishing photo hugged tight to me…it comforts…I finally return the calls.

  Shock and sorrow from Joe, Mel, and Renata. I keep the calls short. Yes, there was shooting involved. I’m okay and at the hospital. Peter Greer’s in surgery.

  “So awful,” Mel weeps.

  “Horrible!” Renata says, and consoles, “Maybe a book deal.”

  “You’re there?” Joe says. “Keeping vigil?”

  “If you were shot,” I say evasively, “wouldn’t you want me there?” I’d saved him for last, knowing he’d sound hurt.

  I haven’t called Alex back yet. Not sure if I want to, he knows I’m alive…but minutes after I disconnect, the dear almost-my-ex phones again. He’s shocked and horrified, really relieved that I’m okay. “Jeez, be more careful,” he tells me. “I need you for Kim’s trial.”

  I keep his call short too.

  Everyone’s going to keep in touch, updated, gasping to see me. I tell none of them about my shiner, aches, or trashed apartment.

  The window near me overlooks the hospital’s ambulance bay. Through the dark glass I hear sirens, more emergencies arriving…a constant mill of heartache.

  I am so very tired. An upsurge of melancholy grips me.

  I lean my head back and close my eyes, seeing Charles Street again, the police chaos, lights strobing the night sky. Somewhere above that bright dome I’d caught a glimpse of the moon sailing through clouds, and now I see it again… riding white veils behind my lids, serene, immune to pain.

  I squirm and try to get comfortable, hurting, feeling the steady thud of my heart.

  55

  My eyes open to cold gray light in the window. I blink, and the ceiling falls in.

  It’s guilt. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong - I’m an outsider who caused all this! Last night’s shock and adrenalin were kinder; I just wanted to see that he was okay. Now, after some sleep, it hits that his children will be coming. What will they be told? She killed your mother?

  I have to leave.

  The clock on the wall reads 5:20.

  Oh the pain, trying to uncurl myself.

  I find a bathroom, and wash up. Groan at the sight of my eye, the bruises on my neck, and change into a blue turtleneck. I pick up my duffle again, and find Peter’s room. It’s a private.

  “Okay if I go in?” I ask a nurse coming out. “I’d like to drop off something.”

  She’s tired but smiles. “You’re Ava. Sure.”

  I don’t understand; she knows my name? From the door I see Peter on his back under blankets, an IV in his arm, bandages visible. He’s facing mostly away, eyes closed, dark-stubbled.

  “He loves this.” I hold up the fishing photo. “It will help.”

  Her nametag reads Nia, and her eyes worry. “Good, but you’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Yes. I’ll probably check into a hotel.”

  “But you can’t.” Her whisper rises as we step outside a little. “I mean, he came awake and was asking for you. Tell her, Fran.”

  An older nurse comes up and nods earnestly. “Around four he woke in pain. I upped his medication, and in the time it took to work he got agitated, kept saying, ‘Where’s Ava? I need her.’ I told him you were just outside and would see him in the morning.” Fran smiles. “That helped more than the med.”

  Nia is peering hard at my shiner. “You should be in the hospital, not a hotel,” she whispers, adding that she read all about what happened - “horrible!” - it’s online everywhere. Her gaze flicks down the hall. “And you couldn’t have slept much out there; it just made me wince to see you all knotted up.”

  I admit I feel ready to fall down.

  “Come,” Fran says.

  She nudges me into Peter’s room. “Get comfy in that chair,” she whispers, pointing across
in the dimness, patting my arm. “We wanted to tell you during the night, but you were already asleep. Oh, what a beautiful photo; yes, we can put it on this table next to him, or that table on the other side, next to where you’ll be. Be sure to approach the bed from that side, too – oh, you know? Right, because of his chest tube.”

  She helps me around the bed, settles me into an armchair. “Here, let us help you with your duffle. Have you eaten? Nia, do we still have those donuts at the nursing station?”

  “Muffins,” Nia whispers, looking away from the monitor. “Banana and blueberry.”

  They check how I like my coffee, and go. Their bustle is so like angels, I want to cry. They’ve helped me remember life without tragedy.

  The room falls quiet, except for the monitor’s soft beeping. It’s still barely dawn, almost dark in the room except for a small night light. From my chair I lean toward Peter, feel my face crumple a little. You told them you needed me? He’s on his back with his sleeping face turned toward me, as if, despite heavy meds, he knew that the window and return to the outside world are on this side. His breathing is regular…

  And his color is back to alive. No more deathly bluish tinge. The monitor’s beeping is the sound of his heart.

  Tears sting. The feeling of miracle is this.

  I finish swiping at my cheeks, then grip the chair arms, and push myself back to my feet.

  Carefully, I step closer; feel myself melt studying the line of his high cheekbone and strong jaw. His hair is mussed and his stubble is growing. His arm on this side is free of the IV and stretches over the blanket. I wish I could put his photo into his hand, but instead I look to where Fran put it on the bedside table.

  I lean, and turn it so it faces him better. He’ll be able to see it from his pillow. He may be able to reach with his good hand, though that IV on the other side might tug-

  “Ava?”

  The barest whisper.

  I catch my breath, look back. His eyelids flutter in the dimness.

  “Hey…” I lean close to squeeze his hand, smile joyously while fighting more tears. His fingers close around mine, and squeeze back.