Coming for You
Page 10
Andy Cho reappears, frowning.
“I’m afraid there’s a problem, ma’am.”
“Oh?”
“Your prescription has expired.”
“What? That can’t be right.”
He shows me the date on the prescription. It expired six months ago.
“I’m sorry. I can’t fill it.”
“But you could make an exception,” I say. “Just this one time.”
He pauses and looks at me. “Do you have an issue with narcotics, ma’am?”
My legs wobble. “What? No. It’s my foot. Please, can you just fill the prescription? I think I might have an infection.” I lick away beads of sweat on my upper lip.
“If you have an infection you should see a doctor.”
“I don’t need to see a doctor. The expired date is just a technicality, surely you can make an exception this one time.”
Andy Cho folds the prescription in half and slides it across the counter. “I’d lose my license.”
“I just need medicine for my foot…accident…the woods,” I say, tripping over my words.
Andy Cho frowns. “The woods?”
“The woods, yeah.” My tongue feels thick. Andy Cho is fading in and out. “Oh, the pain.”
I reach for the carousel rack of insoles and go down.
28
Voices come to me in snatches. You’re safe now. How much have you taken? Can you feel this? What’s your name? Do you know what year it is? Hold still while we put on the brace.
I don’t know where I am but I’m moving, being moved, slipping in and out of consciousness. An ambulance. I’m in the back of an ambulance. The woman putting a needle in my arm has the bluest eyes. Pretty cornflower blue. I want to tell her she has the bluest eyes I have ever seen but when I try to speak I can’t. My tongue is dead in my mouth.
“Ba….” I say and slip away again.
When I come to, I try to sit up but my head is jammed between two polystyrene blocks. I feel the tape sticking to my forehead. A gentle hand on my shoulder pushes me down.
“Relax. You had a bad knock. We need to check your neck.”
Oh my God, I have broken my neck. And I thought having a half foot was bad enough. I roll my eyes to the left. I’m in a world full of people. A nurse is taking someone’s blood. A young boy has his arm in a splint. A man in a red beanie is fighting with a security guard. A busy ER department. Next to me a uniformed police officer is taking notes.
“And who is Rex Hawkins?” he says.
“What?”
“Is he your husband?”
I try to shake my head but can’t because of the neck brace. I start crying.
“Calm down, ma’am.”
I choke on my tears. I try to sit up. Hands press me back down. My heart races.
“No, don’t! Please!” I yell.
A needle is quickly slipped into my arm and I fade out again.
When I wake, I’m still in the ER department but the police officer is gone and I’m free of the neck brace. I sit up and my stomach flips. A passing nurse shoves a container under my mouth just in time.
“Whoa there,” she says.
I throw up good and proper.
“That’s right, get it all out.”
When I’m done, she gives me some water. I look at the IV drip going into my arm.
“Antibiotics,” says the nurse. “Pretty savage infection by all accounts.”
Oh god, they’ve amputated my leg. Panicked, I throw aside my bedsheet. Relief washes over me when I see that my leg is still intact, my foot in clean bandages.
“I want to go home.”
“They’re keeping you overnight for observation.”
“No way. I have to get home.”
She purses her lips. “You got a husband? Better half of some sort?”
I think of Ethan North.
“Yes,” I say and reach for my phone.
29
Ethan and I sit in the living room in the failing light sipping the tea he has made. My eyes drop to the gold shield of his detective’s badge clipped to his waistband, his holstered gun beneath his suit jacket.
“You were working,” I say.
“I should never have left you,” he says, almost bitterly.
He looks calmer now than he did before, when he had rushed into the hospital with sheer panic written all over his face, going from bed to bed trying to find me.
I look down at my tea. “You were right.”
“I was?”
“About the links. There are none. It’s all just speculation. Rex Hawkins is dead. There would’ve been some sign of him if he was alive.” I look up. “I had an ‘off-the-books’ information analyst trying to track him down but she couldn’t find any sign of him. And there’s also the DNA evidence, of course. That’s pretty irrefutable, isn’t it? For some reason I just couldn’t accept he was dead. I know how crazy that must sound.”
Ethan raises an eyebrow. “Information analyst?”
“Yeah.” I stare into my milky tea. “I never used to be like this, Ethan. I was happy once, confident, not this pathetic, broken person.”
He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You’re not broken, Amelia. Sure, you’re a different person than you were back then, you can’t go through an experience like that and not be changed, but you’ll forge a new path.”
I start to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“Hey.” He puts down his mug and pulls me into a hug. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
He feels good and warm.
“Will you stay tonight?” I murmur into his shoulder.
He kisses the top of my head, rests his chin there, thinking.
“The sofa?” he says, finally.
“Not the sofa,” I say.
*
I wake around 3 a.m. with Ethan lying next to me, fully clothed, on top of the covers. I watch his profile in the moonlight, that lip, hear the quiet warmth of his breath. He stirs and rolls on his side, blinks sleepily at me.
“Hey,” he whispers.
I touch his cheek and feel stubble beneath my fingertips. “A true gentleman.”
“Pop taught me well.”
“Thank you for being here,” I say.
He pauses. “You’ve been through a lot. I can only imagine.”
I don’t reply.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s okay.” I swallow hard, take a breath. “For a long time, I was angry at myself, for being so naive.”
“But you couldn’t know what was going to happen. Hawkins manipulated you, took advantage of your good nature.”
“Yes, I understand that now. He was so normal and nice, charming even. A cowboy type who certainly didn’t appear like an abductor in waiting. When he asked me to help him with that spare tire, I never suspected a thing. I couldn’t believe what was happening when he pushed me into the trunk of the car and took me to the woods. It was just so surreal, like I was trapped inside some kind of bizarre B-movie.”
I lapse into silence. Ethan remains quiet beside me.
“I was raped, but you know that already. Everybody knows that,” I say.
He gives me a squeeze. “I read about it in the papers.”
I laugh sourly. “He even apologized for doing it.” I shake my head in disbelief. “He was definitively big on playing mind games. He even said he would let me go then changed his mind.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Yes.”
“I read that you tried to get away.”
I nod. “Twice. Each time he caught me. That last time he strangled me and dumped me in a dirt grave.”
I shudder at the memory of his hands around my throat. “I managed to dig my way out, spent weeks lost in the wilderness, et cetera, et cetera…I’m sure you know the rest.”
“It’s an incredible story, Amelia. Something like that would have done most people in.”
“Luck.”
I feel myself blush. “So that’s my sad story.”
He pulls me into an embrace. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
“You want to join me in here where it’s warm?”
I feel him study me in the darkness. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in ages.”
30
He calls in a few favors and takes the weekend off. We spend it together in a bubble. Outside, rain blisters the windows. Sleet too. Reminders that New York will soon be in the lead up to Christmas. With dark nights and snowfall. And all the transportation chaos that those things bring with them. But for now, all that seems far off, and I’m content to stay indoors with Ethan, furnace pounding out heat, dozing on the sofa while Ethan watches Netflix or baseball or motorsports on my laptop.
We feast on takeout—Thai, Indian, Mexican—which Ethan dutifully goes out to pick up every night, returning to the apartment clutching plastic bags and smelling of the city and shaking droplets from his coat. Then with our stomachs full, Ethan tells me more about his life, his long-departed mother who died when he was fifteen from kidney disease, his beloved Pop who lives in a geriatric care home, his decision to become a police detective and the impact that’s had on his life, a divorce a decade back, a gastric ulcer, the unsolved cases that haunt him.
I lie there listening, taking in the timbre of his voice, his gentle presence in my space. I feel safe and at home. Slowly I begin to think that it could really be possible for me to forge a new path, one where the past doesn’t dictate my future life.
All too soon, Monday morning arrives and Ethan has to go to work. He emerges from the bathroom, freshly showered and shaved, but in the same clothes he’s been wearing for three days. I fight the urge to tell him not to go. Take the week off, I want to say, just stay here with me.
“You need me to come over tonight?” he says, shrugging into his coat.
“I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
I nod and see him to the door.
“Thank you,” I say. “For this weekend.”
He takes me by the shoulders and looks me in the eye.
“You need anything, you call. You’re not alone in this, you understand, Amelia?”
I smile and give him a salute. “Understood, Detective North.”
31
Lorna manages to squeeze me in at 2:20 p.m. It will be the first time I have been out of the apartment since the hospital. Without thinking, I begin the checking process. It’s not until I am testing the window latch in my bedroom that I realize what I’m doing. I’m annoyed at myself. I’ve accepted that Rex Hawkins is dead so there is no need for this ridiculous behavior anymore.
I pause, take an internal audit on how I’m feeling. Tense? Panicked? Anxious? All the usual emotions that drive the checking process. I smile. I feel none of these things. I drop to the end of the bed. I feel good, actually, lighter. I think of Ethan. My heart does a little flip. The beginnings of love.
So, yes, there has been a change. Progress. The checking is a habit, an ingrained pattern, that needs to be undone. That’s all. I can do this. I can forge a new path ahead.
So I permit myself one round of checking, and only one, and by the time I leave the apartment I already feel like I have won some sort of challenge.
*
Lorna looks worried when she greets me.
“Amelia, I’ve been concerned. I’m glad you reached out.”
Her eyes run over my body, my face, my eyes, my wrists. I know she lost a patient a few months back. I overheard the receptionist talking about it. Bath. Hot water. Razor blades.
“Thanks for fitting me in.”
I follow her into her office and we take our seats. She smooths down her lilac skirt and delivers her usual opening question.
“So, Amelia, where would you like to begin?”
I hesitate. I pour myself some water, take a sip, put my glass back down.
Finally, I look at her. “Lorna, I’ve been lying to you. For months. Years even.”
She nods slowly. “Okay.”
“And I don’t want to do that anymore.”
I tell her all of it. How bad the checking was. How diminished and lost I had become. My serial killer theory. Hiring Chris and my obsession to track Rex Hawkins down, even though logically I knew he was dead. Lorna listens intently. Tries to keep her face passive. But she has to be hurt and I feel bad. I know how much she cares and genuinely wants to help. She’s a diligent therapist who demands very high standards of herself so my betrayal must be a low blow.
“Sorry,” I say, finally.
She nods. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I mean it, Lorna. You’ve been good to me. I told you I’d always be honest with you and I wasn’t.”
“This isn’t about me and my feelings, Amelia. You should be proud of yourself. This is a significant breakthrough.”
“There’s something else.”
“Go on.”
“A man.”
Lorna’s a little taken aback. “A romantic relationship?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You think so?”
I feel myself blush. “He’s nice. Too nice for me probably.”
“You are a whole person, Amelia, worthy of love. Everyone has trauma at some point in their lives.”
“Even you?”
She pauses and I think I’m going to get the usual we’re-here-to-talk-about-you-not-me line.
Lorna nods instead. “Yes. Even me.”
She lets that sit for a moment, then says, “Tell me about him. Your new man.”
Ethan’s face comes to me and I can’t help but smile. “He’s a police detective. Soft. In a good way. Caring.”
“And he knows about the incident?”
“He does.”
“And what about you? Does he know about the checking?”
“He knows everything.”
Lorna seems impressed. “Well, that’s a fine start.”
“Yes.”
She tilts her head. “But you’re scared?”
I chew the inside of my cheek. “A bit.”
“That’s understandable, Amelia. Emotional connections with an intimate partner can raise feelings of intense vulnerability.”
“Yes.”
“But you shouldn’t let that hold you back. It’s a great opportunity for transformation.”
“You think so?”
She smiles. “Absolutely.”
“What about my compulsion to check? Will it stop?”
“Be patient with yourself. It’s going to take time.”
“Okay.”
“Remember, Amelia, slow and steady wins the race.”
32
I step outside Lorna’s building into fresh air. I feel good, invigorated. Coming clean to Lorna has taken a massive weight off my shoulders and standing there in the late autumn sun, I experience an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the people who care about me. Lorna, John Liber, my mother, Ethan.
The thought of Ethan brings a smile to my lips, and acting on impulse, I take out my phone and punch in his number.
“I changed my mind,” I say.
“Well, hello to you too,” he says. “What exactly did you change your mind about?”
“Let’s have dinner at my place tonight. I’ll cook.”
He laughs. “Wow. Beautiful, smart, and she cooks.”
“Don’t overdo it, Detective. How does six sound?”
“Six it is.”
There’s a Whole Foods Market a few blocks over, so I go there and peruse the aisles like I know what I’m doing. It’s been years since I cooked for anyone, let alone someone I want to impress.
What to have? Steak? Pasta? Chicken? In the end, I opt
for simple and fresh and choose two fat salmon fillets, a premade wasabi mayo, a packet of organic rocket salad, and a tub of honey crisp gelato to finish. I pause at the wine section but decide against it. I’m still on meds, and don’t want a repeat of last time. Instead I select a large bottle of cold pressed juice, blood orange and pomegranate, and hope that Ethan will like it.
On the way to the checkout, I spy some spectacular white lilies. I grab a bunch and end up dripping water all over myself. The checkout operator, a woman in her mid-fifties, left hand wrapped in a thermo-skin RSI glove, passes me a paper towel.
“Pretty flowers,” she says.
“They’re for a special dinner.”
The woman smiles. “What’s the occasion?”
I pause, thinking. “New beginnings.”
When I get home, there’s a letter waiting for me from the Bar Association. The disciplinary hearing is scheduled for next week, Tuesday at 10 a.m. I lower myself into my chair. The real world is intruding and I’m not sure I like it.
Dear Ms. Kellaway
Following an Attorney Grievance Committee investigation into your alleged violation of The Lawyers Code of Professional conduct, namely:
DR 7-102 [1200.33] Representing a Client Within the Bounds of the Law.
DR 7-103 [1200.34] Performing the Duty of Public Prosecutor or Other Government Lawyer.
The Committee finds there is a case to answer and the alleged misconduct is sufficiently serious to warrant a due process hearing.
The possible outcomes are censure, suspension, or disbarment. It could mean the end of my career. I’m suddenly overcome with sadness. All I ever wanted was to be a lawyer and help people. After my initial shaky entry into the profession through corporate law, a soulless and brutal arena, I discovered public prosecution and found my life’s purpose. It’s where I belong. To have that taken away would be devastating.
On the other hand, maybe disbarment is exactly what I deserve. Maybe I’m not a fit and proper person to be doing such an important job. Whether I like it or not, I showed a terrible lack of judgment and violated one of the most sacred rules that went to the heart of the accused having a fair trial. It was a terrible, terrible mistake. It could be that the most honorable thing to do is resign and hand in my license.