“Who the fuck is this?” he growled, while he wiped his hands with a rag. He was at work and had been in the middle of an oil change.
“It’s me, it’s Jane… Sisco, it’s Trudy… We…” Then she started crying and at that exact moment Sisco’s heart stopped beating.
“What about her, Jane? Why the fuck are you at Harborview. Is it the baby?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything, since I’m not family. There was an accident.”
“Accident?”
“She was hit by a car. I don’t know… It was all so fast.” She was sobbing so badly he could just barely make out what she was saying. “There was so much blood, Sisco. You need to come here.”
He heard that part too well. “I’m on my way.”
Decker shook his head when Sisco started towards his bike.
“You’re not riding, Sisco. I’m taking you.”
“What?”
“I’m not gonna let you get on your bike right now. I’m taking you there. You’ll be of no use to your wife if you’re in a room down the hall in the E.R. I’ll take you.”
He wanted to protest, but another part of him knew Decker was right because he couldn’t even feel his own hands. He was somehow shut off from everything, including his own body.
Thankfully Decker didn’t try to talk to him during their ride to Harborview, not even to tell him it would all be fine. He didn’t want to hear that, because somehow… he didn’t believe it. The one line going through his head over and over again was Jane’s shaky comment, ‘There was so much blood.’ He couldn’t stop thinking about it, and in his head Trudy’s blood was coming from all over her. His girl.
This couldn’t be the end. It just fucking couldn’t. He’d done it all the right way. He’d met her, taken care of her, loved her, married her, stayed at home for her, and stopped selling drugs to keep them safe. He’d done all that shit just to make sure they got what they wanted—a new, better family. So it couldn’t end like this. With a fucking car accident. All the shit they’d made sure to stay away from, just to be hit by a car.
He ran into the emergency room, and Jane caught him in a hug.
“You have talk to them. They won’t tell me anything.”
She was a mess, and once again her line about all the blood went through his head. He didn’t even want to know what she’d seen and didn’t ask. Instead he looked towards the reception to find someone he could talk to.
“Mr. Evans?” a doctor asked as he walked towards them.
Somehow he’d lost his voice, but Jane responded for him, “Yes! This is her husband.”
“Good. Mr. Evans, could you come with me, please?”
“No,” he croaked. If they were taking him to a private room they didn’t have good news. “No, do it here.”
“Mr. Evans, I think it would be better if we did this in private. You can bring your friend.”
“Just tell me,” he said. He felt his legs disappearing from underneath him. “Please…” And now his lungs were giving up, too. There wasn’t any air in the room.
“Mr. Evans. We did what we could…”
That was all he needed to hear. She was gone. He couldn’t fucking believe that the love of his life, his soul purpose for breathing, had died, and he hadn’t felt it when it happened. She’d been dying, had died, while he fixed cars! How could a part of you die without you knowing?
His legs couldn’t carry him any longer. He was on his knees on the floor with Jane’s arms around him. They were both sobbing. He had no idea how long they’d been there when someone came and helped them up. Then he found himself in that fucking private room anyway.
“Your wife, Gertrude—”
“Trudy,” he interrupted him. “Her name is Trudy.”
“Okay. Trudy was hit by a car, and it caused a placental abruption. If I understand it correctly,” he said with a look at Jane, “it took the ambulance some time to reach her.”
“Yes,” Jane sniveled. “Fucking forever.”
“By the time she got here, she’d lost a lot of blood. Since she’d already reached far enough in the pregnancy, we immediately did an emergency C-section and a hysterectomy, but it…”
Sisco shut off. He couldn’t hear anymore. He didn’t want to know. They’d cut her open and… He didn’t need to hear anymore because he couldn’t think of a single moment in his life where he would feel better knowing those things. The doctor’s lips were still moving, but Sisco wasn’t listening. He knew what he needed to know. His girl was gone. Then something did break through, and it was Jane’s voice.
“The baby is alive?”
“Yes,” the doctor said but didn’t look happy about it, which Sisco took as another bad sign. He might as well have added ‘for now,’ but kept hiding behind the doctor lingo. “The prognosis isn’t good, I’m afraid, but we…”
He knew. They’d kept the baby alive for him to see it. Like that fucking helped. He’d seen enough brain dead people hooked up to tubes to know there wasn’t any honor in that shit. It wasn’t a good way to say goodbye to anyone, but he still asked.
“Can I see… Is it a girl or a boy?”
“It’s a girl.”
He had a baby girl. Lorna. Or he’d have her for enough time to say goodbye to her, too.
They took him to see her, and on the way there they basically confirmed his suspicions. There were a lot of technical explanations, but the blood flow to the baby, to Lorna, had been interrupted for too long when the placenta had ruptured. She wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t sure if it really was the right thing to have kept her alive long enough for him to see her, but when he held her he was glad they had. He got to hold his living baby girl in his arms. As much as that hurt, it gave his sorrow more of a purpose. He’d had her for a short while. That was heartbreaking, but in a beautiful way.
He got to see Trudy as well, and he stood there and just bawled his eyes out. He wasn’t even ashamed of it. She was his wife! It was supposed to have been the two of them always, and now she was gone. Considering that his heart somehow hadn’t seemed to have been beating since he had understood what Jane was saying on the phone, he still couldn’t understand how Trudy could’ve died without him knowing it on some level.
It felt so banal, so… wrong for her to die the way she had. Wrong that she’d died at all, but they’d been through so much, seen so much shit, and for her to die because some fucker hadn’t kept his eyes on the road… that was wrong on so many levels that he almost refused to believe it was true. It couldn’t end because of something like that.
A sheet covered her body from the neck down. He didn’t want to know what she looked like underneath it, but there were no marks on her face. She was pale, and her eyes were closed, but she was just as beautiful as she’d always been.
He slowly stroked her cheek before combing his fingers though her hair.
“Love you, baby, and you’ll always be my wife,” he mumbled before carefully pressing his lips to her cold forehead. “Always.”
His baby girl, Lorna, died the day after her mother, and since she was born alive he got a birth certificate on which he put her name as Lorna Trudy Evans. The next paper they handed him was her death certificate. He broke into a sobbing mess right then and there.
He couldn’t wrap his head around most of his feelings during those days, and he didn’t really try, either. It was just a constant storm and flood of emotions raging through him, and he let it. He never remembered falling asleep, but each time he woke up he felt a calm inside him for a few seconds until he remembered why he appreciated it so much. Then the storm hit him again.
Whenever he managed to calm down and think about it, the unfairness of it all just struck him over and over again. Fucking junkies, shooting up during their pregnancies, got to keep perfections that grew up to become his Trudy. He’d done it right. They’d done it right. They’d prepared, read books, were so fucking happy, had a nursery all set up for the baby. Trudy’d been so sure
the baby would be a girl, and she’d been right. What the fuck had he, had they, done to deserve this shit? She never even got to see the girl she’d been so eager to meet, that she’d spent hours talking and singing to before she was even born. It was just so fucking wrong. All of it.
He had no idea how he would have gotten through it all if it hadn’t been for Jane. She helped him with everything except wiping his ass when he’d been to the toilet. He picked the caskets for both his girls, and flowers, but that was all he managed to do. She took care of the rest and took him where he needed to be when he needed to be there.
The funeral was another haze, but he noticed how full the church was; almost all their friends where there. Some had come home from tours in Europe or Asia just to attend the funeral, and they were all crying. He’d noted so many times the tremendous impact Trudy’d had on people, not just on him, but everyone she cared about. The church wasn’t just filled with people, but with flowers, too, some from those who hadn’t been able to come.
Jane and Pete stayed close to him the entire time. Laurie was a mess, and Casey didn’t look much better, and they’d tried to be there for him, but he couldn’t handle their baby boy being around. He just fucking couldn’t, and they understood and left him alone.
He buried his girls side by side, and left enough room on the headstone for his own name, because there was no way in hell he’d be buried anywhere else but next to them no matter what happened from that day on.
On his way back from the cemetery, he noticed that the headlines on most of the music magazines were yelling out that grunge was dead. No matter what he thought about the word ‘grunge,’ he couldn’t help feeling that the two big loves of his life had died at the same time.
A week later, the only one left with him in the house was Jane.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted as they sat next to each other on the porch, staring at the falling rain. “I didn’t love her the way you did, you know that—”
“I know,” he interrupted her. “But you loved her. I know that, too.”
“And I love you, but I can see the look in your eyes—you’re leaving. I’m losing you, too.”
He actually hadn’t though it out loud even inside his own head, but when she said it he knew it was true. He was leaving. He couldn’t fucking stand the house with the nursery, all her paintings, and everything that had been their life together. It was all the two of them, and now it was just a memorial of their lost future. He didn’t know how to make it just his, and he didn’t want to do that. The house was set up for him, Trudy, and Lorna. He couldn’t change it, because he couldn’t accept that they were gone. That they would never live there.
“I don’t know…” Jane started again, “If I should just fuck you and make you stay, if that would be cheating on Trudy—“
He interrupted her again. “It probably wouldn’t, she would’ve understood, but… Jane, if I stayed with you, it would always just be to hang on to her for a little longer, and as tempting as that is…” And it was so fucking tempting. He’d thought the exact same thing as Jane; if he fucked her it would almost be like being with Trudy again. As if she was just at the edge of the bed waiting to get into the playing. “You deserve better, Jane. You should be with a guy who’s… for you. Not just because you…” he couldn’t finish when he felt the tears in his eyes.
“I’m losing you both,” she mumbled again, and he noticed her crying. too. Eventually she came to sit on his lap, and they sat there for a long time.
“I’ll check in with you. Often,” he mumbled when they calmed down. “I’ll be around. You’ll be fine.”
She gave him a kiss. “Love you, stud. Don’t go killing yourself. She’d hate you forever if you did. You know that.”
He did. If he hadn’t, he’d probably have eaten a bullet the day of the funeral. She would’ve hated it, and because of that he wouldn’t. He’d promised her to be married to her forever, and he was going to keep that promise. He would spend the rest of his life married to a dead girl.
CHAPTER ELVEN:
As In Cisco the Kid?
-o0o—
Present day, Greenville, Arizona
Sisco’d been waiting for it, and when Bear sat down next to him late one night, he knew what was coming.
“Wanna tell me what’s been eating you?” he asked and passed a beer over the table.
“A lot,” Sisco admitted. “Think it started with Vi being knocked up. Just… a lot of memories lately. It happens sometimes.”
“You know that if you need some time, all you have to do is ask. Maybe you can go up north? Visit some old friends.”
“Nah. I’ll be fine. I don’t need to go there.”
He knew Jane was looking after the grave. He talked to her often and sent her money for flowers, despite her continuously telling him there wasn’t any need. She came down to visit him quite often, too. In fact, she would be arriving the next day.
When Bear’s phone rang, they both looked at each other, and Sisco laughed at the look on Bear’s face. He’d gotten that same look every time the phone had rung since Vi’d passed her due date the week before.
“Yeah?” Bear yelled into the phone. The next second he stood up with a wild look on his face. “Now?!”
Sisco started laughing again when Bear just hung up on what he assumed was Mac or Vi.
“It’s time?”
“Fucking yes, it’s fucking time. I have to go.”
“Don’t think there’s any hurry, but you should get someone to drive you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I should. That’s a good idea.” Bear was just rambling, and Sisco kept laughing. “You coming this time?” Bear asked.
He thought about it, he really did, but then he shook his head. “No. I might stop by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Bear nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget to call April. She’ll never forgive you if she misses this.”
“I’ll call from the car,” Bear said and turned to the bar and pointed at Wrench, a hang-around, who was standing behind it. “Asswipe, you’re driving me to the hospital, now!”
The hang-around almost dove from behind the bar and ran towards the door. Bear turned around and pointed at Sisco next.
“Tomorrow. I’m fucking holding you to that. That’s my grandkid. And Brick’s! It’s fucking Marauder Royalty!”
“I’m meeting someone in the afternoon, but I’ll be there.”
“And call Wolf! He’ll want to be here for this. It’s not that far, he might make it.”
Wolf was a former member who lived in southern California, so he could make it if he left immediately, and if Vi had a normal birth. It wasn’t too far a ride for someone like Wolf, for any of them, at least not for something like this. They were used to long rides.
-o0o—
Nineties, Seattle, Washington
He left Seattle not a full two months after the funeral. There were a couple of things that made him decide it was the best thing to do.
The first was that everything he’d loved about Seattle was gone. The music scene would never be the same, and more importantly, he’d been everywhere with Trudy. No matter where he went there was something there that reminded him of her. He wanted to see new things; things that didn’t didn’t have anything to do with her.
The second was that the driver who’d killed Trudy had asked to meet him. It was some fucking program to help survivors, and Sisco didn’t want to. No fucking way. He wanted to hate that fucking dude, because some days that hate and rage was the only thing that kept him going. It didn’t matter to him if it was a freak accident. That actually made it even worse, because he didn’t want to meet him and fell sorry for him even for a second. If that made him an ass, he could live with that, but he couldn’t fucking live with having spent a second of his life feeling sorry for the fuck that killed his wife and daughter.
He left it all behind and told Jane to stay at the house for as long as she wanted to and then just
sell everything. She didn’t stay long, since she had the same problem with the place as he did—it was just too full of Trudy.
He talked to her on the phone when she was about to move and once again repeated that she could just sell everything and put the money in his bank account. There wasn’t anything he wanted to keep. When she kept nagging about Trudy’s paintings, he kept repeating the word sell. He didn’t want anything, and especially not her paintings. He remembered what he needed to remember of Trudy and seeing those paintings would break his heart. Jane told him she’d kept all the photos and private things, and if he wanted anything, all he had to do was let her know. After much hesitation, he asked her to send him two pictures. One was their wedding picture. It was just a cheesy picture taken by one of the security guys at the courthouse, but Trudy had loved it. He kept it in the envelope and didn’t open it until years later. The other was a picture he’d taken of Lorna. That, too, was kept in the envelope with the wedding picture, but he liked knowing that he had them even if he couldn’t bring himself to look at them.
He rode around the country for almost two years. He had a lot of money, both their savings and what he’d got when Jane’d sold everything in the house. Just Trudy’s paintings were worth a fortune, and they were all sold immediately. He dryly noted, once again, that all artistic creations became more valuable once the creator died. Some journalists had called just after her death; he didn’t waste a single breath on them. He was done with journalists, too.
Along the road, he hooked up with other random bikers. Some he stayed with for a long time, others just a few weeks. They stopped at some clubs and hung out with the local bikers.
Soon, he started having sex again, and it actually never felt like cheating. Trudy better than anyone knew the difference between fucking and what the two of them’d had. He’d actually been worried about it, but after the first time it didn’t feel strange anymore. Even if Trudy was somehow watching over him, which he doubted for a long time, she’d understand.
Some of the clubs he was at felt like a family, even if he was just a guest. He liked that feeling, but none of them felt like enough of a family to stick around. One of the clubs he considered trying to join was located in Signal Bend, Missouri, and was called the Night Horde. He was there for a few months, and they asked him to stay. It was a pretty small club, mostly locals, but what finally made him say no was the size of the town. The thought of living in a small town like that freaked him out. He was a city boy, and he needed plenty of concrete and plenty of buildings more three stories high to be able to breathe.
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