Maricarmen steps back. Looks up, finally. Says, “I thought it was George, outside your house. I wanted to believe that. And when you said everything was fine? I wanted to believe that too. That’s why I didn’t tell you when I saw the man come back.”
“When?”
“A few days ago. And again last night.”
That doesn’t rattle me because, “I know who it was.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” Weiss. “It’s okay.”
She looks relieved, but also sad. “I couldn’t see. And now, I can barely see you. I can barely see you to know it is you to tell you I am sick, and I am no longer able to care for Isabel.”
“I can’t care for her either. I may as well be blind. It’s, it’s…” it’s then, right there in the street, right in front of Geraldo, that I do tell Mari the whole thing, entirely.
* * *
When it’s done, and we’ve both come clean, I watch Geraldo guide Maricarmen home. I’m glad he’s there, as her loyal cousin or whoever she needs him to be. I didn’t pursue the truth there. I’m glad she isn’t alone.
I’m also glad Mari and I will stay friends. It’s kind of funny, really, that we’d been lying to each other for the same perfectly good two-year-old reason. We both projected such strength. Now, our weaknesses are our bond.
I climb the steps, go inside, and lock the door. I’m headed back to my laptop when the lights go out. “What the fuck?” I turn around, the red READY TO ARM display blinking on the security keypad, letting me know I can arm the place, just key the code.
It also lets me know a fuse didn’t blow just now. Because it would code yellow.
And it also lets me know I shouldn’t set the alarm, because I’d be doing it with someone inside.
In the TV room, faint blue light shows me where my computer monitor is, still illuminated, running on its battery.
And then I see a flash of steel at the same time I realize that someone has tried to strike me in the head with a knife. I don’t feel anything, and I don’t think I’m hit, until blood runs into my eyes.
I crouch low and lunge, pushing off the wall. I put my shoulder into a man’s knee. I know he’s a man because I get a feel for his build when I knock him back—blunt steroid strength. I topple forward with him, my knees nowhere near as hard as the hardwood. My blood blinds me.
“What the fuck?” I ask again, in complete disbelief.
He says nothing, though I can tell by the adduction of his leg muscles that he’s about to swing the knife again.
I jump back and hear the blade swipe air. I try to grab his arm but I miss and fall forward, on top of him, his knife-arm above us. I spit; I spit my blood at him. He doesn’t react; doesn’t make a sound. Instead he comes at me, so I lean into him to block his chance to strike me again. When he tries to push me away I go with momentum to get distance. Then I feel the wall at my back and get against it and push myself up to standing. I wipe my face but I can’t see anything. My blood is everywhere.
Then I feel the blade slice my leg, my quad. It seems the pain comes on a delay. Before my leg cramps and puts me on my knees, I lean against the wall and turn and kick, a heel strike in his direction. I don’t get him straight on, but my forefoot catches him in the head.
He still doesn’t make a sound.
I collapse, my leg useless now. And I can’t see him, but I know he’s getting up.
I push myself up, hands and knees, and then on my good leg, all my weight, all my strength. And as he comes at me again, I take a chance: instead of raising my arms in defense, I turn and move left, back to him, putting myself in striking distance as I reach for the security pad. I can barely feel my fingers but I don’t need to feel them to push the buttons. PANIC. It’s there somewhere.
And then I feel the knife strike, and tear down my back.
As I fall, the alarm blares.
“Two minutes, motherfucker,” I yell, looking up, seeing black. “They’ll be here.”
I sense him coming at me again, over me. I grab at his legs. He shakes me off, steps back, and kicks me in the stomach. And then he steps over me, opens the door, and goes.
I curl up. I cover my head and my face and I’m afraid he’ll come back and I think I’m going to die.
And then, an operator says, “Emergency services have been dispatched.”
I manage to say, “I’ve been attacked.”
“Are you able to verify your identity with your security password?”
I say, “Isabel.”
22
And then I’m in the hospital. Again.
I don’t recall triage or transport. I went into shock and it was all bright lights, big trouble.
Once my vitals were stable, things came into soft focus. The emergency room team disbanded and a lone nurse completed my intake forms. She didn’t care what happened; she just wanted to know who was going to be responsible for paying to fix it. I signed on a dotted line, and the exams got under way.
The resident ER doctor was dispatched to examine my back.
He didn’t like what he found.
He did some diagnostic tests.
He didn’t like the results.
Then came a steady stream of visits by medical professionals, this nurse and that doctor and some specialist who concurred my textbook neuropathy was worrisome but weren’t sure what to do, each one unable to gauge just how close the third knife strike came to my spinal cord. Eventually a neurosurgeon showed up. I remember his title because I sure as hell hoped he wasn’t planning on surgery. After he performed the same exam all the others did, he called his nurse, who put in an order for an MRI.
Yes, another MRI. I didn’t argue. I didn’t say anything at all, because I was fucking scared.
I waited. I slept. And I woke—just now—to hear a dick from Fourteen arguing with the primary nurse. He isn’t getting anywhere.
“I don’t care who she is,” the nurse says. “In here, she’s a patient. And in here, officer, you’re in my jurisdiction. If you aren’t next of kin, you aren’t talking to her.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Not right here you won’t.”
I assume she shows him the waiting room door. Makes me wonder if Fourteen has been able to notify Iverson, or Delgado. For once I wish the news would spread.
After what seems like three tomorrows an orderly comes to take me to the tube. As he wheels me down a sun-drenched hallway—it’s tomorrow, at least, by now—I lie there and study his undersides. I think I see him clearly, though so much seems off: his chinstrap beard doesn’t follow the round shape of his face, his Adam’s apple shifts diagonally when he swallows. When someone passes by, his thin nostrils flare unevenly, part of his smile.
I think back to the ER, the neurosurgeon. I don’t know when the pain stopped, but without it, this has all become so dreamy, so increasingly surreal, that I start to feel like a corpse.
This guy ignoring me doesn’t help.
I raise my arm, kind of, and try to wave. “I’m still alive, right?”
He doesn’t look at me. Says, down his long nose, “Right through here.”
Like I know where here is; like I’m following instead of being pushed. I try to think of something funny to say, to show I’m okay; I wonder if I can’t think of anything because I’m not.
He takes me through a double set of double doors into the radiology department. No windows in here, either, and fluorescents stand in for sunshine. He hands my paperwork to a nurse and rolls me past her desk and the control room straight into the imaging room.
“The technologist is on his way.” He’s gone before I can manage a thank-you.
I close my eyes and wait.
Other than the steady drone of the machine’s cooling system, the room is quiet.
The quiet is unnerving.
I open my eyes and wait.
The imaging room is a replica of the one Metzler sends me to on North Avenue. The questions the neurosurgeon’s nurse asked when she
prepped me were the same, too: Have you ever had surgery? Been shot? Have any metal implants, devices, or dental work? Are you or could you be pregnant? Claustrophobic?
My answers were all no, same as always. Sad, though, that I seem to have a higher chance of taking a bullet than I do of getting knocked up.
Hey, that was kind of funny. Maybe I’m not going to die.
“Hello, Ms. Simonetti,” the radiology tech says, a bald man with a blond nurse in tow—a blond nurse so perfect I’m certain she has to say yes when asked about surgery, implants, and dental work.
The tech, on the other hand, looks like he may say yes to bullet shrapnel—his rough face, a pugilist’s ears. Sharp-edged black tattoos fork up from the collar of his lab coat.
He rolls foam earplugs between his fingers as he comes around one side of the gurney, the nurse around the other. “We’re going to get a look at your spine today,” he says. “If you experience any further discomfort, let me assure you it’s because you’re flat on your back in a cold metal tube. Just try and stay still, and we’ll get you in and out of there, fast as we can.”
The nurse lays a blanket over my torso and they both look down at me, easy smiles as the tech fits the plugs in my ears.
I say, “Thank you.” My voice sounds syrupy, drugged.
They move the bed in line with the machine. It clicks into place, raises, and starts into the tube.
“Here we go” is what I read from the tech’s lips.
I close my eyes. The entrance is the worst part.
Inside, the familiar tinny voice comes over the transom: “This first test will take about thirty seconds.”
I start to count, not seconds, but knocks: one, two, three, four … one-two-three. I try to let my mind wander. I imagine a woodpecker, his beak ricocheting off the metal. I think of Woody Woodpecker, his maniacal laugh. And that song—for kids, really?—It’s nothing to him, on the tiniest whim, to peck a few holes in your head …
The knocking stops.
“Ms. Simonetti,” the tin voice says. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, it’s time you listen. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“What?”
“I said you’re lucky. To be alive.”
“Who is this?”
“I am anybody. And I can get to you anywhere. To you, or to Isabel.”
“What? What the fuck? Let me out of here—” I try to bang on the wall, but the space is too small. I can’t move my hands or my arms or anything else. I am trapped.
“Ms. Simonetti. Can you still hear me?”
I look in the mirror above my head—the one that gives a glimpse of the way out. I see my feet, splayed and barefoot. I am defenseless.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“This is about what you want. If you want to live. If you want Isabel to live.”
“Jesus Christ—this is insane—”
“If you want those things, quit the case.”
The case? The fucking case? “Where is Isabel?”
“You don’t know? Isn’t your duty to serve and protect her?”
“Who the fuck are you?” I scream, the earplugs amplifying all the noise in my head. I thrash around the tube. I try to push myself out. I try to inch myself toward the opening. I try every possible way to get out, and I exhaust myself so much that by the time I finally speak again I just say, “What do you want.” I say, “What.”
“I said, this first test will take approximately four minutes. Hold still…”
Then the knocking begins again.
I scream until it stops.
When I’m rolled out of the tube, the radiology tech and his nurse are there, flanking the gurney, same easy smiles.
“Ms. Simonetti,” the tech says. “Did you forget to tell us you’re claustrophobic?”
“What? No.” I try to get up off the bed. “What the fuck just happened?”
They look at each other, hold the smiles. Take my arms. Hold me. “Careful,” the tech says.
“How long was I in there?”
“Not very—”
“The voice. Who was that? Who was talking to me?”
“On the intercom? That was me, communicating the procedure—”
“Where’s Isabel?”
Again he exchanges a look with the nurse; this time to confirm a red flag. The nurse nods, checks my pulse.
“Ms. Simonetti, you’re exhibiting signs of a panic attack—”
“Damn right I’m panicked—”
The nurse takes that as her cue, pivots, and goes.
“Where is she going? Who’s in charge, here?”
The tech consults the chart chained to my bed. “Dr. Tacker. The attending. I’ll page him. In the meantime, we’ll give you something to calm you down—”
“I don’t want to calm down—”
“It’s very important that we do this test.”
“No. I’m not going back in there.”
“Okay, tests aside, for your safety, you need to calm down—”
The nurse returns with a syringe. She isn’t smiling anymore.
“No! I don’t want to fucking calm down! I want to see the doctor. I want to see the cop who was waiting for me in the ER—”
I try to fight the tech as he pulls a strap across my chest and fastens it, a belt over my arms. I kick my legs; he pulls straps tight over my knees.
“Ms. Simonetti,” he says again, his fighter’s face unmerciful.
“Okay. Okay: I hear you loud and clear. I’ll quit the case.”
They both look at me like I’m insane.
The tech says, “We cannot let you harm yourself in here.” He gives the nurse the go-ahead with the needle.
“No—” I say to her. “Wait.”
She doesn’t.
In another thirty seconds, I’m out.
23
Now, I hear people talking. Men, talking—
She must have surprised a thief.
It looked like a smash and grab.
Witness said it was a black guy.
The neighborhood, you know—still rough.
That stretch is disputed MLD territory …
I don’t recognize the voices, but they are casual as much as they are informed, proving they must be police. I count three. From Fourteen, probably—caught this case on account of time and place, just like I did St. Claire’s. And, just like me, they’re starting without any real fucking clue.
Soon, talk turns into debate about details of the attack. The kind of knife. Where it came from. Where the attacker came from. If he knew I was police; if he knew me. If he held a grudge.
They believe the suspect must be injured. They know I fought.
I want to speak up. To tell them the fight isn’t over. To tell them what happened in the tube.
But. I am anyone.
He could be here right now. A cop, a doctor. A cockroach.
That possibility is why I will let them believe I am asleep. That possibility is why I will say nothing if they rouse me.
When the cops run out of things to speculate, they begin retelling their own war stories, spit-shined and ballsy.
I tune out and try to get my bearings.
In the room, central air hums beneath the ticks and tones of a pair of monitors. To my right, I hear the indirect echo of street noise—a garbage truck idling, a siren swirling. I must be a few floors up; I probably have a window on the alley with a view of the building next door. To my left, I hear doctors being paged and patients being impatient, call buttons like part of a techno soundtrack, giving rhythm to the business of a hospital.
I don’t know which hospital.
I do know I am not in pain. I am gummy. I am connected to machines. And I am trapped. Again.
And, when I tune back in, I am stuck listening to this:
“Fucking bone was sticking out of his arm and he was still trying to swing at me.”
“They should have a special code for guys in the oz
one like that. Ten-fifty plus ten-ninety-one-V, what’s that come to—?”
“Suspect under the influence of a vicious animal?”
“No, I’m trying to add the codes together…”
“It’s twenty-one-forty-one-V.”
“That sounds right. A vicious animal under the influence—”
“You can’t add twenties. Twenty oh-one, forty—”
“Gentlemen,” a new voice says. A woman. Not a gentle one. “Since you’re bending your brains, try this one: how many police does Fourteen have to put on a case so none of them can figure out they can’t interview an unconscious victim?”
None of them answer. I wouldn’t, either, because it’s Iverson doing the asking.
“What about the door?” she asks. “How many does it take to man the door?”
Still nothing.
“Okay. Do any one of you know where the doctor is?”
Someone comes over, presses the call button alongside my bed.
“There you go. Now, please. Go wait in the hall. And make yourselves useful: talk to the floor nurse when she arrives—she’s the blonde in the blue-striped scrubs, name’s Sandra?—ask her to page the attending physician.”
I hear the shuffle of feet, the room going quiet.
“She’s very attractive,” Iverson calls out. “Try not to trip over each other.” Then she takes my hand—but only so she can move it in order to get to the TV remote.
She switches on the TV. “Mind if I hide with you, Simonetti?”
She skips over the noon news channels and tunes into a cooking show, some Italian chef whose English is staccato, syllable-timed: let me share with you what are my favorite wines to go with these shellfish …
“Mediterranean mussels?” Iverson asks. “Who the fuck wants to cook that?”
She watches anyway.
I wonder if this might be a good time to regain consciousness. We’re alone; I’d have the chance to tell her what happened. I’d have the chance to appeal to her on a personal level.
The problem is, what I currently know about her personally is that she probably would not enjoy cooking mussels. I’m actually not sure what appeals to her—except useful information. Information that fits into a promising story she can present to the bosses.
I don’t have much information and I definitely don’t have the makings of a promising story. To Iverson, now, I’m the flower that got ripped off the vine. She’s not going to want to know about this unless I bring her the whole thing in a big, nasty bouquet, indisputable and prosecutable.
The Lies We Tell Page 24