by Olive Balla
But as the doctor walked through the door, Collette leapt at him from her perch atop the entertainment center. With the full force of her thirteen pounds, the cat hit Bellamy’s shoulder, instantly pushed off again and disappeared into the bathroom.
Bellamy yelled something that sounded like “Whaa,” and tossed the derringer in a high arc to his right.
The weapon hit the wall and fell to the floor. Frankie and Bellamy simultaneously dove for it, but the doctor was a nanosecond quicker.
In desperation, Frankie reached into her pocket and pulled out Mina’s barrette. She stepped toward Bellamy, closing the distance between them. By the time he straightened and turned back toward her, the two stood nearly face to face.
Surprised by Frankie’s proximity, Bellamy did not take time to aim but precipitously pulled the trigger so rapidly the two shots almost sounded like one. Something tugged at Frankie’s sleeve as the first bullet nicked the fabric and buried itself in the wall. But the second bullet found its mark in her shoulder. A red hot poker screamed its way through her flesh as the superheated projectile expanded, searing and masticating tissue at the same time gun powder stippled her neck and cheek.
A low growl started up from somewhere deep inside her chest. It gained strength as it rose in her throat, turning into a full throttled battle cry. She shoved the sharp metal points of the starburst barrette into the base of Bellamy’s neck. The heavy metal spikes sliced deep, piercing flesh and muscle.
Dr. Bellamy squealed, dropped the derringer, and backed away. His eyes wide, he tugged at the still embedded barrette, but realized too late his mistake. With nothing to hinder its flow, blood seeped through his fingers and down the front of his shirt.
One hand pressed against his neck, Bellamy half ran, half crawled toward his car. Drops of blood marked his progress down the stairs and along the sidewalk.
Frankie’s vision blurred, but she forced her body into action. Warm blood trickled down her arm and ribs. Her legs felt like they were tethered to sandbags. But she ran after Bellamy.
The doctor whimpered and kept glancing back over his shoulder. With his free hand he opened his car door, fell onto the seat and jammed the key into the ignition.
Only a few feet from Bellamy’s car, Frankie’s eyes went out of focus. Her knees buckled and she fell forward onto the asphalt.
Chapter Thirty-Four
When Larry regained consciousness he was lying on a hard, cold, flat surface. His head throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat, and the roar of pumping blood filled his ears. He lay still for a few seconds and waited for the chaos in his mind to clear a bit. When it did, he opened his eyes.
Every movement shot fresh pain through his head, but he sat up. Nausea tickled at his insides and his vision blurred. He tried to stand, but his legs refused to hold his weight and he plopped back down onto the floor. The contact with the hard floor jarred his head and he nearly lost consciousness again. He hand-walked up the wall, leaning against it for support.
“Is that the best you could do, you old bastard?” he said to the empty hallway.
Larry staggered toward the lockup. Steeling himself against what he might find, he opened the door. But other than the empty gurney, the room looked the same as when he’d left to go for the car. He was relieved to see no blood or any other indication that Bellamy had hurt Frankie.
That was the good news. But as soon as Bellamy got his hands on what Tim took, he’d have no choice but to kill her.
“Not my Beauty.” Careful not to move his head more than necessary, Larry slid his hand along the wall and wobbled toward the cutting rooms.
Hector and the other cutter were standing at their work stations when Larry stumbled into the room. Hector put down his boning knife and walked toward his friend, while the other cutter went back to slicing pieces from the red mass in front of him.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” Hector said. His mouth opened wide when he saw the blood on Larry’s clothes and the gaping wound on his head.
“So did I,” Larry said. “But I got sidetracked.”
Hector pulled his bloodied apron off and tossed it into an empty chair. He peeled rubber gloves off his hands and threw them on top of the apron. “What happened?”
“Bellamy hit me and took off with my girl. I’m going to get her back, but I don’t want to attract attention. Folks see me all bloodied up, someone’s going to ask questions. Might even call the police.”
Hector examined Larry’s head. He clicked his tongue a couple of times and walked to a white metal cabinet against the wall. He wet a handful of cotton balls with some kind of brownish solution and dabbed at the wound. Larry winced.
“You need stitches. Scalp wounds bleed bad.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Larry glanced at the other cutter, who kept his head down and eyes on his work. “I need you to sew me up.”
“I can, but I don’t have anything to deaden you. It’ll hurt.”
“Can you do it fast?”
Hector nodded. “My mother taught me. She said I was better than any doctor.” He grabbed sutures out of a cabinet and told Larry to sit in a chair. After he’d put several stitches into his friend’s scalp, he doused the area with the brown liquid that burned like fire.
“That’s going to hurt pretty bad for a couple of days.” Hector held out two white tablets. “Extra strength aspirin will help some.”
Larry put the pills into his mouth and chewed.
Hector began to take off his blue and white striped pullover. “Take off your shirt. You can wear mine.” He tossed the shirt to Larry then put his black rubber apron on over his white undershirt.
Larry put his own red flannel shirt into a nearby trash can and slowly pulled Hector’s shirt over his head. “Thanks.”
“De nada.”
“I’ll name my first boy after you.” Larry headed toward the door.
Hector beamed. “Go with God.”
“Give little Anna a hug.”
As fast as his pounding head would allow, Larry walked toward the exit through which Bellamy and Frankie had passed a short time earlier.
****
Nick drove like a madman toward the motel where he’d learned Frankie was staying. In the event he was over-reacting and she was okay, how would he explain his presence to her? He couldn’t just show up out of the blue and tell her he’d come because he couldn’t stop thinking about her—that he couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep because of her. Or that he was terrified the blood in Mina’s apartment was hers.
As he neared the motel what began as a tickle at the base of his neck blossomed into full-fledged alarm at the shriek of sirens growing louder and louder. He pulled into the parking lot just behind the ambulance from which the sirens whooped.
The emergency vehicle’s lights bounced in eerie strobe patterns off the brick front of the motel. The ambulance headlights lit up the parking lot, bringing into sharp detail a tableau straight out of a television crime show.
Two patrol cars had arrived earlier and secured the area for the safety of the emergency response personnel. Motel guests stood in clusters watching the action. Several of the younger ones held camera phones pointed toward the scene.
A black Jaguar stood in a cordoned-off area, its driver side door open. A man half sat, half reclined behind the wheel, his legs splayed with one foot inside the car and the other outside. The man’s head leaned back against the headrest, his eyes open and staring. His hands lay in his lap. Blood formed a puddle around the man’s shoe where it rested on the carpeted floorboard. Blood, now coagulated, had poured from a red line encircling the man’s throat and onto his shirt front.
Frankie lay face down on the asphalt a few feet from the car, her hair fanned out into an auburn halo around her head. Unable to tell whether or not she was breathing, Nick gritted his teeth as his stomach clenched into a hard ball.
Two paramedics, bags in hand, jumped out of the ambulance and split up. One moved toward F
rankie and the other toward the man in the car.
Nick identified himself to the police officers, one of whom he recognized. He explained his presence, and after some discussion was allowed to move closer to Frankie.
One paramedic dropped to his knees beside her still form. He checked her vital signs and called out information to the other paramedic.
“Is she going to be okay?” Nick said.
“It’s too early to tell,” the paramedic said. “Are you a relative?”
“No, I’m a friend.”
“She’s been shot in the shoulder and has lost some blood. Her pulse rate’s a little weak and she’s in shock. Our best bet is to get her to the hospital ASAP.”
“This one’s gone,” the paramedic attending the man in the car called out. He picked up his bag and moved to help his partner. After a few more minutes, they packed up their gear, put Frankie into the back of the ambulance and sped away, sirens blaring and lights flashing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Larry had run inside the motel at the sound of approaching sirens. He’d hurried through a rear door and into the nearest men’s restroom, where he spent the next several minutes washing blood from his hands and the front of Hector’s shirt. He washed the blood from his knife, folded it back up and put it into his pants pocket. Careful to avoid contact with his head wound, he ran dampened fingers through his hair to straighten it, and exited the restroom. He blended in with a gaggle of motel guests that were filing out of the building and into the parking lot, loudly speculating with each other as to the nature of all the excitement.
A large crowd soon gathered in the parking lot. The police held the watchers a distance from the scene, where they milled around, craned their necks and exclaimed.
The usual, Larry thought. Gawkers. Probably not one of them had a real life. They just sucked energy from the crap that got dumped onto other people’s heads.
Someone tapped Larry on the shoulder, and his heart rate instantly shot sky high. He turned toward the person who was trying to get his attention.
“What’s going on?” an elderly man said.
Larry shrugged. “Not sure. But it looks like someone got what was coming to him.”
The paramedics bent over Frankie. Relief washed over Larry when one of them said she was still alive, and a smile of satisfaction creased his face when he heard Bellamy was dead.
Some tall guy wearing cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a western shirt got out of a white pickup and approached the police. They let him pass through the cordon and approach the paramedics.
After Larry overheard the paramedics tell Cowboy the name of the hospital where they would take Frankie, he slipped away from the crowd and headed toward the darkened rear of the motel where he’d parked.
Warm feelings of pride and pleasure suffused his body. His Beauty had lit up that old doc pretty well.
When Larry had first arrived at the motel, Frankie lay in the parking lot a few feet from Bellamy’s car. The doc sat behind the wheel, sobbing like a baby as he tried unsuccessfully to get the engine to turn over. He was talking to the car for all the world like it could hear him, like he couldn’t believe the thing would dare ignore his commands to fire up.
At the sight of Frankie lying there so still Larry’s head felt like it would explode. He’d sure enough lost it. He ran right up to Bellamy’s car and yanked open the door. The doc was bleeding some, but the injury was not fatal. So Larry made it fatal.
The expression on Bellamy’s face was priceless. It seemed kind of comical how his look of hope changed from pleading to terror as he recognized Larry’s intention.
“You failed to properly plan your escape,” Larry had said into the dying man’s face. “You should have just packed up and left.”
The ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, the blare of its sirens jerking Larry out of his reverie. He ran back to his car. A maelstrom of mixed feelings churned at his gut as pieces of a new plan came together in his mind.
****
Frankie opened her eyes to a dream world. She stood on a grass-carpeted pathway that meandered through a meadow of the deepest green imaginable. The fragrance of a million flowers filled the shimmering, sparkling air. Trees of exotic appearance and flowers of every imaginable color moved their fronds and branches in time with music such as she’d never before heard. Complete, unconditional love engulfed her.
People poured into the meadow from every direction. They stood with their faces turned toward her, eyes sparkling and alight with welcome. Although they must have numbered in the thousands, and even though all but a few of them had died long before she’d been born, Frankie recognized each one.
Great Grandma Malloy stood beside Uncle Mike and his Grandma O’Neil. Her dad stood atop a small hillock, waving and smiling at her. A pair of Ó Mórdha cousins raised their hands in greeting. Row after row of Frankie’s Irish forebears nodded in welcome.
A handsome, dark-haired man named Aedan, her grandfather several times great who’d lived during the sixth century, began singing in a clear tenor voice:
Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.
Saol fada agus breac-shláinte chugat.
Although Frankie had no memory of ever having heard the ancient Irish tune, she recognized the haunting melody and understood the Gaelic words that told of people helping each other to survive, and blessing the listener with a long, healthy life.
Movement drew Frankie’s gaze to her right. Tim stood near a particularly tall tree, a child of about five beside him. Both their bodies were outlined in a brilliant white light.
“Hello, Sis,” Tim said.
“Hi, Peepers.” It was Jenny’s voice.
At first, Frankie couldn’t speak for the emotion that blocked her vocal chords. Tears stung her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Her brother and the child she now recognized as her older sister smiled. Their eyes filled with infinite gentleness.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Don’t try to talk,” Tim said. “You need your energy to get well.”
“But I want to meet her. Where is she?”
Tim held up his hand, palm out. “Look, Sis, I don’t have much time, and you have to go back to your life.”
“I don’t want—”
“You’ll come back here when it’s time.” Jenny smiled. “But not until you’ve finished running your race.”
Tim nodded. “Life’s too short to live in regret of the past and fear of what might happen tomorrow. You can choose to open your heart to love—it’s the only thing that never dies—or you can slug it out alone through years of loneliness. Your choice.”
The beautiful world grew fuzzy, like a video camera going out of focus.
Tim nodded his head, as if agreeing with some unspoken voice. “Or you can continue to isolate yourself and become a bitter, angry old woman who’ll die alone.”
A sudden rushing wind filled the garden. Tim, Jenny, and all the generations of Frankie’s gene pool dissolved as she was pulled backward through a long tunnel.
“She’s lucky to be alive,” a clinical voice said from somewhere to her left. “She lost a great deal of blood.”
Frankie’s shoulder throbbed. Something was hooked over her ears, wound down her face and looped under her nose, forcing air up her nostrils. She tried to swallow, but something was stuck down her throat, and when it moved, it irritated the already raw tissue. She gagged.
“She’s choking,” Lola said. “Those tubes are clogging up her throat.”
“Those tubes are doing the breathing for her,” the clinical voice said. “They’ll be removed once she regains consciousness and can breathe on her own.”
“How long will that be?” Nick said.
The sound of his voice made something funny happen in Frankie’s stomach. But this time she didn’t push the feeling away.
“It depends on several things,” the clinical voice answered. “The bullet entered just below her right collarbone. The damage would have been much
worse had the weapon been further away. As it is, the bullet miraculously missed any major blood vessels. The fragments that didn’t make it all the way through her flesh became embedded in the scapula. We removed the pieces and repaired her collarbone.”
“She’s a fighter,” Kate said.
“What was that sound?” Lola said. “I’m telling you, she’s choking.”
Frankie opened her eyes. She tried to speak, but the result was a cross between a bark and a gargle.
Everyone was ordered from the room while the breathing tube was removed and other adjustments made. They were allowed to return after Frankie had been made comfortable.
“Look who’s awake,” Nick said. His smile almost too wide to get through the door, he strode to stand beside the bed. He looked into Frankie’s eyes and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. His touch was feather gentle.
Black stubble covered Nick’s face. His clothes looked like they were made of that pre-wrinkled fabric people bought so it wouldn’t wrinkle later. He combed his fingers through his hair several times, his efforts to control the thick locks mostly unsuccessful. It was a look Frankie could get used to.
Make every day precious…Grandma O’Neil whispered.
Frankie mouthed something. Nick bent over to bring his ear close to her mouth as the air in the room crackled with anticipation.
Suddenly, Nick blew a puff of air out through his nose in a soft snort, nodded his head, and laughed. He clapped his hand on Kate’s shoulder and smiled. “She says she hopes you brought some of your marvelous pecan pie.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The morning sun was barely up when Hector awakened. Although he’d slept only a couple of hours, he cheerfully got out of bed and dressed for work. He walked out of the bedroom he shared with his wife, his head held high and his shoulders squared for the first time in months. He whistled a melody from his boyhood as he entered the kitchen.
Imelda smiled up at Hector. The sight of her made his chest swell with pride and love.