Misty

by Allison Hobbs

  “I’m going to make you even more beautiful than you were before,” the doctor reassured with a twinkle of confidence in his eyes. That promise had Misty dreamy-eyed and feeling lightheaded before the anesthesiologist had administered the injection.

  She woke up to excruciating pain after the ten-hour surgery. It didn’t help that each time a nurse checked her pulse and accidentally brushed her palm, Misty would see flashes of light as head-splitting images raced across the screen of her mind. She was too dazed to make sense of the images, but possessed enough awareness to wish she could hit the pause button on her gift of sight. The random images that depicted the lives of people she couldn’t even see, due to the mummified bandages wrapped around her face and head, were giving her a migraine.

  She released an agonized moan and someone mercifully put her out of her misery with a painkiller injected into her IV.

  • • •

  It was finally time for the big reveal. She’d yet to meet her benefactor, the mysterious Gavin Stallings, but they spoke on the phone regularly.

  Brick was there, holding Misty’s hand and maintaining a poker face when the last bandage was stripped away.

  “Am I beautiful, Brick?” she asked in a voice strained by anxiety.

  “You’ll always be beautiful,” Brick responded, rubbing her hand.

  “There’s still a lot of swelling, which is to be expected, but it should go down in another week or so,” Dr. Cavanaugh said.

  Needing to see for herself, Misty slowly worked her gnarled fingers around the handle of the mirror that was at her side and determinedly brought it up high enough to see her reflection. “Oh, God; I’m still hideous. I look worse than before the surgery,” she said, shooting the surgeon an accusatory look.

  “I’m an expert in my field and I can assure you that you’re going to see evidence of your new, beautiful face very soon,” the doctor said.

  Misty surveyed her image. “My face is bloated and distorted; I don’t look anything like myself,” she whined.

  “Healing from surgery takes a while, but you must have faith in me and be patient,” the doctor said as he began scribbling in Misty’s chart. “Trust me, Ms. Delagardo, your beauty will be astonishing,” the surgeon said. His voice didn’t waver; he didn’t blink. He seemed utterly convinced that her face, distorted by lumps, blisters, and bruises would settle into something beautiful.

  “If you say so,” she said, sulking.

  “Oh!” the doctor said, suddenly remembering something. “I have some rather good news for you.”

  “What’s that?” Misty looked at the doctor through eyes with lids so swollen, she could barely make out more than an outline of the man.

  “I know you’re weary of being in the hospital, and I’ve spoken with your other doctors and we agree that you’re well enough to be discharged, tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow! You want me to leave the hospital and go out in public looking like this?” Misty was dumbfounded.

  “It’ll be all right, babe. It’s time to start getting used to doing some things for yourself,” Brick added.

  “I’m not ready. I can’t leave here until I look like myself, again.”

  The doctor’s eyes shifted downward. “Actually,” he said, his gaze aimed at the floor, “your coverage won’t allow you to continue convalescing here. We can get a social worker to speak to you about long-term care facilities, if you’d like.”

  “I know you’re not trying to put me in one of those places for invalids,” Misty said, indignant.

  Brick shook his head defensively. “No, that’s why I got the apartment for us, so you wouldn’t have to go into a facility.”

  Misty wanted to give Brick an appreciative smile, but was too swollen to manage it. She directed her attention to Dr. Cavanaugh. “What about Gavin Stallings? I thought he was paying for everything.”

  “He paid for the reconstructive surgery and has promised to pay for extensive dental work once your face has healed,” Dr. Cavanaugh replied, writing additional notes in Misty’s chart. “Your coverage does include a home health care nurse for a few hours a day,” he said with an encouraging smile.

  Misty sighed audibly.

  “I’d like to see you in my office in two weeks.” The doctor left his card on the nightstand, shook Brick’s hand, and then squeezed Misty’s arm in parting.

  “This is some bullshit,” she said to Brick after the doctor exited. “Gavin has enough money to keep me here while I’m healing. Why would he let them kick me out like I’m trash?”

  Brick shrugged. “Who knows the ways of eccentric rich folks?” Brick gently placed a hand on Misty’s shoulder. “I got you, Misty. You don’t have to worry about anything…you hear me?”

  She nodded mechanically as her mind raced with terrifying thoughts. Suppose Gavin Stallings was a crazy, vindictive former client whom she’d burned. Misty had been a ruthless pimptress and had hurt a lot of people in her life. Gavin Stallings was a wealthy, gay man and she’d sent most of the boys who hustled for her out on “dates” with men of means. Men who didn’t mind paying hefty prices to suck young dick. And some of those men fell in love with her hunky recruits. Oh, God, suppose Gavin was out for revenge and had hired the surgeon to deliberately fuck up her face worse than it already was. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Was it possible that Gavin had hired the woman who had tried to kill her and was now intent on making sure she lived a fate worse than death?

  She glanced in the mirror again. Ugh! She looked like the fuckin’ elephant man. She’d been so stupid to allow a nutty stranger to select a surgeon to give her a new face.

  “Brick,” Misty said in a whimper.

  “Yeah, babe?” He massaged her shoulder. “Stop worrying, you’re gonna be all right.”

  “Remember when you promised to get revenge on the person who hurt me?”

  Abruptly halting the shoulder massage, Brick’s hand went still. “Yeah, I remember. And you told me to leave it alone; you said you were at peace with everything.”

  “That’s when I was preparing to die, but things have changed, and I need to know who did this to me. I need that bitch and everybody associated with her to be dead.” And that includes Gavin, if he paid for the botched hit.

  “I already took care of that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It wasn’t a female who hurt you.”

  “Yes, it was. A tall bitch wearing Louboutins.”

  “No, it was one of your workers, dressed like a woman,” Brick said grimly.

  “Which one?” Misty’s voice raised several pitches.

  “A dude named Horatio.”

  “Horatio! Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Why would Horatio want to kill me?” Then she recalled their trip to Miami and how she had treated him. How she’d gone as far as firing him after he had helped her hook up with mega star, Smash Hitz. So what? He should have taken it like a man. You win some; you lose some. You don’t go around disfiguring and paralyzing people because you got your feelings hurt.

  “He’s been dealt with,” Brick said, his face tense and with a deadly look in his eyes. “I made sure he suffered. At first that punk was pleading for his life, and then he was wishing he could hurry up and die.”

  Misty nodded in satisfaction. “What about Smash Hitz? I’m sure he had something to do with it.”

  “Nah, he didn’t. It was a bitch named Juicy who set you up. Her and another woman named Redbone.”

  “Juicy did this to me! That no good, jealous-ass—”

  “She ain’t breathing no more. Died of AIDS. And that Redbone chick died a painful death right along with Horatio. Did you really think I’d be able to rest if I didn’t track down those muthafuckas?”

  “I should have known you would handle it. Who is Redbone, though? Why did she hate me?”

  “Her and Juicy were fucking each other. Redbone was part of the set-up, trying to please Juicy. And that was a big mistake on her part. If the Grim Reaper hadn’t gotten t
o Juicy first, I would have paid her a visit in the hospice place where she was staying and skinned her ass alive before she had the chance to check out peacefully on pain meds.”

  “I’m relieved that Gavin wasn’t involved.”

  “Why would you even think that?” Brick was baffled.

  Misty made a face and shrugged.

  “He’s not out to get you. Why would he spend all that money for a makeover if he wanted to harm you? That nightmare is over, Misty. It’s gonna be smooth sailing from now on.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Late afternoon, Brick had gone to look for work again. There was a tap on Misty’s door. The nurse had applied fresh bandages, which sufficiently concealed her dreadful appearance, and Misty called, “Come in,” feeling somewhat confident that with her face bandaged, at least she wouldn’t scare the bejesus out of whoever was attempting to enter her room.

  She was surprised to see David coming through the door with his cleaning cart filled with spray bottles of disinfectant and waste bin liners.

  “Come back tomorrow, after I check out,” Misty said snippily. She didn’t feel like being disturbed while she was watching a rerun of The Preachers of LA, a reality show about religious leaders who enjoyed excessive lifestyles that allowed them to live in mansions and own multiple luxury cars. If those pompous jerks could earn that much money from merely yelling Bible verses with passion, then she should be able to live like a queen with her new gift of inner vision.

  Hmm. Inner Vision had a nice ring to it. Misty’s Church of Inner Vision. No, if she put the word “church” in the title of her operation, she’d have to start learning scripture and she didn’t have time for that.

  The House of Inner Vision. Yeah, that sounded much better. She smiled to herself as she imagined a mega, church-like structure where she’d give readings to desperate people who would pay any price to glimpse their future.

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed that David was still lingering in her room. “Are you deaf? I said come back and clean in here tomorrow,” she said in an aggravated voice that should have made him scurry away.

  But he stood his ground. Grim-faced, his back rigid.

  “Let me rephrase my question. Do you have a hearing problem?”

  “No, uh, I want to apologize about the way I acted when you told me about my wife and the man with the dreads.”

  “Apology accepted,” Misty said without taking her eyes from the TV screen.

  “I was wondering if you could give me another reading.”

  “Hell, no,” she barked. “My services aren’t free, and you can’t afford another reading. You should have been more appreciative when I was doing giveaways. Like most people, you thought a freebie had no value. Oh, well, it’s your loss, not mine.”

  “Please. I need to know if I pulled the trigger on the dude who’s cheating with my wife.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you that. Either you’re gonna do it or you’re not. Only you know the answer to that.”

  He began to pace. “I never thought about killing anyone before, but right now, I’m close to getting a gun and killing both of them, and then turning it on myself,” David said, looking tortured.

  “And then what happens to your little girl?”

  David shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said with a groan.

  “It would be real selfish of you to leave your child an orphan simply because your wife cheated. People cheat all the time. It’s life; divorce her and get over it.”

  “But I still love her.”

  Misty rolled her eyes. “Obviously, she doesn’t love you.”

  “But I do everything to satisfy my wife; I can’t believe she’s cheating on me with one of her coworkers. I found out they go to lunch together, and sometimes they skip eating, if you know what I mean.”

  “Look, I don’t know what to tell you about your problem. My advice is to figure out a child support and custody arrangement for your daughter’s sake, and then move on with your life.”

  “You’re right, I need to move on,” David said, staring off into space.

  Misty gave him the side eye, thinking to herself, this muthafucka is crazy!

  Snapping out of whatever zone he was in, he looked at her with a soft smile. “Thanks for listening to me.” He took a few steps toward the door and stopped and turned around. “Would it be okay if I left my number with you?”

  “For what?”

  “In case you see something else in my future,” he said, taking a pen from his pocket, prepared to scrawl his number on a piece of paper.

  “That’s not how this works. I told you what I saw and it’s not likely that I’ll get a spontaneous read on you with a different outcome.”

  “Your powers are new, right?”

  “Yeah. And…?”

  “You never know what might happen. You might see something else.”

  This janitor with his quiet self has the nerve to be pushy as hell. They say you should look out for the quiet ones. I’m gonna accept his number, so I can get rid of his ass. “Put your number in my phone,” Misty said, nodding toward the new iPhone that was on the nightstand. She loved the newest version of the iPhone that Brick had bought her; the very sight of it made her want to shout with joy.

  David entered his number in the phone and gave her a head nod before exiting her room.

  Suddenly, Misty was relieved that she was leaving the hospital tomorrow. In case David had mentioned her prediction to anyone, she didn’t want to be around when the news came out that the soft-spoken janitor had gone haywire and committed a double murder and suicide.

  The glimpse into the future that Misty offered folks was definitely not for the weak-minded. Hopefully, her paying clients would be able to handle what she told them and possibly alter any unpleasant future events she foresaw.

  • • •

  The apartment Brick found for them was spacious and sunny and even more important, it was on the first floor, with their front door leading to the outside. There were no worrisome stairs and no vestibule area. The place was more like a townhome than an apartment. Other than mounted TVs in the living room and bedroom, a nondescript chair in the living room, and two stools in the kitchen, there wasn’t any other furniture.

  “No point in filling the place with a lot of furniture when you’re going to need the space to wheel around,” Brick explained.

  I’m not wheeling around, Misty thought with repugnance. It was unrealistic to think that she wouldn’t, but she stubbornly held on to the belief that somehow she was going to walk again.

  She sat in her new, shiny-wheeled chair while Brick pushed her from one empty room to the next, pointing to bare walls and reminding her that there were huge portraits of her boxed up in her mother’s basement that would look great hanging in their new place.

  “Nah, leave those pictures where they are. I want to hire a photographer to take some new shots of the two of us together, after my face heals.”

  She looked up, checking Brick’s reaction to the unselfish way she’d included him in the future photo session, but he didn’t seem to notice. Misty intended to have blown-up photos of her and Brick all over the place to taunt her mother when she finally caved (she couldn’t stay mad at her firstborn child forever) and came over to visit the reunited couple.

  Misty’s phone, which was resting on her lap like a beloved pet, began to ring. She glanced down at the display and spotted the 610 area code. “It’s Gavin. Put him on speaker for me, please.”

  Brick reached down and deftly swiped and tapped, and then said, “Hold on for Misty.”

  “Hi, Gavin,” she said.

  “Hello, Misty,” Gavin replied cheerfully. “How’s the new place?”

  “It’s nice; Brick has good taste.”

  “I hear you’re recovering beautifully.”

  “That’s a lie! My face is as big as a balloon. It’s red, black, and blue and has lumps all over it. There’s nothing beautiful about me.”

  �
��Don’t fret,” Gavin clucked like a mother hen. “It won’t be long before you’re restored to your natural state of loveliness.”

  There was sincerity in his tone, putting Misty’s mind at ease. She no longer feared that Gavin and Dr. Cavanaugh had played a cruel trick on her. Suddenly, her heart quickened at the idea that in a few short weeks, she would no longer be hideous. She wasn’t aware that she was crying until the salty tears seeped through the gauze bandaging, stinging the puffy, enflamed skin on her face.

  “Misty?” Gavin’s concerned voice filled the air.

  “Gavin, I’m gonna have to call you back,” she said, sniffling.

  “Oh, gracious, you sound terrible. Are you in pain? Listen, don’t try to be brave, my dear. Take the pain meds the doctor prescribed for you, and I’ll check on you tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”

  “Okay.” She wiped at her nostrils, the only part of her nose that wasn’t covered with bandages.

  Brick reached down and tapped the screen, ending the call. Baffled, he asked, “What’s wrong? You were feeling fine a few minutes ago. Why’re you suddenly crying?”

  Observing her inquisitively, Brick dabbed delicately at the tears that fell from her eyes.

  “I’m crying because I’m happy, Brick. For a moment, I had a bad feeling about the surgery; now I know everything is going to be fine.” There was a glimmer of excitement in her teary eyes and the corners of the lips that poked through the bandages, bunched up together in an attempt to smile.

  “I never doubted that everything would work out. You being psychic and all, shouldn’t you have already known that?”

  “Not really. I can’t foresee my own future; I can only predict snatches of events in other people’s lives, but you already know that.”

  “I’m only messing with you.” He brushed the top of her hand that was contracted so badly it seemed to be balled into a fist.

  Misty regarded her deformed hands. “My hands are going to have to be broken and operated on if I expect to be able to fully use them again. But a different kind of surgeon will have to work on my hands.”

  “All in good time, Misty. Don’t start worrying about that.”