Broken Sky

by Saurav Dutt

  “This is beyond that, here..” she smiled as she threw it up in the air, knowing one of them would catch it “..try it then you can laugh all you want.”

  The black man stared at her suspiciously, and then with a smirk forked the bottle of whisky over to her without batting an eyelid. She flipped the lid open and swallowed a few gulps down, immediately bringing her mind back into focus and slapping the headache out from her skull. “These are fuckin’ pink” the man scowled as he studied the multi colored pills on the surface of his fingerless gloves. “Ah just take the goddamn things..” another man shot back.

  “You dress a bit too well to be down here” another transient muttered, he was older, skinnier, a rough grey beard smattered over the sharp cheekbones of his withered face.

  “Yeah, what’s with that shit-you some kind of cop or something?” the black man scowled “trying to get all up in our shit, seeing how we poor folk live and then draggin’ our asses out.”

  “Ease up Steve” the older man frowned “I’ve seen her before, I’m sure of it…I’ve seen you with those suitcases uptown, I had a chestnut stand there for a while..i’m sure it was you.”

  “It was probably me” she sighed “ain’t going back there now though.”

  “Why not?” Steve demanded.

  “Never mind, all sorts of shit going on.” she muttered to herself.

  “I think” Steve smiled “you do need some blow after all.”

  Before she could agree she realised blood was now leaking out of both nostrils, her head became dizzy as the brightness of the fire was now beginning to sting her eyes. Stepping backwards, she lost her footing and landed on the ground, flat on her ass. “What’s wrong with ya?” Steve scoffed, peering down at her with curiosity.

  She rested her head on the cold ground to alleviate the pain; as her eyes glanced sideways she noticed somebody walking steadily towards her. She stared up and heard the crunching granite of the bridge above her as cars roared past. “Hey…” said a comforting voice, a familiar voice. She realised it was John, the tip of his nose red in the cold, his hair damp with the rain. “Hey you..” she mumbled, the effort to speak overwhelming as her head began to throb. “We’ve been looking all over for you” John smiled as he stroked her hair “you shoulda just stayed put at mine.”

  “I was…scared” she paused as she clasped his hand “I didn’t know what to do..”

  “We gotta get you somewhere safe, get you some help” John nodded towards Pearce who was approaching “I have someone very special who wants to meet you too.”

  He wiped the blood away from her nose and cradled her in his arms. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked Pearce as he knelt down to study her carefully, placing his hand on her sweating forehead. “She’s got a fever…but there’s probably injuries as well, the doctor at the hospital who saw her earlier, he can definitely help..her pupils are dilated as well, she might have taken some junk..drugs or alcohol, or both.” he added with a shrug.

  “Then we’ve gotta get her there” John sighed, helping her slowly to her feet. Pearce helped balance her between the pair of them, and noticed that specks of blood were now trickling from the older wound on her forehead as well as from her nose. “He opened her up pretty bad” Pearce said as they began to move gingerly forward. “Who..who…” she slurred as she struggled to place one foot in front of the other “…who am I gonna meet John?”

  “Well we gotta get you cleaned up first” John replied, propping her head up to stem the bleeding “but you’re gonna be meeting your daughter..we found Andrea, you’re gonna be meeting Andie”

  “That man…in your flat..” she hesitated as her eyes fluttered “he’s gonna get to her…”

  “Don’t worry about him” John replied “that son of a bitch ain’t going nowhere, you did a real number on him.”

  “You found her…” she trailed off as a smile came to her face.

  “Don’t talk right now” Pearce cut in as her breathing became shallower “just try to relax..”

  She watched the sun retreat as twilight enveloped the clouds, and for a moment she didn’t think about the pain, the blood, and the drugs raging through her body. She only smiled.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Only moments had passed since she last opened her eyes. As her eyelids flickered open she realised she was in a hospital ward room. Muffled voices could be heard outside the door, but the only thing that interested her at that moment was that she felt quite warm. The pain in her head was now replaced with a sense of crystal clarity and tranquillity. At that moment she remembered how Madsen slumped to the ground of the kitchen; his body contorted, his face growing paler by the second as spurts of blood fizzed out from the entry wound in his neck. She saw Drago’s empty face, devoid of emotion, hanging above her as his sweaty hands rubbed all over her body.

  As she turned her head to the side, she saw nothing but the crackling sparkle of a bedside lamp, the amber hue turned down as low as possible; but not low enough. She could still see the face staring at her from across the room. It came closer, and then she realised it was the cherubic face of a young boy. “Hye..” he mumbled, staring at her curiously. “Hello…” she croaked. He may have been eight or ten years of age. She could comprehend through the darkness that his face was shorn of any kind of joyfulness whatsoever. It was the face of a young boy, but with the glare of a troubled man. “I’m Peter…” the boy replied as he stepped forward “..but my friends call me Petey.”

  “Hye Petey…” she smiled “…have you been standing there for long?”

  “My Mom brought me here after school” he trailed off “..I dunno why, but my Mom is upset..”

  “I’m sorry to hear that..” she replied “..where is your Mom now?”

  “You were talking in your sleep” Peter ignored her, studying the IV drips hanging above her and the occasional blips on the ECG machine, their colours illuminating her face. As she furrowed her brow she realised there was a plaster wrapped across her forehead, covering the scar already there, and also that her sense of smell had now returned.

  “What was I saying?” she asked, studying him carefully.

  “I couldn’t understand everything…” Peter answered, staring down at his shoes “but you were saying my Mom’s name…and my Dad’s name..”

  “I would remember a cute kid like you..” she smiled “…where’s your Mom and Pop now?”

  “They don’t talk…” Peter shot back.

  “What does that mean?” she asked as she repositioned herself to get a closer look at him.

  “It means they’re not talking to each other now” Peter rolled his eyes “anyway…I got to go.”

  “No” she replied “stay a while…please..”

  “My Mom told me not to talk to strangers-and not to you either…but I came in here anyway.” Peter sighed as he began to tap his foot.

  “But you still are..” she observed.

  “I am what?”

  “Talking to me….I mean..you were the one standing here watching me, didn’t your Mom tell you it’s not polite to stare at people?” she answered with a coy smile.

  Peter frowned as he turned his back to her and began walking towards the door “I don’t have to listen to you, you’re not my Mom or my Dad” he replied as he struggled to yank the door open.

  “I’m sorry I was rude to you just now” she mumbled, attempting to raise her head from the pillow only to realise he had already ignored her and walked out of the room.

  Still staring at the door, she heard footsteps from outside and smiled as John walked into the room, flanked by Doctor Firth. “Well Gina” he cleared his throat “I hope you’re doing well…or certainly better than you were before.”

  “Gina?” she muttered under her breath, smiling as John leant forward to kiss her on her forehead.

  “Yeah…Gina Rossi…we know who you are” John nodded “since you’ve been here, we’ve been able to run prints, blood samples, hair samples..working with an agent at
the FBI we’ve established the time line of events that resulted with the attack at my flat…we’ve run that man’s prints as well, he’s an enforcer..a hitman who works for your ex husband..Dennis Rossi…there’s no point hiding the truth anymore..”

  “How long have I been here?” she wheezed, closing her eyes as she struggled to understand what was being said to her.

  “You’ve been here for 72 hours” Firth explained as he began scribbling notes on the clipboard yanked from the foot of the hospital bed “one of the things we were investigating before you..er…left the hospital the last time you were here, was the condition of your liver…well due to excessive alcohol use it’s in quite a state..we had to carry out a procedure to pass a stent across your liver to join two large veins, that’s why you’ve probably been experiencing problems regarding bleeding or coughing up blood..so you can understand that I’m not exactly jumping for joy at the fact that you escaped from the hospital before you got a chance to recover properly….as for your head, it was already in a fragile state, but we’ve found evidence of drugs in your blood stream, this along with the alcohol and the attack you were involved in at John’s flat resulted in what’s called a subarachnoid bleed to the brain..now we’re giving you medicines through an IV line to control blood pressure over there which are what the tubes are that you see.. luckily you’re not suffering from an aneurysm otherwise we would need major surgery right away..but the condition of your head and brain tissue is still extremely fragile..so what you need now Gina…is complete- and I do mean complete- bed rest, we don’t want any additional bleeding.”

  “I don’t know where you went” John sighed “but you pumped yourself full of so much shit that you might have been dead in 12 hours or even less, that’s what the doc is saying.”

  “I..I” she stammered “I..don’t have anywhere to go, I mean I don’t have a home…I have a daughter, I have a daughter…where’s my suitcases?”

  “Andie..” Firth smiled “Andrea, does that name ring a bell?”

  “She’s not safe…” she muttered under her breath “it’s not safe for her..”

  “I’ve been speaking with Andie” Firth continued “she’s agreed to put you up in her house, just for you to recover after your hospital stay. You have no paperwork, you have insurance or funds. It’s important you’re with people now, calm, relaxed and without stress as much as possible. Now pieces of information, pieces of memory will come back to you slowly in time..they already have in fragments I’m sure you’ve noticed..the way you’ve been living, the drugs you’ve consumed, all the drinking…that has only impeded your progress, its hampered all hope of restoring your memory and brain function to its full capacity...now we keep you clean and sober from now on Gina and maybe, just maybe, you can start to put things together properly.”

  “It’s not safe.” she shook her head, ignoring his words “..I need to see her” she stared off into the distance.

  “How much do you remember about the past?” Firth asked as he continued to scribble away “be as specific as possible-do you recognise that your name is Gina-or do you respond to the name Tanya Girling-which is one name given to you by the FBI when you went into witness protection?”

  “My daughter..” she sighed “..I came here to find Andie…where is she?”

  “Please” John interrupted “just answer the doctor, we’re trying to help you.”

  “I can’t…” she cursed under her breath “…you know what you know, and you know Dennis, I remember that…I remember he hurt me, he hurt Andie too..”

  “The man who attacked you, who you defended yourself against-do you remember his face?” Firth asked.

  “I remember his face, yeah” she nodded “it was him….he did this to me too” she pointed to the bandaged scar on her forehead.

  “You ran from witness protection” John interjected “and you knew all along what was in those suitcases didn’t you? How far did you think you’d get with a bag of laundered money?”

  “I don’t know…” she shook her head “..I had to tell Andie she was in danger, but I was sick…I…I didn’t know who to trust, I couldn’t go to a hospital..I couldn’t risk getting caught..I didn’t trust anybody..and then slowly, I just started forgetting things..names, faces, places I’d been to…I felt the same, but it was easier to …to be…be somebody else.”

  “You did a great job, it’s like you fell out of the sky” John frowned “I still don’t really know if you’re telling me the truth about all of this-all I have are the facts, and the facts only point to one thing.”

  “I didn’t come here to run away from anyone” she sighed “I came to find the one thing those bastards couldn’t take from me, and I wouldn’t let them…has she seen me? What did she say?”

  “No she hasn’t” John answered “and to be frank with you, she hasn’t exactly been jumping for joy about all of this either...”

  “The police will want to talk to you when you’re better” Firth cut in with an appreciative nod towards John “now let’s just concentrate on getting you back on your feet…no more dramas for you.”

  “You’re going home” John whispered in her ear “where you’ve wanted to be..”

  “Yeah..” she swallowed “..that’s what I’m afraid of”

  “You got nothing to be afraid of” John replied as she closed her eyes, oblivious to the sounds around her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The table had been laid out. It was almost seven in the evening. Andie looked glumly towards the plates and cutlery she had carefully distributed in front of her. Wrapping a cleaning cloth around the rim of the wine glasses, she thought about what she would say when her mother emerged from her room upstairs. Nothing was normal, not anymore. Everyone in the house but her had ventured into the guest room for the past four days where she rested; the district nurse sent by the hospital had seen her, slipping in and out of the house quietly and never once flashing a look of bewilderment at why a daughter would wish to avoid her own mother.

  Just then she heard the steps of the nurse descend the stairs, coming to a pause at the door. Andie turned to face the short, overweight lady with an expression that barely contained her antipathy. “She’s coping well, better than I thought” the nurse mumbled in a blank, expressionless voice “I can reduce my visits to twice a week now instead of every two days.”

  “That’s good” Andie muttered as she stared down at the table, refusing to make eye contact. She adjusted the plates, realigning the cutlery before she realised the nurse was still staring at her with an intense glare of disapproval. “What is it?” Andie hissed, feeling an overwhelming feeling of dread at the thought of serving food to a woman she had grown to despise.

  “She could do with some company” the nurse replied in a matter of fact tone “I believe only Detective Cassini and some police officers have actually spoken with her, she could do with a familiar face…there’s no need to have her eat in her room upstairs or to avoid her.”

  “That’s none of your business, and as for nice company, well..” Andie scoffed “that’s me all over..” she added with a sly grin.

  “Family is family” the nurse answered in a matter of fact tone.

  “I doubt she knows what I even look like now, what I sound like, what I do for a living, not a thing” Andie smiled “so please, don’t presume you know my mother just because you’ve looked after her for four days, you don’t…”

  “Fine M’am..” came the prompt reply.

  Andie rolled her eyes as the nurse strutted away. She casually flipped open the bottle of wine sitting atop the table and poured herself a glass, moving the bottle away from her grasp in one swift movement. “Nervous?” a voice called out from behind her. She turned around to see John standing there leaning against the door frame, his eyes focused on the bottle. “It’s my home, I can have a drink if I want” Andie shot back “and that’s a pretty stupid thing to say..of course I’m freakin’ nervous.”

  “Okay” John chuckled, movin
g forward to the table to pour himself his own glass “you don’t have to get uppity with me about it, I didn’t mean you..I meant the fact that you moved the bottle away.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andie shook her head, taking a prolonged sip.

  “You’re nervous” John folded his arms “that your mother might drink that wine, get back to her old ways and say something she might regret, or maybe you just might” he added with a shrug.

  “From what it sounds like… she won’t be saying much at all” Andie scowled, averting his gaze by looking at the floor.

  “Oh she’s making good progress all things concerned” John nodded “she’s asked about you..a lot actually.”

  “Asked why her only daughter hasn’t gone up to read her a bed time story?” Andie shook her head.

  “You don’t have to be like that” John replied “I mean, she’s not Gina Rossi anymore…the wife of Dennis Rossi…the person you probably grew to despise, who you read about in the papers..who you think is a drunk, a terrible mother, a selfish human being-”

  “-Who exactly are you?” Andie cut in as she turned to face him “I mean you’re a cop, or at least you say you are, you’re under investigation for something to do with the woman who says she’s my mother, or you’re telling me is my mother..and I’m just supposed to believe this story you and this FBI agent have cooked up, which goes against everything I’ve been told… in court, in official agency paperwork and what my own father has told me up until you barged into my house and laid this bullshit at my door…”

  “Regardless of how you feel” John replied “she is your mother. I don’t know what went down between you guys, but this isn’t the Gina Rossi you and me know or think we know..this is a woman who needs help, who came here to find her daughter..as for me, well I like the dame, what can I say? Shoot me.. I think this really is what she wanted…she went through a whole lot of shit to get this far just to see you..”