Dead End Job

by Ingrid Reinke

  “Oh Mom, that’s fine,” I said, speaking in a tone loud enough for the whole group to hear me. I knew it had to be Rocky, and I knew what I owed him. “Actually, you guys should know, that’s the guy who saved my life.”

  “Oh my gosh!” my mother exclaimed. “We had no idea. He didn’t say anything! I’m going to go out there and thank him.” And with that she grabbed Joe by the hand and pulled him out of the room to the hallway. Alex and Amanda stood looking at me.

  “We thought that he was probably Rocky,” said Alex. “We were just not sure, and we didn’t want to upset your parents,” she explained.

  “It’s OK, guys,” I said. “Trust me, I owe him more than you can imagine.”

  My mom returned in a moment, dragging a very exhausted looking Rocky. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes were surrounded by dark circles. I could see how my parents might have questioned that he was a police officer, because although he was wearing his uniform’s pants, he had removed his navy blue shirt and was wearing just a plain white T-shirt tucked into his slacks. The shirt would have been completely unremarkable, except for the fact that it was soaked with splotches of dark, dried blood. It covered his shirt from just above his belly button, all the way to the collar, and was smeared on his neck all the way up to his strong chin. At first I was shocked, thinking that he had also been injured. It took me a few seconds to realize that the fact that he had been sitting in the hallway unattended by medical staff meant that he was in fact, just fine. Even more shocking was the realization that Rocky was covered with my own blood, and so much of it. He must have been holding me even after I passed out, waiting for the medics to arrive. He approached my bed and looked down at me with concern.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I replied, giving him a weak smile. He looked like absolute hell. I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror lately but I could imagine that I must have looked even worse.

  I looked around the room at Alex, Amanda, my mother and step-dad, all staring at Rocky and I, and decided that I’d rather not have this conversation with an audience.

  “Mom, Dad, Alex, Amanda,” I said, turning to look at each of them. “Do you guys mind giving us a minute?” I asked. Joe, Alex and Amanda nodded and quietly stepped out of the room. My mom looked concerned, and hesitated in the doorway. “It’s OK mom, I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  “We’ll be right out in the hall if you need anything Sweetie,” She said, and even though I wasn’t sure she fully believed me, she stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  Rocky looked relieved. “Thanks for that,” he said. He turned around and pulled a stool that was sitting in the corner up to the edge of my hospital bed and sat down. He sat quietly for a second, taking me in, then reached down and gently touched the finger tips of my right hand with his large ones. He cleared his throat. “It looks like you’re going to be just fine,” he said, confidently.

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” I responded. “My shoulder hurts, but it’s not terrible. I’ll make it,” I said. I looked down at our hands touching and realized how confused I was about the whole situation. “What happened? How did I get here? I can’t remember much after Martin shot me. There was so much glass, and I know you shot him…” I looked up, searching Rocky’s eyes. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Rocky’s confident façade broke down a bit. He didn’t break my gaze, but his voice was much quieter when he answered me.

  “He’s gone. The paramedics brought him in behind you. He was dead when they got here.” Rocky’s hand left mine and moved to my face. He stroked my cheek and gently tucked a strand of my crunchy, blood soaked hair behind my ear.

  I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt awful. I knew deep down that if Rocky hadn’t shot Martin, I would be dead, but I was still hurting. Another death—I didn’t know if I could take it. It must have been showing on my face.

  “I’ve only discharged my weapon twice in the line of duty,” he said. “The first time was in self-defense, and there was no doubt that it would have been him or me. Even though I knew that I’d been protecting my own life, I felt guilty about killing that man for years. I wished there was something else I could’ve done to avoid it, another approach. It’s always bothered me. But I want you to know, shooting Martin is never going to haunt me. I have no doubt that I did the right thing. He was hurting you, and I would do anything to protect you. There was no other way, Louisa. Know that,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You saved my life.” There wasn’t much else to say. Even though I could tell that Rocky wanted to say more—talk about us, I didn’t have the energy to go there at the moment. My eyes were getting heavy, so I thanked him again and asked him to let me get some sleep. He got up, kissed me gently on the forehead, and turned to leave.

  “Rocky, wait,” I said, groggily, as he started to turn the doorknob. He looked back at me. “How did you know I was there, at Merit?”

  He turned around in the doorway. “It was that security guard from the building,” he said.

  “Who?” I asked, for a minute I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Remember the night you went into the building to get your medicine? The night Sarah was murdered?” he asked. “The security guard from your building who was working, he left that next morning and went camping somewhere in the woods over in Idaho. We tried to get him on his cell phone, but he was out of range. We even asked Idaho State Patrol to try to track him down, but he’d gone so far off the grid that they couldn’t find him either, so we just had to wait for him to get back. Well, he finally called the station when came back to work yesterday. He was really alarmed and upset, he had no idea what was going on back here while he was gone. When he got done with work last night at eight-thirty he came over to the station and we took his statement. Detective Wang was interviewing him and I happened to be there, so I was watching over our CCTV. Anyways, when she asked him about that night, if he remembered seeing you come in, he said something that clicked with me.”

  “What?”

  “Well, he remembered everything from that night. He said that he did see you go into the building and exit a few minutes later, but he didn’t think it was strange, because he said that he figured you were just going upstairs to meet your gay friend who had gone up fifteen minutes before you. He said you two were always together during the day, so he didn’t think it was strange that he saw you both go in later that evening. I knew that he had to be talking about Martin. He was the only other person with access to your floor that had been there in the building. We knew it was probably another Merit employee, because the perp used a guest pass that had gone missing from the office months before, we just didn’t know who that person was. When I figured it out, I barged in to the interrogation and grabbed Detective Wang and dragged her out into the hallway at once to explain my theory. We had a team dispatched to Martin’s house from the station, but I was thinking about you. I called your cell phone right away, and when you didn’t pick up I drove to your house. You weren’t home, but Kathy was there and she told me that you’d rushed out to meet Martin at the office. When I finally got back to your office I was almost too late. I will kick myself forever for letting you get hurt like this, but I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened to you if I’d gotten there a minute later than I did. I’m sorry Louisa,” he finished.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “You saved my life.”

  With that, Rocky gave me a half hearted smile, turned around and left, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 18: All Bad Things Come to an End

  I was still in the hospital four days later. My left shoulder was achy and still very bruised, scabbed and gross looking, but the bandages covered that up, and the cuts and bruises that covered the rest of my body were slowly healing. Rocky had been right—the bullet had gone straight through, causing relatively little damage. The doctors told me that I’d cau
ght only a glancing shot. Martin had probably been aiming his gun elsewhere, and if I hadn’t jumped forward at the second that I did, I would probably not be in as good of shape. However, my surgeon insisted that I would have to keep my arm in a sling for the next couple of weeks in order to make sure I healed properly, which meant no driving and total dependence on others to bus me around and keep me fed for awhile.

  My parents live a bit too far away from Seattle to commute each day, so they stayed downtown at a hotel near the hospital while I was there, keeping me entertained and my spirits up. I spent the afternoon after I woke up enduring a long and exhausting session of questioning by Detective Schreck and Detective Wang. Thankfully Detective Lopez was absent, so the feeling this time was much less accusatory. Detective Wang even thanked me for the information I provided to her about Martin’s plans and sounded relatively sincere. When I asked about Martin’s alibi, the “Norwegian Viking,” Detective Schreck told me that he’d finally admitted under questioning that he was so drunk he really didn’t know what time Martin picked him up at the bar.

  Beverly and her husband came down several times, and Alex and Amanda were also staples in the room. Even Kathy showed her face, and even though I was asleep, I was told that she chatted my parents up for longer than necessary about the merits of wind and solar power in Washington State.

  I also got flowers and visits from some of my colleagues at Merit. Ari came over with Elaine and Mark a couple of days later, and they visited for an awkward five minutes. Elaine loudly proclaimed that I was her “hero” and that Merit Legal was simply not the same without me. Ari quietly explained to me that Guy Farner was under full FBI investigation for the involvement in Martin’s botched attempt at corporate espionage, and that the death of NorCom’s Leila Carson was also being investigated as a possible homicide. The authorities believed that Guy Farner had also tried to collect information from NorCom’s Portland office, and even though she’d died at home, Leila might have been another victim. Priti came by one evening with some home-made chocolate chip cookies, and I got an ostentatious bouquet from the Merit management and HR teams that read “Thank you for your service to Merit, we look forward to your speedy recovery and return.”

  My mom told me that Rocky came by twice to see me, but I had been asleep both times. The second time he came by he left a massive and beautiful bouquet of yellow roses with a card that read: “I can’t wait until you get better – R.” I didn’t know how I felt about his visits. Even though I was so grateful to him for saving my life, I still felt that he had betrayed my trust within our romantic relationship. A big piece of my heart ached for him to hold me again, and tell me that he loved me, but I just didn’t know if I’d ever be able to really trust him, and that was not a good place to start a relationship. I would have to give it some time and see how things felt as I healed and got into a more normal place, physically and mentally.

  My mom insisted on staying with me for a few days once I got home. I spent the next week or so in bed riding the manic-depressive high of strong opiates. When I was happy I was either watching TV, chatting on the phone or messing around on my laptop (it was too hard to read or do anything that required any type of concentration) and when the happy haze dissipated, I was either cranky, uncomfortable, or sleeping. I slept a lot—up to twenty hours a day. My mom patiently puttered around the house, cooking me healthy food, doing my laundry and bringing me handfuls of antibiotics and ibuprofens for the swelling.

  When I went to my check up appointment, ten days after the “incident,” my doctor gave me a rave review. My injuries were healing ahead of schedule, and even though I would always have a nasty scar, I was promised that if I kept healing at the same rate I would regain full function of my left arm and shoulder within about six months. The doctor patiently reviewed the large stack of leave paperwork that my mom had filled out for me, and signed the appropriate boxes indicating that I could return to work on a part time basis starting the next week, and could go back full time within a month. Joy.

  After we got home from the appointment, my mother packed her small bag and returned to her home in Anacortes, a small town to the north of Seattle. I’d insisted that I would be fine, that she had return to her life, and even though I still needed help around, I assured her that I would be able to get friends to help out.

  Alex turned up the next evening. I gave her one of my vicodins, we shared a bottle of wine, and we spent the next few hours shopping online in a slightly stoned and drunk state.

  The rest of the week flew by: Amanda came over the following day after work, then I had only one day to myself and Beverly was over entertaining me, picking up dinner and driving me around for two nights and three days. By the Sunday before I returned to the office I was alone again, but, feeling optimistic, I took a city bus down to the Gene Juarez Salon & Spa downtown and spent the afternoon having fresh highlights put into my long hair, getting a facial and having my fingernails and toenails painted in a beautiful blush pink. Even though my arm was still in a sling, my wrists were still bandaged and I had some little scabs left on my arms and face, I figured that getting pampered was a good way to put a positive spin on heading back to Merit. It sort of worked, I was feeling much better about my appearance, but by the time I got home in a cab I was completely wiped out. I had planned to select, iron and lay out an outfit for work in the morning, but instead I found myself only having the energy to barely glance in the mirror at my $300 worth of services before I brushed my teeth and headed back to bed.

  Monday morning came much too quickly. My alarm went off at 6:30 and instead of struggling to get up, I found myself wracked with anxiety, feeling like it was the first day of high school all over again. The fact that I was really headed back to the office was not only surreal but also completely anxiety-inducing. My heart was already pounding as I practically jumped out of bed into the shower, brushed out my newly blonded locks and put on some light eye make-up and a whole shit-ton of bronzer, attempting to cover up the very pale skin of my face that I’d not been able to tan since the accident. Because it was now officially “Seattle hot” outside I donned on a light but long, bell sleeved dress that had an empire waist and large graphic red and pink floral print, matched with my gold strappy flat sandals. I stopped by the coffee shop on my way to the bus and got a cranberry bran muffin and a latte, which I picked at nervously while waiting for the bus on the corner of 76th St. and Highway 99.

  The bus came quickly, and I made it into the office by 7:45. I pressed the button for 29 and rode up in the elevator alone. When the elevator bell chimed twenty seconds later and the doors opened up to the Merit reception it was difficult to relate the brightly-lit and immaculate hallway with the carnage and horror that I’d experienced there only a couple of weeks before. In a creepy mind-fuck, the beige carpeting that had been stained by pools of mine and Martin’s blood was gone. It had been neatly replaced with carpet that was the exact same pattern and color, and the glass doors that had been installed were undamaged replicas of the doors that Rocky had put multiple bullets through.

  Even though on the surface it seemed that nothing sinister had happened in that clean and bland office hallway, when I walked slowly over to the doors, my body was overwhelmed with a sudden chill as I took my key card out of my purse. A shiver started at my hair follicles and worked its way all the way down to my calves as I pressed my card close to the sensor box. The buzz of the door provided a sharp break to the quiet hum of the fluorescent lighting in the hallway, and I held my breath.

  I don’t know what horrible sight I was expecting to encounter when the door clicked open and I slowly pulled it towards me, but as soon as I stepped through it, I was greeted by the familiar early morning sounds of the IT department chatter on the left side of the kitchen and the coffee machine grinding and humming as it brewed up a morning pot. I paused for a moment, standing just inside the door in the exact place I had survived a bullet wound weeks earlier. I turned around and stared at the door whe
re glass had shattered down on my bloody body, and I had closed my eyes readying myself for death, surveying the normalcy with suspicion. Suddenly out of the corner of my vision I spotted a dark mass coming towards me. I gasped and whirled around, ready to defend myself.

  But when I completed my turn and jump combo, I came face to face with one of the IT workers—a large, BO-smelling man with a greasy grey ponytail who was merely putting more wear and tear in the already well defined, grimy carpet trail between the IT department and the coffee maker. He looked at me and blinked, probably surprised by my defensive reaction.

  “Uh, hey. Good morning,” he said uncomfortably, then passed by me without stopping, making a bee-line to the coffee pot.

  I felt my whole body relax. Smiling and flushing awkwardly, I entered the kitchen, stepping around stinky-greasy-pony-tail man and emerged into the quiet early morning peace of the legal department.

  As usual, there was not another soul around on this side of the building when I got to my desk. I sat down and stared at the log-in screen, realizing that I could not for the life of me remember my most recent password. I was already on hold with the help desk when I heard the door to the front entrance click open, a swift succession of footsteps and a little voice calling my name.

  “Louisa! Louisa! There you are!” It was Priti.

  “Oh, hi Priti,” I said, still listening to the hold music. “How have you been?”

  “I’m good, but are you coming? Everyone is waiting for you.” She was flustered.

  “Sorry, coming to what?”

  “The all-company meeting. You didn’t see the invitation from Mr. Curtis?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “Oh, it’s going on right now in the main conference room. Come on. Come with me!”