by Ina Zajac
Via closed her eyes while his words, “She did this to me,” hung in the air. She didn’t need the pretty lights to tell her what was happening. It was as though her own father was gripping her tight. She was caught up in Carlos’s sick embrace, but also her father’s. His desperation reactivated. His thoughts whirled her into the darkest night.
In the silence, she relaxed back into the loop of time. She was reunited with herself and the place she had once belonged. She would tell him the words she hadn’t said before. The words her father had needed to hear. The words that could have saved her mother.
“It’s not real,” she said, her voice calm as she held him and pulled him in even closer. Leaning in, she whispered in his ear, “It’s not real. None of it is real. It’s the drugs. It’s just your mind playing tricks on you.” It was quiet. She felt him waiting for more. He needed more. “You’re not alone. You are loved. I love you,” she told him. “It’s all going to be okay.” She pressed her eyes closed and lay the side her head against his chest. His breathing felt wet and ragged.
She let herself hope. She listened for it, but it never came. Mama’s feathery voice never came. This was the part when she should have felt Mama hugging her too, saying, “Via’s right. Listen to her. It’s all going to be okay. We’ll call the doctor. We’ll get you help.” Via could smell her, sweet and safe and wonderful. But then, where was the smell of gingersnaps? Nowhere.
Via’s eyes flicked open. Her heart ramped up. The moment was gone, but she could still sense her mother. There were no burning cookies because this was not that reality. Her mother was never coming back. And this was not her father.
“Carlos?”
He was pressing himself into her, hiking up her dress, grabbing her ass. “It’s too late,” he said. “There’s no going back. But, as long as you love me—you know how I get when I’m high—I need you one more time. You owe me that.”
He clutched a fistful of her hair, and pulled her head back and lunged into her neck. His kisses felt rough and desperate. She was able to look back over her right shoulder, but the gun was too far away. What else was there?
“I knew you would love this,” he hissed in her ear. “You love the way I hurt you.”
Think, Via, think. What else could she say? How far was the door?
He let go of her hair and went for his pants, while he pressed her harder against the edge of the desk. It cut into her lower back.
Now. She heard the word—crisp and clear—but wasn’t sure where it had come from. There were no lights, it wasn’t her mother’s voice. Could it be the instincts she’d been deaf to for so long? Now sprang up from somewhere deep within her inner being.
Forever is now! Her fingers prickled against the static crisping through the air. Maybe with my left hand, she thought. She leaned back, frantically grabbing for anything. Her fingers grazed the scissors in the cup. She stretched until they were hers, pulled back, and launched them into his back as hard as she could.
“Arghh, bitch!”
He released his grip on her, just for a second. She freed herself and made a break for the door—past the couch, past the coke-smudged table. Hoping to hear him hit the floor screaming in agony, she heard only groaning and furious profanity. If only she could have used her right hand. If only she had something sharper than a pair of scissors. But she had given it everything she had.
The door was so close. She reached out her hand, but buckled when the ten-year-old crush of resounding gunfire finally found her.
***
MATT
“SHE’S NOT IN THERE,” Ben said. “He was in there with Kaytlyn when I left. I wasn’t gone that long. And you should get out of here. It’s not safe for you—”
But Matt knew she must be in there. He felt her. Nobody could stop him. Ben lunged into his path and tried to block him. But Matt reached around, opened the door, and was rattled by the sound of gunfire.
Via was there, eyes wide, reaching out for him.
Ben screamed, “Down!”
Matt pulled her to the floor and covered her with his body. He looked up as Carlos put a handgun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. The side of his head flew apart in an eruption of blood and brain.
Ben was yelling, “Call 9-1-1!” It echoed throughout the building. “Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1!”
He felt Carlos’s warm blood on the side of his face and Via trembling beneath him. Girls were screaming in the other room.
Ben got up. “You good? You good?”
Matt nodded as he pulled up off of Via. He knelt next to her and pulled her in for a hug. She looked okay—thank God. She wasn’t crying. But she wasn’t hugging him back. His hands were warm and wet. Where was the blood coming from? No. No!
Ben was there, shouting, “She’s been hit! Put her down. Put her down!”
He loosened his grip on her, but couldn’t let go. He turned her and pulled her onto his lap. She was looking up at him like she was just waking up from a nap, but the color was draining away from her face, neck, and chest. Ben eased her onto her side and began ripping the back of her dress from the neck down. What was he doing? How was he even moving so fast?
Matt’s hands were shaking. “Here,” someone said, handing him a blanket from the end of the couch. He pushed it away. “Don’t you dare touch her with that.”
“Somebody, clean towels!” Ben yelled. “And, a first aid kit, or gauze—find something.”
As he felt his coordination returning, Matt took her hand in his. She was trying to tell him something. He leaned over. It sounded like she was asking for her mother. Oh God, she was talking to her dead mother—and probably the lights too. Girls were still screaming. His ears were buzzing. He leaned in closer to her face, but he still couldn’t hear her. He wished he could turn her up like an amp. He wished he wasn’t so slow and worthless. She closed her eyes and he couldn’t tell her not to because he couldn’t say a word.
“Here, Matt, it’s clean,” Whitney said and handed him a white robe. He wrapped it around Via and tucked it under her chin. Her face was almost as white. He thought of Snow White and his chest ached because he wasn’t a prince. His kisses weren’t magical. The ringing in his ears had morphed into the sound of sirens, right on top of them.
A voice shouted, “Medic One on scene!”
He looked up to see two cops coming through the doorway with their guns drawn. They looked right past him, and then back again. One walked past him and toward Carlos’s desk. “Shooter down,” the cop said into his radio. “Repeat, shooter down.”
“Another one here,” the other cop said from the corner of the room. “That’s two, plus the shooter.”
“It’s good—scene secure!” Ben screamed toward the doorway. “Scene secure! Get them in!”
One of the cops ran back outside yelling, “Bring them in!”
Via was looking up at him. “Mama.” The look in her eyes was desperate. Those lips he loved were turning blue.
Two EMT techs came rushing in with big, black plastic boxes. “Give us room!” one yelled, pulling him away from her. “Get back.”
He gave her up and crawled a few feet out of the way. Whitney pulled him onto the couch. “Your arm,” she gasped. “Were you shot?” She tried to get a look at it, but he pulled way. “Did you break it?” He marveled at her composure. He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think. He sat, not knowing what to do. Whitney turned her attention to the back corner of the room and cried, “Kaytlyn? No!”
Matt turned and saw Kaytlyn on the floor next to the stripper pole. There were cops milling around her. Her body was contorted. Her hair veiled the side of her face. He turned away. It was too much.
The EMTs were buzzing over Via, talking in code a thousand miles a minute. Ben was telling them he’d found two entry wounds, but no exits. A guy in a dark suit was there. He patted Ben on the back and said, “Good work, Agent Stern.”
But Ben just yelled at the guy. “I told them we couldn’t wait, that it was time to mov
e. I told you!” He shot Matt an awkward glance, and then stormed out of the room. What the fuck? Matt wondered.
The EMTs had Via sitting up; one was shining a thin flashlight into her eyes while asking her questions as a pale blue sheet was eased under her. It looked clean. Another EMT was cutting off the rest of her dress with a pair of scissors, snipping her lacy black bra in half. Matt loved that bra. Damn, he loved her. They covered her with a blue blanket. The cop standing over them said he wanted her clothes.
Her eyes closed again and her head fell limp against their hands. “She’s first! No C-spine, GCS was eight, but now unresponsive, sixty over forty—hypotensive!” a paramedic yelled over to the guys bringing in a gurney. “Out of the way!” he was yelling to the cops by the door. Everyone was yelling over each other.
“I’m calling Nick. I’m calling Nick,” Whitney kept saying. “Where are you taking her?” she asked a paramedic.
“Harborview.”
Whitney leaned in and whispered, “Matt, you have to go.”
His brain was shutting down. His limbs were like stumps. He just looked at Whitney, aghast.
“Matt, listen to me. This is Via they’re taking away. You can’t not go,” she insisted. “You’re in shock. Do I need to slap you?” Her words sprang him back into his urgent reality. They were taking Via away.
“One, two—three,” they expanded the gurney. The wheels clicked into place and they rolled her toward the door. He could see her eyes were still closed. He felt himself unfreeze. He jumped up and followed them outside. There were two-dozen people at the door, waiting for them like paparazzi. The Medic One driver was waiting and the lights were going; the back door was wide open. Two paramedics slid the gurney in like a pizza into an oven.
He hadn’t told her yet. She would die if he didn’t.
“I’m her husband,” Matt yelled after them. “That means, I can come, right? I can come?”
One looked back at him. “Let’s go!”
CHAPTER 46
MATT
THE SIREN SOUNDED muffled from the inside of the ambulance. Matt was crunched into a corner—cramped, but grateful to be there. He held his arm against his side. Nothing had ever hurt so much, but it didn’t matter. It was just an arm. He watched as they started hooking her up to wires and tubes.
Via was wearing a mask that covered the bottom half of her face. They had placed another blue blanket on top of the other, but only up to her waist. They kept pulling plastic packages out of drawers. Everything was brand new, just for her. It couldn’t have been cleaner.
They were calm, efficient. Each seemed to know what the other needed. Just like the nods and glances he and Nick shared on stage. One was bald and sat on a foldout chair next to Via’s head. He kept looking at her and furrowing his eyebrows. The other was skinny with brown hair. He was busy messing with an IV full of clear liquid while looking at a computer screen.
Matt heard the driver on the radio, “Incoming Medic twenty-six: female, early twenties, multiple penetrating GSW, lower left anterior—four minutes out.”
The bald one looked over at Matt. “You can help, answer some questions,” he said, looking at her bruising.
“I didn’t do that to her,” Matt told him. “I’d never, ever hurt her.” But then he wondered. Had he done this to her? He wasn’t innocent in all this.
“No, that’s not what I was going to ask you. We need to know what’s in her system. She on anything? Meth? Heroin?”
“No.” He was insulted. “She’s not some hooker. She teaches Sunday school.” He had no idea what he was saying or why.
“Sir, every single patient is important,” the paramedic replied. Then he began prodding Via’s side and abdomen. She winced and recoiled from his touch, but still didn’t open her eyes. “PT reactive to pain,” he said.
“Could she be pregnant?”
Matt heard the question reverberate in his head like an unchecked speaker. His chest constricted and knotted up. “No. I don’t think so. No.”
“Three minutes out,” the driver yelled.
“We’re going to intubate,” the skinny guy said. “To help her breathe.”
The bald guy opened one of the white drawers and started fishing around. “Here’s a fourteen gauge.”
Matt remembered that he knew her blood type. She had told him, that one time, that she’d earned an A+ in blood. “Her blood type is A positive,” he told them.
“Good to know, thanks,” the bald one said and then told his partner, “She’s hypotensive.”
Matt realized they hadn’t been pumping her full of blood. “Aren’t you giving her blood?” he asked.
“We don’t carry blood on board,” the skinny one replied.
“Why the hell not?” He leaned forward, jostled his arm, winced, then sat back.
“Sir, calm down. Sit back. You have to stay seated,” the skinny one said without taking his eyes away from the screen.
The other guy lifted the blanket. “I don’t like how she’s reacting to the IV.”
“She ever have issues with penicillin?”
“What?”
“Allergies?” the skinny one asked, now looking back at him. “Betadine, penicillin, anything like that?” Without waiting for an answer, he reached into a drawer and pulled out some kind of syringe. The blanket was in the way, so Matt couldn’t see, but he seemed to jab it into her thigh and hold it there. The other guy was putting a shot of something into the IV.
Her cheeks were bright red. He saw hives on her arms and neck. Her breathing seemed to be labored, high pitched.
“Can she hear me?” Matt asked. “I have to tell her something.”
The bald one looked over. “You can hold her hand if you can reach it from where you are. But you have to stay seated.” He looked at the monitor. “Still hypotensive.”
The ring, he realized. It was cursed somehow. It had to come off.
“It’s bad luck,” he told them when they noticed him taking it off. He winced again as he put it in his pocket. He pulled his white-hot arm against his chest.
“Can she hear me?” he asked. “I need to tell her something. If I don’t, she’ll die.”
They looked at each other as though they were resisting the urge to smack him. The bald one held up his hand. “Sir, wait.” He yelled up to the driver. “Alert them to anaphylaxis, likely from the IV.”
“Hypotensive!” the other one interrupted. “Pulse, pulse!”
And then an alarm went off. Beeeeeep. It wasn’t loud, but sharp and persistent. They crouched over her and crowded him back into the corner. The bald one reached over to a small black box mounted on the wall. He flipped a switch and pulled off two small paddles. He placed them toward Via’s chest and announced, “Clear!” Then he pressed them against her and her body jerked.
It was just like on TV, but he couldn’t change the channel. He closed his eyes and yelled over the noise. “You’re pretty!”
Over the beeping sound he heard a buzz and a bump, and then “Clear!” Then another buzz and a bump.
“You’re pretty!” he screamed over the backs of the paramedics, over the sound of the alarm, and the radio, and the siren. “You’re pretty! You’re pretty!” His words weren’t working. He began to panic. He didn’t know what to do. He just wanted her to know. “I love you!” he screamed. He needed her to hear him. “I love you!”
Then the beeping stopped.
“Got her,” one of them said. “That a girl!”
The paramedics were so focused on Via, they seemed oblivious to their idiot ride-along. He kept yelling until the ambulance came to a stop, the door opened, and someone pulled him out. He took a breath. His attempts weren’t working. She wasn’t opening her eyes.
They jumped out and two guys in green came to help.
“We had to defib,” the bald guy told them. “Intubated, hypotensive.”
They pulled out the gurney and its silver frame sprang into place. He couldn’t see much of her face, just some of h
er hair. It looked wet.
“Two entry lower left, no exit per exposure,” the skinny guy added. “She had been responsive on scene, Glaslow was eight. Reactive to pain. She didn’t like the IV.”
The words they tossed back and forth over her body seemed cold and were meaningless to him. They didn’t understand how special she was. He hurried to keep up with them as they went through clear double doors.
They had started down a long hallway when a man stepped in his way. “This is as far as you can go.”
Someone else tried to pull him back and toward an open room. Fierce fire shot up his arm. He kept forgetting about his arm. He had forgotten about everything except her.
“Sir,” he heard a voice say. “We need to get her admitted, get some insurance information. You’re her husband?”
“Isoldey!” he called after her. He knew people probably thought he was crazy, but if he couldn’t get through to her right now, nothing else would matter anyway.
“He’ll need to be seen, too,” another voice said. “His arm.”
He was being held back. He could only watch them take her away. They were pushing her through a set of double doors. What if she was seeing those lights? What if she followed them off somewhere?
“Isoldey!” he pleaded at the top of his lungs. “Don’t go with the lights. Come back to me!”
CHAPTER 47
VIA
SHE HEARD MEN TALKING about her allergies. Her allergies were killing her? That was weird; she could have sworn she had been shot. She heard what sounded like Metallica playing in a cave. She was shaking. She was on her side. Someone pulled her hair back and away.
“She lucid?” a woman’s voice was asking. She sounded irritated, impatient.
What was happening? She squinted. It was bright. There were fuzzy-looking blue people huddled over her.
“Do you know where you are?” Someone was shining a piercing light into her eyes. “Do you know what day it is?”