High Risk

by Rick R. Reed

  And all at once, he was in her arms, the flowers crushed between them. He covered her face with small kisses, lips fluttering over her eyelids, ears, and neck until finally their lips merged and the kiss burned into her, indelible and filling her with joy.

  When they at last parted, Mark set the irises on the bedside table, then took her hands and stared into her eyes.

  “The music,” he said. “It’s what the string quartet played at our wedding.”

  She still couldn’t find her voice. She looked at the flowers, then back at him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Tears flowed, hot and salty, down her face. “How can you ever forgive me? I’ve done so much to hurt you and I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I’m just glad you’re here, so glad you’re okay and we have a chance to be together again.” He gathered her in his arms once more, surrounding her with strength. He leaned close to her ear. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  She leaned back. “Is it really?”

  “I’ll always love you, Beth.”

  She started to return the sentiment when a nurse came into the room. Beth couldn’t recall seeing this one before, but so many had been in and out since she’d been admitted, she couldn’t be sure. The woman’s black hair was pulled into a tight bun, and, unlike the other nurses in multi-colored scrubs, this one wore an old-fashioned, starched white uniform.

  “How are you feeling today, Beth?”

  “So much better, now that I know my husband’s all right.”

  “Well, perhaps I could pry you two lovebirds apart for a couple of minutes. I have something I need to discuss with Beth.”

  “Understood,” Mark said.

  Beth held fast when he tried to let go of her hand. “Not yet,” she said. “Anything you have to say to me, my husband can hear.”

  The nurse shrugged. “Have it your way.” She consulted a clipboard and took a breath. “As a matter of course, the hospital ran a number of blood tests on you.”

  Beth squeezed Mark’s hand tighter.

  “One of the blood tests was for HIV.”

  Beth’s mouth went dry.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Beth. Your tests results came back positive.”

  “No,” Beth whispered.

  “I’m afraid so. We did a second test to confirm.”

  Beth noticed a curious thing: the corners of the nurse’s mouth quivered, as if she were about to laugh. The woman nervously rubbed the back of her neck. Her eyes twinkled.

  “Is something funny?” Beth asked, hysteria rising.

  “No, not at all,” the nurse managed to say between breaths. She burst into gales of laughter. Beth watched in shock as the woman doubled over, holding her stomach. She looked up once, red-faced, tears streaming down her face, and between guffaws, managed to blurt, “Poetic justice!”

  Mark pulled away from her, looking bewildered, troubled. His blue eyes had clouded over, while a frown marred his scarred features even more.

  “Hubby’s probably infected, too!” the nurse screamed. “What a turn of events! How do you like them apples?” The woman snorted, then started laughing again, her voice going higher and higher, breathless.

  “No, please stop.”

  But the nurse laughed too hard to hear her. She dropped her clipboard, then collapsed to her knees, pounding the floor, almost as if in pain.

  * * * *

  Beth awakened all at once. Pale, purplish light filtered into the room: dusk. Rain tapped against the window, and she saw only a smeared landscape when she looked out the glass.

  She turned over to be confronted by the IV dripping into her arm. Her mind filled with one thought: Mark is dead.

  Her ordeal had delayed her grief. Now, the sadness and loss seemed almost overwhelming. Survival and escape had brought with them new pain. Beth wanted to struggle back into her tormented sleep, where at least Mark was still alive.

  With her remaining fingers, she clutched the sheets, balling and smoothing, hardly aware that she was doing it. A ball had formed in her throat, and she knew she was just shy of crying out into the shadow-darkened room, just shy of being crazed with mourning.

  Perhaps she could horde some sleeping pills, and when she got home, take them, lie down on the bed that she’d shared with Mark, and slide gently into the good night until all the pain disappeared.

  The rain fell harder, and as she stared out the window, watching the lights in the tall buildings begin to come on, snatches of memory rushed back to her…

  * * * *

  “Girl, you’ll catch your death out here!” The woman looked too old, too frail, to be driving the Ford S-10 pick up truck. In the dark, Beth couldn’t make out much more than the woman’s gray hair. The engine chugged as it idled.

  Beth didn’t know what to say. She held up her bleeding hand to the woman, then her bandaged hand, almost in supplication.

  “Good Lord, girl, what happened to you?”

  Beth had felt strange; she couldn’t speak. The words swirled in her brain, but she couldn’t find the mental switch to release them. She stared at the woman, quaking with horror. All she could do was clamber into the truck, hoping she didn’t frighten the woman and cause her to opt not to help.

  Abbott could be close behind.

  Beth swallowed, groping for words.

  “You look like you’ve been through some kind of hell,” the woman said. Illuminated by the overhead light of the cab, the woman squinted to get a better look at her and sucked in some breath. “Oh my, God. You’re Beth Walsh.”

  Beth felt a jolt. How had this woman known her name?

  “I’ve seen you on the news and in the paper. Oh, Lord, what’s happened to you?” The woman touched the stubble on Beth’s head. Beth flinched. A shadow moved across the back window of the truck. She grabbed the stick shift and stared desperately at the woman.

  The woman looked confused for a moment, then her care-worn features relaxed. “Of course, you need help.” She jerked the gearshift into position while pushing down and releasing the clutch. The truck lurched and began moving down the road.

  Beth could have sworn she heard fingernails scraping across the bumper and Abbott’s wail of despair as they took off.

  Or maybe she’d heard only tree branches hitting the truck with the wind.

  Later, they pulled into the gravel parking lot of a little store: Mike’s. A fading Coca-Cola sign and peeling paint spoke of better times.

  Had Abbott come here to buy her food?

  * * * *

  Beth turned in her bed. She remembered how the teenagers hanging out in the store had stared at her and the shame she felt.

  The woman hadn’t made her feel any less conspicuous either. “Somebody call 911! I’ve found Beth Walsh! The one in all the papers!”

  It seemed like only moments had passed before bright red, blue and white lights whirled outside, accompanied by the squawk of metallic voices and sirens.

  Before the first of the policemen had even come into the store, Beth had fainted.

  Now, a nurse peeked in, then withdrew. Beth struggled to get to a sitting position, but the room swam around her. What kind of drugs had they given her?

  “It looks like she’s awake. You can go on in.”

  Beth had a sudden vision of Abbott in the hospital corridor, a knife concealed beneath his jacket. Her heart began to race. But as the door swung open, she saw her mother.

  The two women regarded one another from across the room and, almost unbidden, Beth’s grief at last emerged. She coughed, sputtered, and began to sob.

  And Kate rushed to her daughter and gathered her in her arms, whispering, “Things are going to be okay, Beth. I’m here for you, every step of the way.”

  The warmth of her mother’s arms and the release of her grief were proved temporary as a cold chill passed through her. “They haven’t caught him, have they?”

  “Oh, honey, don’t concern yourself with—”

  “He’s still out there, isn’t he?”

&n
bsp; Kate closed her eyes, then looked at Beth. “The police are searching for him right now. I’m sure in no time they’ll be bringing him in.”

  “But they haven’t found him?”

  “No.”

  Beth turned to glance out at the sky, now completely dark. The rain came down harder now, slamming against her window with the force of the wind. In that rain, in that dark, Abbott Lowery lurked out there somewhere.

  Waiting.

  Beth gripped her mother once more, pulling her toward her as a shield.

  Chapter 31

  The bandage felt hard and crusty. Abbott gingerly ran his fingers over the gauze.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what happened to you, son? We need to file a police report.”

  The doctor’s voice rose up, a remembrance from the emergency room at St. Elizabeth’s in Youngstown, the hospital from which Abbott had sneaked out only hours before.

  The motel bed beneath him felt hard; he would never be able to sleep. The room smelled of disinfectant and stale tobacco smoke.

  “It was just an accident,” Abbott had snapped. “Just shut up about it. I didn’t come here to be interrogated.”

  The motel room lay in near darkness, but for the flickering images from a TV mounted high on the wall. Static hissed and lines of snow rolled from the vacant channel, casting gray, changing shadows into the room.

  “I can get you bandaged up, but I think you should stay here for a while, so we can make sure there’s no lingering infection.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Just because you’re indigent, son, doesn’t mean we can’t treat you.”

  Abbott rolled over, bunching the pillow up under his head. Was his eye now throbbing beneath the bandage because it was infected, and would soon move from his eye into his brain?

  “Will I be able to see out of that eye again, Doc?”

  “You can’t see out of something that isn’t there, but we can—”

  Abbott hadn’t wanted to hear it. He stared at the flickering static, his whole body clenching and tightening. On the TV, images began forming beneath the static. Abbott squinted. Freddy Krueger stared out at him, blinked, and waved with bladed fingers

  “Lost your eye?” he growled. “What a fuckin’ nightmare!” Raspy laughter filled the room.

  Abbott rubbed at his forehead as the pain started clamoring. Again he wondered, was this a simple headache or the beginnings of infection?

  Freddy’s face disappeared to be replaced by Jason’s, then Peter Lorre’s, then a balloon wafting into the sky.

  Then his mother’s face filled the screen, and Abbott jolted upright.

  “Candy?”

  She smiled as the camera moved down her naked body, lingering over her breasts, the nipples erect. Down further, her navel and a curl of dark hair near it, then her dark pubic hair and at last, the camera stopped at the swollen lips of her vulva. Red fingernails came into view, parting, and letting Abbott see the pink inside. He could hear his mother’s laughter.

  He rolled away from his view of the screen. He tried to ignore the laughter and voices whispering from the TV and tried to concentrate on the practical. He needed to lay low for a while, so he could heal, so the search for him would die down.

  After a time, he would be stronger, and Beth would have let down her guard.

  Then it would be time, time to go to her and finish the dance she had begun at Nordstrom that sunny day that now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Chapter 32

  Six months later

  Beth set the last of the clay pots on the shelf outside her kitchen window. She stood back, wiping her hands on her jeans and looked at her first garden. She had planted rosemary, basil, chives, dill, parsley, and oregano. Tomorrow, she would fill the two large pots at her feet with plum tomato and cayenne pepper plants.

  Behind her, the sun sank faster and faster over the rooftops. A line of slate blue clouds had moved across the horizon, promising rain within the hour. A gust of wind, cold, tugged at Beth’s sweater and rustled her hair, as if to confirm her prediction.

  She hoped her mother would make it home before the rain. Lately, the spring had been marred by thunderstorms that had come almost daily. Yet it had been a sunny day, unseasonably warm for April, with the temperature soaring into the 70s. The perfect day to begin her garden.

  Beth went inside and washed her hands. She wiped her hands on one of the tea towels her mother had brought with her when she moved in and began taking out the ingredients for their supper. Boneless chicken breasts, rice, yellow squash, herbs. Ever since she had moved in after Beth left the hospital, Kate Donner had been teaching her daughter to cook.

  She turned preheated the oven, then hurried into the bedroom to change out of her soil-stained gardening clothes. She caught a glance of herself in the bedroom mirror. Abbott had left his mark on her. She tried to avoid mirrors now, but sometimes, like now, she was drawn to them, fascinated by the change.

  Her hair had grown back, but not as quickly as she’d hoped. She now wore it spiky and her mother said it was “cute.” Beth felt the short hair made her face look too intense, her eyes too big, like they reached out to other people, forcing them to stare.

  And they did stare, wherever she went. Whenever she was in public, they were always staring, whispering.

  Sure, fewer and fewer people looked at her as the months went by and Chicago became absorbed with new tragedies. Other people bore the burden of the media spotlight now. But still, someone always recognized and stared.

  Beth covered her right hand with her left. It was still difficult to see the four stubs. Thankfully no one had viewed the dark burn scar on her inner thigh, except for herself and medical professionals. The thought of a man seeing any intimate part of her still repelled her. Even though that detective McGrew showed more than professional interest in her, Beth wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to reconcile herself to having sex again. It was too fraught now with pain and loss.

  She wondered if she’d ever feel differently.

  She pulled at the little spikes on top of her head, making them stand at attention, and smiled at herself. Her face had begun to fill out more; her cheeks had started to redden. For so long after everything had happened, she had been underweight, sallow, and unhealthy looking.

  For a month, she’d hidden in the place she and Mark had shared. Her mother had come to live with her (over Ted’s protests, but her mother would never let her father hurt her again) and had tried to convince her to move. “Let’s go someplace quiet,” she had said. “We can start over. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I’ve heard it’s beautiful. We could winter in Florida.”

  But Beth saw the graystone as her home. Yes, people always drove past to see the “house of horrors,” but they also became fewer and fewer as time went on. And yes, this place held some horrible memories, but an awful lot of good ones, too, times she and Mark had shared.

  Beth didn’t want his memory to die, so she stayed. If she moved, what remembrances would she have of him? There would be no fireplace where they had burned logs in the living room, no memory of lying close in front of it. No view through the dining room window of the stained glass window on the building next door. She and Mark would sit many nights at dinner and make up stories, usually gothic in tone, about what went on behind the twisting vines and flowers of the stained glass.

  Beth turned from the mirror and, as she did, caught a glimpse of movement. Just a flash of something dark and quick.

  Had someone really hurried across the room behind her?

  She turned.

  Abbott?

  The hallucinations had begun plaguing her just as soon as she thought things had gotten back to normal. She’d see a movement in the shadows, or catch something awry out of the corner of her eye as she turned away from something. A floorboard creaking became a footstep.

  Her therapist, Dr. Newton on Wells, told her the hallucinations were due to “post-traumatic stress” and that, over time, they would f
ade.

  But how much time?

  Beth squatted to look under the bed, crossed the room to peer into the closet, moving aside clothes to see into the back.

  Silly, she told herself. It’s been six months.

  But still the image haunted her, the sleek dark shape rushing across the mirror.

  How could she have seen it if it wasn’t there?

  * * * *

  McGrew knew, as he flicked the signal to turn right, that he needed to let go of Beth Walsh. He and she were worlds apart, and he would always be nothing more than a reminder to her of what had happened. Nevertheless, he exited Lake Shore Drive onto Fullerton anyway, just to swing by, to see if everything was okay.

  He had gone almost daily to Beth’s house in the last month or so, “just to make sure everything checked out.” When Beth was first released from the hospital, a lot of squad cars drove by the house since everyone had expected Abbott Lowery to materialize once more.

  But Abbott had stayed away, and before long, the police force pushed aside their search for him in favor of more pressing needs.

  He slowed the car as he drew near Beth’s graystone, then pulled to the curb in front of a fire hydrant. Perhaps he could sit for a few minutes. He had a paper in the back seat, coffee in the cup holder. He wasn’t due in at the station for another twenty minutes anyway.

  Besides, Kate would be home soon from her part-time job at Barbara’s Bookstore and he would feel more comfortable knowing Beth wasn’t alone. McGrew closed his eyes and wondered if he had become compulsive, not so different from the stalkers he read about.

  “Get a life!” an inner voice shouted at him, one that sounded very much like June Comstock.

  He started the engine again, looking around almost guiltily, hoping Beth hadn’t glanced out her window and seen him.

  There were only two ways to get over this compulsion: move on or ask Beth out.

  He decided, heading west on Fullerton, that he would buck up his nerve and ask her for a date. After work, he would drive by once more, but this time, be a respectable man and park his car, knock on her door. Yes, he’d ask her out to dinner. If she refused, then he’d move on.