by Lisa Olsen
“A few days? What day is it now? Wait, what kind of surgery?” All at once a dozen questions leapt to mind, each clamoring to be answered.
The nurse’s expression grew shuttered, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “You know… I should really let the doctor come and talk to you.” She took a step back toward the door.
“Wait…” Desperately my eyes scanned the nurse’s scrubs for a nametag and spied the badge hanging around her neck. “Rachel…” I tried a friendly smile. “I can appreciate you’re not supposed to discuss my medical condition, but you’ve got to cut me a break here, okay? The last thing I remember, I was at work Saturday night and the next thing I know I’m in the ICU with tubes hanging out of my arm and up my nose.”
Indecision warred on Rachel’s features, and she hovered indecisively at the bedside. “That’s really all you remember?”
Now I felt bad for making it sound like I was an amnesia case. “I remember who I am and all that good stuff,” I admitted readily. “I remember stepping out into the alley behind the club. It was my turn to take out the garbage and there was…” My focus shifted as it started to come back to me, eyes staring off into space as I pictured it. I remembered the scuffle between the two men, one of them had a knife.
“He stabbed him…” I murmured, my face twisting with empathy as I saw it again in my mind. “And I screamed… I threw the garbage can at him to make him stop, but he batted it aside. He…” I swallowed as I remembered him stalking toward me, the bloodied knife glinting in the poor light. He must have attacked me then, though I didn’t remember it specifically or any of the pain. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details after that. Who brought me in, do you know?”
Rachel picked up the datapad, paging through the records. “Let’s see, you came in via ambulance, transported from… Second Avenue and South Washington Street, is that where you work?”
I nodded, trying to cast my mind back again but the fog was still firmly in place, making it difficult to wade though. The image came unbidden of the man in the long coat, the same man I’d seen in my hospital room with crystalline blue eyes. Staring down at me, his expression a mixture of sadness and awe, and something I couldn’t quite define. “Have I had any visitors?” I asked suddenly, wondering if she had a record of who he was.
“No, we don’t allow visitors in the ICU. Though I think you had a couple of people waiting around when you were first brought in. I didn’t talk to them.”
“There wasn’t a guy in here earlier?” Had it all been a dream? With the way my day was shaping up, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
“No, I don’t think so. Unless you mean during the dayshift? I think Bryan was working.”
A nurse. He hadn’t looked like a nurse. I decided it wasn’t important in the end, my mind already switching tacks. “Can I call my brother? Let him know I’m alright?”
“Sorry, there aren’t any phones in here, but I can call him for you if you like. You’ll probably be moved to a regular room soon though, if that’s any consolation.”
“Yes, could you? I’d really appreciate it.” I gave Matty’s phone number to the helpful nurse, hoping he remembered to pay his cell phone bill that month or I’d have to call my mom. And I really didn’t want to call my mom.
Hating hospitals on general principle, I couldn’t wait to be moved. The sooner they gave me the green light to get out of intensive care, the closer I’d be to getting out of the hospital altogether. As it was, I’d probably end up seriously in debt if I’d already been there for a few days and had emergency surgery. The health insurance offered by the club wasn’t exactly comprehensive, but it was better than nothing. Besides, they couldn’t squeeze blood from a stone. I had few assets they could try to seize as collateral. Hell, they were welcome to try and take my sometimes running car, it was probably cheaper to take the bus than foot the repair bills anyway.
“You should try and get some rest now. We’ll send the doctor in as soon as she gets here, alright?” Rachel smiled, picking up the datapad. Tucking it under her arm, she paused by the foot of the bed, her expression inscrutable.
I stared back, waiting for her to say something, but she just stood there. “What is it? Is something wrong?” I couldn’t help but ask as she lingered.
“No, I’m just… surprised to see you awake and doing so well. I’m glad you came out of it,” she said simply. Turning on her heel, she left without another word.
“Yeah… doing so well.” A long, drawn out breath left my body as my head fell to one side, eyes growing heavy again.
Chapter Two
Dr. Michaelson proved to be somewhat of a disappointment. The brusque woman virtually ignored my questions in favor of asking her own. I was able to gather that I’d been brought in after a knife wound to my abdomen, and I only barely survived the surgery. The doctor seemed almost peeved that I woke when I did. She was unable to account for my sudden improvement, and I wasn’t sure if I should be amused or irritated by her annoyance. After all, I was the one lying in the hospital bed, shouldn’t she be happy if I got better? Either way she still got her paycheck.
From the sound of things, I took a turn for the worse after the surgery and infection set in, only the doctor used a lot of incomprehensible words to describe it. The gist was, she really hadn’t expected me to pull through it at all. A sobering thought.
The faint glow around people was still there, and I noted with interest that there were different colors associated with different people. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the color schemes meant though. The doctor noted the anomaly with a scowl, ordering a battery of vision tests to be conducted the next morning, which would probably cost me another month’s wages.
Maybe it was because most of her patients were unconscious the majority of the time, but the surgeon’s bedside manner definitely left something to be desired. Her color was a deep orange with flecks of green in it, and I couldn’t help but think the green bits weren’t very nice.
The only bright spot on the horizon was Dr. Michaelson agreed I could move to a regular room if I didn’t take a turn for the worse during the course of the night. After that, I settled into a boring routine as everyone lost their interest in my miraculous recovery and went back to business as usual.
Rachel came back to check up on me at regular intervals until the dayshift came on, and I was disappointed to find out Bryan the nurse was not the man I remembered with the piercing blue eyes (though his aura was a nice peaceful blue).
Finally, I found myself in a semi-private room, happy to find I had no roommate as of yet. The food police still wouldn’t allow me any solid foods and only a little water, no matter how much I begged and pleaded. Even my most winsome smile hadn’t gotten through to Bryan on that account, and I started to wonder if his peaceful blue aura didn’t mask a slightly masochistic streak.
I was about to ring for a refill on my ice chips when the door swung open. “Ah, my hero,” I grinned, expecting to see Bryan with his plastic cup. Instead, a guy in a dark blue suit entered, shutting the door firmly behind him. He was of average height, average build, average looks, his dark hair slightly disheveled despite the early hour. In fact, there was nothing remarkable about him. Until he smiled, and a light of amusement came into his deep brown eyes, leading me to believe he’d heard my remark. The smile made him much more appealing, cute even, and I smiled back in response.
“I haven’t been called anybody’s hero in at least… a week,” he grinned, moving to stand by my bedside where I could see him better. His aura was a deep indigo, and I found myself distracted by it for a moment, wondering what it meant.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I admitted with a sheepish grin.
“Give me a chance, I just got here.” His smile widened before sharp eyes gave me the once over. “You don’t look that bad at all,” he considered aloud, as though he found the thought surprising.
“Do you always begin conversations that way?” I raised a br
ow, the corner of my mouth quirking into an almost smile at the way he’d said it. As though he’d gotten something for Christmas he hadn’t asked for.
A tinge of color washed up the side of his neck, and I could see he hadn’t realized how it sounded. “Sorry. I meant they told me yesterday you were at death’s door, but you look good, better than good even.”
“At death’s door… not exactly something a girl likes to hear.” No wonder the nurse had been surprised when I’d woken up. “Actually, I feel pretty great, all things considered.” It was true, once the grogginess wore off and I’d gotten a few hours of sleep, I felt more restless than anything else, tired of lying in bed. I was still too chicken to lift the bandages and take a peek at the surgery scars though. There went my summer bikini season.
“Those must be some great drugs they’ve got you on,” he muttered, drawing out a small notepad and pen from his pocket. “I’m Detective Benjamin Gates, with the Seattle Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
“Ah, the cops.” He didn’t look much like a cop in my opinion, something about his eyes were too gentle. Then again, my experience with the police was blessedly limited. “Sure, go ahead.” It was better than what was on TV anyway.
“Merceline Renault, that’s an unusual name. French?”
“That’s what they tell me, though none of my relatives ever seemed particularly French to me. Most of them live in California,” I replied with a half shrug. “You can call me Mercy, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Mercy.” He smiled again and I felt myself smiling back like a fool. All at once it occurred to me, I hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth in a few days, and my lips snapped shut. Had he already gotten a wave of dragon breath? My good hand snuck up to surreptitiously comb through the tangle of my hair, tucking it away behind my ear.
Whatever my state, Detective Gates didn’t seem to notice or care. Instead, he plunged ahead with his line of questioning. “I’m sure you can guess why I’m here. We’d like to catch the guy that did this to you. What can you tell me about that night?”
“The details are sketchy, but I’ll do my best.” I let out a deep breath, head falling back against the pillow as I cast my mind back. “I went out back to take out the garbage, it was my turn.”
“This is behind Eden, the nightclub?” Gates interrupted, already scribbling into his notebook.
“Yes, I’m a bartender there,” I nodded. “It was late. We were almost ready to close, so I was out in the alley by the dumpsters and that’s when I saw the guys fighting. Well, sort of fighting, it was more like one guy attacking the other. He had a knife and I saw him stab the other one, so I yelled and shoved the garbage can at him.”
“There was another guy there?” The detective’s brows drew together over that tidbit of information, and I could tell it was news to him. “That wasn’t very nice of him, not sticking around after you got stabbed,” he muttered darkly. “Sorry, please continue. What do you remember about the man with the knife?”
“It was dark, but he had brown hair. A little shaggy and long around the ears, and he was unshaven. Not a beard exactly, just scruffy. Dark eyes I think, but I could be wrong about that, they were…” I swallowed, recalling the expression in his eyes. They’d been full of rage and a light of excitement when I stepped into that alleyway, like I’d given him a gift. “They were dark,” I repeated lamely, not sure how to articulate it any better than that, but the Detective nodded encouragingly.
“He was tall. Not as tall as the other man but taller than me, which isn’t hard to do.” I stood at just under five feet five inches, with a slender build, and I’d lost every fight I’d ever been in with my younger brother, Matthias. I really had no business engaging a man with a knife like that.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking, because instead of running for help, I got it into my head that I needed to stop him. He’d already stabbed the other man, and I worried he might kill him before help could come. But as soon as he saw me…” I swallowed again, wishing for Bryan and his ice chips. “He forgot all about the other guy and came after me.” His face loomed large in my memory, the smile curving his lips as he struck out with the knife.
Detective Gates cleared his throat, drawing me out of my reverie. “I’m sorry to dredge up such painful memories,” he said gently, and I gave him a faint smile.
“It’s okay. It’s my own fault for charging in there without a lick of sense.”
“I’d like to show you a few pictures to see if you can identify the man who attacked you.” He withdrew some mug shots from another pocket, laying them out on the bedside tray and rolled it toward me. I pressed the magic button on the side of the bed to sit up higher (that was the one thing I liked about hospital beds). “Do you see the man here among these shots?”
Surprised they might already know who he was, I studied them with interest. Almost immediately I spotted the guy and pointed to him decisively. “That’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Definitely, I’m positive,” I nodded vehemently. The photo showed the creep with a surly expression on his face that I’d seen first hand. But how did they know he was involved? Had a witness stepped forth? If so, then why didn’t they know about the other man? “It’s funny, I had a… I guess it was a dream, that he was here last night,” I remarked, thinking of the blue eyed stranger.
“Who, the guy that attacked you?” Detective Gates’ eyes widened in alarm at the idea, and I felt a stab of guilt for having gone off on a tangent in my mind without defining the segue.
“No, the other man,” I corrected quickly.
“What can you tell me about that man?” he asked, flipping the page in his notepad.
“Oh… well, he was tall, like I said. Blonde hair, curly and kind of messy the way it fell over his forehead.” Good looking in a clueless sort of way, like he would’ve been a hottie with a makeover, but I didn’t mention that. “His clothing was… I remember a long brown coat. Beyond that, I’m sorry, I don’t remember. He’d been stabbed, like me, but he didn’t look like he was in pain, he looked sort of lost. Or maybe not lost, but bewildered, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening. He had the bluest eyes…” my words trailed off.
“Like yours?”
“What?” My head came up distractedly, as I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“Your eyes… I’m sorry, I was just noticing how blue they are,” he replied, staring openly at me, his notepad forgotten. Not for the first time, I wondered why people were staring at me lately. How much of a wreck did I look like from my brush with death?
“How… blue they are,” I nodded slowly, wishing for a mirror or even something shiny, but I was surrounded by plastic.
“Is there something wrong?” Gates’ eyes narrowed in curiosity, and I shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny.
“No, nothing wrong.” I gave him a tight smile. What could I say? My eyes have been chocolate brown since birth, you’d better get your eyes checked, mister? Things were getting weirder and weirder, but I tried to dismiss it from my mind for the moment. For all I knew, the guy was colorblind, or it was a temporary thing from the surgery. Or maybe it had to do with all the colors I saw around people?
“Ah, where were we?” I frowned, having completely lost my train of thought.
Detective Gates looked down to consult his notes. “Oh, you were telling me about the other guy, the one who got stabbed. You said you thought you saw him here last night?”
“Well yeah, but he couldn’t have been. They told me I wasn’t allowed visitors in the ICU. In fact, you’re the first person I’ve seen not wearing scrubs since Saturday.”
“Maybe he was a patient here, if he got stabbed too?” he mused aloud. His hand rubbed along his jaw as if it itched, and I could see he hadn’t had a chance to shave yet. Suddenly, I wondered if it wasn’t the end of a long night for him, instead of the beginning of a new day.
“Maybe,” I agreed readily sinc
e my mind had already gone along those lines. “That shouldn’t be too hard for you guys to check out, right? I mean how many stab victims come in on any given day?”
“You’d be surprised,” Gates sighed. “He might not have come in at all. A lot of these guys have their own people to stitch them up.”
“What do you mean these guys?”
“Drug dealers. This guy you identified?” He picked up the mug shot of my attacker and shook it. “He’s a known drug dealer, among other things. We lifted his prints from a knife we found in the alley, the knife that stabbed you. Your ID clinches it. Maybe you got in the middle of a drug deal gone bad?”
“Drugs?” Somehow I couldn’t picture the blonde man being in that alley to buy drugs. But then what else had he been doing there in the middle of the night? “You know who he is then? The guy who attacked me?” That was comforting. I thought it would be much tougher to find the man, if ever. Lucky for me he dropped his knife. Lucky for me, but stupid for him. Obviously the guy wasn’t a master criminal.
“Yep, now it’s just a matter of picking him up. We’ve already got an APB out on him now. We’ll most likely have him in custody before you get released from the hospital.” Gates gave me a reassuring smile, and I believed him.
“That’s good to hear.” I didn’t like to think about the guy lurking around the club, waiting to finish off the job. Looking up, I realized the detective had fallen silent and stood there looking at me again. Not expectantly like he’d asked a question I missed, just reflectively. “Do you have any more questions?” My brows rose a fraction higher.
The detective shook himself out of it, flipping his notebook shut. “No, I’ll let you get some rest now. When we do pick him up, we might ask you to come down and fill out some paperwork. Not until you’re well enough to, of course,” he added quickly.
“Sure, whatever I can do to help.”