by Mary Madison
“Yes. That's right.”
“It's his brothers, though,” Chelsea interjected hotly. “Junior and Peter, not him. They're animals. They're trying to kill Desmond because he's the only one who's in a position to put a stop to all this horror.”
“Is that true?” Ernesto asked me intently. “Can you end all of this somehow?”
“I don't know,” I answered honestly. “But I have to try.”
The nurse nodded. “At the hospital, the emergency room gets new patients every day. Gunshot wounds from shoot-outs. Burns from carelessly tossed firebombs. Shrapnel from blown-out windows they happened to be passing by. Collateral damage in this war. Innocent people. Children, in some cases. You people are turning this city into hell on earth, leaving the ones like my colleagues and me up to our elbows every night in the death and gore you leave behind without a second thought. So if you have even the smallest chance of making things right out there, Desmond, I suggest you do whatever it takes to make that happen. Because if you fail—if you fuck up and this senseless pattern of violence continues—I am going to track you down and undo everything I just did to you, and I am gonna make sure it hurts. Do you understand me?”
His words hit me hard and deep, like heavy thrown blades. He was just a nurse, a civilian, not a tough guy... but even so, I could tell that he meant everything he had said. The pain in his voice, the blame and the exhaustion, were very real. I snickered, trying to sound nonchalant. “I thought guys like you took some kind of oath, right? 'First, do no harm,' isn't that it?”
Ernesto's face didn't move. “That's the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors take that, not us. Nurses take the Nightingale Oath, which prohibits us from acts that are evil or malicious in nature. But if you won't do what you can to save this city from bleeding to death, then making sure you bleed to death won't be evil or malicious; it will be a sane and rational act, no different than excising a tumor to keep it from damaging any more healthy tissue. Do we understand each other?”
I offered my hand. “Yes.”
He shook it. “Good. Now, I'll give you two some privacy so you can decide where you're going to go next. Please make it quick.”
Chapter Three
Chapter Three—Chelsea
When Ernesto left the room, Desmond turned to me urgently. “My gun. Did he take it?”
“No,” I assured him. “I've got it. And I took Whitey's gun from him too. Figured it might come in handy.”
“That's putting it mildly,” he grunted. “Hand them over so I can see how many bullets we've got.”
I did, and he slid the clips out of each, checking them methodically. I watched the display raptly—all these years and I still hadn't gotten used to the strange parts of his life that he experienced without a second thought, like smoothly and safely handling weapons of death. The arcane knowledge which the children of criminals are burdened with, and which the rest of us, safe and sanguine in our ignorance, will never need to learn.
“Seven in yours,” he said, slamming the clip back into place. “Five in mine. Could be worse. Still not going to be nearly enough to defend us against my brothers. Part of me still can't believe they would try to kill me. Or you, either, for that matter! It's like all those days we spent together as kids never happened, and it's driving me crazy. Shit, maybe I'm already there. Was that even us back then? Were those different people?”
From his tone, I could hear that he was miserable, spiraling. I hated seeing him so torn apart by his emotions, and on top of that, he'd lost so much blood, endured so much pain...
I put my arms around him, trying to hold all the pieces of him together at once. “Shh. I know you're confused and scared and angry right now, Des. But I need you to be strong for me just a little while longer, okay? You have to focus on where we should go next. Someplace we'll be safe from Junior and Peter until we can figure out what to do.”
He laughed bitterly, wincing at the agony in his torso. “I have no idea where we'll be safe from them. They've got people everywhere—every restaurant, bar, hotel, flophouse. They've got eyes and ears all over the city, especially during this thing with the Azzarellos.”
I frowned. “Hang on. What if we went to the Azzarellos? Told them what was going on, helped them take down Peter and Junior? They'd have to give you protection until the war was over, right?”
“First of all, they'd probably shoot me on sight. Second, even if they didn't, they'd probably assume it was some kind of double-cross in the making and just take me hostage. And third, even if by some miracle they decided to believe I really was on their side, it's not like I can give them some secret computer file or nuclear launch code that's going to make them win this war against my family. Junior and Peter will just keep cutting through all the Azzarellos until they get to us anyway. Frankly, Chels, short of hiding out under a highway overpass, I'm all out of ideas.”
I pictured us living under a cement overpass like a couple of homeless people, and suddenly, it called to mind a handful of memories I hadn't dwelled on in a long time. “What about our place?” I asked.
His eyebrows shot up. “The place? Our favorite place?”
I nodded.
“But... that's crazy!” Desmond protested. “That's barely a place at all!”
“Exactly. No one knows about it. No one would have any reason to look for us there. And if anyone does happen to see us there, we'll just look like a couple of weirdo lovebirds cuddling under a pile of rocks. It's perfect.”
He hesitated, and I pressed on, “You said it yourself, Des. There's no place else for us to go. It's the one real shot we have at staying out of your brothers' way.” I paused, then added, “Besides, just in case things do end up going south for us, don't you want to go back there with me? Just so we can be there together again one last time?”
He licked his lips with a tongue that looked as dry as sandpaper. “Yeah. I guess you're right. But getting down there with all these stitches is going to be a real bitch.”
I laughed. “I'll help you, I promise. Come on, let's go. I'm calling an Uber.”
“Not from here, you're not.” Ernesto was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. “Once you're gone, I don't want to be able to give anyone any details about how you got to wherever you're heading next. That includes the details about the Uber you got into. Limp a few blocks over—in any direction, I don't care which—and call them from there.”
“Again, you're absolutely right,” Desmond conceded. “We'll do that. Thank you.”
“You want to thank me, big man?” Ernesto asked. “You take that life I just gave you and you make it count for something. You put a muzzle on those brothers of yours, and you use the money and influence you have to make this city a better, safer place instead of painting it with more blood.”
“I will,” he promised. “Chels, come on, help me get dressed.”
I hauled him into a sitting position, marveling at his physique as he draped it over me—there was so much power stored in all those rock-hard muscles, even when he was weakened from shock and blood loss and two nights sprawled on a couch. I took strength from it and hoped that he was feeling my strength flow into him as well.
Ernesto had given us some old gym clothes to wear in place of our blood-stained ones, so we got dressed as quickly as we could, given Desmond's stiffness and injuries. The sweats were stained and threadbare and colored in an array of silly pastels, but I had to admit that at least they rendered us less recognizable.
Desmond and I looked at each other and started laughing in spite of ourselves.
“You look ridiculous like a tourist at Disney World!” I giggled.
“Stop!” he gasped. “It... hurts when I... laugh!”
“Glad you two can see the lighter side of evading the law and dodging professional hitmen,” Ernesto commented with a smirk. “Go on, off with you. And Desmond, remember what I said.”
“I will,” Desmond said as I helped him to his feet. He let out a hoarse g
roan, and for a moment, it looked like he might topple backward again—but instead, he took a deep, steadying breath, and allowed me to lead him toward the door.
The crimson rays of the late afternoon were slowly giving ground to the purple shadows of the Chicago evening as I clung to Desmond, trying to keep him upright without putting my hand anywhere near his wound. It was a bit of a losing battle—he did his best to keep walking, but he was sliding downward steadily all the way, like a scarecrow without enough stuffing inside. I kept glancing apprehensively at his injured side, waiting to see a circle of blood expanding from it as a result of torn stitches or fresh internal bleeding. Thankfully, everything seemed to be staying in place so far.
Finally, we found a corner with a bus stop bench, and I lowered him onto it. He exhaled, and I noticed his lower lip was red and shiny with blood. I dabbed at it with my sleeve, hoping no one would see. The residents had probably witnessed stranger transients shuffling through their neighborhood, but even so, the last thing we needed at that point was the attention of some local crime watch group.
As I hit the button to summon the Uber, I thought, Maybe Des is right. Maybe this is a dumb idea, going back to our place and living out in the open air when he's hurt like this. Chicago nights are cold, and he's already in rough shape. Besides, isn't this the kind of silly thing a little kid would do? Retreat to the old clubhouse and suck her thumb helplessly when the real world gets too nasty to face?
Well, maybe. But once again, what other viable options did we have left? It was the one place we knew for a fact Junior didn't have any spies unless he'd started recruiting seagulls and squirrels into his criminal empire.
The Uber pulled up, and I helped Desmond into the back, climbing in on the other side. The driver was a black woman in her fifties with a pink sequined shirt and leopard print, cat-eye framed glasses. She peered at Desmond in the rearview mirror, raising her eyebrows suspiciously.
“Sorry about my friend,” I told her ruefully. “He, uh, hasn't been feeling so good lately.”
“Uh-huh.” She checked the address I'd given for the destination. “Something going on there tonight I don't know about? Fireworks or a block party?”
“No, nothing like that. I just figured the fresh night air might do him some good, you know?”
Desmond nodded next to me, managing a feeble smile and a thumbs-up even though he was sliding down in the seat. I put an arm around him firmly, trying to hold him in place.
The driver shrugged, stepping on the gas pedal. “Fair enough.”
Every time the car hit a bump in the road, Desmond's teeth clenched even tighter. Every muscle in his body tensed in agony, and from the tautness in his face, I could see he was trying not to yell or pass out from the pain.
I kept squeezing his shoulders each time the car jerked and lurched, looking into his eyes, trying to get him to focus on me instead of the impacts reverberating through his wounded body. There was so much hurt in his cloudy gaze, but there was gratitude there too. I nodded wordlessly, hoping he would hear the words in his heart: I am here. I'm not going anywhere. We will get through this, I promise.
Then the ride was over, and we were outside again—at the green edge of the park at Belmont Harbor, with the gray cement steps in the distance and the crashing black waves of Lake Michigan just beyond that. Aside from the odd jogger or vagrant, the area was mostly deserted.
“Come on,” I whispered to Desmond, “we're almost there. Just a few more steps, remember? You can do it.”
Our feet whispered and shushed through the soft grass, and when I looked down at them, the shoes I saw didn't belong to our adult selves anymore. They were the scuffed little shoes of a boy and a girl who would sometimes—when the grown-ups weren't looking—purposefully prick the pads of their index fingers on the gnarled rose bushes in the garden of Desmond's mother and make a solemn promise to meet in secret that very night.
Those two children would wait until their parents were asleep, and then they'd sneak out of their rooms and meet on the sidewalk outside their parallel homes. They'd take the CTA together with their small hands clasped the whole way—Evanston Purple Line to Belmont Red Line, pretending they were individual blood cells pumping through the arteries which flowed to the heart of the city.
They'd stroll arm in arm past the punks and goths and winos and hustlers who hung around Belmont and Clark at midnight, oblivious to the hundred different dangers they passed by without a care, too young to know better. They'd keep walking until they reached the water and take shelter among the piles of jagged rocks that the waves lapped and stroked.
Sometimes they'd stay that way until the first rays of morning light tinged the sky over the lake, and then they'd rub their sleepy eyes and make their way back to their neighborhood, pausing just long enough for a lingering hug before they returned, yawning, to their beds.
And we were never caught, I marveled. Not once in all those years of coming here. No one knew.
I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, and I wondered: were we still those kids, making the same trip we'd made dozens of times before? Maybe everything that had happened to us since then was the dream, and this was the reality—the simple pleasure of this twilight ritual which had always been so sacred to us both. Maybe time had reset itself somehow and we'd still be children when the morning came. We would have another chance to live it out again, to do it together, to get it all right this time around.
Then I felt Desmond stumble and looked up into his face, and reality ripped away the fantasy. There were tattered remnants of the boy I'd once known there, but that's all they were—the man's face that peered out from behind those rips and tears was older than his years, hardened, wearing a hundred invisible scars that would never fully go away.
In some ways, I found myself loving him even more desperately now... wanting nothing more than to hold him and kiss him and take away all that pain, erase all those years he'd been bereft of me when he'd needed me most. The intensity of the emotions he drew out of me frightened me, made me almost unrecognizable to myself. My need to protect him and care for him felt like something shockingly primal, a feral need beyond all reason.
I hoped I was acting on it the right way by bringing him here.
I found the specific rock formation where we had spent so much time before and stepped down first, helping him to descend slowly after me. He let out a sharp cry of pain, and I could see that his injured side was moving up and down, breathing hard enough to make his wound hurt. His dark eyes, normally so calm and calculating, were now bulging and bloodshot.
“Easy,” I said soothingly. “It's all right. Look around, Desmond. We're here.”
He did, and the rising and falling in his chest slowed as he slowly regained his ability to resist the pain. Desmond nodded, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah.”
It was our little “cave”—a hollow in the craggy rocks that was, mercifully, just big enough for our adult bodies. We'd found it together once while our fathers were wandering in the park, discussing boring adult things and ignoring our persistent silliness. We had called it our “pirate's cove,” since we'd been reading an illustrated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island together just the previous week. We promised that we wouldn't disclose its location to anyone else (not without killing them immediately afterward to guard our secret, we sternly amended), and that we would meet there regularly to check on our imaginary chest of Spanish doubloons and “pieces of eight,” a stolen haul of riches which rivaled that of the peg-legged villain Long John Silver himself.
But as the years passed, it became less a place of pretend swashbuckling and more a sanctuary where we would talk about our parents and problems—usually one and the same—in utter secrecy akin to that of a confessional. We felt safe here with each other—kneeling together in the ray of a flashlight, holding hands and exchanging our deepest wishes and fears, far from spying eyes and ears.
“I used to come here,” Desmond sai
d, almost too quietly to hear.
“I know,” I answered reassuringly, figuring he must still be dazed from shock and blood loss. “We came here together all the time, remember?”
“No, I mean later, Chels. After you left.”
His words caught me completely by surprise. I opened my mouth, then closed it again, unsure of what to say in response.
“When your father took you,” he went on. “When you left. I came here almost every night. Used to stay up all night, fall asleep in class. They kept sending me home from school, suspending me. Dad got pissed, yelled at me, slapped me around a few times. Demanded to know where I was going all night and why. But I never told him. Not once, no matter what he did, no matter what he threatened to do. I never told anyone because it was our secret. And I kept coming back because...” He swallowed hard, then continued, his voice trembling. “Because I figured wherever you'd gone, wherever that old bastard had taken you, you'd be trying to make your way back here—to me. And if you did, this was where you'd want me to be. Waiting. So I waited. For years, Chels. Forever. For you.”
Tears stung my eyes, and I took his hand, stroking it tenderly with my fingertips. “I'm so fucking sorry, Des. I'm sorry I didn't come back for you.”
“No, hey, it's okay, though,” he said comfortingly, cupping my chin in his other hand and lifting my face so he could look into my eyes. “Because you did come back for me. See? Here we are again, right where we belong. And it was worth the wait.”
I smiled, looking around at the graffiti on the stones around us. There were the usual swear words, slurs, and crude sketches of genitals, plus a peculiar new addition: a sprawling mural of jagged yellow letters spelling out SAVE KATRINA SURVIVORS, COLLECT VALUABLE PRIZES!
But huddled in the midst of them all was one tiny set of four letters, painted in red and enclosed with a wavy heart: DB + CB.