by W. Winters
The blood is still damp on the gunshot wound, but some of the skin has dried to my shirt. I grimace as I pull it back, revealing that the bullet passed through me cleanly.
Sucking in a breath, I press the dish towel to the wound both on my front and back and then open every drawer searching for plastic wrap or duct tape—anything to keep the cloth pressed against the wound. I’ve already lost too much blood. The lightheadedness tells me that.
I only spare a few minutes to address the gunshot. I don’t have any more time to give it. I need a phone. Bracing myself against the counter, I eye the place. It looks like it hasn’t been updated since the ’80s and I’m praying that means there’s a landline somewhere. Every step I take elicits a short groan from the warped floorboards.
There are no photos to go by, nothing to tell me if this is a family home or an old man living alone in this house. It could be a hunting lodge this far out in the woods, but I don’t see any guns or trophy mounts. I have no fucking idea. I search the walls of the kitchen then the outlets before coming up empty-handed and moving to the living room. A TV was left on, but no one’s there. Someone is in this house; I don’t know who and I don’t know where, but I know there’s someone here. I wish I had my gun on me. I wish I had anything to go by. Anything at all, but I have nothing. It only takes me half a second to see the house phone, complete with a curled-up cord, on what looks like a foldout dinner table next to the worn, brown reclining chair in the back right of the room.
If I had to guess, I’d say an old man lives here. It reminds me of my grandfather’s place when I was younger. The foldout dinner tables, the bared shag rug and the faux wood panel walls. Even the off-white color of the ceiling and the scent that lingers. It’s from years of smoke.
If I close my eyes a second too long, I can see my pops rocking in the corner chair, smoking a cigar and telling me to keep it down because he can’t hear the TV.
For a moment, it’s too real. Too lifelike in my mind.
The vision is quickly wiped away at the sound of a toilet being flushed behind me. From the back hall.
The realization is jarring and I hide behind the threshold of the door. My back is pressed against it as the sound of a door opening and closing echoes through the first floor. There’s no light in this hall, although it looks like it leads to a garage or maybe a basement. The stairs to the second floor are to the left, back by the dining room.
I pray whoever it is takes their ass upstairs to bed.
I don’t have a gun or a weapon; I don’t have the energy or strength to defend myself. If my grandfather saw a strange man with a gunshot wound in his house late at night, I can guarantee he wouldn’t have asked questions. Shoot first. Or else the other guy might.
I’m as still as can be, barely breathing as I listen to the heavy footsteps. They’re slow, giving more evidence that whoever is here is older or at the very least tired.
I listen to him open the fridge, every sound he makes sounding fainter and fainter as I wait with bated breath, feeling the life slowly slip from me.
He grabs whatever he was looking for and goes back into the living room. I’m just behind the wall, so close to the phone, but blocked by his presence.
My mind immediately wanders to Laura and in a helpless moment, I contemplate begging the man to listen and not attack me. I picture myself walking out into the light, hands up in the air, pleading with him to let me use the phone. How would he react to a dying man who snuck into his house?
I don’t trust him. I don’t trust the situation. I trust no one and if I fail, Laura dies.
I remember every moment I had with her and recalling every second I took advantage of her destroys me, warping my mind and my emotions.
“Hey.” The sudden strength in her voice gets my attention. She’s been quiet all this week. She doesn’t speak but sometimes she cries, like something’s just reminded her that she’s all alone. Regardless of the fact that I’m there, walking her both ways, holding her hand when she needs it.
I get it. It’s the way we mourn. We’re fine for moments and then we fall victim to the memories. It kills us to come back to the present.
Even though it’s only early November, the bite of winter is in the air and it’s turned Laura’s neck pink. The tip of her nose is the same shade. With her hand on her front door, keeping it open, she looks out at me.
A gust of wind goes by and I slip my right hand into my jacket pocket, so very aware of how cold the left one is. My palm is warm from her skin and her touch, but the back of my hand is freezing. She let me hold her hand though, so there’s no chance I’m letting her go.
“Yeah?” I ask her, raising my voice as I turn on the uneven stone steps of this old townhouse. I think she’s going to say thank you; she says it every day even though she doesn’t want me to be her babysitter. At least that’s what she says, but I don’t believe it. “You already told me thanks,” I remind her before she can say anything.
She’s busy chewing on her bottom lip, her baby blues wide while I wait.
There’s a moment, a vulnerable one between us. A moment where she wants something—needs something from me—and I’ll be damned if I don’t need it too.
This is all up to her though. Every move is hers to make.
“What do you want, Babygirl?” I ask her, doing everything I can to hide what I want from creeping into my tone.
The moment is over, waning slowly when she shakes her head, her long hair falling down the front of her sweater and hiding half her face from me. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
I shouldn’t feel hollow inside when I force the smile to my lips. It matches the one she gives me too.
“Thanks again.”
“No problem.” I nearly walk away. I’m so close to letting her shut me out, but just the thought of it makes me feel empty. I don’t like the way I feel without her.
“Hey,” I call back before I can stop myself.
“Yeah?” The way she says the single word sounds faint and it almost gets lost in the wind. She perks up with hope though and whatever it is she’s hoping for, I hope she gets it.
“Do you eat?”
It takes her a moment, but she laughs at the ridiculous question and the sweet sound makes me smile as I jog up the steps to get back to her. “I’m hungry and I was thinking, if you’re hungry, you want to come with me?”
I can’t be so out of shape that I’m breathless after making my way up her steps to be closer to her but I blame it on that, and not on the nerves. “Come with me to dinner,” I say, making it a demand rather than a question.
She chews on that bottom lip for a moment longer, debating as the blush rises to her cheeks. “Yeah,” she answers. “I could eat something.”
All that tension melts, all the nerves go away. When she’s next to me, it’s all just fine. It’s perfect.
The click of the television and the silence that follows brings me back to now, back to the chance to make things right. Just a little longer, I think. He’s got to be going to bed.
The stairs creak and with the old floors, I can easily hear him upstairs when he finally leaves. Thank fuck.
I should wait to call Jase, wait until I’m sure that the man upstairs is asleep and won’t come back, but my patience is thin. I’ve already wasted too much time. At that thought, I move as quickly as I can.
I know Jase’s phone number by heart so I dial it, holding my breath. I’m fucked if he doesn’t answer. And Laura…
Fuck.
The other end only rings twice. Both times, I stare down at my hands as they shake.
“Who’s this?” Jase answers in a deadly tone. It’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Please God, don’t let me be too late. She needs me. She’s always needed me.
I need her more. More than anything.
Laura
My hands are still trembling. I’m huddled up, tucked away in the corner of this bed, bracing myself against the painted white cemen
t wall of the cell. Hours have passed, but I still struggle to fully wrap my head around it all.
I’m a nurse. I’ve read about it. I comprehend the words. I just can’t believe it’s true.
Arrhythmia is apparently the least of my worries. The walls of my heart are weak.
Too weak. Even if I’d had my medicine, it wouldn’t have helped. It was only a matter of time before my heart gave out.
That’s what the doctor said when I woke up in the medical center at the back of the jail. I was out for hours; the defibrillator brought my heart back to a steady beat. I know about the medical center here, but I’m not familiar with the doctor who monitored me. He showed me everything though. I saw my charts.
I have systolic heart failure.
The doctor’s voice won’t shut up in my head. He keeps looking at me with those pale green eyes from behind his spectacles. You have systolic heart failure. His voice was so calm, his hand resting lightly on mine. He was a kind doctor, but as I wiped away the tears from the corners of my eyes, I couldn’t help but hate him for having to deliver that news to me.
“Your heart is weak,” he told me. “You’ll be high on the donor list; you’re in good health.” He touched my shoulder, barely gripping me but I could only look at where his hand met the orange fabric of my newly appointed attire.
The scene plays again and again. It can’t be real.
More tests need to be done and an appointment has been scheduled for the first of said tests, but the chest X-ray is a smoking gun. The second I saw it, I knew. He didn’t even have to tell me; I knew just from looking.
“The arrhythmia has developed into something more dangerous.”
I read all about this in textbooks when I was still in school. I’ve never had a patient with heart failure though. They’re always older in the educational videos and on TV shows.
I’m in my twenties, relatively healthy, but my heart is failing me. Really, I’ve failed my heart. I knew something was wrong, yet I never followed through. I let my health slip. They could have caught this sooner.
The next appointment, once my current situation is more concrete either way, will consist of an EKG to confirm, and then I wait. I wait for someone to die so I can have their heart. That’s the best option I have. Of course, there’s medication to take and lifestyle adjustments to relieve the symptoms in the meantime… like removing stressors from my environment. There is no doubt though from Dr. Conway. I won’t survive more than a year with this heart. That’s what he told me. No more than a year at best.
I hardly notice the hot tears anymore.
Sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress in my new cell, I try to focus on all the other noise around me. At least I have a mattress now, and not just a bench. I have a blanket too, and a toilet identical to the one from before is in the corner.
I don’t know if this bed is mine or if the one across from me was supposed to be mine. I’m the only one in this cell, for now. I was told several things while I went through the booking process. But it was all a blur as they took my fingerprints and mug shot. All I kept hearing was: a year, at most.
Clank, clank, clank, clank. Someone runs something down the bars of their cell. It came from the right and a bit of a ways down the much wider hall than the one in the holding area. There have to be twenty cells on each side of this wing. A guard tells whoever’s making noise to quit it. The voice comes from a man and it reminds me where I am, bringing me back to the present.
In two days, my life has changed to be unrecognizable.
A few inmates hooted and made a ruckus when I was blindly led back here. I didn’t pay attention to a thing. Not to where we were going. I hardly remember the sound the bars made as they were closing shut. Even the horrid beep of the lock is less than memorable.
They put me in here and I find it hard to care, but a piece of me does. A piece of me wants out and still has hope; the rest of me can’t believe this is real. Maybe it’s shock. I nod at the thought.
I want to wake up from this nightmare. From the moment Seth told me he killed my father, to the attack and murders in my apartment, to the doctor telling me, “It’s not a death sentence to be on the donor list.”
There are other options but they’re risky, and even worse, temporary. He worries the walls of my heart are just too thin for surgery, but that’s what second opinions are for. I keep hoping he’s wrong. I keep hoping I’m wrong. This can’t be real.
My head feels heavy so I let it fall, pushing my hair up as I lean against the cinder block wall. It’s suddenly bitterly cold and it takes everything in me to keep it together.
One breath at a time is all I need. Breathe in, my heart thumps, breathe out, it ticks too quickly this time.
The jarring sound of the bars to my cell dragging open with a heavy creak causes my eyes to widen.
I don’t recognize the guard. He’s got to be in his late thirties, at youngest. His jaw is covered with a five o’clock shadow and his cheeks are hollow from his age. They match the wrinkles around his eyes. There are too many guards working in this place for me to tell them apart.
“This is your stop,” he speaks and oddly enough, it seems like he meant the words for me. He stands there, his back straight as a rod as a woman wearing orange clothes that match my own, walks into the cell. He never looks at me, even though I stare at him. His embroidered tag reads Brown, I think. It certainly starts with a B.
I don’t like that he, just like Walters, doesn’t look at me. Or when they do, it’s with an air of righteousness. It’s possible I’ve made it up in my mind, but I hate it. I shouldn’t be here. The thought desperately tries to turn into spoken words.
Instead of speaking, I drop my gaze, picking at an oddly thick thread in the blanket and waiting for the bars to shut.
It doesn’t matter what he or anyone else thinks of me; none of this matters. Still, I want him to know I didn’t do it. There’s an itch in the back of my throat and a cold tingle that dances along my skin, giving me goosebumps, at the mere suggestion that he thinks I’m guilty.
I didn’t do anything wrong. The small piece of me that’s focused on getting out screams in my head even though it sounds like a whimper caught at the back of my tongue.
The larger part of me knows it doesn’t matter. Where I’m sitting doesn’t matter. I have no intention of moving if I can help it.
All that matters is that I don’t miss my next visit to the doctor and schedule with another to get a second opinion. To find out whether the bespectacled doctor’s diagnosis is correct. And whether or not I qualify for the donor list, like he said I did. That’s what matters.
A rough ball scratches its way down my throat as I swallow thickly, finally looking at my companion. She takes her time walking to the other bed, pushing up the orange sleeves as she does. Black ink scrolls its way down her arms. It’s a scripture of some sort but it’s no longer sharp, it’s faded and fuzzy from years of being on her skin. She blows a stray strand of hair out of her face.
Years of being conditioned to be polite and uphold formalities wins out. “I’m Laura,” I tell her even though her back is to me as she smooths the mattress sheet. Although I’m sitting, I know she’s taller than me, broader than me. Big-boned is an expression my grandma would have used to describe her. She carries a lot of weight, but it looks like she works out just the same. Her black hair is lifted off her neck in a ponytail that’s not smooth at all. It’s like she haphazardly pulled it up. I suppose to her, what hairstyle she chooses doesn’t matter. I get that.
The bed creaks and squeaks as she climbs onto it with a bit of a bounce that comes with aggression, mirroring my position and leaning against the wall.
She crosses her arms while she talks. “I know who you are.”
Thud, my instincts recognize that tone. It’s a warning cadence, a deathly low one that’s meant to strike fear. I’ve heard it plenty in the old bar I used to work at, the Club, and plenty on the streets. Instead of eliciting fear as it�
�s intended, irritation flashes through me. A match is lit and it gracefully falls to a line of fuel, igniting its way through me.
How fucking dare she? I deserve to at least revel in my pity party. How fucking dare she?
It’s then I see just how much muscle she has. Although I keep my expression calm and I don’t hint in the slightest at the terror I know she wants to evoke, I size her up. Every inch of her.
“Oh,” I say sweetly, “the guard didn’t tell me your name.” I smile naively at the bitch, staring into her deep brown eyes. Shrugging, I do my best to look pathetic. I’m sure with my red-rimmed eyes and tearstained cheeks, it’s not hard to appear otherwise.
I’m ice cold down to the marrow of my bones when she hisses in a breath, “Damn, you’ll be a hard one.” She shakes her head gently, that hair behind her head swaying as she does, as if she truly has remorse. The chill in my blood pricks harshly, sending a bite of frost to cover every inch of me. “You seem sweet.”
I let my lips part and feign confusion. The dumbass eats it up, leaning forward with an expression that tells me she’s oh so sad to inform me. “I’m waiting on a note,” she says.
“A note?”
“Telling me whether or not to kill you,” she says and I let my eyes widen, halting my breath. As if I didn’t know she was here to hurt me. Kill me? That part is new. Why, I don’t know. This could all be a joke, a ruse. I don’t give a fuck.
She might know my name, but she doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know where I came from. My hackles rise inside and an angry girl I’m far too familiar with emerges.
I swallow and then quicken my breath, letting her feel what she wants. My fear, my turmoil. “I didn’t do any—”
She cuts me off, not letting my plea go on; thank fuck for that.
“I know. It’s unfortunate,” she says and tosses her head back. “I’m a killer for hire in here,” she confesses. I stare wide eyed and think about Seth, about my father, about my fucked-up heart, all in order to bring tears to swell in my eyes. Outwardly I’m fragile, stricken with her confession. Internally, I imagine this woman killing inmates and getting away with it. Calling them sweet.