“You wanna eat concrete, that’s fine with me.”
I stand and watch all of this, the fingers of my right hand pressed against my lips, hugging myself with my other arm. I feel stupid. I feel so, so stupid. I mentally planned out everything I would need to do to help once I got here, and now that I’m here and my help isn’t apparently needed I feel…I don’t even know how I feel. Mostly four different kinds of scared. Scared that that doctor might have done more harm than good; that I’m going to get busted for taking that blood from work; that I’ve shown up in Zeth’s place without him personally bringing me here. But most importantly, I’m scared because there was a second there when I contemplated Zeth dying. And the sheer terror that thought inspired won’t be leaving me anytime soon.
When did this happen? When did I begin to need him so much? I’ve always made a point of never needing anyone. I feel sick to my stomach. Zeth looks up through the fussing he’s receiving from Lacey and Michael, and his eyes meet mine. His expression tightens, forming a deeply furrowed brow. “What happened?”
Oh, yeah. I’ve completely forgotten that I look like I’ve been street fighting. “Fender bender,” I whisper.
“One of Charlie’s guys nearly forced her off the freeway,” Michael helpfully supplies.
“They what?” Not content with the minor miracle of merely sitting, Zeth tries to go the whole hog and slips from the table, trying to stand. It’s a glorious failure. His legs don’t even pretend they’re fit to hold him up; they bow immediately, and he drops like a sack of stones. I rush forward—like I would have a hope in hell of catching him without getting flattened—but Michael’s already on the case. Zeth’s unconscious again, his skin a pallid, deathly white.
“How about that transfusion, Ms. Romera?” he suggests.
“Yes. Of course.” I go and grab the blood from my bag, feeling the weight of the fluid heavy in my palm. Before blood transfusions, people would die from wounds like Zeth’s. Hell, people still died from them today, with the blood transfusions. As I put a line into Zeth’s arm and watch the dark, almost black blood slowly make its way into his body, I can only hope I brought enough. And I can only hope Zeth wakes up again.
Four Days Later
Something tells me I’ve lost time. You tend to know these things when they happen to you—you can feel it in your bones. There’s that feeling of wakefulness when you rise from sleeping—a pleasant, mostly lethargic experience. Then there’s the sudden wakefulness of your consciousness resetting and switching back on, like you’ve been powered down while your body carries out maintenance work, and then having the reset button hit when things are tolerable enough for you to wake up again.
Waking right now feels like the reset button being hit. And it fucking hurts like a motherfucker. I’m working up to opening my eyes when I hear voices. The buzzing of a cell phone.
“Who is it?” Lacey’s voice, soft and hushed, speaking to someone else. Another buzz of a cell phone. A deep sigh.
“It’s Pippa. She wants to talk to me. We fought before your last session.” Sloane now. Sloane’s voice. I feel positively fucking tingly when I hear her speak. It’s like a huge weight being lifted from my chest. She was hurt. I remember that. Someone hurt her.
“Are you going to call her?” Lacey asks.
There’s a pause for a moment, and then Sloane says, “I just don’t have the energy right now. She’s not one to let something drop.”
“You should just be honest with her. That’s what she told me.”
Another pause, longer this time.
“And are you going to take her advice? Are you—you don’t think you should tell him yet?” Sloane’s tripping over her words like she’s skirting a very sensitive subject.
“I—I don’t think—No, not yet. It’ll be better—if I wait a little longer.” Lacey seems to be having problems getting her words out, too. I’m hit with the sudden memory of Sam saying that Charlie sent them to take her in order to protect her.
“I can totally understand that you’re nervous about this, Lace,” Sloane says softly. “But you don’t think he has a right to know? I mean, you can’t keep it from him forever, right?”
My hands begin to clench into fists. I get this absurd image into my head—Lacey with a huge, round belly, and some schmuck who’s knocked her up standing right next to her. If someone’s gotten her into trouble, I’m gonna go on the fucking warpath. As far as I know, Lace has been steering clear of every single guy on the face of the planet bar me, though. Maybe she met someone at Sloane’s dad’s church camp. Some hippy dippy asshole who plays guitar and likes toasting marshmallows. The very idea…yeah it’s fucking laughable. Thinking about laughing makes me realize just how damn dry my throat is. I start to cough.