Sebastian

 

 

I blink my eyes open, thinking I heard a noise in the hallway. The T.V. is still on but it’s quiet enough that I know the infomercial on the screen isn’t what woke me. I rub my eyes and turn it off, stretching as I walk to the door and look out the small peephole. I can’t see anything except a light pink shoe. What the hell?

I open the door, my eyes instantly falling on Anna. She’s sprawled out on the floor, a soft groan escaping her lips. I notice her apartment door is wide open but there’s no sound coming from inside and the lights are still off. I kneel beside her and gently lift her head, noticing a small pool of blood soaking into the carpet. I glance up at the metal case surrounding the thermostat and see a smear of blood just below it.

“Anna? Can you hear me?”

“Mmhmm,” she mumbles.

“Anna, what happened?”

Her eyelids flutter open but quickly close again. “A man, he knocked me dow- I thin.”

“Anna, listen to me, I’m going to close your door and get a towel for your head. I’m still here, okay?”

“Mmmhm.”

I close her door and notice the handle is loose before I duck back inside my apartment and snag the towel hanging on the stove as well as my keys and wallet from the coffee table. I scoop my arms underneath her and lift her easily, holding her snug against my chest. I wedge the towel between her head and my body to hold it in place.

“I’m going to take you to the hospital, okay?”

“Mmmmhm,” she mutters. “I’m glad I did not have you kill…Don’t call Esme.”

“Have me what? Never mind, just hang on freckles. Try to keep your eyes open.”

I make it down the stairs and load Anna into the passenger side of my pickup. The nearest hospital isn’t far, but I speed anyways because she can hardly stay awake and I’m worried she might have a concussion. I park in emergency and carry her in through the sliding glass doors. One look at us and the nurse sitting behind the registration desk waves me over right away.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I’m not entirely sure but I think she may have surprised a burglar,” I tell her. “She was laying on the floor in the hallway, she mumbled something about a man running into her. She hit her head pretty hard, there was blood on the wall and I think she might have a concussion.”

Anna stirs in my arms and blinks open her eyes, looking slightly more alert. She presses gently against my chest and I slide her carefully to her feet while keeping my arm around her for balance. The nurse at the desk taps on her keyboard as another woman in blue scrubs walks up beside us.

“Oh my God, Anna?”

“Elle?”

“Do you know her?” I ask the pretty blonde in the blue scrubs.

“Yes! She’s my sister, what happened?”

I recap the evening for her as she takes Anna’s other arm and leads us down the hallway. We stop at a small exam room and she gets Anna settled on the bed, forcing her to lean back on the reclined hospital bed.

“I’m going to have to call the police,” she says. “Were they gone when you found her?”

“Yeah, her place was empty,” I say.

She pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and parts Anna’s hair on the back of her head. “Shit, Anna you’re going to need stitches. I’ll page the doctor on call.”

“I feel woozy,” Anna says sleepily.

“You probably have a bit of a concussion. I’m going to get Alison to come and sit with you until the doctor comes while I go call the police.”

“I’ll stick around,” I tell Anna. “I’ll be right out there.”

“Okay,” she sighs.

I’m not even sure if she heard me, but I’m not leaving until I know she’s okay. The blonde ushers me into the hallway as the new nurse comes in and takes a seat beside Anna.

“Thank you so much for bringing her in, and don’t take this the wrong way. But who are you exactly?”

“I live across the hall,” I explain as we walk to the waiting room. “I heard a noise in the hallway and when I opened the door, I saw Anna on the floor.”

“Well I imagine the police will want to talk to you as well,” she says. “You can wait in here, I’m going to go make a couple phone calls. I’m Elle, by the way.”

“Sebastian Miller,” I reply.

She nods and heads back to the nurse’s station while I take a seat in the corner of the abandoned waiting room. I don’t know how long I’m staring at the muted T.V hanging on the wall when Elle comes back into the room, this time with a tall brunette. The other sister I presume, and she looks angry.  

“Mr. Miller, this is my sister, Dru,” she says.

“Hey, sorry abou-.”

“You! You’re the bastard that’s been terrorizing our sister with your bullshit parties,” she hisses. “Was it one of your friends that did this? I swear to God if you were responsible for this, I’ll-.”

“It wasn’t anyone that I know. And trust me, if it was, I would have dealt with them myself,” I say through clenched teeth.

She continues to glare in my direction, no doubt blaming me.

“I’m going to go check with the doctor and see if we can go in,” Elle says.

When Dru responds, I catch the name Esme and remember Anna muttering something. “Uh, she was pretty out of it on the ride over, but she did mention that she didn’t want me to call Esme. I didn’t know who she was talking about, so I didn’t think to mention it when we arrived.”

Elle agrees not to call whoever Esme is unless things are bad. She leaves the room and an awkward silence settles between me and Anna’s other sister. I doubt I could charm her much now, so I don’t bother.

“You can go if you want. I’m here now and I’m sure you have people to get back to,” she snips.

“Nah, I’m good. I told Anna I’d stay.”

She huffs a breath and turns her gaze to the T.V. Minutes feel like hours in the small space of the waiting room, with nothing but the ticking clock to fill the silence.

“Wait. You’re Sebastian Miller? The potter?”

“Last I checked,” I grin.

“Hm. Well I guess just because you do nice things for children, it doesn’t obligate you to be a decent neighbour,” she says, her eyes narrowed.

It doesn’t surprise me that she’s heard about the charity work I’ve done at the community centre downtown. The indie art world is small enough in our area that I wouldn’t doubt it if we had some shared contacts as well. Too bad she’s intent on busting my balls or we could talk shop instead of her shooting daggers at me. I’m about to reply when Elle comes back in and says we can see Anna now.

I don’t know if she means me, but I automatically get up and follow the two women down the hallway and back to the exam room where we left Anna. Two officers are making their way back to the front desk, I assume looking for me. I stop and tell them what I know. They’ll be meeting Anna at home to check things out once she’s discharged. I give them my number and agree to co-operate any way that I can.

The door to the exam room is open slightly and I hang back while Anna fills her sisters in on what happened. When I hear Anna question whether I really brought her in, I open the door.

“Yeah, I did.”

All three women look at me and as Elle gets paged and slips from the room, she squeezes my hand and thanks me. Dru leaves shortly after to go in search of the doctor who should have been here thirty minutes ago. I step toward the bed and stop at the edge as Anna looks up at me.

“How’s your head?”

“Throbby,” she says, with a small laugh. “But I don’t feel as dizzy.”

She fidgets with her hands and looks down, when her gaze meets mine, her blue eyes are filled with tears. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “For, well, just for being there and bring-.”

“Hey, that’s what neighbours are for, right? It’s a good thing you didn’t have me killed otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to help you,” I smirk.

“I mentioned that, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“My master plan didn’t make it past a post-it note,” she confesses. “I was tired. I get loopy when I’m tired.”

“And apparently violent.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry I entertained the idea of your demise,” she offers. “I never would have gone through with it.”

“I know.”

She smiles up at me and opens her mouth to speak, interrupted when the doctor finally comes in. He tells her to keep the bandage on for at least twenty-four hours and that she’ll have to come back in two weeks to have her stitches removed. He says that she’s free to go but he recommends she not be alone for the rest of the night.

“I’d like to be cautious and have you woken up every couple of hours just to be safe,” he says.

“I’ll stay with her,” Dru and I both say.

“What? She’s not staying with you, you’re a stranger,” she argues.

“I’m not a stranger, we’re friends. Right Anna?”

The doctor leaves us to sort it out and once Anna reassures Dru that I’m not a fucking psychopath, she relents and gives me one more glaring reminder that she isn’t thrilled with the idea.

“Your sister needs to lighten up,” I say as we drive back home.

“She’s just overprotective,” she explains. “And she’s going through some stuff with her boyfriend right now, I think it has her on edge.”

“Figures.”

“Hm? What does that mean?”

“Relationships are trouble, freckles.”

“Oh don’t tell me. You’re one of those men who thinks all women are out to get you and true love doesn’t exist blah blah blah,” she says.

Of course she’s a believer of fairy tales, I should have picked up on that. This woman is too damn nice for her own good.

“Look, I enjoy women,” I tell her. “But tying yourself down to one person? Revolving your life around one person, forever? No thanks.”

“Wow. Who was she?”

“Who was who? I don’t need to have had a shitty experience to know that relationships don’t work, at least not for me.”

Liar.

She turns in the passenger seat and narrows her eyes, shaking her head slightly but doesn’t say anything else. We pull into the lot and she takes my arm as we make our way up the stairs. When we reach the second floor, we go to my place first and wait for the officers who are supposed to come and walk through the apartment with Anna.

They show up not long after and as Anna walks through her ransacked living room, she tells the officers that the only things missing are the iPad that was sitting on the coffee table and some cash that she had in a dish on the kitchen counter.

“He probably heard you and didn’t have time to grab anything else,” one of the officers says. “It looks like he was panicking and just going after whatever was in reach.”

“How did he get in? I know I locked the door when I left for work this morning,” Anna says. “And why did he pick my place?”

“There’s scratches on the keyhole, he must have picked the lock. I’d recommend replacing it entirely, maybe with something a bit heavier duty, just to be safe since it’s pretty loose now,” he says. “He was likely scoping the area and thought he hit the jackpot when he realized the lobby door was busted. It’s likely he didn’t hear any noise coming from your place, figured it was a safe bet.”

“What if I had been asleep? Do you think he’ll come back?” she asks with an edge of panic.

“The small items he took suggest this was likely just a hit and run,” the officer says. “You surprising him was probably enough to scare him from coming back. But we’ll be patrolling the area regardless, and the local pawn shops.”

Once the officers leave, Anna looks around the room and wraps her arms around her waist. “I guess that’s that,” she says with a sigh.

I look at the clock in the kitchen, it’s nearly three in the morning and I can see the exhaustion catching up with her.

“Why don’t you go lie down, I’ll set my alarm and wake you up in a couple hours,” I suggest. “I can camp out on the couch.”

She looks like she wants to argue but is just too damn tired. She offers me a small smile and agrees to try and rest. I lean back on her couch and nod on and off until I feel the cushion beside me dip down. She doesn’t say anything, just curls onto her side and places her head on the arm rest. She’s wearing checkered pajama pants and a loose hoodie, her bare feet inches away from my thigh.

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” she admits with her eyes still closed.

I cover her up with the patchwork quilt draped over the back of the couch and turn my body, propping my feet up on the coffee table.

“I snore like a mother fucker,” I say.

She laughs softly and stretches her legs out so that her feet are resting on my lap. I wait until her breath evens out before I close my eyes.