Lily
As I watch the news report, I remember Carol. I remember the first time we met, both of us rookies, and how we found solace by pretending to be twins. Sometimes when we went out to bars we’d even tell people we were twins, because nursing is crazy and sometimes you have to make your own fun. It seemed silly at the time. I never dreamed that I’d be looking back on it wishing for those days to return. I never dreamed I’d ache for those days like some great weight had just been laid upon my chest.
I sit on the floor in front of the TV, staring through tear-bleary eyes at the report. I don’t know when I began to cry, but I feel like I am never going to be able to stop. The tears just keep flowing. Carol Cooley, found dead in her apartment. Not just dead, the news reporters tell me as afternoon turns to evening and more information comes in. No, not just dead. Horribly mutilated, tortured, as though for information . . . for information she would have no way of knowing. For information I might have: information about Roman.
“We always did look alike, didn’t we, Carol?” I sob, burying my face in my hands, tears stinging my eyes. “Do you remember the time Doctor Morris snapped at you about taking too long to get to a room after he beeped you the day before, really went in on you, and then it turned out it was me? We laughed . . . we laughed . . .” I break down then, crying so hard my belly hurts. When Roman shouts up the stairs, I barely have the strength to shout back. The only way I find it is knowing that he’ll be here with his embrace: an embrace I have pushed away these past weeks, but one I need now.
I call down the stairs. Moments later, he is standing at the door. He is difficult to see through teary eyes, in the darkness—when did it get dark? The TV provides the only light, a square of pale blue shining into the room. When Roman switches on the light, I cover my face with my hands.
“What happened?” he demands, keeling down next to me. “Tell me.”
In jerks and starts, I tell him. I tell him how this morning a woman matching my description was found dead in her apartment, how later her name was revealed, and how even later the gruesome details of her death were revealed. All through it, Roman listens calm-faced, nodding, as though something this horrifying is just another day at the office for him.
“It’s my fault,” Roman says calmly. Not self-pitying, or self-accusing, just matter-of-fact. “If we’d never met, the man I’m chasing would never have targeted her.”
“Do you—” Saying it aloud is more difficult than I thought. I choke back a fresh wave of sobs, and press on: “Do you think he . . . he did all that to her because of me? Because she looked like me? People were always mistaking us.”
“Maybe,” Roman says. “It’s possible, but that’s sloppy, and this man ain’t sloppy. A lot of things, but not sloppy. It might be that one of his goons fucked up, or it might be that he’s trying to draw us out. A funeral is a good way to draw someone out, I guess.”
I rest my head against the bed, staring at the TV. Roman goes across the room and turns it off. “It isn’t helping,” he says.
“She’s dead,” I mutter. “She’s really dead. They had her name on the TV and everything. I just can’t . . . I wish my mom was here, Roman. I wish she was here so I could tell her everything, the pregnancy, you, this. She would make it better. I know she would.”
Roman sits on the floor next to me, our shoulders touching, but doesn’t reach out to take my hand or anything. Maybe he’s unsure because of the way I’ve been acting. I can’t really blame him for that. Sitting on his lap, telling him to leave me alone; no man would know what to do after that. So I reach across and place my hand on his. He flips his hand, and we interlock fingers. He is warm, so warm, so welcome after the cold news of today.
“I’ve thought that before, too,” Roman says. “About my mom, I mean.”
“How’d she die?” I ask.
“Gunshot,” Roman says shortly.
He gives my hand a squeeze. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Just sit with me awhile,” I say. “I don’t think there’s anything else.” I sniffle, another sob rising in my throat. Just when I think I’m done, they keep rising. “I keep thinking of Carol standing over me with that big sister look on her face. We might’ve looked the same, but we were no way the same when it came to our personalities. She was the wild party chick, always trying to get me to be wilder, to party harder. That’s the only reason we met, Roman. I was out on a blind date she’d arranged. I keep thinking of her pointing down at me and saying: ‘I’m getting you out there. No, I won’t hear any arguments. I’m getting you out there and you’re going to have some fun.’ I just—”
It’s impossible to put into words the flurries of memories, frozen images, disjointed sounds, even smells which all fill my mind at the thought of Carol. An entire friendship, a whole life, just wrenched away in bloody and cruel way. A whole life, my friend . . . and Roman’s right, I know, if he had never met me, she would be alive. But I can’t blame him. Because if that’s true, then it’s also true that if Carol had never met me, she would be alive. I let my mind drag me toward this morbid thought, and before I know it my face is buried in Roman’s chest and I am sobbing, sobbing harshly, acidic, and moaning: “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.”
“No,” Roman says, stroking my hair, massaging my scalp with his firm fingers. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. It’s his fault. You haven’t done anything wrong, Lily. Come on, talk to me about something. Talk to me about something else.”
His voice is strained. This might be the first time he’s been confronted by an inconsolable woman. I clear my throat, snort, trying to fight off the tears.
“I wish Mom was here,” I repeat, not caring that I sound about twelve.
“Tell me about her,” Roman prompts, smoothing my tear-wet cheek with his thumb. “Tell me about your mother, Lily.”
I grab his hand before he can take it away. I know he’s just trying to distract me from Carol, about the whole, terrible mess. He stares deeply at me, and I stare back, but I don’t see him, not immediately. First, I stare through him and see Carol, in a hundred different situations, vibrant and full of life. I see her handing me a fresh pair of scrubs with a rueful grin on her face after mine were covered in shrapnel from the nursing trenches. I see her pushing a drink in my face at the bar, giggling and spilling it over the rim of the glass. I see—But then Roman’s face comes into focus.
“You really want to know about my mom?”
Roman nods. There’s something almost desperate about that nod. I remind myself that a man like Roman—CIA, military, perhaps criminal, a tough man, a man’s man—has probably never had to deal with a weeping woman before. I swallow, and then clear my throat.
“Okay,” I say, managing to keep the tears back. “My mother was a police officer. I remember when I was a girl I’d watch her getting dressed for work. There I was putting my hair in pigtails and getting ready to go to the school bus and there she was in an armor of blue tucking her gun into her holster. I used to think she was some kind of action hero. It was the coolest thing ever. And then I got older, and it became the scariest thing ever. I learned to watch the news. I learned about gangs and guns. Suddenly that gun on her hip didn’t seem so cool.”
I sniffle, and then laugh in an attempt to laugh away the tears. I fail, but still, the laughter is better than violent sobbing. “You don’t want to hear all this.”
Roman is squinting at me. His jaw is clenched, his face all at once very serious. “I do,” he says, voice low. “Finish, please.” His hand, before holding mine softly, is now firm. I hold it back with the same firmness. Maybe he’s just upset seeing me upset? Somehow, I doubt it’s that.
“Okay,” I say. “There isn’t much else to tell. Soon after I learned that gangs were real, the tragedy struck. Oh, Roman, it was awful. Really awful. Mom was never a cowardly woman, but that day I wish she had been. Her partner was off sick when she got the call about the gang shootout. She should’ve waited for backup before responding, or she should’ve not responded at all, not on her own. But she was closest, and so she drove there like the devil was at her heels; she was brave, too brave.” I choke back a sob. Damn these sobs. My chest feels tight, my head is spinning so fast it’s a wonder it doesn’t detach from my shoulders. “When she got there—she always got sad when she told me this part—there was a nurse helping one of the gang members. He was bleeding out. So she went down the street for her backup . . . Are you okay?”
Roman’s face is screwed up, his lips twisted, his eyebrows furrowed. He has let go of my hands and he’s leaning back, his jaw dropping as though in slow motion. Recognition glints into his sky-blue eyes. But recognition of what? “I’m . . . fine,” he says after a pause. “It’s just—After your mom arrived at the scene, she went to get backup, didn’t she? And after that, another gang member showed up. Your mom . . . she took a bullet, but the paramedic dragged her behind cover, and patched her up, but then the paramedic was killed.”
What the hell?
“How did you know that?” I ask. The tears have stopped for a moment, surprise and confusion pushing sadness aside. It’s like my chest is a stage, and each emotion is waiting backstage. Exit stage left, sadness, enter stage right, confusion. “Did you read a news report?”
Roman lurches forward, takes my hand in both of his, and stares at me more intensely than he ever has before, than I imagined a man could stare at a woman. I feel like I’m the only woman alive when he stares at me like that, that I’m the only woman he’s ever laid eyes on. “Whatever comes at you, Lily, I swear on my life that I won’t let anything hurt you. Ever. You are under my protection now. You will be at my side and anything that tries to harm you will have to come through me. I swear, on everything, that I will keep you safe.”
Twin embers of blue, those eyes, those impossibly intense eyes.
“Why?” I whisper, voice faint. “Why, Roman? Why . . . this?” I nod at him, meaning to indicate the sudden change which has come over him.
“What happened after, with your mom? Is she safe? Is she happy?”
“No.” I swallow a lump. “She died of brain cancer a few years after.”
“Fucking world.” Roman growls. “What a fucking world.”
“Yeah, but, Roman . . . can you please explain?”
“My mom, she was the . . .”
He explains it all then. He has to go over it a few times, because at first it seems so absurd. On the third repetition, I finally accept it. He goes into detail about that night and when he mentions his mom’s name, I vaguely remember it; I read about it in the newspapers. But I was young. I can’t be sure. Then Roman goes into his bedroom and returns with that same newspaper clipping. There it is, side by side, a picture of my mother, and Roman’s.
“The world is a strange, strange place,” Roman says, carefully laying the newspaper clipping on the bedside table and sitting down beside me. He places his hand on my knee. Fuck, that feels really good right now. The closeness, the power of it, just laid casually on my knee, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. “I won’t let my mom have died for nothing. She saved yours. Now I’ll save you.”
I place my hand on his, feeling his knuckles, and then pull, pulling him down toward my crotch. His hand slides over my thighs, squeezing the flesh. Toward my pussy. And my pussy is hot, waiting, beginning to get wet.
“I need you, Roman,” I whisper, an ache in my voice. “I really fucking need you.”
Roman turns to me, gazes down at me, his face blank for a few moments, as though he is gauging whether or not I mean it this time. When he sees that I do, he snarls, “About fuckin’ time.” Then he slides his hand the rest of the way, touching my pussy.