Ice

The sky is clear and all is as silent as the dead of night always is around these parts. No one followed us here. Guess those old fuckers don’t know the back roads around here the way I know them. If I leave now, I’ll be long gone by dawn. I should leave. Disappear. Tonight’s episode was a mistake, one that’s only gonna get compounded, if I keep her around after I already stole her. They’ll find her tomorrow, or, what’s even more likely, she’ll go back to them tomorrow.

I should just leave. I know it, but for some reason, I’m not getting back on my bike. I even light a cigarette, while I watch through the ER windows as she speaks to the nurse in the reception area. It’s a short exchange after which Barbie goes to sit in the last row of the benches in there, right by the window I’m watching her through. Does she see me out here? Probably not. I’m in the dark where I belong, and I can only see her because of the bright lights in there and the fact that this is a small ass hospital that nothing much ever happens at.

Her and the nurse are the only ones in the waiting room, the parking lot is deserted, and the hospital above the ER area is dark. There’s a bigger, more modern hospital near White Falls and that’s the one everyone uses. This town is even smaller than my hometown, and even deader. I can’t even hear any cars driving anywhere. I bet if I listened real hard, I’d hear people snoring in the houses nearby. I figured they’d take her right in. Why are they making her wait?

I should get on my bike and disappear into the night. I should do that before I start thinking about this situation too hard.

Because the image of her alone in the waiting room is already getting superimposed in my mind with what Roxie must’ve gone through when she was suddenly left all alone in this world. That’s a new thing that I only started worrying about recently. The one I remember more vividly right now is how I raged when Lizard came to me with the lie that he found her, that she was his now.

I broke a couple of noses and smashed some heads in before they could overpower me. They fucking chained me up that night. Just like they would a dog. And once I stopped raging, I made the decision to survive every fight and wait for the opportunity to avenge Roxie and everyone else no matter how long it took. I held onto that hate and rage for years, but by the end I lost that connection too. I lost every connection to anyone I ever had, and none of them came back. Not even after I fucking disemboweled Lizard over what he’d done to my family. Not even after I sliced open most of the guys who helped him kill everyone I ever cared for.

But something like a connection is back now, as I watch Barbie sitting all alone in that waiting room. It came back before now, while I was still just checking her out at the bar, and certainly when I watched her get punched and couldn’t stand for it.

If I leave now that boyfriend of hers will find her and give her a worse beating than the one she got tonight before he takes her back. The cops won’t help her, hell, even this nurse won’t help her. She’s just letting her sit there, even though they clearly have nothing better to do tonight than take care of her wrist and her face. And Barbie’s not the type of woman to beg for their help.

She’s not even asking for my help. Not even after I added to the problems she was already facing.

And what, I’m just gonna leave now?

That cold well of regret and disconnection in the pit of my stomach is telling me to do exactly that. Leave, because she’s not my problem. She’s a club whore, I’ve known her type all my life, she just looks a lot better than any I’ve ever met did.

But I can’t deny the connection. It’s something I don’t even get with Roxie anymore, even though she tries so hard. It’s very lonely and dark in my head without something like it. And another voice is telling me that leaving her here will just be another thing I’ll regret.

I don’t know what that means, but I can call it what it is. And I do know I can’t let her sit in there all beaten up and bruised, waiting until her boyfriend rolls by and takes her away for another beating. I probably can’t keep her safe from him, but I can give it a shot. I can try to finish what I started.

* * *

Barbie

Figures the dream would be cut short before it got any better. That’s what always happens with the good dreams. It’s the nightmares that keep coming back.

This could well be an even worse situation than the one I woke up to today. I’m wearing a short, soaking wet red dress, no underwear, and a pair of pumps, and that’s all I got to show for myself. Well, I also have forty dollars stashed in my bra, but that won’t get me very far. In other words, I got nothing. And no one will help me get it either. Even this dumb bitch nurse thinks I’m trash. She keeps casting me glances that say that exact thing, while she doesn’t let me in to see a doctor, even though I’m the only one in this waiting room. What does she think? That I deserve to be sitting here soaking wet with a swollen wrist and a face to match? She probably does.

I left her world—the world of normal people—behind to be wild and free and live out all my fantasies. But that sweet dream is awful hard to remember right now too.

The sliding door hisses open, but I don’t even look up. Whoever came in will probably get treated first, and I don’t need any more reminders of just how low I’ve fallen.

“What the fuck is taking so long?” Ice says harshly.

I look up automatically, ready to give him a piece of my mind about speaking to me that way, but at the same time my heart is fluttering in happy excitement, because he didn’t just leave. I’m not completely alone after all.

He’s not talking to me though, he asked the nurse that, and now the old bitch is just blinking at him, anger and fear both clearly visible on her face.

“The doctor’s busy,” the nurse finally chokes out.

“She’s been sitting out here for half an hour with injuries you can probably treat without a doctor present,” Ice says.

He’s looking at me now, but despite the way he’s standing up for me, I don’t actually see any compassion or care in his face. But whatever, at least he’s saying what he’s saying, and that’s more than any other guy’s ever done for me. Especially the ones who made it necessary for me to come to the ER in the first place.

“Go wake the doctor and let’s get this shit done,” Ice adds.

“She…I…she’ll just have to wait,” the nurse says in a shaky voice.

“Go do it, or I will,” Ice says.

The nurse gives him a very nasty look and mutters angry things under her breath as she leaves through a door behind her desk.

I walk up to him, and kinda just want to lean against him when I reach him, but I don’t.

“She’s bound to call the cops now that you yelled at her,” I tell him. “We should probably just leave.”

“But thank you,” I add, as he gives me a once over. His eyes are strikingly blue and very, very cold. Like one of those winters that just won’t end. Maybe his eyes are how he got his name.

He doesn’t say anything, just squints at me and nods. It seems like he’s struggling with something internally, like maybe the decision to come in here and help me, then take me somewhere where I’ll have more of a chance to leave Brick behind. Because this ER waiting room ain’t it.

“I’m happy you came back, that you didn’t, you know, just leave me here,” I say even though I don’t actually know that’s what he’s doing. “Let’s just get out of here. I don’t need treatment, my arm’ll heal. Look, I can move all my fingers just fine.”

I show him and he looks down at my fingers. His face is still completely unreadable as he meets my eyes again, but the winter in his isn’t as harsh, isn’t as cold.

“You should get it checked out. You’ll need your hand down the line,” he says and I figure he’s talking about sex now, because he’s smirking, and because that’s what most guys talk about when they’re standing this close to me. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he genuinely just wants to see me get better.

“What’s the problem here?” a bossy woman’s voice sounds behind me.

I laugh out loud as I turn and realize it belongs to a tiny woman in a doctor’s coat. She’s more than a head shorter than me and half as skinny. I figured she’d be some large police woman or lady security guard judging by her loud and commanding voice. Laughing wasn’t the best reaction though, because she’s glaring at me even more angrily now.

Ice puts his arm around my shoulders and pushes me forward. “She needs to be seen.”

The doctor’s eyes narrow into slits as she glances at my injuries. She fixes her gaze on Ice right after. “And I suppose this was an accident. She fell down the stairs, right?”

“Yeah, why not?” he snaps back. “Now lets get this done.”

The doctor keeps looking at him though, and she looks less and less confrontational and angry by the second. She’s also not saying anything.

“Look, she got beat up earlier, I didn’t do this to her, but you do what you gotta do,” Ice says. “Just treat her and make it fast.”

“Let’s just go, Ice,” I put in since what he just said sounds too much like he still means to make me ask the cops for help, and not that he came back to take me along to wherever he’s heading. “I’m fine.”

“Ice?” the doctor asks quietly, blinking at him now. “Is that you, Brandon?”

That takes him by complete surprise, makes him look at the woman more closely and makes me jealous since a lot of that winter ice in his eyes disappeared. It makes no sense, and I blame the concussion, but I really want us to go now, so we can leave this woman in some distant past of his where she’s obviously from and where she belongs.

“It’s me, Mandy Ritter,” the doctor says.

“Mandy Ritter, shit,” he says, chuckling the way pleasantly surprised people do. “And you’re a doctor now. Good going.”

She still looks more shocked than anything else, and there’s a fat gold wedding ring on her finger, so I doubt I have much to worry about, but I am.

“I thought you were dead,” she says and the look on her face tells me she mourned him.

She said it with such a sad finality that it kinda shook me too, and the winter returns to his eyes like it never left. “Yeah, not actually. Look, can you see my friend now so we can get outta here? We’re kinda in a hurry.”

Doctor Mandy nods and asks the nurse to take me into the back, which the old bitch does right away. She’s not muttering anymore though.

The doc doesn’t come in to see me for a fat fifteen minutes though, and I wish I knew what her and Ice talked about during that time.

But what does it matter? He said we’re leaving together after this, and that’s all I really wanted to hear.

* * *

Ice

That was a stroke of luck running into Mandy here. Maybe things are finally starting to look up tonight. She was my closest neighbor growing up, and had the biggest crush on me from kindergarten through high school. It was kinda nice in a nerdy sorta way. She always let me copy all her homework and did most of my papers for me, so she’s probably the only reason I finished at least part of high school. But she was always this skinny, tiny girl she still is and seriously not my type. She asked a bunch of questions about what happened to us that night and where I’ve been for all these years, but I kept it short and didn’t tell her anything much. Except that Roxie survived, which she was real happy to hear like everyone is. I’m sure she’ll keep quiet about seeing us here tonight.

But it still takes a long ass time before Barbie comes out of the ER with a shiny white bandage on her arm and a paper bag filled with pills by the sound of it.

“OK, that’s finally done,” she says as she reaches me. “Nothing’s broken. Let’s go now.”

There’s a bright shine in her face, like she’s ready for an adventure. But that’s probably just from the painkillers they must’ve given her.

I toss my cigarette into the bushes and shake my head. “Why you wanna come with me so bad? We’ve known each other for what, five hours? What if I’m some psycho?”

There’s no what if about it, so I don’t know why I even phrased it as a question.

Her face tightens for a second, because she’s a shrewd woman who knows what’s what, and knows I’m talking sense, but then she smiles very brightly, as brightly as she smiled at her old man earlier. Her eyes are glowing too, kinda like when the sun hits the ocean on summer mornings.

“You’re not a psycho. You’re a good guy, and I want to get to know you better,” she says.

I laugh harshly at that, can’t help it, since it’s such a practiced line. She’s a foxy patch whore, that’s for sure. But she’s also a very pretty one, and her smiles are warmer than sunshine.

“I’m not what you think I am,” I say. “You’re better off just walking away.”

I don’t know why I’m forcing this issue now. I stayed and waited for her because I want to take her with me. But there’s a part of me that needs her to know that, because the rest of me knows it’s the truth. I’m not someone anyone wants to get to know better. I’m not even a man anymore. I’m a ghost. A cold, revengeful, angry ghost. And she should be running away from me.

“Let me see,” she says, biting on the fingernail of her index finger and looking up at the sky like she’s thinking hard about it. “You took on five guys because one of them hurt me, brought me to a hospital, yelled at nurses and doctors because they didn’t treat me fast enough, then waited for two hours while they mended me, so I’d have a ride from the hospital. If I sum all that up, you’ve already done more for me that any other man in my life ever has. Than all of them combined ever did, actually. And you did all that in the five hours that we’ve known each other. So yeah, I’m pretty sure I want to stay with you.”

She gives me another bright smile once she finishes her little speech, and I don’t know if it’s her words, or her smile, but I kinda feel better and happier than I have in a good long while.

“Alright then, where do you wanna go?” I ask, since what else do you say to something like that? She’s wrong, but she’s hot and she’s willing, and I’m no good at saying no to a good time.

“You’re giving me a choice of anywhere at all?” she asks coyly.

I nod.

“Well, I’ve never seen the ocean,” she says after thinking about it for a minute or so.

“A girl with ocean blue eyes and she’s never seen the ocean?” I ask automatically, since that’s the first thing that popped into my mind when she said it. “We gotta fix that. ”

I point her in the direction of my bike.

“Good,” she says and smiles over her shoulder as I walk a couple of steps behind her, enjoying the way her ass sways in that tight dress of hers. As long as I’m not looking at her bruised face, I still want to fuck her badly, even more than I did while she was sipping her wine at the bar.

It’s a good plan all around. I’ll take her to Cali, show her the ocean and then take her to Sanctuary. The Devil’s Nightmare guys will know what to do with her once we get there, she’ll be safe from her old man with them, and I get to have her for the ride. It’ll be a win-win outcome to what looked like a bad mistake just a couple of hours ago.

We might as well take the long way to Cali. I’ve been wanting to go cruising for a long time, and my ride out here wasn’t as enjoyable as it could’ve been, since I knew what waited at the end. But the way back could be better.