It was close to five o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t heard back from Daphne or Avery in over hour. Life had a way of reminding you just how small the world really was sometimes. Just like it had earlier tonight when Daphne was scrambling to get to her brother. It had dawned on me then that Avery was working the overnight shift at the same hospital. Without Daphne knowing, because something told me she wouldn’t have appreciated me butting in and pulling some strings on her behalf, I texted Avery to let her know to be on the lookout for Daphne. She had texted back pretty fast letting me know it was no problem. But it had been over an hour since I had heard anything from either one of them. The radio silence was making me fucking mental and there was only so much space in my apartment for me to pace. Deciding it was better for me to get the hell out of my place, I put on my sneakers and went for a run.
For a late spring night or morning, there was more than a slight chill in the air. It was downright fucking freezing. My teeth were practically clattering together like a goddamn cartoon in time to my steps along the pavement. And as I ran through the streets of the city that never sleeps, my thoughts kept going back to Daphne. That was a fucking first for me. It was definitely more that physical with her…I knew it and she knew it. Or at least I hoped she knew it. Damn, what if she didn’t know it?
Fuck, Max, maybe you ought to tell her so she would know it, you idiot, I thought to myself.
“I will,” I said out loud to myself. “I’m gonna tell her today, dammit!”
“Good for you, buddy,” was the response from some random stranger who was also getting in their pre-dawn run.
I was just about to say thank you to the stranger when my cellphone started to buzz in my pocket. Since I knew it was Daphne, I stopped running and just swiped my phone to answer.
“Get your ass to Jack’s house right now!” Trevor yelled into my ear.
“Huh?” I pulled the phone away to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Nope, it wasn’t Daphne at all. It was really Trevor and he was calling me way too early for it to be a fucking joke. “What the hell is going on?”
“Max, I can’t explain too much right now because we don’t really know much. Just please get your ass over to Jack’s right now.”
I could hear him talking to who I thought was Veronica in the background, but it was too muffled for me to make it out clearly. It was something along the lines of their being a family emergency and telling the driver to hurry the fuck up. I started a dead sprint towards the nearest street corner that I knew had to have some cabs to hail one down.
“Look, we’re on our way there right now. Please meet us there as soon as possible, okay?”
I was busy flagging down the taxi and getting my ass inside and didn’t answer Trevor right away.
“Max, did you hear me?!” he shouted.
“Yeah, I heard you. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He hung up. No good-bye, no, I’ll see you later, no nothing.
This was bad.
I knew it in my bones.
Arriving at Jack and Avery’s house just over ten minutes later, I threw some money at the cab driver and didn’t bother to ask for change. I practically ran from the cab up the steps and pushed open the door. Inside, the lights were all on and in their living room Trevor was pacing back and forth.
“Jack just left,” he told me. “Veronica’s upstairs with the girls.”
“Oookay, and now can you tell me what the fuck is going on around here?”
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Max, I’m not sure of all the details, but from what I understand, Avery was involved in some sort of attack from a patient tonight.”
“Holy shit! Is she okay?!”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” he answered. “But it was obviously serious enough that they called Jack and asked him to come down there himself.”
Looking around the room, my eyes zeroed in on a bunch of photos in mismatched frames on the fireplace mantle. It always drove my parents fucking nuts, especially my mother, to see all the different frames. It brought the tiniest hint of a smile to my face in the midst of this craziness.
“Fuck me, and you said he just left?” I asked Trevor.
We both looked up at the sound of feet coming down the stairs. Veronica was trying to be quiet and had her fingers to her lips to shush us.
In a loud whisper, she told us, “Guys, the twins finally fell back to sleep, but I’m not sure how long they’re going to stay that way.”
She went straight to Trevor’s side, where he pulled her close to him and kissed the crown of her head. “Thanks, babe.”
I sat down on the window seat, blankly staring out onto the street as Trevor and Veronica took the big couch. We were in it for the long haul, waiting for who knew how long until we got word from Jack. And if there was one thing I hated, it was waiting…for anything or anyone. I was anything but patient. When I was a kid, I remember my brothers having to explain to me over and over that Christmas only came once a year. It drove them crazy that the concept just wouldn’t click for me. Finally, they took it upon themselves to make it Christmas during the summer for me because I wouldn’t stop whining about how long it took for the real thing to get here.
As I recalled some of my past childhood makeshift Christmases, my fingers started tapping out the theme song to Frosty the Snowman against the frame of the window seat. I kept doing it over and over to distract myself from waiting.
“Cut it out, Max. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”
Looking at Trevor over my shoulder, I saw that he wasn’t kidding around. He wouldn’t even crack a smile. I wasn’t exactly in the happiest of moods either, but this waiting around was for the goddamn birds.
“Oh shit, I almost forgot! Daphne can tell us what’s happening with Avery,” I said, hurriedly going through my pockets to find my cellphone.
“How can she do that?” Veronica asked and then looking to Trevor, asked him, “I didn’t know Avery and Daphne were friends, did you?”
“No clue, babe. Max, do you care to elaborate on how they know each other?”
“Long story,” I mumbled. “After I get Daph on the phone, I’ll explain. Stand by.”
My first call ended up going to voicemail. Before I tried again, I told Trevor and Veronica the very, very abbreviated version of how Daphne was at the same hospital as Avery tonight…or today, this morning, whatever time of day it technically was. Understandably, I was a bit out of it when it came to figuring out what exact time of day it was after having pretty much pulled an all-nighter. I tried calling her one more time and she answered. She was hysterical; practically hyperventilating and I couldn’t make out one word of what she was trying to say.
“Daph, sweetheart,” I told her as calmly as possible. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Glancing over at Trevor and Veronica, they whispered between themselves like a couple of teenagers who had busted their parents saying sweet-nothings to each other. Rolling my eyes and ignoring them, I got up and went to the kitchen for some privacy.
“Okay, take a big breath in, Daphne.”
I could hear an intake of breath so loud through a sequence of hiccupping that had her on the brink of losing her shit again. It was starting to freak me the fuck out. Seriously, when she left my place a few hours ago, I was under the impression everything was cool with her brother.
Daphne got her voice back long enough to say in a quiet, eerily alarming voice, “Max, something terrible has happened.”
“Sweetheart, is your brother okay?” She had me panicking too and imagining the worst about her brother. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not about Eddie, it’s Avery.”
“What about Avery?” I asked and then rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to make sense of what Daphne was saying. “Is she okay? Can you tell me what happened to her? My brother just left his place because we got a call saying he had to come down there and—,”
“She’s gone, Max.”
“What do you mean she’s gone? Jack is on his way to meet her and—,”
“She’s dead,” she cried, her voice collapsing with emotion. “She’s gone. I’m so sorry, Max.”
“Stop fucking around, Daphne, it’s not funny!”
Her crying was so loud and so guttural that I knew she couldn’t have heard me. All at once, I felt the blood rush from my face. A fear so real, so fucking terrifying settled into the pit of my stomach. I dropped the phone down onto the ground with a loud a clatter that would have woken up everyone in the house. Grabbing the edge of the kitchen counter, I heard myself repeating the word “no,” over and over.
Trevor came into view out of nowhere it seemed and tried to make sense of what was going on. The words just wouldn’t come from me. I tried talking, but it was of no fucking use. My brain, my emotions, my entire world was all over the place. Veronica followed soon after and picked up my phone from the counter. In a matter of seconds, the look of shock and horror on their faces was enough to confirm that Daphne wasn’t messing with me at all.
What we were able to piece together from Veronica’s conversation with Daphne was that her brother’s friend, Joey —in an attempt to get out of going to jail for stealing a car— decided it would be a really fucking good idea to try and escape from the emergency room. Avery thought she could help mediate the escalating tension between the cops and Joey. And that’s the best part, because as soon as I heard this bit of information, I smiled a little because that is exactly what Avery would want to do. She was always the type of person to try help anyone in need. And it appeared as if her final breaths on this Earth were because she was as fucking selfless as ever. The rest of what happened and the exact details were a bit sketchy since no one could tell us how Joey ended up with a gun from one of the security guards that was working tonight. All we were sure of was that Joey tried using Avery as a hostage and gain some leverage with the cops. But that just made everything worse. Apparently things quickly got out of hand once he must have realized he wasn’t going anywhere but jail. Instead, he shot Avery in the head, point blank range and she died instantly. And then he was shot twice and killed immediately afterwards.
All of that for nothing and for some reason I was hoping that it was a dream and that I was still in my bed about to awoken. But this wasn’t a dream that I could just wake up from.
This was a real fucking nightmare.