chapter TWO
Taxis are scarce in Alphabet City, and an Uber would cost way more than it should, so I run to the subway station on 14th street—my umbrella getting pulled inside-out by the powerful winds—only to find the service is suspended.
I run to First Avenue, and stick my arm out to flag down one of the few taxis that are still on the road.
I hear a noise behind me and turn to see a man dressed in brown pants and a tethered down jacket, huddled in the stoop of a store that has it’s gates lowered. He’s shivering and taking cover from the torrential downpour.
Just when I think no one wants to be on the road anymore, a taxi pulls up with it’s window rolling down.
“I’m done with my shift, but I’ll take you as far as the Queensboro,” he says, leaning across the passenger seat.
“That’s perfect,” I open the back door and am about to climb in when I see the man shivering behind me. With the taxi door still open, I skip over to him and hold out my umbrella. “Take this.”
He gives me a startled expression, clearly not expecting anyone to approach him in this weather, and then takes it from me with a nod.
“Stay safe tonight,” I say and then get into the cab as quickly as possible.
I talk myself out of going fifty times on the way uptown. Maybe it’s the good-Catholic girl in me, but knowing there is someone inside this hospital, alone, makes me feel sorry for him. And if he dies, well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive myself. He already haunts my dreams—if he passes away, that could take haunting to a whole new level.
Before stepping out of the car, I pull my hood over my head and prepare to run through the rain pelting hard from the sky. The winds push me to the side, and I have to fight my way to the sliding, glass doors of the hospital entrance.
The ambulances line the street with sirens blaring. Cars are double parked, and people are rushing in from various directions. Gurneys race in and out of the emergency room exit as doctors wait under the awning to greet—and quickly work on—the next patient arriving in trauma.
I shoulder past a group of people and through the doors. The waiting room is packed. People are seated in chairs, on the floor, and standing in a mob—all rain-soaked and worried.
Sliding my hood off my head, I wipe the water from my face and shake my body to get the droplets off my clothes. The ends of my pants are soaked from traipsing through puddles.
Not knowing where to go or what to do, I search the room. There’s a group of people waiting to talk to a woman by a podium so I take a place in line.
Pulling out my phone, I see it’s twelve-thirty in the morning. A chill from my wet clothes in an air-conditioned room runs up my spine, so I jog in place to warm myself up.
An elderly woman behind me is audibly upset. She keeps shouting into the room that she needs to call home but she doesn’t have a phone. I spin around and offer her mine, telling her she can take as long as she needs. When she gives it back it’s with tears in her eyes and a series of thank-you’s.
The local news is playing on a TV in the corner. Lonnie Quinn gives continual updates on the storm, and the weather team stands by wearing tacky, yellow rain slickers while being blown around in various locations around the city. Staten Island has begun to flood, as have parts of lower Manhattan. Long Island’s beaches are destroyed, and people have evacuated their homes in the Rockaways.
I hope Kelli is okay. Not daring to tell her in person where I went, I sent her a text from the taxi. Her response was less than supportive.
Kelli: WHAT?! I’m coming up there to talk some sense into you!
Me: Already left. In a car. Brought a charger with me.
Kelli: Are you fucking kidding me? You should let that son of a bitch die!
Kelli: Turn around.
Kelli: He ruined your life.
Kelli: Pull the plug.
Kelli: Trish?
Kelli: Answer me!
That was followed by a series of voice texts I refuse to open. I’m already so screwed up in the head over being here, I don’t need her conscience to make me feel worse.
To be honest, I’m rather indifferent to the fact he could be alive or dead. While I don’t wish the latter on anyone, I wouldn’t shed a thousand tears at his passing, either. He was a prick. Of course, he would find a way to fuck with me one last time—leave me to confirm the body. But, still, I don’t want to have to tell his sister he’s dead.
It’s forty-five minutes before I reach the podium.
“Jackson Davis,” I tell the woman with a clipboard full of papers in front of her. I recite his birthdate, and she is able to find him in the system.
“Are you next of kin?” she asks.
I lie. “Yes. Ella Davis. His sister.”
She pulls out a bright-pink sticker with the word visitor written in sharpie. Waving an orderly over, she says to me, “He’s in the hospital, but it doesn’t say where. There aren’t enough rooms for the influx of patients.” She turns to the orderly and writes Jax’s name and a series of numbers on a post-it note. “Can you help her find this patient? The system indicates he’s in triage.”
The orderly reads the information and then tells me to follow him, so I do. I guess it’s safe to say Jax is not in the mortuary.
Now that I know he’s alive, I should leave. But, if he’s dying, as Ella claims, then I should do what I set here to do, and sit by his side.
The fluorescent lights of the hospital create an eerie atmosphere. A gray-blue halo glows off the walls and there’s the pungent smell of stale antiseptic. The air reeks of illness. Add that to the scramble of doctors and nurses trying to help their patients, and it’s surreal. So much pain in one area in makes my heart hurt and my fingers twitch.
Beds line the hallways. The critical get rooms while the less serious are in a row in the corridor. Old people with breathing tubes around their noses, a woman moaning in pain, a child crying on her mother’s shoulder, and a boy clutching his stomach are just a few of the those I pass. I look each of them in the eye, waiting to find the man I came here to see. But we don’t locate him in the halls.
The orderly asks another employee who hasn’t seen him before we continue down another hallway where we meet a nurse who tells us which direction he may have been moved. In the third hall, I find Jax’s name on a whiteboard with a room number next to it.
He’s not in a hallway. He’s in a room, which means his injuries must be fairly severe. Just the sight of his name written in black is enough to make my nerves stand on edge.
We step through the door, and I’m taken aback by how small the room is, with barely enough room for the bed and a leather recliner shoved in the corner. It’s as if Jax were stuck in a closet without any further thought. The tiny window depicts the dark, rainy night. The lights over the bed are dim, casting shadows around the room to make the space appear even smaller.
Without any further words, the orderly leaves, and the door shuts behind him.
Every ounce of blood surges through my body at an unexpected pace. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m cold or that I’m in a hospital during one of the worst storms in history. Or, it could be, the fact that just five feet from me is the man who has tortured me mentally for nearly a decade.
Jackson Davis.
Slowly, I walk toward his lifeless figure on the mattress. As I get closer, I see his features more clearly—his eyes are closed, his chest is moving, and he’s most definitely alive.
I take a step back, run my hands over my head, and inhale a couple of oh-shit-I’m-actually-doing-this breaths.
“Okay,” I mutter to myself. “He’s fine. You can leave now.”
Nodding my head at my own comment, I take another step back toward the door.
But, of course, I can’t.
Like a moth drawn to a flame, I ease myself back to the bed. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him in person, which is why the onslaught of emotion that starts racing through my heart and brain surprises me. The same feelings that burned within me as a teenager— a young, dumb, and in-love kid—consume me.
“Come lay with me,” he said, motioning for me to come closer to the spot he was sitting in the field behind our school.
I rubbed my arms as the evening breeze swept in. “It looks like it’s about to rain.”
“Does that scare you?”
“We don’t have an umbrella.”
His face lit up into a cocky grin. “Then we’ll just have to keep each other warm.”
With his hand stretched out, he grabbed mine and pulled me down onto the ground. My butt hit the cold earth a little rough, which caused my head to bump into his. I put my palm to my forehead and laughed.
“Solid as a rock,” he chided, his thumb rubbing his brow where we collided.
I laughed even harder. I was about to make a snarky response when the sky opened up, and rain came pummeling down.
“Oh my God!” I sought protection in the crook of Jackson’s shoulder.
He wrapped his arms around my head in an attempt to cocoon me. It didn’t matter—we were soaked.
“Race you to the car,” I shouted over the deafening sound of rain. I bolted straight across the field toward the parking lot. When I got to the car, I pulled on the handle, but it was locked. I looked at the driver’s side. Jackson wasn’t there to unlock it.
When I turned to look for him, he strolled leisurely in my direction. He had a look on his face that was totally at ease. A look I didn’t understand.
His t-shirt was stuck to his chest, and his hair fell over his brow. His mouth was quirked up, and his eyes were slightly wide in wonder.
I stood, waiting for him to approach, with my head tilted, curious as to why he was acting so calm.
When he got to the car, he stood before me with rain trickling down the bridge of his nose. His mouth was moist, and despite the fact that we were both sopping wet from head to toe, I felt the heat emanating from his body.
I squinted my eyes in question as to what he was thinking.
“I love you.”
I panicked, wondering if I heard him correctly over the deafening rain.
He opened his mouth again. “I love you.”
This time there was no mistake—his words were calm, collected, and said with sheer conviction.
Instead of responding, I stared—stared at his face and the way his pupils dilated with every passing second, and at his chest that started to rise and froze as if he were holding his breath.
He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, pushing the tendrils away from his youthful gaze. “You don’t have to say anything. I just…I’ve been feeling it for some time, and then I was looking at you standing here in the rain, and it overwhelmed me. I had to tell you. Because I do. I love you. But you don’t have to say it back. Take as much time as you need. What are you thinking?”
A slow, building smile grew on my face as I watched this overly confident boy totally fall apart after telling a girl he loved her. With a laugh on my lips, I leaned up, threw my arms around his neck, looked straight into his eyes and told him, “I love you, too.”
Just as the sweet memories of the short-lived romance we embarked on in the weeks before he left for college come sweeping in, so does the pain that quickly followed.
“I wish you could see how beautiful you are. Can I film you?” he asked, looking at me naked on the bed.
“No. What if someone sees it?”
He climbed over me, running a hand up the side of my body as he drew closer to my face. “It’s just for me. When I go to school, I want something to keep me sane until I come home for break. Please, baby, I need to remember this moment. I want to relive it every minute I’m not with you.” He leaned down and gave me a sensual kiss that radiated down to my toes.
“Okay. Promise it’s just for us.”
“I swear.”
The devastation of betrayal. The anger of being used.
“Why is everyone staring at me?” I asked as I walked down the hall. Every eye of the school was on me as I made my way toward class the first week of my junior year.
“They’ve all seen your sex tape,” a girl on the school paper sneered at me.
My heart stopped. Fear knocked my soul out of my body. “What are you talking about?”
“The one of you on top of some guy. It’s Jackson Davis, isn’t it? I totally saw something going on between you two. It is, right? Everyone’s trying to figure it out.”
“Sex tape?” I could hardly get those two words out of my mouth.
“Here, I have it on my phone.”
For nine minutes and forty-five seconds, I watched myself do things I never dreamed I’d watch myself doing. That’s how long he filmed me until he turned the camcorder off.
In six months, he went from a cherub-like angel I worshipped to the devil incarnate.
Except now, he has tanned skin and bleach blond hair. It’s far cry from his natural, light-brown waves. He looks like an idiot—like a Q-tip or a bad Ryan Lochte from the 2016 Olympics.
He is no longer my Jackson. This, here, is Jax.
I stare down at him and appraise the man lying in front of me because that’s what he is now: a man.
His jaw is more square, hard and masculine. Even his neck and shoulders, that are currently covered in bruises, are thicker than they once were. He still has the same boyish good looks with high cheekbones and clear skin. There’s stubble on his jaw that trails down his throat, and lips so lush, I remember why I wanted to kiss them so badly.
Tattoos cover his arms, but the Jackson I knew had virgin skin, a clean slate from any sort of art. Now, he has more ink than I ever thought he’d be able to sit still for.
The bedsheet blocks my view past his clavicle. With the slightest pinch of my fingers, I grab the fabric and pull it down, exposing his upper body.
A dragon wraps around his right shoulder and cascades down his chest—its mouth blows fire onto his heart, and the tail wraps around his ribs. It’s colorful and bright, a true piece of artistic expression. A woman’s eye is on his forearm and an elephant’s head is on his left bicep with its head decorated with vibrant jewels.
Hard to believe this harden man in front of me is the same boy of my past. The one who wanted to be a lawyer. He played lacrosse and tennis. He was a jokester and the most popular boy in school. Princeton was in his future, as was a life in the political arena as he followed in his father’s footsteps.
The Davis children were required to excel in music. Ella learned the piano while Jax took up the guitar. They played at all of their father’s political soirees as a showcase of the well-rounded children Senator Davis was raising. I never dreamed he’d make a career of it.
A beeping sounds from the machine on the other side of the bed, followed by a humming noise, and the blood pressure cuff around his bicep squeezes his arm. I don’t know much about this equipment, but there are no alarms going off, so I assume his vitals are stable. My eyes jump from one thing to the next, unable to focus on any of it long.
There are two bags of fluids being fed into his body through an IV that rests in his forearm while the other is set in a cast. Not the plaster kind, but more of a splint.
Ella didn’t specify what his injuries were so I do my own examination, taking note of a large bruise on his torso that stretches over his ribs and the tattoo of a woman’s mouth. The left side of his face is banged up, too, and dried blood is sitting at the top of his hairline and another bruise cascades down his temple.
I pull the sheet more to further expose his body, but then quickly put it back when I realize, Jax is naked.
My pulse speeds up and I can feel my face flush. I look over my shoulder to see if anyone saw me and then realize I’m alone in a hospital room.
I run my palm over my face and consider if I should continue. I don’t know what I expected. Even if he had on a hospital gown, he’d still be naked from the waist down. And I set out to make sure he’s okay. There’s only one way to do that.
Taking a moment to gather my composure, clear my throat, I push my shoulders back and continue with my task.
My eyes widen at the bruising that continues down his side and large bandage on his hip and the lotus flower that’s been tattooed between his pelvic bones.
When I examine his legs I gasp at the site of his calf that is virtually open. And as soon as I see bone and cartilage, I jerk the sheet back over his leg and jump away as if his injuries were contagious.
My mouth waters the way it does right before I’m about to vomit. I gag a little, waiting for the feeling to pass.
I’ve never seen a broken leg before. It’s quite possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever witnessed. It appears to have been reset and in a splint, but I wonder what they plan to do with it next—surgery possibly, or maybe a cast? Let it sit in the open, so he gets infected with MRSA?
I bolt out the room and pull over, rather forcefully, the first nurse I come across. “Excuse me, I need information on my brother. Is he scheduled for surgery?”
“Who’s your brother?”
“Jackson Davis. His leg looks really bad.”
“Yes, I believe he’s scheduled with the surgeon. I’ll find out for you,” she promises before walking down the hallway and turning a corner.
Looking up and down the corridor, all I see are doors to other rooms, and I assume she must have gone down to the nurse’s station. I cross my arms and wait in plain view as not to be missed on her return. It’s quiet, unlike the chaos I walked through to get here. I don’t hear the echo of feet or even the whisper of someone coming my way. I don’t know what else to do with myself so I pace, my wet sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, as I wait for the nurse to return.
When I reach the end of the hall, I come to an alcove, and in it is a computer on a cart. I glance back down the way I came and see it is still empty before I tip-toe to the keyboard side. I look at the screen, and the swirling windows icon prances around as a screensaver.
I’m violating a million HIPAA laws, but being complacent and waiting for people to give me information was never my strong suit. It makes me wonder what they’re hiding.
I bite my bottom lip and contemplate whether breaking into a hospital’s database is something I should do. It only takes a moment to make my decision.
I tap a key on the keyboard, and the desktop comes to life. The program is logged in, and against my better judgment, I go about searching for Jackson’s file.
Twenty-seven-year-old. Male. Found unresponsive when paramedics answered the call at eight-sixteen in the evening. Picked up at Treble Night Club in Harlem. Arrived with a broken arm and leg, fractured ribs, and a concussion.
He’s already had a CT scan and is awaiting a consult with the surgeon about his leg. He doesn’t seem to be in pain, but he could be high on narcotics right now.
I drum my fingers vigorously on the metal as my stomach clenches with worry. The idea of a wound going untreated doesn’t sit right with me.
I double-click an icon and look for the name of the surgeon who was paged for the consult. Dr. Louis Abler. I tap the button next to his name to page the physician and a sub-screen pops up for me to type in the message to be sent to his pager. I type in Jackson’s name and room number followed by the word “STAT” because that’s what they say on TV. Hopefully, it gets him to the top of the doctor’s need-to-see list.
Pushing the cart toward the wall where I found it, I creep out of the alcove and back into Jax’s room, unnoticed.
I cross my arms and try to fight off the chill that's sitting in my bones. I know he’s not wet like I am, but it is cold in here, so I adjust his blankets to make sure he’s warm.
The blood pressure cuff goes off again, and the heart rate monitor blinks steadily. I place the back of my hand on his head to check for a temperature—his skin is smooth and a little clammy—but there’s no sign of a fever. I allow the back of my hand to travel down his temple, close to the piercing on his brow, careful of the blood and bruising.
I can’t believe he’s lying here in front of me. I can’t believe I’m standing here in front of him.
The realization forces me to draw in a deep breath, my chest heaving out. I release the air and a chill curls down to my toes. My nails gently trace Jackson’s once familiar jaw, the pads of my fingers feathering down his neck, just before stopping at the top of his chest.
In sleep, he looks so peaceful. The feeling I get from looking at him reminds me how I felt the day I saw him. He was the teenage boy who took my breath away as I watched him from afar when he got out of his parents’ car. He was wearing mesh shorts, a Wyndham Lacrosse t-shirt, and the sweetest grin I’d ever seen. The Senator had just won his seat and relocated his family to Wyndham. I was twelve years old and way too young for a relationship, let alone one with an older boy. Still, it never stopped me from doodling his name in my diary.
For four years, I pined over him, going to all his games and helping him pass out flyers when he ran for Student Body President and gave him extra coverage in the school newspaper on his lacrosse wins. I remember this one time, I was visiting his sister, when I walked into his kitchen and found him at the table with his thumb and forefinger formed in a circle as he waved them wildly in the air.
“Did you glue your fingers together?” I asked as I approached him.
He stopped shaking his hand at the sound of my voice. With a self-deprecating smile, he grinned, “This is so embarrassing. I’m as useful as a trained monkey.”
I swayed from side to side. “Actually, I think trained monkeys would know how to glue.” I approached the table as he laughed, lightly, with his head down. “What are you doing?”
“He pushed his hair off his face as he answer, “Trying to glue the aortic valve onto a piece of metal wire.”
On the table was a large 3D model of the human heart with tubing going through it to depict the vena cava. “Did you make this yourself?”
A smile that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be bashful or cocky crept along his face. “Yeah. I made it from newspaper and duct tape. See the vena cava,” he pointed to the tubing that was running through the heart in multiple directions. “That shows blood flow. I cut these windows in the tubes to show where the valves are that control the blood flow. Except, I just glued my fingers together.”
I covered my mouth to cover a laugh. “Go run your fingers under cold water or you’ll blister. I’ll help.” I took a seat a the table.
There were four round makeup sponges on the table, cut in the enter, lying next to metal wire. I held a sponge in the air, “Is this from your personal stash?”
He turned around from his spot by the sink. When he saw the sponge in my hand and the look on my face, he burst out laughing.
“Now you know my secret,” he winked and for the first time in my life my stomach whooshed.
Turning back to the project, I lifted the gun to the sponge and added some glue alongthe top. “Like this?”
He nodded and took a seat next to me. “Perfect. I’m going to wrap the metal around the tube.”
My brain wasn’t registering his words. Just the way he was seated so close and smelt so good, like warm honey. I never cared for the stuff but sitting next to him made me crave a cup of tea with honey like I was sick and in need of a cure.
I shook my head at how ridiculous I was sounding, even in my own head.
I gave myself a shake. “What’s this for?”
He took a second to long as if lost in his own thought as well. “Anatomy. We got to pick any organ in the body.”
“Why the heart?” I asked. It was a simple question, but the answer I got stayed with me forever.
“Because it’s what controls our emotion, courage and wisdom.”
I furrowed my brow and shook my head slowly. “No. That's the brain.”
His finger tapped his head. “The brain tells us know. The heart stresses when we’re mad or sad, and it beats steady and true when we’re happy and content. The heart influences processing, perceptions, and emotions. It tells the brain how we feel about the information in our heads but what it’s feeling right here.” He placed his hand over my heart and I nearly died. I also wound up burning myself with the glue gun.
I never told Ella I had a crush on her brother for fear she’d think I was her friend for the wrong reason. But I was secretly in love with him. Secretly, until that fateful day in March of my Junior year when he asked me out. I wanted to say “Yes,” but couldn’t. I was too young to date.
“Technically, I didn’t ask you out.” He placed his hands in his pockets and looked up at me with a devilish grin.
Fighting the embarrassment that was creeping up my cheeks, I tried to backtrack. “Obviously. I mean, yeah, when you said let’s go out you really meant—”
He took a step closer. “You see, if you were able to date, I’d ask you out and we’d date.”
I could feel my jaw drop. “We would?”
With a nod, he inched just a tiny bit closer. “I’d pick you up at your house and drive you to play mini-golf because you love it, and I’d let you have the neon orange ball because it’s your favorite color. Then we’d go out for burgers and end the night at the drive-in to watch that new movie that’s out where the news reporter solves the murder.” He closed the gap between us as his hands remained in his pockets. “And then I’d take you home, walk you to your door and kiss you so good you wouldn’t be able to deny a second date.”
“You w-would?” I was mumbling.
“I would.”
With a quivering lip, I looked down and kicked a stone on the ground. “But, since I can’t date, you’re not asking me out.”
“Since you can’t date I’m gonna ask you to do all of that as friends.” He released his hands from his pockets and grinned. “Except at the end of the night I’m gonna park my car around the corner so your daddy can’t see my kiss you so good you won’t be able to deny me a second non-date again.”
I run my fingers through his platinum locks. The strands are dry from bleaching, but I caress my hand through it again, feeling the tendrils as they weave between my fingers.
In another world, he could have been a decent man. In another world, all this beauty would be put to good use instead of the villain he became. In another world, he could have been mine as once promised. Instead, he became the devil.
“Is this heaven?”
The low, dry voice beneath me causes me to jolt, releasing my hand from his head and jumping back.
“Did I die?” He speaks again, his voice sounding like he’s in desperate need of a glass of water.
My head spins. My body is frozen except for the erratic swirling in my gut and thoughts.
I look down and see Jackson Davis staring back at me for the first time in nine years.