Trista
The warehouse has an eerie calm to it. Despite the moans, the sobs, the ringing silence and smell of sulfur and blood, it’s almost peaceful.
Through a thick layer of nothing I hear Merryn’s sobs, her body still huddled on the ground. My eyes see Jake walk towards her, his footfalls heavy, yet dull, on the floor. Closer by one of the Slingers is crouched over the dead one’s body. I honestly forget their names. The live one is crying, sobbing. He blubbers out words, unintelligible. One of the other Slingers hunkers next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“… right?”
A voice, beside me. My body turns its head and I see Lance. He’s looking at me.
“What?” I make my mouth say.
“I said, are you all right?” He looks emotionless. Even his breathing is slow and steady.
“Yeah.” I turn my sight away from him. Merryn. I make my body walk past the turned-over table, over the broken beer bottles and bullet shells. I reach Jake and Merryn and hunker down next to them.
“How is she?”
Jake looks at me. “I don’t see any blood.”
I reach down and coax Merryn’s face up. It’s streaked with tears.
“Merryn. Did you get shot?”
She sniffs wetly, shakes her head.
“No … but the baby …”
“Oh God, hon,” Jake says.
“Okay. It’s okay,” I tell her. “We’re going to get you out of here. Take you to the hospital. Lance?” I call out, looking around. He strides over. “Help me lift her up.”
So the three of us, Lance, Jake, and I, help lift Merryn as close to standing as she can muster, feeling her body shake and shudder with sobs. I watch as we move slowly, hobbling towards the back door. As we clear the pile of debris, the body of that girl on crutches comes into view. My body feels part of Merryn pull back and I look to see Jake staring at the girl.
“Emily …”
Lance lifts a hand and puts it on his shoulder, making Jake look at him.
“Leave it, man,” Lance says. “It’s over. Come on.”
But then the body shakes, coughs. A moan, higher in pitch than Merryn’s, and Emily slowly moves her strange, twisted limbs.
“Emily!” Jake calls. He leaves Merryn to Lance and me, moving swiftly and dropping down beside the girl, his sister. She moans as she rolls onto her side. The camera slung around her neck is shattered at the front.
“Uh,” she coughs, “do I get a say on whether or not you leave me?”
“Oh God, Emily.” Suddenly Jake’s crying, his whole body racking as he wraps his arms around his little sister. She lets out a stifled grunt and pushes him away.
“Ow ow, careful,” she says.
“Ah, sorry,” he says, still crying. Dirty fingers wipe away his tears.
Just then Merryn lets out another, louder moan, her body threatening to collapse as she pulls in on herself.
“Let’s take her to the car,” Lance says. His voice sounds thicker than usual, and I nod, not wanting to betray my own tight throat.
Jake stays with Emily as Lance and I slowly bring Merryn out into the brilliant sunlight, harsh compared to the darkness from inside the warehouse. My eyes see the tire tracks from where Will sped away. We hobble Merryn over to Lance’s car, and he opens up the back, the two of us helping her climb inside. Lance stays with her as I go back to get Jake and Emily.
When I walk my body in it takes me a moment of blinking before my eyes adjust to the darkness. But once I can see clearly I realize that almost everyone is looking at me. Jake is still hunkered down behind the pile of debris, with Emily. The place looks like a mess. Bullet shells are everywhere, pools of beer from the broken bottles spill out beside the fallen table. The only people not looking at me are the live Slingers, all focusing on the one dead one.
My body dips down and helps Jake lift Emily up to her feet. She’s wincing a lot, but her lips are tight and she doesn’t make a big fuss. I grab her crutches as Jake takes the brunt of Emily’s weight.
We’re about to leave when a voice pipes up from the crowd.
“Jake!”
He turns around, we all do, and the crowd is looking at us still. Even some of the Slingers have lifted their heads.
“What do we do now?”
It’s one of the Chains, the girl.
“Go home,” Jake tells her. “This is done.”
“Home?” she asks, taking a step forward. “But … what about Will Silver? And the Bullets? What about everything you said?”
I look at Jake. He looks tired. “Listen, guys … we blew it. Okay? I’m sorry. We didn’t kill Will Silver like we’d planned. But listen. Merryn might be going into labor right now and Emily needs to get to a hospital. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”
The girl Chain doesn’t offer any more rebuttals, so Jake and I take Emily out to Lance’s car. When we get there it’s obvious that Merryn is taking up most of the back seat. Lance opens the front passenger door and Jake leads Emily to it. There isn’t enough space for me.
“Um,” I hear myself start to say, but Emily speaks up before I can voice my concern.
“Jake’s bike,” she says. “You can take Jake’s bike.”
“Oh shit, I almost forgot about it,” Jake says. He helps Emily into the car and then fishes the keys out of his pocket. He hands them to me.
“It’s that one,” he points it out.
“I’ll take the lead,” Lance says, waiting at the driver’s side door. My body nods its head and Jake climbs into the back while the rest of the doors shut. Walking over to Jake’s bike I climb on it and start it up. Lance pulls out of the parking lot and I follow close behind, the wind whipping my hair back as I do.
I follow close behind Lance on our way to the hospital. My mind feels … strange. Addled, and oddly empty. It’s hard to think. Hard to think about what just happened, or come to terms with it. Everything still feels far away. Like it’s not really happening, or it’s happening but I’m viewing it from far away, or from overhead.
Something happened, though. Back in the warehouse. When Jake and Will Silver had their guns on one another. At the times when I was yelling to Will, I was … it was like it was me yelling. I could feel myself doing it. I wasn’t just listening. It felt like my voice. It sounded like something I wanted to say.
Eventually we reach the hospital and the bike follows Lance’s car to the emergency entrance. Wasn’t I here already this morning? The sliding glass doors open and two male nurses, the same two male nurses as before, come out with a wheelchair. But if they recognize me or Lance, they don’t make any notion. Lance tells them they need another wheelchair and one of them rushes back to get a second one as Merryn is helped into the first. Soon enough Emily’s in a wheelchair too and they’re both taken in, Jake following. Lance shuts the doors of his car and gets back in. I follow him to the parking lot where we park side by side. In silence we walk back to the emergency entrance. If he notices the irony of this like I did, he doesn’t mention it.
When we get inside neither Merryn nor Emily are present, but Jake is. He’s pacing back and forth, muttering. It seems his usual fervor has come back with a vengeance.
“… they there? They shouldn’t have been. It was dangerous, they knew that …”
We approach him and he looks up, sees us.
“What the fuck happened?” he asks us, his eyes nearly bulging out of his skull.
“Sit down,” Lance says, but Jake doesn’t seem to hear him.
“They weren’t supposed to be there!” he almost shouts. “Merryn, with Will Silver. And Emily! What the hell was she thinking?”
“It was fucked up,” Lance agrees. “Nothing went the way it was supposed to.”
Suddenly Jake blinks, as though seeing Lance and me for the first time.
“And what the fuck were you doing there?” he asks me. He looks at Lance. “And who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Lance Rush,” he says. His voice is calm and level. “Trista and I were there for the exact same reason you were.” His eyes dart side to side, taking in the surroundings of the hospital. He doesn’t elaborate on what that reason was.
Jake’s breathing hard, but he doesn’t say anything. So Lance goes on.
“When I was a kid, my little brother got killed. Shot because he saw a poker game go on between Will Silver and a mob boss. I thought, at the time, that it was the mob boss who shot Danny. But I just found out that it was Will. Before I found that out, though, I had it in for him for something else. Another kid, this little baby. Will wanted the baby dead. And he wanted me to do it.”
I feel something click in my head.
“Wait … what was the kid’s name?”
Lance looks at me. “Why?”
I lower my voice. “Was it Nathan Willow?” His eyes widen, answering me. “I was still working as a cop when Jeannette Willow came in to report … something. She was in danger, and it was with Will Silver. So I told her to leave the city until I got things figured out. Flynn and I were planning on taking Will out, but it never happened. The morning we thought he was going to show up,” I look at Jake, “that was when you showed up.”
Jake blinks, his energy having fizzled away, but Lance nods.
“So that’s why she was leaving,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” Jake says, and now it’s my turn to look surprised. “About yesterday. I’ve fought with Merryn a lot about it. And I didn’t know that you were planning to … and this kid, Nathan. I didn’t know about that.”
I feel my head nod. “It’s okay,” I say.
Lance inclines his head. “Let’s sit down.” And so we go over to the rows of seats, finding three together. Although it’s silent between us, it doesn’t feel as tense as it did before.
Jake’s the one who breaks the silence. “So you two were there for the same reason I was?” We both nod. “Do you have any plans now? Now that, you know, it’s over?”
My head shakes and so does Lance’s.
“No,” he says.
“Well, maybe we should keep in touch,” Jake says. “In case we find we can work together on this.”
I think about Sal, and about what he’d said about Jake Hawksley. Good head on his shoulders. When he’s not blinded by rage or sex, he’s got it all figured out.
“Yeah,” I say. “That sounds good.”
So Lance and I exchange our numbers with Jake, who gets ours in turn. Once our cell phones are stowed away we go back to waiting. The hospital moves all around us, the clock ticking by slowly on the wall. People come in the emergency, others go. I see some of the same staff as I did this morning, but if any of them recognize me none of them make any notice.
Finally a nurse approaches us.
“Jake Hawksley?” she asks, and Jake stands up. Lance and I follow suit.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got Merryn and Emily in stable conditions,” she says, and I see relief flood its way through Jake. “We thought that maybe Merryn had gone into labor, but it was a false alarm. The baby’s fine. Emily has a few broken ribs, but other than that she’s okay. The camera she came in with is shattered beyond repair, I’d say.”
Jake nods. “Can I see them?”
“Yes, you should be able to see them,” and so she leads us down the hall. “Since you all came in together we put them in the same room,” she explains as she leads us through a door. Inside are two beds, the closest one occupied by Emily, the farthest by Merryn.
“Oh God, Emily,” Jake says, and he goes to his little sister. Lance and I hang back as Emily gives a weak smile and raises her twisted arms to give her brother a hug.
“They should be good to go home as soon as they can get dressed,” the nurse tells the room, and then she departs.
“Emily, you idiot,” Jake says. His sister releases the hug.
“Go see Merryn, dummy,” she says, her smile a little brighter now. Jake stands up and walks over to the other bed where the very pregnant Merryn lies in a hospital gown. But Jake doesn’t go to hug her as he did Emily. Instead he stands at the edge of the bed.
“Merryn,” he says, shaking his head. I can’t see his face, but the tone of his voice is a bit different now. “What were you thinking?”
Merryn looks like she’s struggling to hold back tears. Tears of shame, I would imagine.
“Jake, I’m so sorry,” she chokes out. The tears betray her and roll down her cheeks. “I should have told you. I only wanted … I just wanted there to be peace.”
“But Will Silver, Merryn,” Jake says. “How did you think you could trust him? What was going through your head that you thought it would be okay to go see him? Alone?”
“Because he came to us!” she protests from the hospital bed. “He told us he needed help. I trusted him. You trusted him, too! That’s why you went!”
“But I wouldn’t have put myself alone in a room with him,” Jake counters. “And you’re pregnant, Merryn. For God’s sake, our baby! What if he did something to our baby?”
“He wouldn’t have done anything to our baby,” she says.
“He held a fucking gun to your head!” Jake explodes, making everyone in the room jump. “What the fuck were you thinking? He wouldn’t do anything to our baby? He almost killed you, and you just trusted him! You’re always going on about trusting people and look where it got you! In a fucking hospital having almost prematurely delivered our baby!”
He’s breathing hard now, I can see. It’s like a switch was flipped. He was so calm before. Merryn opens her mouth but Jake cuts her off before she can speak.
“You lectured me! You told me I was acting crazy, that I was getting paranoid! And then you fucking go behind my back and you put yourself and our baby in danger, and for what? Now the fucking plan is ruined! Will knows now, now he’s going to be suspicious! You didn’t even bring backup! You didn’t tell me, I could have covered you! Nobody knew where you were! What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Jake, stop it,” Emily says from the other bed. Merryn’s crying again, the tears a constant stream on her face. She’s shaking her head, but she looks tired.
“Jake,” she croaks. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry!” He throws up his hands. “Well stop the fucking presses, Merryn is sorry! I guess that solves everything, now doesn’t it?” He turns and starts pacing. I see his face now and it’s a ruddy shade of red. “Sorry. Sorry! Time to go home now and act like nothing ever happened because Merryn is sorry!”
Merryn lets out a sob, but it doesn’t faze Jake.
“Jake,” she croaks again. “I … I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Jake,” Lance speaks up, “maybe take a walk or something. Drink some water.”
Jake’s shaking his head again. It’s like he can’t stop.
“You don’t know what to say.” It’s like he didn’t even hear Lance. “Maybe there’s nothing you can say, Merryn. I can’t trust you. And if I can’t trust you … then I can’t have you in my life.”
He lifts a hand, runs it down over his face.
“I want you out of the apartment, Merryn. Pack your bags and go.”