Chapter 10

Chrissy

The next day I was discharged from the hospital into the care of a rehabilitation facility. The one I was supposed to go to was here in the hospital complex, but after what had happened, the police agreed that some extra steps to ensure my safety were warranted. So, in short order, I was secretly loaded into an ambulance on a gurney, and taken to a different inpatient rehabilitation facility across the city and checked in under an assumed name.

The media went ape-shit.

Headlines like, ‘Where Are They Hiding Christina Marie Franco?’ and ‘Lawyer Refuses to Speak’ were splashed across the newspapers and carried over to the evening news. Word of the incident at the hospital had gotten out and it’d seemingly whipped the situation into yet another froth… as if things hadn’t been bad enough already, I felt like a prisoner, even if my cage were a gilded one.

The facility they had moved me to was a nice one, and I spent the next week and a half learning how to reliably stand and walk on my own without any more assistance. That was a lot harder than it sounded. The bullet had gone in through low enough on my back that it could be considered my butt and had lodged in my pelvis, fracturing it badly. I’d been lucky, though. The doctors had told me a little bit higher; it would have destroyed my kidney. More to the left, it would have impacted my spine…

I didn’t quite consider myself lucky at all, but I suppose any port in a storm, right? I mean, I had to try and find what silver lining I could in all of this mess. Whenever I thought about it like that, though, I could only come up with one… and he was walking up the hallway now, dressed in his casual attire of black leather and denim.

I watched him go to the front desk and speak to the receptionist, admiring how his black leather chaps framed his extremely nice ass in the jeans he had on. I felt a very definite pang of disappointment that he’d been too much of a gentleman at the time to take my up on my offer of some no-strings-attached fun. Then again, back then, I had been sort of glad for it. It’d meant he’d genuinely liked me and now… well, now who knew?

The receptionist pointed past Tony and I quickly looked down at my kindle so as not to get caught blatantly ogling his behind. I was sitting in the facility’s atrium, soaking up some sunshine and making use of one of the park benches they had out here. When I felt his eyes on me through the long line of floor to ceiling windows, I looked up and smiled. He smiled back but it was Mary, the receptionist behind him that caught my eye. She was grinning just a little bit too hard at my expense. She’d seen what I’d been doing and when Tony turned his back on her to look at me, she gave me two thumbs up behind his back and moved them out and in my direction and back in, twice.

I felt myself begin to color but was saved, Tony turned around, presumably to thank her, but Mary’s hands were folded on top of the desk, and she was giving him a wide-eyed and innocent look. I laughed and he, asked her for directions. She leaned forward and pointed down the hall and he headed further into the building to come around and access the door to outside.

Mary and I exchanged a look once he’d moved out of both of our sights and both burst out in a fit of giggles. It felt good; nice, normal, and light.

Tony found the door leading out here and trudged across the grass in my direction, but by then Mary and I had both regained our composure.

“Hi,” I said, laying my kindle in my lap and he grinned at me, dropping onto the bench beside me.

“Why do I think that I’ve missed something here?” he asked, looking between me and Mary who was pointedly staring at her computer monitor, fingers clacking against the keys, and away from us.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said innocently and Tony laughed.

“You know for a lawyer, you’re a bad liar Franco.”

“So I’ve been told.”

We each had a light laugh and he looked me over.

“You’re looking good.”

“Thank you, Pasquale came to visit me the other day and was nice enough to bring me some real clothes. I gave him the key to my apartment, but I think he had other ideas.” I looked down at myself, I’d never owned an outfit like it, but he’d come back with two perfectly matched and fashionable jean and light sweater pairings with some fabulous boots in something like six shopping bags. Had dropped my keys into my hand and said, ‘Let’s go, paper princess, I am not about to dress you any other way.’

“Not your clothes?” Tony asked.

“I’m not even sure that he stopped at my place, to tell you the truth.”

“Looks like he spent a small fortune on you. Stuff’s nice.”

“I thought so, too, but apparently he got them at a clothing swap the LGBTQ community here in the city puts on once a month.”

“Nice, look at you, making friends wherever you go.”

I nodded and smiled, and tried not to let what he said get to me. I missed Sami Lynn so much, but Tony hadn’t meant anything by it, I knew that. It hurt that I couldn’t see her family. The press were hounding them for information about me and David had called and said that his parents were going on a sort of vacation to get away from it. That I shouldn’t take it personal and that there was no resentment and that they wished very much that they could be here for me. I understood, but it still hurt.

Tony searched my face which must have given it away because he said, “Sorry,” and bowed his head. “My fuckin’ mouth, sometimes it gets away from me.”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I didn’t. I mean, I really didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” I said again. “Really, can we just change the subject?”

“Sure. So I hear you’re gonna be busting out of here, soon.”

“A week more,” I said softly. “Then I get to go home and deal with outpatient care and physical therapy.”

“The fun just doesn’t stop, does it?” he asked and I sighed and put on a brave smile.

“Party all the time,” I agreed.

He chuckled and leaned back and I shifted. It was hard to get comfortable, my arm still in its sling, trapping it close to my body. It didn’t really come out of this position except for the occupational and physical therapy exercises designed to strengthen it, which of course, hurt like hell.

“What’d they say about it?” he asked, gesturing to the arm.

“I’ll never regain full range of motion when it comes to the shoulder. It will always be stiff and ache with changes in the weather. It’s got a super long way to go, and I’m going to need help with things like brushing my hair and showering for a while still. I’m doing better with getting dressed, but still need help there, too. It’s a bitch doing anything one-handed.”

He nodded and sighed, dropping his head and turning to look at me, searching my face before saying, “Yeah, but if anybody can come back from this stronger and better than ever, I have a feeling it’s you.”

I smiled, bolstered by his confidence and said, “Trying every day to make this thing my bitch. What about you? Any luck on that other case?” I wish I’d felt the same level of conviction the words held, but I didn’t. I was hoping that a change of subject would spare me from having to talk about me and my situation anymore.

I hadn’t seen much of Tony lately. He tried to visit regularly, but unlike the hospital, this place had set visiting hours and he wasn’t always successful at making it inside the times they allowed. We’d seen each other maybe once a week, but traded phone calls and emails fairly regularly. At least until my phone had started blowing up with interview requests. I’d shut it off after telling the Hayworths and Tony to reach me by email if they wanted to talk. Tony had kept up with me the most, emailing once a day minimum, summing up how the day went. Usually the tone of those emails were polite and superficial, but if you read between the lines, the mutual friendship and comradery of both being cogs and wheels in the criminal justice machine were there.

It was comfortable, and I needed something, anything, that felt that way to cling to so I didn’t lose my mind.

“We caught the girl. A sad case for sure, but we got her.”

“Isn’t every case a sad one when working homicide?” I asked.

“Not always. We don’t get to pick the vic, but sometimes we can’t feel especially sorry for them. Some of ‘em are a real piece of work.”

“Isn’t it hard not to feel empathy for the killer in those cases, though?”

“Sometimes yeah, sometimes not so much. Depends on the situation.”

“Okay, give me an example then.”

He looked at the sky and I watched the reflection of the fluffy white clouds against the backdrop of his steel blue irises. It was a striking contrast and one I wished I could capture a picture of. Ah well, some things were better left a memory to cherish. Sitting here having a candid conversation, even if it was a bit macabre, was definitely one of those times I was locking away to replay later as I tried to fall asleep.

“Case I had two years ago, banger gets shot and killed by another banger, pretty common in the south end. Banger one, the victim in this case, was a real piece of work, rap sheet a mile long and was pretty much recruiting kids to run his drugs and guns. Considered himself a real Good Samaritan for it, too. He knew that a kid pinched with that much product or a firearm would be out in less than half the time and would be back to pushin’ for him. Bragged that he was doing the neighborhood a favor, that he was helping these kids earn so that when they aged out and their juvie records were sealed they could have some kind of a future.”

“A future of crime, maybe.”

“Yeah, well you know that, and I know that, but it was a hell of a siren’s call to these kids who grew up on government cheese sandwiches at school as their only meal a day for sometimes three and four days straight.”

“Ugh…” I sighed. “So who killed him, and why?”

“One of the kids who’d grown up playing banger one’s little game. Banger one was trying to recruit banger two’s little brother. Banger two had gotten himself locked up at seventeen, thinking he was immune to consequences. Was put away on adult charges and as we both know, that shit doesn’t disappear. Got stuck, couldn’t find decent work; had a record hanging over his head the rest of his life. Didn’t want the same for his kid brother.”

“I can empathize with that, can’t you?”

“Sure, so could the jury, he got out on a reduced sentence and I picked him up last month for killing his little brother. Little brother refused to give him money. Big brother thought the kid somehow owed him for big brother’s mistakes.”

“That’s not exactly what we’re talking about here, though. Is it?” I asked, and Tony lifted one leather clad shoulder in a shrug.

“At the end of the day, and this particular case, isn’t it? I mean, the first time around people’s sympathies and empathies were allowed to cloud their judgment, the man got a reduced sentence because the victim was a piece of shit and the perp had a violin to play.”

I raised an eyebrow at his cynical world view but heard him out.

“Second time around, no sympathy, no violin, dude goes directly to jail, but at the same time, that doesn’t bring his little brother back.”

“The system failed after a fashion, I guess.”

He studied my face, “How do you figure that?”

“Well, in order for the system to work correctly, you have to judge a case based on the facts presented. It’s flawed in that people are inherently emotional creatures, and so divorcing ourselves from those emotions and thinking logically and critically isn’t always our strongest suit. It’s a flaw in the system, but one we can’t always work around. One we have to live with, remain aware of, and work diligently not to let it get in the way of the truth.”

“I don’t disagree, beautiful.” He heaved a big sigh and it was a sentiment I echoed.

“We win and lose every case, sometimes in unexpected ways,” I murmured and thought about my own situation.

“Hey.”

I looked over and met Tony’s very serious and very penetrating gaze as he said, “None of this is your fault. You did your job. These people… hell, people nowadays seem to have no real concept of reality. They just don’t know when or how to quit. Their actions are in no way any kind of reflection on who you are, or what you did.”

I closed my eyes and nodded.

“You know, Miranda really was innocent. I don’t get to say that about many of my clients, I know that, but Miranda? She was the real deal. She was genuinely afraid for her life when she did what she did. I have zero guilt or regrets that I won that case and she went free.”

I was pointedly staring down along the grass and away from Tony, fixating on a bundle of yellow trout lily growing against a wall. Tony’s hand on my knee, giving it a squeeze brought me back around to look at him.

“I kind of figured; I’m sorry you’re taking the heat from this.”

“Just one more service I offer,” I said meekly at an attempt at humor and it worked, he smiled big and chuckled.

“You should have been a cop with a sense of humor like that.”

I smiled too, “A little late for a career change, especially now,” I said lifting my permanently injured arm out from my body slightly for emphasis. I knew what I could get away with, without hurting.

He nodded and took his hand off my stretch-denim clad knee and gripped the edge of the bench seat.

“Yeah, maybe so,” he agreed and it was nice. We sat quietly in the atrium of the rehab facility for a time, neither one of us needing to say anything, just comfortable in each other’s presence.