Page 144 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

He couldn’t stay here in this too-warm house with less than half a thimbleful of morphine. She wouldn’t allow it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I love you.”

Andrew was never one to return the sentiment, but he squeezed her hands, smiled again, so that she knew he felt the same.

Paula mumbled, “Christ.”

Jane turned to glare at her. She had started cutting up a tomato. The knife was dull. The skin tore like paper.

Paula asked, “You two into incest now?”

Jane turned back around.

Andrew told her, “I’m going to rest for a while. Okay?”

She nodded. They would stand a better chance of leaving if Andrew was not involved in the negotiation.

“Get a scarf,” Paula said. “Keep your neck warm. It helps the cough.”

Andrew raised a skeptical eyebrow at Jane as he tried to stand. He shrugged off her offer of help. “I’m not that far gone.”

She watched him lurch toward the swinging door. His shirt was soaked with sweat. The back of his hair was damp. Jane turned away from the door only when it stopped swinging.

She took Andrew’s seat parallel to Paula because she did not want her back to the woman. She looked down at the files on the table. These were the two things that Nick had valued most: Jasper’s signature attesting to his part in the fraud. The Polaroids with their red rubber band.

Paula said, “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not going anywhere.”

Jane had thought that she was incapable of feeling any more emotions, but she had never abhorred Paula so much as she did in this moment. “I just want to take him to the hospital.”

“And let the pigs know where we are?” Paula huffed out a laugh. “You might as well take off your fancy boots, ’cause you ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Jane turned away from her, clasped her hands together on the table.

“Hey, Dumb Bitch.” Paula lifted up her shirt and showed Jane the handgun tucked into the waist of her jeans. “Don’t get any ideas. I’d love to shoot six new holes into that asshole you call a face.”

Jane looked at the clock on the wall. Ten in the evening. The Chicago team would already be in the city. Nick was on his way to New York. She had to find a way out of here.

She asked, “Where are Clara and Edwin?”

“Selden and Tucker are in position.”

Edwin’s apartment in the city. He was supposed to wait for phone calls in case anyone was arrested.

Jane said, “Northwestern can’t be far from here. They’re a teaching hospital. They’ll know how to take care of—”

“Northwestern is straight down I-88, about forty-five minutes away, but it might as well be on the moon because you’re not fucking going anywhere and neither is he.” Paula rested her hand on her hip. “Look, bitch, they can’t do anything for him. You did your rich girl slumming at the AIDS ward. You know how this story ends. The prince doesn’t ride again. Your brother is going to die. As in tonight. He’s not going to see the sunrise.”

Hearing her fears confirmed brought a lump into Jane’s throat. “The doctors can make him comfortable.”

“Nick left a vial of morphine for that.”

“It’s almost empty.”

“That’s all we could find on short notice, and we’re lucky we could get that. It’ll probably be enough, and if it’s not—” She shrugged her shoulder. “Nothing we can do about it.”

Jane thought again of Ben Mitchell, one of the first young men she’d met on the AIDS ward. He’d been desperate to go back to Wyoming to see his parents before he died. They had finally relented, and the last eight minutes of Ben’s life had been spent in terror as he suffocated on his own fluids because the rural hospital staff were too frightened to stick a tube down his throat to help him breathe.