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12

Not Good At These Things

M arisol gasped as if she forgot how to breathe. After blinking away the dots in her vision, her gaze followed bars of light drawing a grid up the elevator shaft. The grid shrunk into a halo at the top floor. It must’ve been morning.

The icy chill of the concrete floor dug into her back. Could she move? She wiggled her fingers and her toes. Ow! Breathe. Each sip of air she took begged for respite from the pain. Moving would not be easy.

Would someone hear her if she cried for help? Her dry and sticky tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She managed to whisper, ripping her lips apart.

“Help.”

The empty hiss of white noise mocked her. She swallowed, but the parched gulp stuck in her throat.

She had to save herself .

The dots in her vision formed into an aura, clouding her search for escape. From under a desperate blink, she spotted a ladder out of the pit. She propped on her elbows and dragged herself an inch. More pain racked her body but not the throb of her broken leg. It was the sharp peel of her skin when she crawled out of the puddle of her own blood. She collapsed.

He found her earlier. Could he find her again? She grazed her hand against her chest—a feeble touch of her abuelita’s necklace. “Help me.”

The cables in the shaft groaned, pulling the weight of the elevator car. Someone was there. If she yelled, they’d find her, but she couldn’t. She reached into the pocket of her coat and grabbed her keys. Shallow, desperate breaths chased the pain away. She inched closer to a vertical metal beam and struck her keys against it. It rang.

The elevator stopped. The bars of light danced above her. She dropped to her back. With every blink, her eyes grew heavier. Dying felt like resisting a nap on a bed of dry ice.

The doors thundered, wrenching open. Tobias emerged from the parted doors. “Somebody’s here!” He jumped to the ground and dropped a crowbar at his feet. “Marisol!”

Tobias kneeled beside her and pressed against her carotid artery, checking for her pulse. “Get me a stretcher. She’s alive!” He whipped his tie off and tied it around her thigh. “Stay with me, Marisol. Stay with me. ”

She moved her lips, but they made no sound. With a final push from her lungs, she whispered, “Where were you?”

She awoke in a hospital room. From the angle of a patient, it felt unfamiliar. A sling elevated her leg. A fiberglass cast wrapped from her knee to her foot. She reached to touch her encased leg, but the dull jerk from the tubes in her hand stopped her. An IV of blood and saline solution leashed her to the spot. Boop. Along with an EKG monitor. She was stuck but not in pain. Thanks, morphine.

To her other side sat a bouquet of white and pink lilies. Marisol untucked the card from the plastic prong. “Godspeed. Tobias.” It hurt to be charmed. It meant she was worthy; a worthiness she couldn’t feel with her body and mind devastated by trauma. A gentle rapping sounded from the doorway.

“Some people are real cheese balls.” Tobias leaned against the doorframe, draining a small Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Thanks.” She nodded toward the bouquet.

A weak smile flickered across Tobias’s face before he crushed his cup and tossed it in a small waste bin near the door. “We could’ve set you up in a better place. Nothing but weak coffee here.”

Here, abscess-yellow paint decked the walls unlike the institutional blue walls of the Varian Family Hospital. “Where am I? ”

“St. James. Far on the Eastside. I swear you won’t burst into flames.” He stepped farther inside the room. His dress shirt was disheveled and stained with blood.

She was afraid to know whether the blood was hers or… even worse, Annie’s. “You should wear a clean shirt when you visit a lady.”

“Hey, you owe me a tie, kid. We were attached. It was the last good thing my ex-wife gave me.” He ambled around, looking everywhere but toward her bed. “You’re already a legend at the precinct, surviving that fall.” At the window, he bent a couple of blinds to peer outside; his back turned to her. “We’d been there for hours before we found you.”

“What’s up with that, man? I thought we had a thing going. I save you. You save me,” she teased, but it came out hoarse. Her savior had been too late.

He faced her, his eyes shining with tears. “I got you, though.”

“Annie? Is she?” Gunshots echoed in her memory.

“Gone.” His voice became a whisper.

Marisol closed her eyes as hot tears rolled out of them.

“I swear I will get him.” He brushed his fingers at the foot of her cast.

Within her mind, she saw the twisted tableaux again—the giant, the little guy, and the teeth. “ There were three. Didn’t security cameras see them?”

“They were wiped. Did you recognize them?”

“No. I never saw them before, and the Bloodsucker, he was... in a mask. Looked like a sea lamprey.” Last night’s violence snaked through her brain, numbing her.

Tobias nodded his head, but his face twisted. “Shit.” He stuck his head out the door and scanned both directions of the hall. With a lowered voice, he turned back to her. “The Bloodsucker? Once he knows you’re alive, he’ll be after you.”

“Good thing I have you to protect me.” In fact, he felt like the only thing around keeping her from living in the unending feedback loop of blood, screeches, and teeth.

“It would be better if we move you to a safe house. Our department will probably put you in a bedbug infested hovel, but we should get you there after they discharge you.”

“Will I be able to go to Annie’s funeral?” She stiffened as she awaited the answer.

“I don’t know.”

“Her parents depended on her to translate for them. They’ll be so lost when they learn…” She hiccoughed. Her parents would be so defeated as they searched for answers. But there was only one answer. Someone murdered Annie.

“I’m sorry.” He sat on the edge of her bed and looked down .

Family. She gripped her sheets as a sob heaved in her chest. “I can’t leave. My dad will get himself in trouble, and my mom can only hold so much together. Without me—”

He held her hand. “I’ll check in on them. I’ll keep a special eye out. Just for you.”

Marisol rubbed her fingers across his calloused knuckles. She focused on his hand and not his face, afraid that he would see a heat of shame wash over her when she asked, “What about us?”

He cracked a weak laugh. “Probably couldn’t visit you, anyway.” He sighed, now serious. “So I don’t compromise your location.”

“What if you came in disguise?”

“You’re a funny one, kid.” He interlaced his fingers with hers. “I don’t know. I have a way of screwing these things up.”

These things being relationships, of course. “You, too, huh?”

“Even when I thought you stood me up, I never cursed your name. And knowing you were...” Tobias drew her hand to his lips and kissed the space between her knuckles.

Stood up?

Strange. As strange as the kiss on top of her hand. In a mask, he would’ve kissed the inside of her wrist.

The conclusion she’d been afraid of loomed like a knife in the dark. “Could you come closer? ”

Tobias bent over her. She placed her hands like a mask over his face, parting her fingers so his eyes peered through them. “Your eyes. They have brown flecks in them.”

He nuzzled into her palm. “Yeah. I told you. It’s my sectoral heterochromia. My eyes are blue and brown in spots.”

Tobias was never the Patron Saint.

And not only had she been a fool, but she had also dragged his feelings into it. She traced her thumb over the edge of his square jaw, tainted with graying stubble, and dropped her hands from his face.

Both sat with their heads bowed. The heart monitor beeped over and over again.

Any second now, one of them would talk.

Tobias sighed. “I’m going to grab some more coffee.” He headed out of the room but looked back from the doorway. “I’m your personal bodyguard.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. Tears clawed down her face. A part of her always knew Tobias wasn’t him. It’s why she sought the hero and not the man. She ached, a dull throb of betrayal. Her Patron Saint fought for her, saved her—except for this one time. The one time when she needed him most. She felt for her necklace, only finding her bare skin.

Footsteps thumped into the room. She opened her eyes to see an officer standing at the foot of her bed. He appeared half the size of Tobias. A bandage covered one of his round cheeks. His wading-pool size eyes were bloodshot. She flinched as she recognized him. It was Chewed-face, John-Boy rather, from the night before.

“Came to finish the job, bitch.”

Marisol searched for a hole to escape in. Nothing. She had one resource left. “Tobias!”

As if she conjured him herself, Tobias appeared in the doorway. “Can I help you, officer?”

John-Boy stared at her, smiling and baring his crooked yellow teeth.

Tobias adjusted his untucked dress shirt, revealing the gun in his holster. “Officer? I’m talking to you!” His fingers twitched at his hip.

The giant, the second one from last night, crept up behind Tobias.

She screamed, “Look out!”

The giant wrapped a wire around Tobias’s neck and dragged him into the hallway.

As John-Boy lurched, she grabbed the vase of flowers and threw it at him. He reeled, howling and holding his face. The vase welted his unblemished cheek. She scrambled to unhook her cast out of the sling.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “I was told to make it look like an accident. Now? I’m really going to make it hurt.”

Marisol fell out of her bed; a blinding pain shot from her broken leg. She writhed among the mess of flowers and water. The tangle of tubes pulled at her hand. She ripped them away and smoothed her thumb over the medical tape. The flatlining monitor wailed while Marisol crawled to the corner.

Crash! Bits of glass scattered on the floor. The Patron Saint flew into the room through the window, swinging by a cable.

John-Boy froze. “What the—”

The Patron Saint landed on his feet and stood between Marisol and John-Boy. He swung bolas above his head, cast them, and wrapped them around John-Boy’s ankles. As he struggled against his bindings, John-Boy fell to the ground with an oof. As he wriggled on the floor, the Patron Saint attached his cable to John-Boy and shoved him out the window. The cable pulled taut as he dangled outside, screaming.

Gunfire echoed down the hallway. The monsters were still coming for her. The Patron Saint picked Marisol off the floor. She gripped her arms around his neck as thundering footsteps pounded closer to the door. Please be Tobias. Please…

A wheezing mass stumbled and held itself up in the doorframe. Tobias Quinlan. Thank God.

The Patron Saint carried her to the doorway. “I must get her out of here.”

“Move fast... backup will... be here at... any moment. Can’t trust… my own,” Tobias ordered .

“You two know each other?” she strained her eye muscles, looking from Tobias to the Patron Saint.

Tobias rubbed his throat. “Acquaintances.”

A howl came from the direction outside. The Patron Saint turned his head, eyes glowing. “You’ll have to fish the little fake policeman out the window.”

“And fill out… paperwork... about the dead big one.”

“I will take her to safety. Do you trust me?” the Patron Saint asked.

“Do I have a choice?” Tobias answered.

Orderlies and nurses bound to the hall and cowered. Nothing like a dead body and the Patron Saint to induce paralysis.

The Patron Saint nodded. “Hold your breath if you want to remember this, Quinlan.” He dropped a gas canister to the ground. A wall of smoke separated them from Tobias. The Patron Saint raced with Marisol in his arms out the fire exit and up the stairs.

She warmed with reverence. He hadn’t abandoned her. “Where were you?”

He flinched and mumbled, “I busted the window out of a home of a family choking on the fumes of their space heater. Stopped some hooligans harassing a jogger in the park. A stabbing. A robbery. But I didn’t… not when you needed me.” He stopped running. “I made a mi stake, but I swear from now on that no one will ever hurt you again.”

Of the three promises she had heard today, she wanted his to come true the most. “How?” she asked. Because he’s all-powerful—radioactive or alien?

“I’m taking you to a safe house.”

“Will you and I finally be getting some one-on-one time?”

He clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m physically broken, suffering some serious grief and abandonment issues. And anyone I have contact with seems to be targeted by murderers. I only need a kind, familiar face. Even if it’s behind a mask.” She caressed his jawline.

“No. I’m sorry for this.” The Patron Saint raised his hand to her face. He blew powder into it. She breathed in and…