Page 12 of Savior
“What the hell, Piper? Just let me in!”
Caught between the need for someone familiar, someone safe, and the devastation of what I’ve been through, I freeze. Gavin bangs on the door and I jump backward.
“Piper? Piper, c’mon, baby. Open the door.” His voice is achingly familiar and causes sobs to rise in my throat.
“No,” I think I say, but I’m not sure if the words actually make it through my lips.
He keeps banging on the door until other voices join him, then another knock comes, but this time it’s a woman on the other side. I glance out the window and find the front yard full of flashing lights.
With tentative movements, I open the door and peer around the side.
The officer on the other side lowers her weapon. “You’re safe now, Piper. Help is here.”
* * *
A hand wraps around my wrist and I come up screaming, fists balled and swinging.
“Ms. Davenport! Ms. Davenport,” says a frantic, shrill voice. “You’re safe. You’re in the hospital.
I open my eyes and blink, chest heaving from the sudden rush of adrenaline. A wary, unfamiliar face peers down at me. “I just need to check your vitals,” she says, and takes a measured step toward the bed. “Is that okay?”
Nodding makes my head throb and I press a hand to it, then pull it away when I find a thick bandage.What the—
Then it hits me. All of it.
Paige.
My fingers wrap around the metal arms of the hospital bed when the force of it threatens to simply wash me away. The nurse puts a hand on my arm and I jerk away again, lost in the throes of the memories. A harsh sound is coming from somewhere and it takes me a minute to realize it’s my desperate, broken sobs.
The nurse rushes out of the room and comes back. I cover my eyes and sink into the bed as she pushes God-only-knows-what into the I.V. snaking into my arm. Whatever it is, I hope it’ll take the pain away. He didn’t kill me, but I almost wish he did. I wish he’d taken me instead.
Living without Paige is simply incomprehensible. I reject the very thought of it.
Whatever the nurse gives me swallows me slowly, taking me under into the blessedly empty depths where there’s no such thing as pain at all. I give into it gleefully.
A few hours later, after a visit from the doctor and a bevy of nurses, my parents appear. I can hardly bear to look at them. They remind me too much of Paige. My mother flutters about the hospital room arranging all the flowers already filling every surface while my father stomps around glaring at everyone. They’re trying to keep it together, trying to be strong for me, but I can read the strain between them. I can see how they’re struggling with the fact that they just lost a child, but at least they still have the other.
I ignore them both and feign sleep. They’ve stopped giving me any of the good drugs because the police are supposed to come by for an interview so I can’t slip off into unconsciousness and hide away from it all anymore. I can’t even move without being reminded of my own anguish.
A broken wrist, various lacerations, a concussion, and shock are my new bedfellows. And I am grateful. The combination blurs most of what happened after I locked myself in Paige’s room. I have only a few recollections of being wheeled from the apartment to an ambulance. Flashing red and blue lights. A huddle of curious onlookers scenting blood. Flickers of the ride to the hospital. Feeling grateful I didn’t have to see them take Paige away. The blood smeared on our floors is the only image that is crystal clear.
The finality.
“Piper,” my mother says from the doorway, her voice watery with tears. “The officers need you to go over one more time what happened.”
I nod, though I kept my gaze on the lone window of my hospital room as I sit up.
Detective Manning, who I notice is dressed in a worn suit when he’d come to the scene to check on me the night before, hadn’t changed in the hours since. It is hopelessly wrinkled by now, a fact that I appreciate. Paige deserves that kind of dedication, which is why I don’t protest. He was tireless with Carly’s case and kind to us. He’s the only one I feel understands what I’m going through. The moment his eyes settle on me, I want to burst into tears and throw my arms around his neck.
As he draws into the room, I scoot over on the bed and offer him a place beside me, comforted by his closeness. He obliges and perches on the bedside, a kind of familiarity borne from tragedy. He takes my hand for a second, then pats it and sets it down on the bed. He pulls out a legal pad about a third of the size of the one he used when he interviewed us the first time, which almost makes me smile. When he speaks, his voice is soft and full of compassionate understanding. “Start wherever you can, with as much detail as you can, Piper. Whatever you can remember will help us figure out just what happened. Take your time.”
“It was late, probably past midnight, although I don’t remember the exact time. I’d been drinking. I was coming back from a bar. She’d been there with me about an hour before. Around eleven o’clock. I’d seen my ex-boyfriend, and she was talking me out of rekindling the relationship.”
“His name?” he asks.
“Gavin Lance,” I reply absently.
Detective Manning shuffles through his notes. “So you were at the bar together around eleven o’clock and you went home about an hour later. How did you get home?”