Page 33 of Boardroom Mask

JILLIAN

“Come to me / In the night hours / I will wait for you”

— “War of Hearts” by Ruelle

I get back from Mount Sinai a little after one in the morning.

It wasn’t exactly a fun trip to the hospital. It’s always amazed me that people go work there every day, because to me, hospitals are some of the least pleasant places on the planet. Beeping monitors, squeaky stretcher wheels, hushed and morbid conversations—not the backdrop to a nice day at the office, in my opinion. But the nurses always seem to tolerate it just fine. Heck, a pair of them manning the desk on the ER floor were giggling with each other for most of the evening like all was right in the world.

The whole time, I sat there running the math on what I’d done. I dragged Elliot to that restaurant because I was too afraid to go home alone. Iusedhim.

And the Masked Man madehimpay for it.

In some twisted kind of penance, I made myself sit in that awful plastic chair under those awful buzzing lights and wait until all the nurses and doctors had gone in and done what Elliot needed them to do. One of them, mistaking me for some kind of wife or sister or girlfriend, stopped by to give me the report. He had a hairline fracture to his orbital bone, two cracked ribs, fourteen stitches to close the gash over his left eye, and he required a blood transfusion to make up for all that he’d lost. Luckily, there was no internal bleeding, but they were going to keep him overnight for observation since his answers to the concussion test were not what anyone would call “accurate.”

I nodded and mumbled thank you, then sat there for a few more hours because I didn’t know what else to do. Finally, I couldn’t keep my head upright. It was time to go home.

But I also couldn’t leave without at least looking at him. So, after waiting a little longer to be sure no other medical professionals needed access to him, I slipped into Elliot’s room.

He was propped up in the bed with half his face swollen shut and a row of fresh purple stitches above his brow. He looked small in that bed and that papery gown. I saw his ever-present Knicks jersey, looking like a bloodied rag, in a Ziploc bag next to his bed, and I almost cried.

“Hi,” I whispered from the doorway. “Elliot, I just wanted to say I’m so?—”

His good eye found me for half a second. The fear in it was so frothy and so total that I stopped talking and died a little inside.

That was bad. What was even worse was how, then, he stiffened and looked away from me as if I no longer existed.

Yeah. I deserved that.

I left.

Now, I’m home…

… and there’s a message painted in blood on my wall.

I stand in the doorway for a while and look at it.I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO.Some of the blood has dried darker than the rest, almost black at the edges. Part of me wants to clean it, but the thought of expending the energy required to find a bucket, and soap, and bleach, and hot water, and to stood where he stood and scrub away what he wrote there… It makes me want to vomit with exhaustion.

Instead, I back up and pull the bathroom door shut.

Other rooms beckon to me. The kitchen, to eat something. My bedroom, to sleep until this horrible saga ends. The couch, to numb my brain with mindless TV so I don’t have to think about how terrified Elliot looked to see me again.

But I don’t go to any of those places. I walk to the kitchen, open the junk drawer next to the fridge, and dig around until my fingers close on the Taser I bought a few years ago in a midnight, post-nightmare frenzy. It’s pink and shaped like a small flashlight. I check the battery indicator. It shines green. Good enough.

Then I sit down at the kitchen table.

The apartment is quiet. The window is shut now. The lights are on. The fridge hums. The clock on the microwave says 2:33 A.M.

I set the Taser on the table in front of me.

And I wait.

Because he’s coming back. I know he is. He was here tonight. He wrote on my wall in Elliot’s blood and then he left, and now, he’s out there somewhere doing whatever he does when he’s not terrorizing me, but at some point soon, I just know it in my bones, he’s going to come back through that door.

When he does, I’m going to be sitting right here.

As I sit and wait, I think about everything that’s happened so far. I try to do it dispassionately. If this was a story I’m researching, then I’d be laying out the facts.

Here’s what I know: A masked man broke into my apartment last night and told me he was sent to kill me. Then he left. He followed me to a coffee shop and bought me a drink. Then he left. He followed me to a restaurant and beat the shit out of my neighbor. Then he left. He came here and wrote a love note in blood on my shower tile. Then he left.