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Bringing Betty coffee and cinnamon buns or a pillow for Betty’s goddamn head. And did Betty want this? Or maybe he could go get her that?
Made me fucking sick.
I kind of hoped that when this was all over, Betty would tell Deke to go straight to fucking hell. Because if Liddy and I were not going to get our happily ever after? No one else was going to get theirs either. The thought that I might screw both of those pain-in-the-ass interlopers out of a romance novel ending cheered me up enough to make me want to take out the bike. I had hardly left that hospital room since they had brought Liddy in. One minute, one hour, one day had faded into another. If staring at a woman and holding her hand could make her come back to you, then I had that in spades.
Being there with Liddy, calling her name 24/7 wasn’t working. Worst of all, at times I swear that I could feel Liddy slipping further and further away from me. Liddy had been hurt badly, almost fatally injured. When the FBI had found Liddy in that cage, she had just been shot. A man was lying with a steel bed spring stuck in the middle of his eye and another in his throat. And there had been another woman in the cage with Liddy. I didn’t know much about her condition, but I know that she was in the hospital same as Liddy.
Henry Peters, that low-life, bottom feeder, mother fucking, sonofabitch had sung like a goddamn canary when pressed by the bureau guys. It was with his help that they were able to find Liddy. We had been right in thinking that Peters was up to his shriveled balls with the Rogue Hillbillies and their nefarious dealings. The contents of the safe provided evidence the FBI needed to bring the whole thing to a screeching halt. They had made dozens of arrests and were still in the process of sorting things out. There had been other women held in the cage with Liddy, but I wasn’t sure what the deal was there. Who the other women were, why they had been taken, where they had gone? All that was still being investigated.
In the meantime, Liddy remained in that goddamn bed trying to find her way back from one world to the other. And I wasn’t at all sure that she was heading in the right direction.
All of a sudden it all got too much for me. I started heading straight out. I was going to go out that door and keep on going. I needed to breathe in something other than antiseptic cleaner, feel something besides hard industrial linoleum underneath my feet, and see something other than the woman that I loved hooked up to machines.
Selfish, self-serving bastard that I was. I needed out.
But, as I turned the corner and began to walk towards the exit door I heard the soft sound of music. I turned to the left and a polished oak door with a small stained-glass window of white lilies appeared immediately in front of me. The sign over the door saidChapel.I paused for a minute because the last time I had been in church was the time that my buddy Eddie DeCroce and I had broken into a side door of Divine Mercy. Eddie, who had been an altar boy, knew just where the wine had been stored before Father O’Hara got around to blessing it.
I took another look at those stained glass lilies and figured what the hell, it couldn’t hurt. So, I pushed open the door and stepped inside. The first thing I saw was a large, wooden crucifix. There were lit votive candles arranged around the base of the cross surrounded by large vases of colorful flowers. The music that led me here was a little louder now but no less peaceful. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I had sure as shit never prayed before, so I figured I would just sit. There were not many pews in the chapel, maybe a half dozen or so. I sat down heavily on a bench in the back and closed my eyes. I was suddenly so tired. Weary in a way that no amount of sleeping could fix. But now, I just relaxed and let the music take me for a moment.
Pictures of Liddy flashed before me. All kinds of images. It was like seeing our life together from reel to reel. I remembered the first time I saw her bony knees and pink glasses. I remembered how I loved to make her mad because all her attention was on me. I thought about the ripped picture and out of habit, I rubbed the half-moon scar her bite mark had made on the back of my hand. I thought about that day at the lake and how kissing her had felt so right. I thought about the riot that kiss had caused and the heavy cost of its aftermath. I thought about Liddy under me, on top of me, and how it felt to be inside her. I thought about how being with Liddy was always like coming home.
Because Liddy was my home.
She was my heart. Liddy was my goddamn life, and we just had never had enough time together. And now to think that the time we had left, that the life we had waited for, would be taken away from us? I didn’t know if I would survive that. I didn’t know if I wanted to survive that. Because no matter what Betty thought, or the doctors said, I knew. I knew we were losing her and there was not a damn thing I could do to stop it. I grew furious with impotent rage. I wanted to smash the cross to bits. I wanted to shatter the glass votives and rip the heads off the flowers. I wanted to open a vein in sacrifice.
But in the end, what good would that do me?
How far had a life lived in violence brought me?
So, in the end, I just sat there. I stopped fighting. I stopped looking for answers and just let the misery wash over me. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it anymore. I gave it up to the dude on the cross. Maybe that is what praying is after all. The room had begun to darken as the natural light began to fade. I felt a kind of quiet peace wash over me.
“Keed?” A small voice seemed to call to me. “Keed?”
I felt a light hand fall on my shoulder. Then there was a slight shift of the air, and suddenly a small pretty girl with big eyes and a shy smile was sitting next to me. She was wearing a hospital gown.
“Who the hell are you?” I leaned back away from her, startled to have someone suddenly so close to me.
“I am sorry.” She apologized in a heavy French accent. “You are Keed? Leedy’s Keed, no?”
I stood up and away from her. The way she had suddenly appeared unnerved me.
.
“You know Liddy?” Then a sudden understanding hit me hard. “You’re the other one. You’re the other girl who was in the cage with Liddy.”
She smiled sadly. “Yes.
“Emilie.” I nodded. “You’re okay”
“Yes. I am… now.” She took long pauses in between each utterance. I knew she was struggling to find the words. “But Leedy is not?”
“No. She isn’t.” Then because Emilie was the one person on earth who knew what Liddy had gone through, I told her. I told her everything.
“Liddy won’t wake up. The doctors say she can, but she won’t. There is no medical reason that they can give me, except that she needs time and rest. But they’re wrong. My gut tells me they’re wrong. She is leaving. I can feel her leaving. I can feel her life beginning to slip away. I feel like I’m going crazy, but I can feel her dying.” I bent my head down and felt the hot tears fall down my cheeks. “And what do I do? What the hell do I do? I get ready to bail. Just before this, just before I walked into the chapel, I was on my way out that exit door and I don’t know if I would have come back.” My voice cracked with raw emotion and deep shame.
For the first time in my whole damn adult life, I cried. And not just a few tears. Sobs wracked my body as I let go of all the fear and anger and hurt and pain, the power of it brought me to my knees.
“I am…sorry. I do not understand.” She patted my back awkwardly. “Leedy not good. I know this. Leedy not good.”
