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I chuckled grimly, rolling my eyes as I asked him, “What part of Baltimore do you live in?”
He rolled his icy eyes in response and put his arm around my shoulders to steady me and help me step up. I gripped the cold, thin rail and eased my way up the first flight, grimacing in pain as my muscles tightened further with the effort. As we reached the second floor landing, I groaned and gasped, “Stop, stop, hang on…”
Frost stopped immediately and let me lean back against the graffiti-stained wall, biting his lip in uncertainty as I caught my breath. “You said this is normal?”
“Fairly,” I responded, my guard slowly easing back up.
“But what is it from?” His eyes had narrowed and seemed to pierce through my soul. I felt transparent and I could understand how a man like this, young as he was, could become a successful homicide detective. He seemed to be the sort of person who could quickly come to know people better than they knew themselves. From knowing him one day, I could see all too clearly that he was brilliant and would have done well as a lawyer or neurosurgeon if he wasn’t so suited to detective work. “Car accident,” I lied. “I was in a car accident when I was seventeen and my stomach muscles were badly torn up.”
I could tell by the unwavering steadiness of his eyes that he didn’t believe a word I said, but after a moment, the piercing expression lifted and as I seen him do before, he filed away the conversation for later study. “Are you okay?”
I hesitated, evaluating the pain I was in and whether I could make it up the second flight of stairs yet. After a moment, I nodded. “Yeah.”
Frost reached out a hand to me and I took it gingerly, still worried about just how much he’d seen through me. Just how much did he know? Did I really believe he hadn’t looked me up in the police database, hadn’t perused my file at the BPD? Not remotely, but I knew there was no way I could get to my apartment alone without collapsing and probably falling down these stairs, breaking a bone or worse. The stairwell was concrete and I could very easily crack my skull open if I fell back.
He put his arm around my shoulders as before and helped me make my way up, one step at a time. By the eighth step, near the top, my stomach was clenching as if something was chewing and tearing my muscles. My mind instantly went to Cujo and I actually glanced down to make sure I wasn’t dragging a St. Bernard up the stairs by its teeth. There was not a dog there, of course, but the pain was growing unbearable. I tightened my eyes shut and whimpered, my breathing stopping altogether in agony. “Poe?” Frost asked quietly, worriedly. Before he could say anything beyond my name, though, a shot of pain rippled through my torso as if I’d been ripped in half. I screamed and my knees buckled beneath me.
Frost’s arms locked around my midsection, catching me and easing me down to lie across the steps. As he knelt beside me, saying my name over and over, trying to get me to respond, I wondered vaguely how far down the stairs I would have fallen had he not caught me. From the way my legs gave out beneath me, I would not be lying if I said that I would’ve rolled backwards and possibly broken my neck. I moaned weakly as another shot of pain racked through me and Frost easily, gently, shifted me onto my back and slid his arms beneath me, lifting me up and carrying me slowly up the stairs like a small child.
As we passed through the third floor stairwell door, Frost asked me, “What number?”
I groaned, trying to hold back tears as my insides burned. “Thirty-six.”
As Frost hurried down the hall, saying the apartment numbers out loud as he passed each door, he said urgently, “I’m going to need your key.”
We approached door number thirty-six and I gasped, “Put me down. I’ll get it myself.”
Frost eased me to my feet, helping me to lean against the wall beside the door. I gripped and tried to massage out the cramps in my muscles with one hand and, with the other, dug in my front jeans pocket for the key. After some difficulty and another wince of pain, I produced the little bronze key and handed it to Frost. He took it immediately and began struggling with the aging, warped lock as I tightened my eyes, holding in a scream.I’ve had worse, I’ve had so much worse…
Frost finally shoved the door open wide and took my arm, helping me in and closing the door behind him. “Do you have any pain medications or muscle relaxants?” he asked, moving with me into the tiny living area directly beyond the threshold. I nodded and hissed, “Kitchen cupboard. By the fridge. I don’t need water.” Frost readjusted his grip, his fingers tightening on my bare hand, sending warmth across my skin. I avoided shivering at the touch and he helped me to a seat on the couch, then rushed back into the kitchen, flinging open the indicated cupboard. The cupboard door slammed against the adjacent fridge with a resoundingcrackand if I wasn’t in pain, I would have given him hell for breaking my furniture. He muttered something to himself as he sought out the pain medication and I realized too late just how full my medicine cabinet was of various pain killers, anti-depressants, sleeping pills and my old PTSD prescriptions. I turned slightly, trying to see him from where I sat, but before I could crane my neck far enough, he’d returned with the indicated bottle. Hands shaking at not only the pain now, but also shame at everything he must have seen in the cabinet, I struggled to pry the little orange container open and shake three pills into the palm of my hand. Without hesitating, I tossed them back and swallowed them instantly, then gave him back the capped bottle. He placed it silently on the book-covered, shabby coffee table before us and sat beside me on the couch.
I studied my hands on my stomach carefully, letting my dark hair fall forward as a curtain between his eyes and my red face. Shame polluted my mind and I thought of the water stains on the ceiling, the peeling wallpaper, the warped door, the creaking floorboards, the mold I had tried and failed to kill beneath the kitchen sink. And this man had assumed my building would have an elevator. He had money and was probably looking at me right now as if I was homeless, but additionally, he was probably judging me based on those medications. There were a lot of opium-derivatives in that cupboard; addictive, dangerous pain killers and anti-anxiety medications. Anti-depressants meant to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The heaviest sleeping pills doctors can legally give out. What did I look like to him? He probably thought I was insane, addicted to opium, and dirt-poor. Disgusting, no doubt. Why had I let him in? Why had I let him help me? I could have made it up the stairs myself eventually. And I certainly could have dismissed him as soon as we reached my apartment door. What had I been thinking?
Frost gently touched my hand with the tips of his fingers and immediately some of the tension fell away. My mind raced. There was no way he could not have seen what else was in that medicine cupboard. There was no way he was not judging me even as he touched my hand. To judge was human nature. Why then, was he…touching me? Reassuring me? Comforting me?
“Why are you still here?” I asked, my voice numb with confusion.
Frost didn’t say anything for a long moment, finally replying, “Do you want me to go?”
I thought about it; this was my chance to ask him to leave, to get him out of my life and far away where he couldn’t do me any more harm. I did not want to get hurt again and he would surely do just that. So, why did the image of him walking out that door frighten me so? “No,” I finally answered.
“Then why do you ask?”
I lifted a now tear-streaked face from my hands to look at him. His eyes were molten ice, concern and worry alive in them, drowning any trace of judgment, if it were even present at all. “Because I don’t understand why you’d want to stay.”
He frowned deeply, something haunted stirring within him at my answer. “Because…” he hesitated, then said, “Because I care, Poe. Why wouldn’t I stay?”
I blinked. I’d never heard anyone say those two words together in my life.I care. I imagined in my mind his warm voice repeating the words “I care” over and over, the sweet way they rolled off his tongue, like water. He barely knew me and we’d scarcely spoken. No one cared about me, not even my foster parents. How could any of this possibly make any sense? How could he truly want to help someone like me? What would his reward be? He tilted his head, puzzled by something I’d given away in my expression. “What is it?”
I shook my head slowly, tears silently falling over my cheeks. “It’s nothing, I’m just…not used to being cared for. Especially by someone I only just met.”
Frost smiled warmly, briefly, and then the concern returned to his eyes. He glanced down at my afflicted muscles, concealed as they were by my sweater and jean jacket, then returned his gaze to my eyes. “Better?”
I gritted my teeth against another spasm of pain. “A little. It takes awhile to take effect.” I leaned heavily against the soft cushions of the couch, trying to relax manually. “Thank you, Frost. I don’t know how to repay you.”
He looked down at his hands on his knees. “It’s not really the sort of thing I ask payment for.”
“Not for helping me upstairs,” I clarified. He met my eyes again in puzzlement. “For not judging me.”
