Bleeding Out (23 page)

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“We’ll see. At least a couple of days. We want to give the artery a chance to knit itself together. We don’t want you moving around right now and tearing it open.”

Frank could tell Kennedy wasn’t pleased with the answer though she nodded resignedly. When the nurse and doctor left Frank stood by the bed. “Still sleepy?” she asked.

Kennedy stared up at the ceiling before replying, “More stupid and foggy, really. And thirsty. I feel like I’ve been running through the Sahara.”

“I’ll see if they’ll let you have water yet.”

Frank returned a moment later with ice chips and slipped one into Kennedy’s mouth. “This’ll have to do for now.”

Kennedy glanced at the blood on Frank’s shirt.

“That all mine?”

“Sure is. And there was a helluva lot more.”

“You must have saved my life.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Keeping as much in as you did before the ambo got there.”

Frank didn’t know what to say. Taking credit for saving Kennedy’s life after she was the one who’d endangered it in the first place hardly seemed fair. Kennedy clamped her eyes shut, and thinking she was suddenly in pain, Frank asked, “What is it?”

Kennedy opened her eyes, and Frank was alarmed to see tears. “I almost died in there, didn’t I?” she whispered.

Frank swallowed hard, pushing her hands down in her pockets. She nodded at Kennedy, confused by an ugly knot of shame and guilt. Kennedy closed her eyes again as a tear slowly leaked out. Frank watched it slide down her temple, amazed, even slightly envious, at how easily Kennedy let it go. As she watched the tear fall, Frank walked into another part of the day’s script. With no warning, she remembered the shock that had hit her when she realized how close she’d been to dying, the pure terror of it.

Frank wanted to get the hell out of there. She wanted to go home and stand in the hot shower and drink a quart of Scotch and not remember anything ever again. A little voice in her head screamed for her to run as fast as she could. She could do that— just walk out and not look back. And she knew if she did, she was as good as dead.

When are you going to grow up?

Barely breathing, Frank took Kennedy’s hand. It was warm and smooth, and Kennedy’s fingers grabbed tightly. Frank marveled at Kennedy’s ability to cry, as if it were as natural as breathing. Before she could think about it, Frank reached out with her free hand to keep the fat drops from rolling into Kennedy’s ears. She was surprised and embarrassed by the tenderness of her gesture. She half expected Kennedy to tease her, but the detective only whispered, “Sorry.”

Frank shook her head. “Don’t be. Go ahead and cry. It’s pretty scary.”

“He was gonna kill me.”

Again Frank was speechless. She looked down at the hand in hers, the blood crusted in the knuckles and nails. She felt a dull justification in shooting Johnston, but it paled next to her regret.

Frank said, “I’m sorry I got you into this.” She heard the quaver in her voice and wondered if she was helping Kennedy or just shamelessly seeking her own absolution. Kennedy tried to shrug and winced. Wiping her tears, she said simply, “I’m a cop.”

“Yeah. And a damn good one.”

Frank squeezed Kennedy’s hand and she squeezed back. Frank had to clear her throat before she could ask, “More ice?”

“Yeah.”

Frank riddled with the slippery ice shavings while Kennedy recovered her bravado.

“So,” she teased, “are you being my personal slave-girl now?”

Frank considered the question. She didn’t think she’d ever be glad to hear Kennedy call her a slave-girl, but as she caught a piece of ice she grinned slightly. “Looks that way.”

“You look like somethin’ the cat ate and threw back up.”

When Kennedy woke up again, Frank was still in her ruined clothes, still working.

“Hey.”

Laying the statement aside, Frank noted, “You don’t look much better.”

Although the nurses had sponged off the worst of it, there was still gore matted in Kennedy’s hair. Betadine yellowed her jaw and neck.

“Want some more ice?”

“Yeah.”

Kennedy accepted it eagerly. Frank asked how she felt.

“Okay, I guess. Tired.”

“It’s been a long day.”

Frank waited to give her another chip, and Kennedy said, “For you, too. Why don’t you go home? You’re gonna start to stink the place up.”

Frank shrugged. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. ‘Sides, that’s the nurses’ job.”

Frank slipped more ice in her mouth.

“Luchowski called your father, but he said he couldn’t make the long flight.”

“Yeah. He’s got emphysema pretty bad. It’s hard for him to get around.”

“Is there someone you want me to call?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

Kennedy made a face and told Frank not to be silly. “I’m in a hospital, for Christ’s sake. What’s gonna happen to me?”

Frank didn’t know how to explain about the nightmares and cold sweats, or the screams that woke you out of your sleep and the terror that lingered even after you were awake.

“They’re probably going to move you soon. I’ll just make sure you get there and then I’ll go.”

Kennedy wisely declined to argue. Shortly after, she was transferred to a double room. The other bed was empty, and Kennedy joked about keeping it empty because she might want to have a party later on. She’d already charmed her nurses. After they settled her in and left, Kennedy told Frank to bring on the dancing girls. Frank had to admire Kennedy. Under all the shock and trauma, there was still a resilient vitality.

“The only dancing girls you’re going to be seeing are in your dreams, sport, so why don’t you try and get some more rest.”

“Not a bad idea.” Kennedy started to yawn, but the pull in her neck cut it short. “Only if you go home, though.”

Although Frank craved her bed and the merciful oblivion of sleep, she said, “Tell you what, I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep and then I’ll go.”

“Promise?”

Frank nodded.

“Alright.”

Kennedy promptly shut her eyes. Frank sat down, propping her bloodied shoes up on the other bed. She started on the statement again, but after a few minutes Kennedy asked somberly, “Have you ever been hurt on the line?”

Frank stared at the last sentence she wrote.

“Couple times.”

“What happened?”

“Different things.” Frank didn’t want to go into details. Kennedy was silent for a minute. Then she asked quietly, “What was the worst?”

Frank sighed, giving up on the report.

“Right after I made detective, my partner and I were talking to a woman and her boyfriend. Her baby’d been thrown out the window. Fell three stories, and they were insisting they knew nothing about it, that he must have just crawled over the windowsill. Problem was, the kid was only a couple months old. So I’m talking to the mother. My partner’s standing next to her, and all of sudden he gets this look, and he’s looking right behind me. I see him pull at his holster, and just as I’m crouching and turning to see what’s behind me, I feel this burn over my hip. Bastard shot me with a .38. My partner blew his fucking arm off. Turns out he’d dumped the baby and decided we were weren’t taking him in for it.”

Frank shrugged. End of story. But not for Kennedy.

“So what happened to you?”

“I was fine. By some…fluke, it went right through me. Exited the other side. I didn’t know that though until after I came out of surgery.”

“Did you think you were gonna die?”

Frank had told her story to the wall. Now she turned toward Kennedy, remembering what Noah had said, how she looked like Mag. Her eyes were serious for once, but they still burned. There was a hunger in them that made Frank more comfortable looking at the wall again.

“I saw where it had gone in and figured it was pretty bad.”

“Were you scared?”

Frank scanned the smooth white paint for an answer. The shooting was another part of her past that Frank had walked away from without looking back. She’d never talked about it with Joe Girardi or her partner, and had managed to gloss over it during the shrink sessions. She’d acknowledged it only in the dark safety of Maggie’s arms after a flashback had sent her reeling, or a nightmare had yanked her from sleep. Slowly she squared the papers on her lap, then closed the folder around them.

“Yeah, I was scared. Not as much when it happened, but later. That’s when it hits you, is later, after you think it’s all over and everything’s okay.”

“Like how?” Kennedy persisted.

Frank twisted her invisible ring and took a long time to answer. She was so tired. She wished that Kennedy would go to sleep and quit dredging this shit up, but she bit back her irritation. This was why Kennedy’s script was different than Maggie’s. This was where Frank had a chance to right wrongs, maybe to grow up. It felt like an atonement, and Frank reasoned that penance was never easy. She’d gotten Kennedy into this mess and she’d see her through it.

“You’ll be talking to a wit, or just standing at the sink doing dishes, brushing your teeth—you can be doing anything—and then out of the blue it just hits you. You’ll feel where you got shot, you’ll see your partner’s face. You’ll hear his voice, feel the burn where the bullet went in, smell burned eggs and a full diaper pail…you’ll be there and it’ll be real. It’ll be happening all over again. And it’ll scare the crap out of you. Then afterwards you’ll think you’re going crazy, but they say it’s perfectly normal. Posttraumatic stress. There’s also the nightmares. They’re just as real. Sometimes worse than real.”

Frank faltered, her profile to Kennedy. She was haggard. Her jaw had softened and her shoulders hung slackly. Exhaustion had replaced tension. Frank’s hard veneer had cracked. When she spoke again it was with effort.

“You know you’re ROD for a while. You’ll have to talk to a shrink before you can go back to work.”

Kennedy bobbed her head amiably. “Yeah. I figured as much. Did you go to a shrink after you got shot?”

Frank closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the chair.

“Yep.”

“Did it help or was it just bullshit?”

“Let’s just say I think you’ll be a better patient than I was.”

“That shrink didn’t get squat from you, did he?”

Frank graced the ceiling with a faint smile.

“You’re gonna have to go in this time too, aren’t you?”

Frank sighed, arching her back as she got out of the chair. “I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.”

“You can go home anytime,” Kennedy grinned. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“I know.”

“So why don’t you go home, get some sleep.”

Frank looked down at Kennedy. Around the jaundiced edge of the betadine, her color was good. Still pale, but not the awful chalk-white of serious shock. Her eyes were bright again. Frank looked away. She was young and strong. She’d be alright physically; it was the emotional fallout that worried Frank. But so far Kennedy was coping well, better than Frank ever had.

She felt an involuntary pang of tenderness. In order to get out of Johnston’s apartment alive, they’d had to put aside their mutual antagonism and forge a fragile alliance. They came through it together, and Frank wasn’t about to abandon Kennedy now.

“Look. I thought the deal was you sleep, I go. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner I can get out of here.”

Kennedy surprised Frank by closing her eyes and wiggling deeper into the sheets.

“I’m Audi,” she murmured, and indeed she was gone, sleep quickly claiming her. But Frank stayed by the bed. A lock of hair, the color of sunflowers, was taut under Kennedy’s pillow. Frank freed it, surprised how silky it was. She held it for a moment, then let go, an odd expression on her face. Quietly she backed away. Instead of going home, however, she took off her shoes and stretched out on the empty bed.

A few weeks after his father’s funeral the boy picked up a whore. He was nervous. His father had always handled the business, but she seemed willing enough. He asked if it would be okay to do it in the car. When he told her what he wanted she balked and jacked the price up fifty dollars. He didn’t have that much money.

“Then I guess you gonna have to settle for what you can get,” she said, starting to blow him.

He couldn’t do it.

A week later he tried with another whore and a hundred dollars in his pocket. When she got on her hands and knees, he flew again. But he missed his dad.

The next few days brought endless visits from deputy chiefs and commanders. OIS came and went with their interminable questions and forms, as did Foubarelle and Luchowski and the suits from IAD. Timothy Johnston’s family was calling for an investigation, and Internal Affairs was cross-examining all the detectives involved. At least Frank had managed to avoid the RHD dicks, but they finally cornered her at the hospital. She was less than cooperative. The two detectives left in a snit after a tense fifteen minutes, threatening to nail her with hampering an investigation.

“I reckon that’s the least of your worries right now,” Kennedy observed.

Frank agreed. “Pretty low on my list of priorities.”

Having just come from home and a decent night’s sleep, Frank asked how Kennedy was doing.

“Never better. Ready to git on my board and hit the surf.”

“Not on my watch,” Frank warned.

Kennedy grinned. “What are you, my mother?”

Frank nodded. “As long as you’re in here.”

“Well, that ain’t gonna be for much longer. Doc said he’ll probably release me tomorrow.”

Frank raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yep. Then it’s me an’ the long-board.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s gonna stop me?” Kennedy challenged.

Frank leaned on her knuckles at the foot of Kennedy’s bed. She couldn’t have imagined just a few days ago that the younger woman’s cheekiness would have ever pleased her. But then there was a lot she couldn’t have imagined a few days ago.

Except for brief trips home and to headquarters, Frank had spent most of her time with Kennedy. They talked a lot, alternating between friendly sparring and painfully serious discussion. Kennedy was able to switch gears rapidly and easily, often leaving Frank in the dust; one minute Kennedy made her laugh and the next she felt like she’d been skewered through the heart. Keeping up with her was demanding, but Frank was game. She considered it part of her reparations to Kennedy. Though in truth, she actually enjoyed the young woman’s company.