Dead End Job (24 page)

“Oh of course, Honey,” my mother said. “Nurse, can we please get my daughter a glass of water?” My mother’s authoritarian tone was well-practiced from decades in the classroom as a high school teacher, and the nurse nodded and immediately shuffled out of the room. I turned my head and looked at Alex. I was trying to tell her that her hair looked kinda crazy but I all could muster was raising my right arm a couple of inches off the bed, only to find it stuck by a massive and pinching IV line that held my hand captive with tubes and needles.

“Dude, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself,” Alex warned.

“Oh Lu,” Amanda said. “You must feel like shit, I’m so sorry. We’ve been so worried about you, I can’t even begin to tell you.” A tear formed in her eye, and she crouched down to give me a very gentle hug.

“Yeah,” said Alex. “We’ve been here all night waiting for you to wake up. We’re so glad that you’re going to be OK.”

“Thanks,” I mouthed, giving up on speaking until I’d had some hydration.

I turned to look out the window and saw that the sun was just starting to come up. It must’ve been close to six in the morning. The nurse re-entered the room with a large glass of water. She pushed a button with her shoe that raised the top of bed up into the sitting position and instead of giving the glass to me, she handed it over to my mom.

“Make sure she drinks this slowly, we don’t want her to be sick or do anything to disturb her wounds,” she said to my mother.

My mom smiled at me, then brought the glass over to my lips slowly and let me take a couple of sips. I drank in the cool water, feeling it rush into my mouth and re-hydrate my sandpapery tongue and mouth.

“That’s enough for now, Dear,” my mom said, taking the glass away. “How are you feeling?”

I had to think about that one for a second. Now that my immediate need of thirst was taken care of, the rest of my situation started to slowly sink in. Although my left shoulder was steadily throbbing and I had a pounding headache, I could tell that I was bandaged and medicated enough to make the pain manageable. I felt a bit out of it as I looked down at my arms, covered with the white patches of bandages, which were covering up multiple cuts from the shattered glass doors, down to my wrists, past the IVs, and noticed that the deep cuts there from Martin’s hack job with the duct tape had also been bandaged. Even through the haze of the meds, I knew I was tired, dizzy and weak from the blood loss and shock, but considering what I had been through, I felt pretty damn lucky.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I finally answered, which was the truth.

“We’re so glad to hear that,” she said, smiling. Joe had stepped over behind her and he was grinning from ear to ear, and Alex and Amanda were also beaming down at me.

“We can’t fucking believe you got shot!” Alex exclaimed. We all stared at each other for a second. Normally my parents would have been mortified by the unabashed swearing, but in the moment everyone found it hilarious. We all just started laughing like a bunch of crazy people. Joe stepped up and gave me a hug and a kiss, Alex patted the top of my head, and my mom hugged me a bit harder than she should’ve, while Amanda snapped pictures on her phone, telling me that even though I looked as ugly as could be, I would appreciate the pictures for posterity later on.

After we had all had a good laugh, my mom stepped up and whispered in my ear, “Honey, there’s a young man outside. He’s been her since before we arrived, and he hasn’t left all night. I think he has been waiting for you to wake up. I think he’s a Police Officer,” she added nervously.

“Oh Mom, that’s fine,” I said, speaking in a tone loud enough for the whole group to hear me. I knew it had to be Rocky, and I knew what I owed him. “Actually, you guys should know, that’s the guy who saved my life.”

“Oh my gosh!” my mother exclaimed. “We had no idea. He didn’t say anything! I’m going to go out there and thank him.” And with that she grabbed Joe by the hand and pulled him out of the room to the hallway. Alex and Amanda stood looking at me.

“We thought that he was probably Rocky,” said Alex. “We were just not sure, and we didn’t want to upset your parents,” she explained.

“It’s OK, guys,” I said. “Trust me, I owe him more than you can imagine.”

My mom returned in a moment, dragging a very exhausted looking Rocky. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes were surrounded by dark circles. I could see how my parents might have questioned that he was a police officer, because although he was wearing his uniform’s pants, he had removed his navy blue shirt and was wearing just a plain white T-shirt tucked into his slacks. The shirt would have been completely unremarkable, except for the fact that it was soaked with splotches of dark, dried blood. It covered his shirt from just above his belly button, all the way to the collar, and was smeared on his neck all the way up to his strong chin. At first I was shocked, thinking that he had also been injured. It took me a few seconds to realize that the fact that he had been sitting in the hallway unattended by medical staff meant that he was in fact, just fine. Even more shocking was the realization that Rocky was covered with my own blood, and so much of it. He must have been holding me even after I passed out, waiting for the medics to arrive. He approached my bed and looked down at me with concern.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I replied, giving him a weak smile. He looked like absolute hell. I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror lately but I could imagine that I must have looked even worse.

I looked around the room at Alex, Amanda, my mother and step-dad, all staring at Rocky and I, and decided that I’d rather not have this conversation with an audience.

“Mom, Dad, Alex, Amanda,” I said, turning to look at each of them. “Do you guys mind giving us a minute?” I asked. Joe, Alex and Amanda nodded and quietly stepped out of the room. My mom looked concerned, and hesitated in the doorway. “It’s OK mom, I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

“We’ll be right out in the hall if you need anything Sweetie,” She said, and even though I wasn’t sure she fully believed me, she stepped out and closed the door behind her.

Rocky looked relieved. “Thanks for that,” he said. He turned around and pulled a stool that was sitting in the corner up to the edge of my hospital bed and sat down. He sat quietly for a second, taking me in, then reached down and gently touched the finger tips of my right hand with his large ones. He cleared his throat. “It looks like you’re going to be just fine,” he said, confidently.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” I responded. “My shoulder hurts, but it’s not terrible. I’ll make it,” I said. I looked down at our hands touching and realized how confused I was about the whole situation. “What happened? How did I get here? I can’t remember much after Martin shot me. There was so much glass, and I know you shot him…” I looked up, searching Rocky’s eyes. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Rocky’s confident façade broke down a bit. He didn’t break my gaze, but his voice was much quieter when he answered me.

“He’s gone. The paramedics brought him in behind you. He was dead when they got here.” Rocky’s hand left mine and moved to my face. He stroked my cheek and gently tucked a strand of my crunchy, blood soaked hair behind my ear.

I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt awful. I knew deep down that if Rocky hadn’t shot Martin, I would be dead, but I was still hurting. Another death
—I didn’t know if I could take it. It must have been showing on my face.

“I’ve only discharged my weapon twice in the line of duty,” he said. “The first time was in self-defense, and there was no doubt that it would have been him or me. Even though I knew that I’d been protecting my own life, I felt guilty about killing that man for years. I wished there was something else I could’ve done to avoid it, another approach. It’s always bothered me. But I want you to know, shooting Martin is never going to haunt me. I have no doubt that I did the right thing. He was hurting you, and I would do anything to protect you. There was no other way, Louisa. Know that,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “You saved my life.” There wasn’t much else to say. Even though I could tell that Rocky wanted to say more—talk about us, I didn’t have the energy to go there at the moment. My eyes were getting heavy, so I thanked him again and asked him to let me get some sleep. He got up, kissed me gently on the forehead, and turned to leave.

“Rocky, wait,” I said, groggily, as he started to turn the doorknob. He looked back at me. “How did you know I was there, at Merit?”

He turned around in the doorway. “It was that security guard from the building,” he said.

“Who?” I asked, for a minute I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Remember the night you went into the building to get your medicine? The night Sarah was murdered?” he asked. “The security guard from your building who was working, he left that next morning and went camping somewhere in the woods over in Idaho. We tried to get him on his cell phone, but he was out of range. We even asked Idaho State Patrol to try to track him down, but he’d gone so far off the grid that they couldn’t find him either, so we just had to wait for him to get back. Well, he finally called the station when came back to work yesterday. He was really alarmed and upset, he had no idea what was going on back here while he was gone. When he got done with work last night at eight-thirty he came over to the station and we took his statement. Detective Wang was interviewing him and I happened to be there, so I was watching over our CCTV. Anyways, when she asked him about that night, if he remembered seeing you come in, he said something that clicked with me.”

“What?”

“Well, he remembered everything from that night. He said that he did see you go into the building and exit a few minutes later, but he didn’t think it was strange, because he said that he figured you were just going upstairs to meet your gay friend who had gone up fifteen minutes before you. He said you two were always together during the day, so he didn’t think it was strange that he saw you both go in later that evening. I knew that he had to be talking about Martin. He was the only other person with access to your floor that had been there in the building. We knew it was probably another Merit employee, because the perp used a guest pass that had gone missing from the office months before, we just didn’t know who that person was. When I figured it out, I barged in to the interrogation and grabbed Detective Wang and dragged her out into the hallway at once to explain my theory. We had a team dispatched to Martin’s house from the station, but I was thinking about you. I called your cell phone right away, and when you didn’t pick up I drove to your house. You weren’t home, but Kathy was there and she told me that you’d rushed out to meet Martin at the office. When I finally got back to your office I was almost too late. I will kick myself forever for letting you get hurt like this, but I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened to you if I’d gotten there a minute later than I did. I’m sorry Louisa,” he finished.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “You saved my life.”

With that, Rocky gave me a half hearted smile, turned around and left, closing the door behind him.

Chapter 18: All Bad Things Come to an End

I was still in the hospital four days later. My left shoulder was achy and still very bruised, scabbed and gross looking, but the bandages covered that up, and the cuts and bruises that covered the rest of my body were slowly healing. Rocky had been right—the bullet had gone straight through, causing relatively little damage. The doctors told me that I’d caught only a glancing shot. Martin had probably been aiming his gun elsewhere, and if I hadn’t jumped forward at the second that I did, I would probably not be in as good of shape. However, my surgeon insisted that I would have to keep my arm in a sling for the next couple of weeks in order to make sure I healed properly, which meant no driving and total dependence on others to bus me around and keep me fed for awhile.

My parents live a bit too far away from Seattle to commute each day, so they stayed downtown at a hotel near the hospital while I was there, keeping me entertained and my spirits up. I spent the afternoon after I woke up enduring a long and exhausting session of questioning by Detective Schreck and Detective Wang. Thankfully Detective Lopez was absent, so the feeling this time was much less accusatory. Detective Wang even thanked me for the information I provided to her about Martin’s plans and sounded relatively sincere. When I asked about Martin’s alibi, the “Norwegian Viking,” Detective Schreck told me that he’d finally admitted under questioning that he was so drunk he really didn’t know what time Martin picked him up at the bar.

Beverly and her husband came down several times, and Alex and Amanda were also staples in the room. Even Kathy showed her face, and even though I was asleep, I was told that she chatted my parents up for longer than necessary about the merits of wind and solar power in Washington State.

I also got flowers and visits from some of my colleagues at Merit. Ari came over with Elaine and Mark a couple of days later, and they visited for an awkward five minutes. Elaine loudly proclaimed that I was her “hero” and that Merit Legal was simply not the same without me. Ari quietly explained to me that Guy Farner was under full FBI investigation for the involvement in Martin’s botched attempt at corporate espionage, and that the death of NorCom’s Leila Carson was also being investigated as a possible homicide. The authorities believed that Guy Farner had also tried to collect information from NorCom’s Portland office, and even though she’d died at home, Leila might have been another victim. Priti came by one evening with some home-made chocolate chip cookies, and I got an ostentatious bouquet from the Merit management and HR teams that read “Thank you for your service to Merit, we look forward to your speedy recovery and return.”

My mom told me that Rocky came by twice to see me, but I had been asleep both times. The second time he came by he left a massive and beautiful bouquet of yellow roses with a card that read: “I can’t wait until you get better – R.” I didn’t know how I felt about his visits. Even though I was so grateful to him for saving my life, I still felt that he had betrayed my trust within our romantic relationship. A big piece of my heart ached for him to hold me again, and tell me that he loved me, but I just didn’t know if I’d ever be able to really trust him, and that was not a good place to start a relationship. I would have to give it some time and see how things felt as I healed and got into a more normal place, physically and mentally.