Learning to Trust: Curtain Falls (7 page)

As I lay there, homesickness crept in, a
poison
washing over my body—and I was
acting as
a
sponge
. No, it wasn't
just
homesickness, it was
regret
. Where would I be now had I just done the job and went back to the city and left this all behind me? Roland had provided me with a hell of a story, one that would have done the trick for sure. I wanted to see my mom and dad, my boss, my friends that I had left behind because I had felt vulnerable, unable to resist temptation as it came my way.

I felt so undisciplined, like my backbone had dissolved and left me a wobbly mess to be exploited. Thankfully, my self-flagellation was interrupted by a nurse.

"Hi," she said. "Glad to see you're up." She sat down next to my bed.

"Thanks," I said politely.

"We had to do a few stitches on your scalp. You were already out, so we just injected the analgesic and went to work."

My hand instinctively shot to my head, feeling the handiwork of the hospital staff. I felt like
Frankenstein
, actually. "Wow," I said. I traced along that tender flesh, amazed by the idea of them
putting me back together
. I desperately wished that they could do the same for my mental health. You know, just put me under and I'd wake up feeling like myself again. "Am I okay?" I asked, suddenly feeling stupid and blushing after the words left my mouth.

"That was the on
ly serious thing. Your pulse
was all over the place, but I attribute that to shock. We'd like you to stick around for at least today, but you're free to go after that." She looked around the room and then stood up. "Is there anything else I can get you right now?"

"Is there a remote for the TV?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," she muttered. She shifted some things around on the table beneath the TV. "Here it is," she said.

I took it from her hand and cradled it like it was a newborn. "Thanks."

"Call if you need anything else." She stepped back out into the hall and closed the door.

Intrigue was once again getting the best of me. I wanted to turn on the news and see what they had made of everything.
My finger slowly moved toward the power button and stayed there once it arrived—but I didn't press it.

No not now.

I
wasn't sure if I could handle it. I set the remote next to the bed and did my b
est to clear my mind. I wanted a blank slate. I wanted to be
numb
.

My mind roared to life again. I wondered if I was under police protection.
Would someone be after me now?
Well, if there was one thing I knew, it would be that my name wouldn't be used publicly, due to the fact that I was officially undercover.
Okay, whatever
.

I laid in silence for a
while, trying my damndest to nap during the day. Right when I was about to doze off, the door opened. It was
Ramón
.

"Hi, Marisa," he said. "I've got visitors for you."

My mom and dad walked in behind him. I almost fa
inted. The tears returned again, flowing more freely than they ever had in my life. They both look tired, like they had found out I was in the hos
pital and took the next available
flight to get here. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was right about the source of their fatigue.

"Marisa!" they both shouted together. I forgot
Ramón
was even there as I hugged them, weeping as they told me how glad they were that I was alive. Nothing else mattered in that moment.
We rejoiced in the fact that I had made it out alive, made it out of that hellish reality. I expected my mom to scold me for my ridiculousness, but she didn't. I appreciated that.

They stayed for a short while until
Ramón
sent them on their way, at least temporarily. Once they left, he shut the door and sat down next to me. "You did a great job, okay? I can't say that enough."

"Thanks."

"You stopped it. I just want you to know that. It doesn't matter how it turned out, because you saved lives, Marisa, you really did. You might have even prevented
genocide
.
Some of those guns were going
to cartel leaders in
—
"

He rambled on while my mind did something else entirely.
I didn't feel like I deserved any of this praise. I felt pathetic and weak, and
Ramón
just served to remind me of my weakness. "I was stupid and impressionable," I said. To whom, I wasn't really sure.

"I don't fault you for anything," he said. I could tell he wanted a cigarette. "You're going to have to come to terms with a lot, but you'll do it, and you'll do just fine. You aren't to blame for anything that happened. If it wasn't you, it would have been someone else. People like Roland do
n't just sit still when there's
an obstacle in their way." He was giving a monologue, and as hard as I wanted to resist his words, they were
started to break
through my har
dened skin and actually soothe
me.

"You shouldn't talk to the press, at least not for awhile.
Maybe not ever. Obviously, we've adm
itted we had someone undercover, but said nothing beyond that
."

"How are...they doing?" I asked.

"Roland's in a coma.
I don't think you need to worry about him ever again." His face was solemn, yet optimistic.

"What do you mean?" I wasn't entirely sure about what he was getting at.

"No one is going to come after you, Marisa. You'll be fine."

Great
! The last thing I needed was a reminder that Roland had threatened to track me down if I ran away. "Ramón! Can we drop the scary stuff for now?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry," he said pathetically. "As for your buddy
Frederic
, he
j
ust got out of a long surgery—
and
h
e may never walk again.
They won't know for a while. He's headed to prison one way or another.
"

Ah, Frederic
. That image came back to me, his lips mouthing that he was sorry as the life
slowly
evaporated from him.
Had that actually happened
?

In a way, it felt like something that I had just seen in a movie, something my mind had super-imposed over that chaotic warehouse shoot-out. No, it had been real. I could hear his words echoing in my mind. It was tugging at my heart, even though he had tried to kill me right before he was flat against the floor.
The threat of death
made ambiguity so much more accessib
le. I was mourning the fate of
someone that had tried to kill me.

There was something
even bigger
to
say
about Frederic. Even though he had taken such drastic measures, there
was not
a whole lot of difference between
him and me
. We
both craved Roland's acceptance for our own personal, selfish reasons. "Was Frederic working for you?" I suddenly blurted out. I hadn't even considered that possibility.

"No, no, he wasn't."
Ramón
looked up from his lap and stared at the
blank
wall.

"Who the hell was he working for then?"

"Somebody affiliated with Von Williams, most likely. Or maybe the Russian mob. We're still piecing that together. We might never know. Getting those guys to talk is nearly impossible.
It's a code they don't break.
"

Von Williams
. I immediately thought of how upset Frederic had seemed when I told him about the bombing. What seemed like such an obvious connection now had totally evaded me then. Weird.

Roland had figured out that Frederic was working for someone else, but he didn't say the name before I was taken hostage.
Why did I even care about all of this
? The questions just kept brewing in me. "Weird." That's all I could say.
The reporter in me was surfacing again, asking all of the questions that might never have answers. Even though I was physically exhausted, my mind was running laps in record time.

The idea that Frederic worked for that asshole Von Williams was something I could barely believe. It just couldn't be true, right? Frederic was so much nicer, so much...

Ramón
turned to face me, resting his hand on mine.
"
You seriously did well, Marisa. No joke."

I paused, collecting my thoughts.
"I did my best, I guess," I said. "
I
just
can't believe this all happened so fast. You were telling me it could be months, and here we are closing the case like a week later."

"Sometimes we get lucky," he said.

"I wish
I
was lucky enough to get my old life back.
I don't know why I ever left it.
I should have never burned that bridge. They needed my help when I left.
" I was thinking about that previous me as an old friend, one I desperately sought to get reacquainted with.
How could I do it
?

Ramón
suddenly smiled, like he was unable to contain himself any longer.
"
I've already informed your old boss that you were under assignment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation—and if he tells anyone, he'll be arrested
for interfering with a federal investigation
. He wants you back, Marisa."

"What?
" I asked, suddenly
flabbergasted
.
"My old job? Are you kidding me? You talked to Pat?" I couldn't help but
feel like I was
transported back to middle school
.
I had been
absent
for an
extended amount of time
and now I needed a doctor's note or I'd be penalized for the time off
. Well, here was my doctor's note, all right—for my
career
.

"That son of a bitch called me and told me to fess up or he was going to go public. After I told him he'd go to jail, he stopped acting like such a tough guy."

I started laughing uncontrollably, the tears spilling from my eyes, not because I was sad, but
from the excess joy that was overwhelming me after so many horrendous events in a row
. "That's just like him!" I
clutched
my side, trying to control the huge giggles that kept surfacing. A moment like this was exactly what I needed.

"He's pretty nice, even though I don't usually like dealing with the media."
Ramón
stared at me, amused. "It's that funny, huh?"

"You'd just have to know him." I laughed until it hurt.

***

Later that night, I left the hospital, heading to a
hotel to stay with my parents. I needed to do a full debriefing with
Ramón
and his team before I left the city, so I would have to stick around for at least a couple of days.

It was the weirdest thing, because
Ramón
and his colleagues all treated me as if I was a war hero or something. I don't think I'd ever feel like I deserved the praise I received for my efforts with Roland, even if I saved lives. It was more like luck—I was
lucky
that my stupid obsession gave me the opportunity to get involved in a dangerous, yet positive way.

My apartment in the city was still mine, but my plan was to go home with my parents for a week or two, to reconnect with home after being involved in such a mess. It was a simpler place, one that would suit me well before I dove headfirst back into the city. I was looking forward to it, actually.

I didn't want to say that the west coast had been bad to me, but I also couldn't say it had been good either. One way or another, I had quite the story to tell, so I needed to find some way I could legally do that. A tinge of sadness washed over me as I boarded the plane. The last time I had been at that airport, I was a totally different person, a person that
had
since
been transformed forever.

The question was, would I actually learn from my mistakes?

THREE MONTHS LATER...

I was sitting at a coffee shop, sipping my
very average
latte and watching the endless bustl
e of humans and machines passing
the window outside. I loved New York City; there was no doubt about it. Every time I had coffee now, it reminded me of Roland. I had yet to find a cup as good as his—and I had tried all of the top spots in the city.
Was I doomed to always long for his perfectly-prepared drinks
?
For some reason
,
I felt that if I could find a
coffee that
was better, I'd be able to push Rola
nd even further out of my mind until he disappeared.