Morning Is Dead (13 page)
Authors: Andersen Prunty
A Hospital at Night
Part Thirteen
At 1:14 AM, someone bombed the Point. According to surveillance footage, it was believed Alvin was a part of this as well. The other individual in the car was believed to be a man named John Strange.
“It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t make the connection between a plot to bomb the Point and a small time drug cartel. It would appear that Alvin was a pawn in both of these crimes.
“Something else. A woman who Alvin was believed to be having sexual relations with was found dead outside her apartment earlier this evening.
“Ms. Blue, what would make your husband go on a killing spree of this magnitude?”
“I don’t think I can answer any questions right now.”
She could barely talk. It was something she didn’t want to know. It was something she couldn’t take responsibility for. She knew if she had scratched the surface she would have found a lonely, unstable man. Possibly a drug addict. Possibly unstable because of the drugs. But this was so much worse. This was like scratching the surface to have the insides blow up in her face.
“That’s very well, Ms. Blue. As I said before, this is not a formal examination. I understand your husband had been estranged for quite a while and this all may come as as much of a surprise to you as it does to me. I just wanted to prepare you for some of what you will have to go through should Mr. Blue make it through this. I lost a lot of friends tonight, Ms. Blue, and I can assure you, mentally ill or not, Mr. Blue will not be alive for very long if he does wake up. There will be questioning and a trial, sure, but I have friends in every facet of the system and, again, I can assure you, if he wakes up he has joined the ranks of the living dead.”
April nodded. She was crying again. And trying to digest what Wilson was telling her. Was he threatening her? Or urging her?
He stood up and patted her on the shoulder. “I just don’t want anyone else to suffer more than they have to.”
And then he was gone, flipping the lights off on his way out, bringing the night inside the hospital room.
Thirteen
Alvin ran on the outskirts of the city. The night came alive with sirens but it sounded like they were very far away, on the other side of the earth. He kept the baby pressed to his chest. The heaviness that had infested him, the feeling that all of his bones were made out of heavy metal had returned. As he ran, all of his wounds opened up—his forehead, his cheek, his back, his arm, his hand—and he could feel rust pouring out of them. He felt like the harder he ran the lighter he became. Now he just wanted to get back home. He thought if he could make it home before the demolition crew blew it up, then he could show April the baby, and then she would be happy and then it wouldn’t matter if they blew the house up or not because they could be happy anywhere.
Rades skulked the streets as Alvin passed by several alleys, but they couldn’t move fast enough to catch him. They probably sensed the rust anyway. He was no longer of any use to them.
He turned onto his street. Everything felt different. He heard birds chirping, heralding the beginning of morning. The air felt lighter and less oppressive. Everything glistened with dew. Even the ruined houses seemed to hold promise, like flowers or trees could spring from them.
The demolition crew stood in the middle of his road. They had a large detonator in front of them.
Alvin could see his house. It was completely covered in wires. A twist of wires, all bright colors—red and green and yellow—snaked from the house to the detonator.
Alvin charged up onto his lawn, moving toward the house.
“April! April!” he called.
Above the house, just over the roof, he thought he could see a trace of dawn limning the sky.
He held the baby out in front of him.
A Hospital at Night
Part Fourteen
The night hugged April. She stood above Alvin but all she saw was gauze and tubes. She already knew more about him than she ever wanted to. She wanted to remember him the way he had been when they got married—before the drugs or the insanity or the boredom. She didn’t want to think about him throwing a homemade bomb through the window. She didn’t want to think about him throwing himself into the flames. She didn’t want to wonder if he was doing it to save her or kill himself. She didn’t want to see him become a criminal. She didn’t want to see him become a prisoner. And she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life under the same scrutiny. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves. She positioned her hands around Alvin’s neck and paused to make sure she couldn’t hear any footsteps out in the hall, to make sure Mirabel wasn’t coming back to check on her, to make sure the detective wasn’t going to come back and ask her any more questions.
Her insides were screaming but everything around her was silent. She couldn’t even hear any sounds coming from outside. The only thing she could hear was the beeping of the heart monitor and a cacophony of voices in her head.
She would never know if this was the right thing to do. She just had to figure out if she could live with herself if she did it. No one was going to tell her it was right or wrong. No one was going to tell her what she should do. If that voice existed, if there was someone who could help her navigate her life, surely they would have intervened a long time ago.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Alvin opened his eyes.
April squeezed.
Fourteen
Holding the baby out in front of him, he looked at the sky over the house, wanting to see a shred of sunlight. He looked at the house, wanting to see April.
He heard the demolition crew behind him breathing. Maybe they were laughing. He thought he could see April in front of him. Her face looked huge. As big as the sky. Then he heard the dull click of the detonator being depressed and he felt all the rust inside of him press its way out through his skin like sweat. He searched his hands for the baby but the only thing he held was fire and then he couldn’t even see his hands as everything fragmented into flakes of rust and fragmented further into dust and—
A Hospital at Night
Part Fifteen
April left Alvin’s room and went to the nurse’s station.
“I think he’s gone.”
Mirabel, all business, stood up quickly, paging the doctor and heading to Alvin’s room.
April grabbed Mirabel’s keys, held on a bright orange, coiled band, and walked to the elevator. She took the elevator to the top floor, the psych ward. Then she found the stairwell that led to the roof. She unlocked it and climbed the stairs. She went out onto the roof. She moved to the edge.
She looked out over the city. It wasn’t so bad here. There were trees and nice houses. The birds were chirping. The air was cool and moist. Refreshing. But she thought about what could be happening in the darkest parts of the city and on the outskirts of the city. She wanted the sun to blast its way through the clouds and shine down on everything, drive all the badness into the soil like a cockroach.
She thought about how easy it would be to just keep moving right off the roof. She was high enough up. And perhaps she would have if it was just her. But it wasn’t. Not anymore. She knew the baby was Brett’s and she also knew that that was not the only reason they were together. It was just something that happened. She was in pieces. She knew that. But they were pieces that could, with time, be stitched together. If she let herself plunge from the roof she knew there would be no mending that.
She took in a deep breath.
Someone had left an old lawn chair up here, probably one of the janitors. Maybe this was where he took his lunch break. April pulled the chair over to the ledge and sat down. She put her feet up and waited for the morning sun.
