Reunion (14 page)

But there’s one more stop before we get there.

You would think that only twenty minutes after leaving the hospital that has been home to me for
what feels like a million
days, I’d be fine with entering a different one. As Mark parks the car in the visitor’s garage and gets the ticket, a gnawing sense of anxiety begins to rattle around inside my chest.

“What if she’s mad at me?” I whisper as he expertly pulls the car into a tiny little spot I would never, ever try to park in. He misses a concrete pillar by inches, yet there’s plenty of room to open the door. Do they teach that skill in special ops training?

Probably.

“What do you mean?” he asks, putting the car in park and reaching for my hand. “God, Carrie, your hands are like blocks of ice. What’s wrong?”

“
What’s wrong?” I ask in disbelief.
 

He gives me a sheepish smile while rubbing my hands. “You know what I mean.”

“I just...I’m okay, you know?” I slip one of my hands out of his grasp and touch the fuzz on my head. “I’m battered and bruised, and I burned my hair off, but I’m whole. My bones will recover. My skin will turn its normal color. The nightmares will fade.”

He closes his eyes and swallows, hard. I squeeze his hand. I know what he sees when he looks at me right now. The long scratch on my face has scabbed.
I
t’s not infected. The bruises on my cheekbones and jawline are a dull yellow, with the occasional bluish-purple spot poking through. I’m tired and swollen, just a little, from all the medicines they had me on for so long in the hospital.

I have no makeup on. I showered this morning. It took about five minutes. Showering is so easy when you literally have no hair. All you have to do is rub the bar of soap on your scalp and voila! Done.

I’m not exactly the picture of womanhood right now.

But I’m alive.

And whole.

“Amy isn’t whole, Mark. Those fuckers took her
arm
,” I hiss in outrage.

He startles at the curse word. “But you stopped them from taking more, Carrie. You can’t dwell on the things you couldn’t stop. If I did that, I wouldn’t be here today.” He gives me a hooded look that makes me wonder how many times he couldn’t stop something.

“But I—”

“You saved her. You wouldn’t let go of finding out the truth, Carrie.
I
t took a lot of courage to snoop around like you did.” His voice goes tight. “Not that I’m saying you should do that again. If you’re ever in the same situation, what you should do is come get me.”

“Duly noted,” I say with sarcasm. “
T
he next time my best friend gets kidnapped by a sex slave trafficking drug lord who is the dean at my university who set up my dad, I’ll be sure to come and get you.”

He gives me a sour look, then smirks. “I guess I deserve that.”

“Amy didn’t deserve any of what happened to her.”

He sighs and stares out the window. “No. She didn’t.
None of the victims did.
”
Turning in his seat, he faces me, his hands warm on my shoulders. “Are you experiencing survivor’s guilt?”
 

“What?”

“It’s typical, Carrie,” he says with the compassion of someone who’s been there, done that. “When you make it through a trauma and your friend doesn’t, it’s human nature to feel guilt. To feel all the
what ifs
. To think that maybe you shouldn’t be okay while your friend is suffering. Or worse.” His eyes go loose and unfocused, like he’s a million miles away.
 

He’s remembering something.

And now
his
hands are ice cold, too.

“Hey,” I whisper, trying to stay quiet and gentle, even as my heart speeds up. Somet
h
ing about the way he’s lost in his own memory makes me wary. “Mark? I don’t think we’re talking about Amy now.”

“
Huh?” He shakes his head like a dog after it comes out of a lake. “Oh. Sorry. Haven’t done that for a while.” He gives me an
aw shucks
grin.
 

I look at him. Really look. Worry lines crease his face. I haven’t seen that before. There is a little more beard growth and scruff, and his hair’s grown out slightly.
H
e’s rumpled and gorgeous, but definitely preoccupied.

The past few weeks have taken their toll on him, too.

Emotion floods my soul. I’ve been so focused on me that I’ve forgotten his suffering.

“I’m so sorry,” I say with a sigh. “This has been rough on you, too. It must be triggering so much for you.”

He frowns and tenses. “I’m fine.”

“I know you’re fine,” I say. “But with me you don’t have to be fine. You can just be Mark.”

His eyes flicker with something so primal. “Sometimes I’m not sure what that means,” he confesses.

I move closer to him and pull him to me for an embrace. I only have one good arm, so it’s awkward at best. “We have the rest of our lives to figure that out. Together,” I whisper.

“
That’s my line,” he jokes. But his body relaxes and he rests his chin on my neck.
 

W
e both just breathe for a while.

“You ready?” he mutters into my neck. Hot breath warms me up. I feel myself rallying.

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

I grin into his ear. “You know me so well.”

“Not half as well as I’ll know you in fifty years.” He plants a butterfly kiss on the one part of my face that doesn’t have a bruise or a scrape.

A girl could get very, very used to this.

We exit the car and walk, hand in hand, to the main reception desk at the wing where Amy’s being treated. As agreed, Mark leaves me alone. I don’t know where he’s going, but he’ll be back in an hour. There’s a flank of guards in the hallway outside her room. A nurse ushers me in through a back way. I can hear the crowd of media people in the distance.

Amy’s guards look suspiciously like mine.

Hey. Wait a minute.

“Silas?” I whisper as I walk into Amy’s hospital room. She’s hooked up to a ton of machines, still, but she has the faded bruises on her remaining arm and on her face like I do.

Silas looks at me and smiles. “Ms. Myerson.”

I shake my head. “Drew?”

He shrugs.

Mark’s been taking care of Amy this whole time, too.

Oh, my sweet man carries so many burdens on those strong shoulders.

Amy stirs, her eyes fluttering open. They are glassy. She rolls slightly to the side without an arm, then flops back.

“Damn it,” she groans. “Fucking missing arm. I keep forgetting.”

I see her personality hasn’t changed.

“Amy?” I say, quiet as can be.

Her eyes widen and shift toward me. “Carrie? Is that you?”

My throat swells with emotion, but I choke out a “yes.”

“Get over here, you savior!” she gasps.

I rush to give her the best hug I can, given she’s missing an arm and one of mine is in a sling and cast.

“We’re gimps, aren’t we?” she chuckles as we hug.

“Amy!” I say, shocked by her tone.

“Jesus, Carrie, if I can’t joke about everything we went through, I might as well be dead.”

Dead.

She came so close.

We came so close.

A sudden flash of Frenchie’s dead body, brains half splattered, invades my mind. It’s like someone shoved an ice pick between my eyes and implanted the image.

I pitch backward with surprise. Strong arms catch my elbows.

“Ms. Myerson?” Silas’ deep voice is right behind me. He’s holding me up. “You need some help?”

“
I’m fine,” I whisper.
 

Amy snorts.

“Yeah. Fine. We’re all just fine. Peachy keen.” But she’s not angry. And she’s right.

We’re
fine
.

But really? We’re so far away from fine it’s not funny.

Silas helps me sit on the edge of Amy’s bed so I’m stable. Reluctantly, he pulls away, settling into a chair just a few feet away. He pulls on his impassive mask, pretending to watch the door or the window.

His presence is deeply comforting.

“I’m not fine,” I say to Amy. “And I’m so sorry about your arm.”

“You saved my life, Carrie. I can’t believe it. You did what no one else could do.”

“I didn’t do anything. I just thought of something at the wrong time and got trapped with you.”

“Didn’t
do
anything? Didn’t
do
anything? From what Mark told me when he came here yesterday, you did
everything
, Carrie!” She’s openly sobbing now, her words coming out in fits and starts.

I’m crying, too.

Wordlessly, Silas produces two neatly ironed white handkerchiefs and hands one to each of us.

“
I was half out of it, sick as a fucking dog, and they’d had me in there for at least a day. Before that, all I know is they had me in some weird underground tunnel system thing. I woke up in one of those giant bags of coffee. In the bag,” she explains. My mind reverts to the coffee bean bag with the big red stain and I shudder.
 

“I crawled out of it and was just feeling my way around in the dark. Claudia’s dad came down there one time and told me how beautiful I was going to be. How I was a chrysalis and he would make me a butterfly.”

My stomach folds in on itself. I stop breathing. I need to hear this but oh, God, I really don’t want to hear this.

“But a butterfly without wings. He said those were so much more precious, because then you could admire them. He went on and on about someone named Nora. Mark told me that was Claudia’s mom?” Amy’s voice goes up in a question. She blows her nose and takes a deep breath.

S
he waits.

Like I have all the answers.

I look at Silas. He’s pretending not to listen.

“Uh, from what I know from people, the dean—El Brujo—had a wife named Nora. She was born without arms and had little legs. She was one of the thalidomide babies.
She was born in Spain
.”

Amy gives me a perplexed look.

“I guess in the 1960s
in Europe
or something, some pregnant women took a drug called thalidomide to help with nausea? I don’t really understand it all,” I confess. “But it made a lot of those babies come out with limb problems. Missing arms and legs, or unformed parts of their limbs.
Even the nurses here—the older ones—know what I’m describing.
”

“Oh,” Amy gasps.

“And Claudia’s mom was one of those babies. She was smart and the rest of her body was fine. She was able to have Claudia.
She and the dean met in college. Nora Landau had a full life. According to Mark’s research, she died of the flu. Just one of those things.
And I guess El Brujo—er, Dean Landau—loved her.”

Amy snorts. “Worshipped her.”

“
Fetishized
her,” I add, using the word Mark carefully explained to me. “He
loved the fact that she was missing most of her limbs. Loved it so much he sought to replicate it in his victims.”
 

Amy gags. I grab the pink puke bin in case she needs it. She shakes her head and motions for a cup of water with a straw poking out. I help her take a sip and she relaxes.

“So that’s why he did this to me. To the others.” She pauses. “Are any of the others alive?”

The word sticks in my throat but I have to say it. “The ones who had limbs amputated?”

“Right.”

“No. I’m sorry, Amy. No. You’re the only one who survived.”

She blinks.
O
ver and over, until it becomes a bit absurd.

“Because of you.”

“Because of luck.”

“Because of luck and Mikey being an asshole.”

I weigh that one out for a moment. “Okay. Luck, me,
and
Mikey being an asshole works.”

We laugh.

It’s not a pleasant sound.

I reach over and squeeze her good hand. She looks at me. Her head is bandaged and her eyes have deep, dark circles under them. The little nose stud she had has been ripped out, viciously. There’s a line in the skin of her nostril where the tear is scabbing. I look at her ears. Same thing.

Those bastards really tortured her.

I can’t help but look at the space where her arm used to be.

“Carrie, you look like total shit without hair,” she declares.

“Well,” I laugh, “you look pretty fucking good without an arm.”

“Trade you.”

I wince. “I would if I could.”

She reaches for my knee and pats it. “I know you would. And that is why you are my best friend. Through everything.”

We give each other shaky smiles.

“And now that I have to learn how to have sex with only one arm—”

Silas makes a slight choking sound, then coughs as if to cover it up.

Amy rolls her tongue against her cheek and gives me an evil grin.

“And,” she says a little louder, on purpose, “I’ll need to relearn how to do
everything
. I mean, I’ve heard of doing certain things one-handed, but this is a whole new level.”

He remains impassive.

“You’re going to just have to come in here and tell me
every
dirty little detail about sleeping with Mark.”

Silas makes that sound again.

Poor Silas.

I turn and look at him. Our eyes meet.

His practically beg me to make her stop talking like this.

“How about we just watch Sons of Anarchy instead?” I offer, reaching for the remote. “This hospital have Netflix?”

“Oooooo, more of Charlie Hunnam’s ass? I’m in.”

Silas closes his eyes in defeat.

And then Amy and I spend the rest of the hour being as normal as we can.

Armless and hairless.

We walk up to a simple apartment building. Mark pushes the buzzer just as an enormous redheaded guy walks up the stairs and stands directly behind us. I turn around and can’t stop staring.

Because he’s covered in oil and is wearing no shirt, a Scottish kilt, and some weird boots with thick socks.

Nothing else.

Mark follows my line of vision and does a doubletake.

The guy is counting a thick stack of money, a mixture of ones, fives, tens, and a few twenties. As he separates and rotates the bills, he mutters a tally under his breath.