Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

"No!" Rune screamed.

Two women ran up and started tending to her. Rune dropped to her knees beside them. She hardly heard the litany of the cabdriver: "She ran through light, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault."

Rune cradled Stephanie's bloody head in her arms.

"You'll be okay," she whispered. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay."

But Stephanie couldn't hear.

Rune stood by the window of the hospital, looking out onto the park.

It was an old city park on First Avenue. More rocks and dirt than grass, most of the boulders painted with graffiti, tinted red and purple. They seemed to be oozing from the underbelly of the city itself like exposed organs.

She turned away.

A doctor walked by, not looking at her. None of them had looked at her-the doctors, the orderlies, the nurses, the candy stripers. She'd given up waiting for a kindly old man in a white jacket to come into the hallway, put his arm around her, and say, "About your friend, don't you worry, she'll be fine."

The way they do in movies.

But movies're fake.

Richard's words echoed: They. Aren't. Real

No one had stopped to talk to her. If she wanted any information she had to ask the nurses. Again.

And she'd get the same look she'd gotten two dozen times before.

No news. We'll let you know.

She looked out the window once more. Watching for Pretty Boy. Thinking maybe he'd gotten away from the man in the subway and escaped from the cops. Followed the ambulance here.

Paranoia again.

But it's not paranoia if they're really after you.

Hoping that Stephanie had hurt Pretty Boy really bad when she'd hit him. A character in one of her fairy stories, a friendly witch, had told someone never to hope for harm to someone else. Hope for all the good you want but never wish harm on anyone. Because, the witch said, harm's like a wasp in a jar. Once you release it you never know who it's going to sting.

But now Rune hoped Stephanie had hurt the bastard real bad.

She wandered up to the nurses' station.

An older woman with a snake of a stethoscope around her neck finally looked up. "Oh. We just heard about your friend."

"What? Tell me!"

"They just took her to Radiology for more scans. She's still unconscious."

"That's what you were going to tell me? That you don't know anything?"

"I thought you'd want to know. She'll be back in ICU in forty minutes, an hour. Depending."

Useless, Rune thought.

"I'll be back. If she wakes up, tell her I'll be back."

Oh, please, Pan and Isis and Persephone, let her live.

Rune stood by the East River, watching the tugs sail upstream. The Circle Line tour boat too. A barge, three or four cabin cruisers. The water was ugly and ripe-smelling. The traffic from the FDR Drive rushed past with a moist, tearing sound, which set her on edge. It sounded like bandages being removed.

Just an adventure. That's all I wanted. An adventure.

Lancelot searching for the Grail. Psyche for her lost lover Eros. Like in the books, in the movies. And Rune would be the hero. She'd find Mr. Kelly's killer, she'd find the million dollars. She'd save Amanda and would live happily ever after with Richard.

0 God of heavenly powers, who by the might of thy command, drivest away from men's bodies all sickness and infirmity, be present in thy goodness …

These were the words she'd said so often during the last week of her father's life that she'd memorized them without trying to.

Her father, a young man. A handsome man. Who played with Rune and her sister all the time, taught them to ride bicycles, who read them stories, who took them to plays as readily as to ball games. A man who always had time to talk to them, listen to their problems.

No, fairy stories didn't always have happy endings. But they always had endings that were just. People died and lost their fortunes in them because they were dishonest or careless or greedy. There was no justice in her father's death though. He'd lived a good life and he'd still died badly, slow and messy, in the Shaker Heights Garden Hospice.

No justice in Mr. Kelly's death.

No justice in Stephanie's getting hurt. None if she died.

Please…

Speaking out loud now. "With this thy servant Stephanie that her weakness may be banished and her strength recalled."

Her voice fell to a whisper and then she stopped praying.

Staring at the ugly river in front of her, Rune took off her silver bracelets one by one and tossed them into the water. They disappeared without any sound that she could hear and she took that as a good sign that the gods who oversaw this wonderful and terrible city were happy with her sacrifice.

Though when she got to last bracelet, the one that she'd bought for Richard, she paused, looking at the silver hands clasped together. She heard his voice again.

You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money - which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard - but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it …

She gripped the bracelet firmly, ready to throw it after the others. But then decided, no, she'd save this one-as a reminder to herself. About how adventures can get friends and family hurt and killed. How quests work only in books and in movies.

And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is.

She slipped the last bracelet back on her wrist and slowly returned to the hospital.

Upstairs, the nurses had changed shifts and no one could find Stephanie. Rune had a terrible moment of panic as one nurse looked at a sheet of paper and found a black space where there should have been a list of patients from Adult Emergency Services who'd gone to Radiology. She felt her hands trembling. Then the nurse found an entry that said Stephanie was still upstairs.

"I'll let you know," the nurse promised.

Rune stood at the window for a long time again, then heard a voice asking for her.

She turned. Froze. The doctor was very young and he had a mournful expression on his face. It seemed that he hadn't slept in a week. Rune wondered if he'd ever told anyone before that a patient had died. Her breath came fast. She gripped the bracelet maniacally.

"You're a friend of the woman hit by the cab?" he asked.

Rune nodded.

He said, "She's transitioned from a deteriorating status."

Rune stared at him. He stared back, waiting for a response.

Finally he tried again. "She's in a stable situation."

"I-" She shook her head, his words not making sense to her.

"She'll be okay," the doctor said.

Rune started to cry.

He continued. "She has a concussion. But there isn't much blood loss. Some bad contusions."

"What's a contusion?"

"A bruise."

"Oh," Rune said softly.

Stephanie, who didn't want to get bruised for her audition.

She asked him, "Is she awake?"

"No. She won't be for a while."

"Thank you, doctor." She hugged him hard. He endured this for a moment then retreated wearily back through the swinging doors.

At the nurses' station Rune asked for a piece of paper and a pen.

Rune wrote:

Steph:

I'm leaving. Thanks for everything. Don't come near me, don't try to contact me. I'll only get you hurt again. Love,

R.

She handed the note to the nurse. "Please give this to her when she wakes up. Oh, and please tell her I'm sorry."

Running again.

Looking behind her, as often as she looked forward. Past garbage cans, litter on the street, puddles. Past the fake, gaudy gold of the Puck Building in SoHo, surrounded by the sour smell of the fringe of the Lower East Side. Running, running. Rune felt the trickle of sweat down her back and sides, the pain in her feet as they slammed on the concrete through the thin soles of her cheap boots.