C Reiss - Sing

She lifted my head and strung something around my neck. This was happening too fast. I’d already let Monica walk out of the room. I’d let it happen because I was weak and now I’d lost control of the situation entirely. That couldn’t happen. They couldn’t wheel me away and cut me open again without me seeing her. They’d done it last time, and look what happened (yes, make him believe she is his good luck charm)

“No!” I swung my arm, and it must have been truly pathetic, because they just strapped it down, easily, as if I was made of bone and rag.

I said her name to myself, over and over, but she didn’t appear.

MONICA

I tried not to fidget, even after they took my phone.

I was raised to think cops believed fidgeting meant lying. I wasn’t lying, much. I wasn’t with the mob or associated with any kind of underground business, which is what they kept implying. I didn’t know anyone they asked about. I was just me. One of the thousands of tall, skinny, struggling artists in this intestinal tract of a city.

“I wanted to look at him,” I said. The guy cop tip-tapped into a laptop, and the lady cop leaned her elbows on the table. The break room stank of stale coffee, non-dairy creamer and sugar glaze.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because my husband’s up on four waiting for a heart transplant, and this guy’s brain dead, with this nice heart, and I just wanted to say a prayer that he died. I know that makes me a bad person.”

I left it there. That was about as much lying as I thought I could get away with. I could have told the truth, but to what end? They weren’t looking for someone who’d screwed with his catheter, their questions told me they were looking for a true assassin.

“That your ring?”

I held my hand out. “The diamond is his sister’s.”

“The other one’s unusual.”

“Quickie marriage to a dying man who I’d really like to see.”

“Wait outside, please.” They let me to a row of chairs they’d set up for people they were questioning. A stocky guy with black hair went in next. Fuck, how long could this take? I couldn’t stop fidgeting. After twenty minutes, I looked at the clock.

Ten minutes to 3am. Did the morning count?

I waited for ten minutes, hands still, suddenly not feeling fidgety at all. When the second and minute hands hit the twelve, I closed my eyes and put my fingertips to my lips. I don’t know how long I held them there, but they pressed my skin until the lady cop came out and handed me my phone and ID.

“You can go.”

I ran like hell.

JONATHAN

It was bright. The people around me had voices that spoke like robots to each other and in fake kindness to me. They narrated what they were doing, but all I knew was, I was strapped to a gurney, staring at the ceiling, with no way to see what was happening around me.

“Okay,” said a man somewhere behind me. “I’m Doctor Chen? How are we doing today?”

“Ask yourself half the answer.”

“Right. Okay. I’m going to put this mask over your face. You need to just breathe and count backwards from ten.”

“Wait.”

He bent over to look at me. Asian guy. Mid thirties. Cap. Hissing gas mask in his gloved hand.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Uhm...” He seemed put-upon by the question. “Three.”

“Exactly three?”

“One minute til.” He started to lower the mask again.

“Wait.”

I looked around the room as far as my position would let me. Five people stood around me in the light blue uniform of doctors and nurses, hands up with the palms facing toward their shoulders. More scuttled in the background.

“Unstrap me,” I said. “One hand.” I didn’t think it was loud enough over the ambient noise of the room. Dr. Chen, cleared his throat, and exchanged some silent communication with the other doctors.

“Mister Drazen—“ he began.

“Please.”

“You shouldn’t be moving, now—“

“Please!” The plea came louder than I thought I was capable of.

Dead silence followed. The clock ticked, and though I couldn’t hear or see it, I was aware of it in the beating of my fucked up heart. I had, maybe thirty-five seconds.

“Mister Drazen,” said Dr. Emerson. “You need to calm down.”

“I’ll calm down. Just do it. Please. Half a minute.”

I couldn’t see his face past the mask, but his eyes stilled, and he glanced at an instrument before turning back to me. “No flailing.”

“No. No flailing.”

He nodded to someone, and I felt movement at my left wrist. I didn’t realize how tense I was until they let it go. Overwhelming gratitude flooded me, and a helix of fear unwound from my torso, though my limbs. When it reached my fingertips I slowly raised my hand.

“Can you tell me when it’s exactly three?” I asked Dr. Chen.

He looked at the wall clock, and I noticed the rest of them standing, in silence, all looking in the same direction.

Chen counted down. “In four, three, two...”

I put my fingertips to my lips.

MONICA

I couldn’t sit in that room any more. I was used to dealing with pain and worry by myself. I wasn’t accustomed to group stress. When Dad died, Mom withdrew, aunts and uncles took off and I basically dealt with it myself. Having these sisters, who were mine only by dint of a forced union, wasn’t the dream come true I’d imagined. They had personalities, and needs I didn’t know how to meet, and I didn’t know how to ask them for what I needed, because what I needed was to be alone.

So I quietly withdrew. Declan wasn’t in the cafeteria any more, but upstairs with the women, sitting by his wife, not touching her. They spoke sweetly to one another, which all things considered, was an improvement.

I felt hopeful. They did nine of these a year. That was good. It was a lot, apparently. He was going to walk out of this hospital and we’d figure out what to do. I walked into the back parking lot, just seeking an open space under the sky, with a spring in my step, a little dreamy, hoping he’d want to stay married and move into the same house with me. The heart would last ten years, but maybe we could squeeze in another two, and maybe another one would come and buy us twenty years together. It seemed like forever. I saw Jessica’s Mercedes, then her, lowering the trunk. She saw me and waved, but went for the driver’s side door, the wave was all I was getting. I got to her just as she was pulling out.

“Hey!” I tapped on the window.

She lowered it. “Yes?”

“Thanks.” That felt ridiculous, thanking her for telling me how to kill someone. “For helping.” Still ridiculous. “I got a call on the way out and I put the tube back the way it was.”

She just looked at me like I was nuts. “He have a heart or not?”

“He’s in surgery. Do you want to stay? I mean, not for me, Lord knows. The family? They kinda consider you one of them.”

“No, but thank you.”

The window crawled up, and I stepped back as she pulled out.

I heard the squawk of police radios behind me, shocking me out of my reverie. Close. Coming for me. I turned around and found three uniformed cops running toward me, laden at the waist, fists on holsters.

I put my hands up.

A black and white came for me, sirens on. I put my palms on my head and got on my knees. Okay, they knew. I’d tried to kill Paulie Patalano. Fuck. Okay. Okayokayokay. Just submit. Just shut up and let them take you in and call Margie and let her work on it.

Right.

The car stopped, and the three cops blew past me, practically knocking me over. I cringed. There was yelling. Get out of the car.