while I made him go to sleep, I knew. I saw the bloody eye. I knew this was coming.
“Come here,” she whispered. I went up to the bed and stood next to her.
“Someone beat him …”
“What?”
“…someone …beat him …up …he …”
I shook my head no. She groped with one hand, and I took it.
“Karen, you’ll be okay. You’ll be—”
“I’ll never forget …the first time …you came down …”
“Me neither,” I said, but I already had, a long time ago.
“I knew …you were special …”
Her one open eye fluttered and then looked around, confused. She looked like she didn’t know where she was.
“I’m going to get somebody to help you,” I said.
“This …is not because …of you…. It was my …”
She drifted off and a tear, pink with blood, rolled down over her swollen cheek. She coughed and something came up. She winced and swallowed.
“I’m sorry I kicked you out….”
She coughed again and made a face. She was in pain. I stared at her until the room got brighter. Her colors were very dim. Little bright spots swirled here and there, like they didn’t know where to go. Tiny orange spikes flaring up, like glowing coals. There was pain—physical pain, but more than that. I’d never realized how much there was, how much of it she kept covered up.
I smoothed the lights back, calming them. I focused on the hot-looking spikes and cracks until they dimmed, turning cooler. Karen’s face relaxed and got a little dreamy. She managed a smile.
“…you …do that …?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks …”
There were a million things I wanted to tell her right then. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me and how much she helped me. All the shit I put her through, I wanted to tell her I didn’t mean it. There were so many things I thought I should say, but I didn’t. I just stood there.
The floor felt like it moved for a second, and I grabbed the bed to get my balance. The room got darker.
Everything slowed down, and I felt cold. The tips of my fingers and toes started tingling. My head got heavy.
“Zoe?” I heard Karen say.
“Karen, I—”
The darkness moved in like black smoke. For a second, all that was left was Karen; then it covered her too. The floor moved again.
The words flashed in the dark. No sound, just words. The smoke cleared just a little, and I felt myself moving through the fog. I heard footsteps on metal, but it was muted and faint. I was running. The walls were sprayed red, and down on the floor I saw empty clothes, wet with blood.
I moved through a big, metal door and out onto a walkway. There was a railing to my right, and I could see a huge open space down below. There were coffins down there. They were stacked up high, arranged in rows. I slipped and saw a man’s hand grab the rail. People were starting to move down below. They started yelling, but I could barely hear them, like I was underwater.
I heard gunshots. I was moving again. There was another heavy metal door up ahead, with a wheel mounted on it. As I got closer, I glanced down to where the coffins were stacked and saw the dead woman, the one from the green room. She looked up at me. There were tears in her silvery eyes.
The doorway opened into a dark room. There was a single light overhead. It shone down on a bed where someone was lying. I ran up to the bed and saw that it was the mean-looking woman, the one with the black lipstick that cornered me in the elevator at the FBI. She was covered in sweat, big muscles standing out. She had on a hospital johnny. Her legs were spread apart and her ankles were locked in stirrups.
Something black and wet, something living, something dangerous, shot out from between her legs. Cords and veins popped out of her neck. I lurched forward as the man’s hand came hammering down on her heart, a blade held tightly in his fist.
Everything went black. The screaming stopped. All I could hear was a steady tone.
I opened my eyes. I was back in the hospital.
“Karen?”
She was still there, lying in the bed in front of me. I’d grabbed fistfuls of the sheets and was leaning over her.
I tried to focus again. While I looked at her, the room got bright again, but I couldn’t see her colors.
“Karen?”
I realized then that the steady tone was coming from the heart monitor. I looked harder, until the room got so bright the color leached out of everything, but I could see her colors. I didn’t know what to do.
The door opened behind me and someone came in. I thought it was the doctor, but when he came around to the other side of the bed, I saw it was the man in the blue jumpsuit from out in the hallway. He reached over and shut off the heart monitor. The beep stopped and the room got quiet.
He took something out of his pocket and shined it in her one open eye. Then he lifted one of her shoulders, until she was on her side. He put his black case on the bed and snapped it open. He reached in, and I saw him take out a black syringe.
He stuck the needle in the back of her neck and I got a clear look at the logo on his chest for the first time. He worked for Heinlein Industries.
I left. I went back the way I came, back down to the lobby, and back through the crowd in the waiting room. I walked back out into the rain and into the street. A car screeched to a stop, the bumper an inch from my leg. Horns blared while I crossed, rain blowing across headlight beams in front of me.
I walked past the subway stop, following the sidewalk and the water rushing beside the curb. It wasn’t until I saw the neon sign to my right that I looked up.
When I first tried to quit, I’d break into a sweat every time I walked by that place. I started taking a different route so I didn’t have to see it. I never took that route again, but that night, it appeared out of nowhere. Right when I needed it most.
I pushed open the door and went inside. Without thinking, I grabbed a bottle of ouzo, the biggest one they had. I walked up to the counter and put it down.
“Long time no see,” the clerk said. After I stopped drinking, I realized the guy must have always known what a complete drunk I was. He might know what it meant, then, that I was back in his store. As stupid as it was, I think on some level, I was hoping he’d say something that would stop me, but he didn’t. He took my money, and I left with the bottle.
The only time I hesitated was back in my apartment. I stopped for a second with the glass to my lips and breathed in through my nose, feeling the licorice burn of the fumes. It was a mistake. It was a bad mistake, but it was going to happen. Deep inside me, the pain was gathering. The only reason it hadn’t hit me yet was because I was in shock, but it was coming, I could feel it. At any minute, I was going to realize what just happened. When I did, the reality of it was going to stick its hooks in me. It would be there for the rest of my life. In the end, I couldn’t face it.
When I took the first swallow, it burned going down. Heat flooded all the way back up my neck to my face, until
