“I don't think we'll win the most beautiful couple award,” I said.
He jerked, startled as if zapped with a cattle prod. It took him a second to put it together, that I wasn't cuddled all snuggly-wuggly next to him, that our warm flesh was not pressed together, and that I had him in the crosshairs again. Not that a flare gun needs crosshairs, of course. They weren't made for precision. I wouldn't need precision.
“H-how's your leg?” Maddox inquired, his faux calm tone no match for the deer-in-the- headlights look sprawled on his face.
Aw. That was cute. He was trying to defuse the situation with lame distraction techniques.
“It hurts like a bitch,” I replied.
He sat up, slowly, watching my finger pressing against the trigger. “What are you doing?”
“Isn't it obvious?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Maybe I should ask 'why' you're doing? That.”
“You really have to?” I said, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. Doing so made me dizzy, but I wasn't going to let him know that. “The whole point was to kill you, stupid.”
“I… I thought we'd gotten past that.”
I smirked. Scrunched my lips together in what I hoped could be construed as sarcasm, because if there was a saw in that kit, I'd cut my own leg off. It was hurting to the point of insanity. Which was alright, as I felt quite a bit insane right now.
“Indulge me,” I replied. “Just wanted to see that look on your face one more time.”
“What look?”
“I read somewhere that a true psychopath isn't able to be afraid.”
He didn't know what to say, and that was alright, too. His eyes grew wider as I brought my other hand underneath the gun. Aimed.
And fired.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
RAMONA
“Miss Sanchez?”
A voice. Coming from somewhere at the end of… what… a tunnel? Sounded a lot like what happens when you string two Dixie cups together and pretend they're phones. Becca and I played that, after Mom told us that's what she used to do as a kid. When they didn't have phones in their pockets twenty-four seven.
“Hey, there,” the same voice said. “You want to wake up this morning?”
I did not. I was about to have a vivid dream about my sister and Dixie cups.
“Miss Sanchez? How about you open your eyes for me?”
What we never had was a tree house. Becca and I always wanted a tree house, but Dad said the trees in the backyard weren't big enough or strong enough to handle one. He got us a plastic fort, instead. It had a slide and a turret, and that's where Becca and I played telephone with Dixie cups.
“Do you know where you are?” the voice asked, and I felt someone's fingers on my eyes, pulling one lid up and shining a light into my pupil.
“...ferrt..,” I said, wanting to say 'fort', but my lips were like two jars of paste. Gluey. It was almost impossible to pull them apart.
My tongue felt like Play-Doh, and I ran my pasty tongue against my teeth, just to make sure they were still there. I didn't know if any of me was still there.
Or here.
Anywhere.
“What was that?”
The little light snapped away, and I opened my other eye.
Everything was so white. Crazy white.
Maybe I was an egg.
Or in an egg.
There were beeping sounds, too. Blips and bloops – a lot like what I heard when Leslie would go the hospital. Heart monitor sounds. Eee. Kay. Gee. And it wreaked of sterility. Pine-Sol and disinfectant.
“Good morning.” The voice sounded happy. Relieved. “Do you know where you are?”
I turned my head one way, then the other. IV drips to port, a tray with untouched pudding and a straw in a cup to starboard. Oh, fuck me twice and call me donkey duke. I was in a fucking hospital.
“… fuck-ing hospital...” I said.
The doctor smiled. Bright, shiny white teeth gleamed from within the darkest face I'd ever seen. His eyes were big and white, too.
“Very good. Do you know why you're in the hospital?”
I tried to figure out what sort of accent he had. Smooth, like coffee, and peppered with a hint of something Hispanic, maybe.
Wherever he was from, he asked too many questions for my taste. He was the professional, he was supposed to know this shit.
I watched him check a clear bag of fluids, and followed the tube down all the way to my arm where the needle was taped.
“...must be sick.” I replied.
He grinned. “You were lots of things, but sick wasn't one of them. Oddly enough,” he said, made a mark on his clipboard, and scooted his squeaky doctor stool to the side of the bed. “I'm Doctor Orizaga, and you're in Princess Margret Hospital. Nassau.”
“What… the hell for…?”
“Do you remember anything?” He asked, reached behind him and poured me a cup of water.
“Yes. I hate hospitals.”
Doctor Orizaga's grin got wider. He nodded, crossed his doctor leg over his knee, and handed me the cup, thoughtfully pointing the straw toward my face. “Slowly, now. Just sips.”
I sucked in a thimbleful of lukewarm water, and let it trickle down my throat. It was quenching, but barely. And honestly, I was sick of plain, stupid water.
“Does Princess Margret have any coffee?”
“Let's see how you handle that first, okay? You've had surgery, so we need to take it slow and easy.”
“Surgery?”
Suddenly, I didn't need coffee to wake up.
Did he say surgery?
Did he not realize how much surgery cost?
Let alone a hospital stay, and by the same token how the fuck long had I been staying? This was a private room, too. There were flowers beside the window – the one with the
