Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (99 page)

Dr. Chen cleared his throat and exchanged some silent communication with the other doctors. “Mister Drazen—”

“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. 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 anymore. 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 alone. Having 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. 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 anymore. He was upstairs with the women, sitting by his wife but 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 would walk out of that 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. I was a little dreamy, hoping he’d want to stay married and move into a house with me. The heart would last ten years, but maybe we could squeeze in another two. Or 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 lid. She saw me and waved but went for the driver’s door. The wave was all I would get. I got to her just as she was pulling out.

“Hey!” I tapped on the window.

She lowered it. “Yes?”

“Thanks.” Thanking her for telling me how to kill someone felt ridiculous. “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 as though 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, fists on holsters.

I put up my hands.

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.

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

I wasn’t in a car. Obviously. I took my hands off my head and opened my eyes.

One cop had his gun trained on the driver’s seat of Jessica’s Mercedes. Another opened the door. More stood behind car doors.

The woman who had guarded Paulie Patalano’s hallway stood over me. “Not today, girlie.”

“I was just—”

“Save it. Nothing to see here.” She shooed me.

I got up and backed away. Walking fast, head down, I navigated a newly formed crowd until I ran into a man who grabbed my biceps.

“What was that about?” Will Santon asked. “You kneeling.”

I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted what I almost did in that room to disappear forever. “I grew up in the ghetto. That’s what you do when the cops run after you.” He seemed to accept that and released my arms. “But it was Jessica. What could she have done? My God.”

Maybe they thought
she’d
been the one who twisted the catheter then fixed it. Maybe she was going to take an attempted murder rap for me. That made no sense. I had to consider for a moment if I would let her.

“We’ve been working on this for weeks,” he whispered and smiled. “Once we stopped having to follow
you
around.”

“It wasn’t her,” I whispered back.

“Yes, it was,” he said with satisfaction all over his face. “She killed Rachel Demarest.”

“But...”

“Play with enough tubes, and someone in that condition’s getting pneumonia. Trust me. We’ve been chasing her for weeks.”

I watched as Jessica had her hands cuffed behind her.

MONICA

M
ore waiting. I felt as though I’d spent the past weeks doing nothing but waiting.

The cafeteria was quiet for once. I stared at my tea, trying to absorb Jessica’s arrest. That had been Jonathan’s plan. It had been what my curiosity had kept him from executing. I seemed so petty now. I looked at my watch, checked my texts for word from Margie, and took out my notebook.

I opened it to the last page, the only one left blank. Much of what I had in the notebook wasn’t suitable to be put to music. I had drawings and staff notes, compositions for multiple instruments with no idea if there was even a possibility of matching words.

“Monica.” Brad sat across from me with a prepackaged yogurt cup and plastic-wrapped toast.

“Brad.” I closed my notebook. “Thank you for that text. It was...it saved my life.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” He unwrapped his toast. “You’re off the hook for dinner, you know. I'm over being mad. I hope we can still be friends?”

“Of course. You still need to yell at me for what I did.”

“I’ll give you an earful.” He bit the toast, wrinkled his nose, and went for the yogurt. “What are you doing here?”

“Margie said she’d text me when he got out.” I looked at my phone, checking to make sure it was on for the hundredth time.

“How long has it been?”

“Six hours, give or take.”

He stirred his yogurt. “That’s long.”

I took a second to absorb what he said then snapped up my phone and texted Margie.

—any word?—

“If she forgot to text me, I’m going to beat her senseless,” I said more to myself than Brad.

A text came back.

—Dr came out an hour ago. Issues with the aortic valve. Bad—

“Fuck.” I didn’t say good-bye to Brad.

MONICA

T
hat fucking waiting room, the same as every other I’d seen when they wheeled him from unit to unit. As I exited the elevator, I realized what a home they had become with their greyed colors and worn seats. I knew that no matter what happened, that would likely be the last day I spent in a waiting room worrying about Jonathan.

They were all there, like a red-haired baseball team. Even Fiona had stopped blowing by long enough to hold her mother’s hand. They looked at me, eyes shaded from green to blue and back, as I stood by Margie’s seat.

“Sorry I didn’t text you,” she said. “I have other things.”

“Don’t worry about it. Did you hear about Jessica?”

“Yeah.” She waved it away as if she couldn’t care less. Her mouth was tight, and she looked drawn and panicked. I never thought I’d see Margie so flustered.

Next to her, Deirdre stood. They all stood and looked at a set of swinging doors. Through the window, I saw an older doctor with silver hair take off his cap and pull down his mask. He turned to another doctor, a woman, and opened the swinging doors. Another followed. An Asian man, snapping off his gloves.

Three of them. One. Two. Three.

They came to us, and the older doctor put his hand on the woman’s shoulder in a gesture of…what? Condolences? Professional commiseration? The Asian guy cleared his throat. What was that? Gathering strength?

Hope dropped out of me and flowed down an emotional drain, leaving black despair in its wake. Shit. Three doctors. If one took a blow, the other held the family member down, and the third called security.

Wasn’t that how it was? I glanced at Declan. He must have seen the panic on my face because he smiled. Then I became that sister.