Gather the Sentient (6 page)

CHAPTER

9

JOSE

Monday, August 29

Phoenix

After his visit with Chloe, Jose returned to the ER and was immediately accosted by Vanessa.

“Where have you been?” she barked accusingly.  “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

He motioned upstairs.  “Took the little boy up to radiology.”

She glared at him.  “Twenty minutes ago!”  After a beat, she shook her head and sighed.  “It’s fine.  Really.  We just got really busy, and I’ve got Andrea Morillo in three, covered in bruises, sporting a nasty looking black eye.  It’s gonna be a while ‘til Unger can get to her, so while she’s waiting I thought you could go in there and do that thing you do.  And I’m warning you, it’s worse than last time.”

He was confused, worrying immediately she knew about his abilities.  “What thing are you talking about, Ma’am?”

“Oh, you know,” she called over her shoulder as she slid through the door into the hallway, “just go talk to her and see if you can get her to spill the beans.  People trust you.  Maybe you can finally get her to fess up about what’s really been going on, cuz Lord knows she didn’t trip over the cat again.”

Relieved she only considered him a good listener and not a psychic healer, he quickly made his way to room three where he found a very battered looking Andrea Morillo sitting on the evaluation table hunched over her cell phone.

He tapped gently on the door.  “Miss Morillo?” he said.

Without lifting her head, she raised her eyes to meet his gaze.  Her left eye was almost completely swollen shut and blood had coagulated around a deep gash on her temple.  “Yes?” she replied.

He crossed the threshold into the room and left the door open behind him.  The last thing he wanted was for her to feel confined with him, not knowing the circumstances surrounding her injuries.

“I was sent in by the nursing staff to find out more about your…”  He paused, searching for the right word.  He didn’t want her to feel worse than she already did.  “Situation,” he finished.

She lowered her face back to the phone screen, burying her chin into her chest.  “I told them already, I tripped and fell in the kitchen.  That’s it.  And I’m only here because…”  She hesitated, staring at the blank screen.  “Well, because when I woke up this morning I couldn’t see out of my eye, and I checked Google and it said I should go to the doctor.”  She lifted her head now for the first time, practically staring him down.  She pleaded with him, “Please, I don’t want to lose my sight.”

He could feel the fear emanating from every pore of her body, and he was relatively certain not all the fear was associated with potential vision loss.  He ventured across the room.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the spot on the table beside her.

Without answering, she slid over to make room for him to sit.

He had seen his fair share of domestic abuse cases in his years at the ER and had learned quite a bit about its victims.  More often than not, they felt as if they deserved to be battered - that their behaviors, however benign, warranted reprimanding.  Other times, victims put up with being abused because they saw it as the only way to prevent loved ones from becoming victims themselves.  Mothers protecting children.  Siblings safeguarding siblings.  And for many, it was almost as if their abuser was omnipresent, saturating every fiber of their lives.  They wouldn’t leave because they couldn’t.  There was often nowhere else to go.

He was quite certain this was the case for Andrea Morillo.  According to her chart, in less than three months, this was her fifth visit to the ER sporting dubious looking injuries which the staff was convinced were the result of an abusive situation.  Unfortunately, without her admission, there was no way to prove their suspicions.

Jose had treated her three times before – dressing a wound on her hand, assisting with stitches to her face, and cleaning up a laceration on her arm.  Each time there had been other staff in the room with them.  This was the first time they’d ever been alone.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” he said cautiously.

She didn’t respond, but he could feel her body become rigid beside him.

“Love is a complicated thing,” he continued.  “It took my aunt Carla six years to leave my uncle Elias.  Six years.  She loved him so much.  I was eleven when she came to live with us.  Brought my cousins with her.”  He chuckled, remembering how they crowded into his tiny bedroom.  Little people everywhere.  “The funny thing was, Aunt Carla thought her life was normal.  That she deserved to be slapped across the face when she was late coming home because of traffic.  Or that getting burnt by a lit cigarette was a reasonable response for not remembering to pick up ice cream at the grocery store.  She thought he was justified in punishing her since he was only trying to make her better.  Because he loved her.”

As he finished speaking, Andrea didn’t move.  She didn’t blink.  She didn’t twitch.  In fact, he could barely detect the shallow rhythm of her breathing.  It was almost as if she was trapped deep within herself, tucked away from the reality of her situation inside a labyrinth of her own creation.  His instinct was to continue, but he forced himself to wait, sensing perhaps, if he gave her time, she would come back.  After several moments of awkward silence, she finally closed her eyes, took a labored breath, and then released her hushed confession.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He felt compelled then to touch her.  To reach out and make a connection, one human being to another.  He hesitated, but was relieved when she didn’t pull away when his fingers touched her forearm.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told her, because it seemed like the right thing to say, even though he had no way of actually knowing for sure whether things would ever be okay.  And for the first time in his life he wished he could do more than heal the body.  He wished too he could heal the soul.

“There are places you can stay that are safe,” he continued.

She shook her head solemnly.  “He’ll find me.  He owns me.  And besides, it would be wrong for me to go.”

As much as he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, it wasn’t unusual for a victim to feel obligated to stay.  “Wrong?” he asked, wondering why someone would choose to stay with someone who caused them so much pain.

She looked up from the hangnail she’d been picking and wiped the blood onto her jeans.  “He took me in off the streets.  He gave me a home.  He put food in my mouth, and he never asked for anything in return.  He never sold me out.  Never forced me to do things I didn’t want to do.  All he’s ever asked for is my obedience, and I’m so ungrateful I can’t even give him that.”  She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and wiped her nose with her sweatshirt.  “I can’t believe I’m even saying any of this to you.  Just another betrayal I suppose,” she lamented as tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.

Jose leaned down beneath her gaze so he was sure she could see him.  “There is nothing in the world he could give you or do for you that would ever give him the right to harm you in any way.  I don’t care if he gave you a million dollars and a trip around the world.  You don’t owe him anything.  You can always walk away.”

He could see her turning his words over in her head, attempting to reconcile his observations with the jagged reality of her situation.

She tilted her chin up and cocked her head to the side, a gesture he immediately recognized as surrender, not defiance.  “Even if I had someplace to go, he would find me and drag me back.”  Her eyes pleaded with him.  “He’s got a network of people like you wouldn’t believe.  I’d never get far.  He’d find me and drag me right back.”

He considered the possibility that what she was telling him was true.  He had no idea what sort of connections her boyfriend had at his disposal.

“Are you talking about a gang situation?”

Her shoulders sagged from the weight of the admission.  “Wedgewood Chicanos.”

Almost imperceptibly, Jose sucked in his breath.  You didn’t grow up in Phoenix without knowing about one of its oldest and most notorious gangs.  Any optimism he’d felt for Andrea’s situation suddenly seemed tragically overrated.

When he didn’t reply, she managed a weak chuckle.  “Yeah.  I told you I wasn’t going anywhere.”

He considered the ammunition he had at his disposal in the form of the legal system.  He could write up her statement.  Send it to the police.  Certainly someone in law enforcement could protect her from this thug.

“He can’t drag you back if he’s in jail, Andrea.”

She smiled then.  A painful looking grimace of a smile.  “And who’s gonna put him in jail.  You?  Me?”  She put a hand to her face, testing to see if the laceration beside her eye was still there.  She winced.  “Besides, I don’t want him to go to jail.  I want him to go back to being the guy I fell in love with a year ago.  I just know that guy is still in there, if I could just stop pissing him off.”

Before he had a chance to respond, Dr. Unger appeared in the doorway.  Jose could smell the disinfectant on the doctor’s hands as he wrestled on a pair of latex gloves.

“Miss Morillo, I’m so sorry to see you back again,” he said, glancing at Jose as if to get a read on the conversation he’d just interrupted.  “Another accident?  In the kitchen this time?”

Feeling frustrated and inflamed, Jose excused himself from the room, mumbling weak wishes for Andrea’s recovery as he backed through the door.  Given what he knew of her, he was certain she wouldn’t confide in the doctor as she’d done with him, and that she would perpetuate the thinly-veiled narrative to explain the origin of her injury.  This made him angry.  Angry that she didn’t value her life enough to see herself out of an abusive situation.  Just the same, he hoped Unger could mend her eye and save her sight because without a plausible means of access to her in the coming days, he knew it would be impossible to cure her himself.

Impossible, unless of course the next injury she sustained at her boyfriend’s hand landed her in the ICU.

CHAPTER

10

MIA

Thursday, September 1

Baltimore

“You wanna grab something from the Shake Shack for lunch?” Jack asked Mia as he eased their patrol car onto I-83 toward the station.

Instead of responding to her partner, she massaged her temples with the pads of her fingers.  She had a splitting headache, and the thought of ingesting a greasy burger made her nauseous.  Sleep had evaded her since the night of Dalton’s conviction, and she blamed exhaustion for the way she’d been feeling in the week that followed. 

“What’s going on with you?  Is it this case?”

Their latest assignment involved tracking down a local scam artist selling fake insurance policies to cancer patients.  They’d spent the better part of two weeks interviewing men and women at chemotherapy infusion centers hoping to identify a pattern with regard to the origin of the calls.  Without a single lead to go on, they started from square one, requesting personal information about physicians, clinics, and insurance companies.  Luckily, most of the patients were happy to help.  So far they’d discovered 18 patients who had been contacted by the bogus insurance company.  And they felt certain it was no coincidence that the majority of them were being treated by a Dr. Frances Wu.

“It’s hard being around cancer patients all day, isn’t it?” he continued when she didn’t reply for the second time.  “Knowing some of them aren’t going to make it.  That some of them are going to go through all that treatment and heartache and are still going to die in the end?”

“We’re all going to die in the end,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“You know what I mean, Mia.”

She did know what he meant, but it was the prophecy, not the case, that was upsetting her.  She actually enjoyed talking to the patients - listening to their stories while she sat with them during their infusions.  The truth was, finding the scam artist preying on the innocent patients gave her something to focus on instead of the prophecy.

Now, as she sat stewing beside her partner, her mind returned to ex-commissioner Dalton and his cryptic words to her at the end of the trial.  She played the message over and over again in her head, certain she was missing something crucial.  What had he meant by ‘see you soon?’

And then it hit her.

She’d purposely erased that morning out from her memory.  The morning back in February when she and Jack had gone to Dalton’s house to confront him, to accuse him of his involvement in the trafficking ring.  Now though, for the first time in many months, she allowed the man’s words to come back to her.  The last sound she’d heard before passing out had been the commissioner’s voice whispering in her ear, “The end is coming, Mia.  Soon the prophecy will be fulfilled.”

Suddenly, it was all very clear.  The people Dalton worked for were part of the prophecy.  They had to be.  It was the only thing that made sense.  Dalton knew they were getting close to fulfilling it and the age of darkness was drawing nigh.

Her head throbbed even thinking about it.  What were the chances of all of them being interconnected?  It seemed highly unlikely, and yet, what other explanation could there be?

While Jack maneuvered effortlessly through the heavy traffic, she attempted to relax her face into a neutral expression in the hopes of avoiding having to talk to him about what was on her mind.  Because although, in her opinion, he was the most trustworthy partner on the force, there were some subjects that were too complicated to discuss, even between the closest of friends.  She wasn’t ready to explain about the prophecy just yet.

As though he could sense her anxiety, he changed the subject, letting her off the hook.  “I saw the letter on your desk from the law firm.  Is it about the nonprofit?”

“Yeah.  It went through.  I meant to tell you.  The Kate Malinov Foundation is finally official.”

“That’s terrific news,” he replied genuinely, placing a hand on her shoulder.  “I know how much starting the foundation meant to you.”

While it was true that establishing the foundation in Kate’s name had been a large step on the path of her recovery, there was more to it than that.  It wasn’t just about moving on.  It was about not wanting to forget.  “I called her family yesterday to let them know, and you wouldn’t believe how emotional they were.  I guess it’s something of a consolation to know your daughter will always be associated with helping trafficked women get back on their feet.”

“The foundation’s gonna help a lot of people.”

She looked out the window at a group of homeless men digging through the dumpster behind the 7-11.  “I wish they didn’t need the foundation’s help,” she told him.  What she couldn’t say was that she wished her only legacy would be the foundation and helping the trafficked women.  But she knew, because of the prophecy, she had much more work ahead – she was destined to save not only the trafficked women, but the entire world.  And the burden was too great to bear.

“Well, until the world is free of darkness, we need people like you, Mia.  It just seems like every day, more and more evil makes its way to the surface.  Scares me to death, bringing a baby into this world sometimes.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d voiced his concerns with regard to his fear of becoming a parent.

“She’s gonna be fine, Jack.  She’s gonna have you and Stella to protect and guide her.  Besides, I think there may still be hope for the world.”

He shifted his focus from the road and cast a dubious glance in her direction.  “Mia, have you met the people we deal with every day?  It’s like we’re screening for roles in the upcoming apocalypse.”

She had to laugh at this, picturing them together in an auditorium, choosing cast members based on who had the more dastardly performance.

“That pedophile PTA president from the case at the elementary school last week would definitely get top billing.  Talk about a douchebag.”

Jack chuckled despite himself.  “See?  That’s what I’m talking about.  I’m not even gonna feel safe sending her to kindergarten!”

“May I suggest slipping a tiny set of nunchucks in her Hello Kitty backpack?”

He glared at her.  “Hello Kitty?  Are you kidding me?  Girl’s gonna have a Black Widow backpack and a Buffy Summers’ lunchbox.”

“Not letting her eat school lunch?”

“Too many GMOs,” he quipped.

At that moment she realized how much better she was feeling.  Jack always had that effect on her.  And the mention of food shifted her attention to her stomach.  “Still interested in Shake Shack for lunch?” she asked.

“Thinking about a Mushroom-Swiss burger?”

“Sounds perfect,” she laughed.