Authors: Zoey Derrick
I just nod.
“When you’re ready, head up to surgery - the waiting room. I’ll find you there when we’re done. We will do everything we can to save both of them, Mikah. I promise you.” She grips my shoulder as she stands. “I’ll see you soon,” she says as she leaves.
From farther back in the chapel she turns to me. “She’s gained more than fifteen pounds since I’ve seen her last. Her weight gain may have just saved her life.”
I want to smile, but I can’t. “Thank you,” I say very slowly.
“You’re welcome.”
She turns and leaves. I’m no longer having to force myself to breathe. She is alive. She’s survived.
“Jesus, God, thank you.”
I pull myself up off the floor and take a seat in the front pew, leaning my elbows into my knees.
I feel a vibration along my thigh. My phone. That is about the fifteenth time in the last half hour it’s gone off, but frankly, I could care less right now.
Resting my head in my hands, I let the tears flow. They pool into my palms. Breathing deep, ragged breaths, I try to pull myself back together.
I need to go upstairs, but I can’t go in the state I’m in. I don’t understand why I’m having such a strong reaction to the news about Vivienne. Something I can’t explain is happening to me. I need to see her.
“You will see her soon enough.”
My head snaps up at the elegant, soft female voice. Nothing. I see no one.
“You’ve been chosen to protect her, Mikah. Chosen to see to it that she is safe.”
I stand quickly, spinning around. Sharp, blinding pain bounces around my body, and I crumple to my knees.
“What— What is happening to me?” I say aloud.
No response. I ball my fists in frustration, and the pain stops as quickly as it started.
I climb back up into the pew, shaking now because it’s not just the pain that’s gone but the hum, too. My connection to Vivienne, and it’s gone. Panic seeps in.
“Relax.”
Relief washes through me in instant response to the command. I have no control over it.
“Why can’t you tell me what is going on?”
“Your answers will come in time, when you’re meant to hear them.”
I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m hearing voices, talking to myself. Yet I can feel someone with me.
“I am not for you to look upon, young angel. I am here to guide you, to help you into your new life. She is ours to protect, and we will. Without fail, we will protect her in the way she is meant to be protected. But we can only initiate the healing; she must do the rest on her own. When the time comes, you will be told what to do next.”
“She doesn’t want me around,” I whisper.
“You do not need to speak aloud, young angel. I know what you think, and I feel what you feel. I believe that her life has taken the turn you need to keep her within reach. Do not fret.”
I sigh. With the heels of my hands, I press against my temples, trying to dispel the idea that someone is talking to me inside my head. I’m not crazy, am I?
A sweet female giggle radiates through my whole body. The tingling is back, but this time it feels different; it tickles. I squirm. Then suddenly the sensation becomes a spreading warmth that comforts me.
I realize that, for the first time, I can interpret the sensations. The tickling is something happy. Or laughter? The warmth feels like love or adoration.
The sensation stops.
Hello?
There is no answer, but a warm calm spreads across my skin. I decide that staying down here in the chapel is only going to drive me nuts, so I head for the door.
I pull my phone from my pocket. Thirty-seven missed calls. I’m not at all interested in any of them. Most of them are from Jack. But one...
I open up the visual voicemail app.
Elton Bennett
09:57 32 seconds
“What kind of game are you playing at, Blake? How dare you pull of out of our arrangement. You will not get away with this. She’s just a white trash tramp who needed to be dealt with. Don’t go getting too hasty, you will burn for it. I’ll see to it.”
I click into my voicemail, find the message from Bennett and forward it to Stevens.
“A little tramp, huh? What are
you
playing at, Bennett?” I say as I reach the door to the chapel.
It doesn’t surprise me that he’s found a connection; he’s a crooked-ass, wannabe politician. It’s clear to me that his attempts to cover his own ass are backfiring already.
Nine
I leave the chapel and head down the hall towards toward the bank of elevators that will take me up to the surgery floor. I’d rather wait up there then down here.
Jesus, what the hell was all that about?
I shake my head but can’t dispel the image of an angel – the painting my mom had above the hutch – from my mind. Could all that talk, all those years ago, really be true? Am I really an angel? But if I’m an angel, doesn’t that mean that I died?
“Not necessarily.”
“Jesus!” I sputter, stumbling in my surprise. Falling against the wall, I look behind me, but there’s no one there. There’s not a person to be seen in either direction.
“No, not Jesus, angel. I am Seraphina – your guardian, your teacher.”
Rather than look like an idiot talking to myself in the middle of a deserted hallway, I try speaking to her in my thoughts.
Then show yourself.
Good God, I really am loosing it.
“I cannot show myself to you. Not until you’re ready.”
But don’t you think it will help me better understand what is going on?
“Not hardly, young angel. You have a lot to learn. When you’re ready, you will see.”
The more she talks, the more convinced I am that she’s not the same voice that spoke to me in the chapel. Ugh! I don’t know how much of this I’m supposed to handle before I break.
Does this have anything to do with the tattoo on my back?
“Everything. Although, young one, it is not a tattoo.”
I nod my head.
I’m growing well aware of that. I swear I saw it shimmering last night. What on earth is it?
“Why, what else would an angel have upon his back?”
My knees buckle as reality strikes.
Wings?
The answer to my question comes in the form of a tingling sensation radiating across my back. The reinforcement of my conclusion leaves me shaking my head. This is all just way too much.
Are you going to keep blindsiding me when you start talking?
“Yes, and no. Now, young angel, know that I will be ever-present and will do my best not to frighten you.”
I push away from the wall and begin moving back down the hall. Finally I reach the elevator and press the up arrow.
There are so many unanswered questions, I feel like my head is going to explode. But something that the other voice told me comes flooding back.
The voice before, she said something about helping Vivienne. What did she mean?
“She meant that we can only help her start the process. The rest is up to her. You are here to protect her, to keep her safe and to help her heal.”
How on earth am I supposed to do that?
“Be here.”
Well that won’t be hard., I have no intention of leaving. Not until she does.
The elevator finally arrives and I step in. As the elevator rises, all the angst and anguish I felt earlier returns. I get this strange sense of emptiness, and I wonder if the voice has gone.
When I get no answering reply, I’m assured that she is. At least for now. With each passing floor, my anxiety rises, and the buzz strengthens across my skin. But for the first time in all of this, I feel a sense of hope.
Ten
I’ve never been a fan of hospitals, let alone waiting rooms. The last time I spent any amount of time in one was after the accident. My youngest brother, Ronin, had survived the initial accident, then surgery, only to pass away about six hours later. We waited, Victoria and I, for nearly four hours while he was in surgery. We had already found out about Dad and my other brother, Shane.
I spent hours pacing the room while Victoria slowly lost her mind. She was far closer to Dad and Ronin than I ever was. I had always been closer to Mom.
All things considered, I will take this waiting room over that one, only because I feel completely confident in Dr. Alston’s abilities as well as my newfound sense of hope.
Though that doesn’t stop me from pacing the room, thankful that I’m the only one in here.
My phone starts to vibrate. Hoping that it will offer some distraction, I pull it from my pocket. My eyebrows knit together.
“Blake.”
“Mikah, it’s Detective Stevens.”
“Have you caught Riley yet?”
“No.” So not the distraction I was looking for. “I called because I received your recording. How in the hell did you obtain this?”
“It’s a simple voicemail recording. Leaving a voicemail is public record.”
I can hear a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “I see your point. How is she?”
My eyes water almost instantly at his seemingly innocent question, but his sense of guilt is palpable even through the phone. “She’s in surgery, so I don’t know.”
“Alright. I’ll try back later.”
“Detective?”
Another sigh. “Yeah,” he says, clipped.
“How are you holding up?” I ask. Doubtless, his dead officer weighs heavy on his mind.
“Officer Anders was a good friend of mine. I’m...” Pause.
“No need, Detective. I understand.”
“Thanks, Blake.”
“Yup. When my people get in touch with you, let me know if you need anything from them. Or from me.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
“Anytime.” I hear the disconnecting click.
I pull the phone from my ear and hit end. I take a step back when I see more of the missed calls. My leg bumps into a chair, so I sit down and begin scrolling through them.
Most of them are from Jack, and looking at the time on my watch and the call log tells me that the majority of them were from before Elton left his message. It’s good to know that, had I been coherent and not hearing voices in my head, I would’ve had a heads-up about what he knew before calling me.
I go flipping through the emails. I quickly see why Elton knows about my severing ties to Bennett and Lisbon, which means pulling out of the condo project we broke ground on a couple weeks ago. Elton knows that he cannot continue without MSBE’s involvement. Ninety percent of the investors on that project only joined in because I was fronting the majority of it. The project was a major risk, given its location.
Jack has also forwarded some more information regarding Riley and his involvement in Rebecca’s death.
I can’t look at this now. I don’t need to have what could’ve happened to Vivienne shoved in my face.
Jesus. Vivienne. She was done, gone, out of Riley’s life, and by the sounds of it, never to return. She could’ve had anything she wanted out of Elton. Or Riley, for that matter. She could’ve used them, blackmailed them, anything. But she didn’t. Why?
I know why. She’s not that type of person. Her determination to be independent through all of this is my answer. Whether it is to prove it to herself or not, she’s determined to make it on her own.
Eleven
A hum radiates quickly through my body as the sound of footsteps registers in my ears. This time it’s light, but doesn’t tickle. Someone that I know is coming?
After four more steps, a man steps into the doorway. My heart races for that brief second before recognition, and then the humming stops.
“Red. What are you doing here?”
“I came by to check on you.”
“How’d you know I was—…”
“You would think, after the last three years, you would know the answer to that question.”
I nod my head. “She’s in surgery.”
“I feel awful about this.”
I look to him, puzzled. “For?”
“I was there. Last night. Waiting for her to return home from work. If I’d gotten there sooner I—…”
“Stop. There was a cop who was killed in Riley’s quest to get to her. Do not think that it would have been any different with you had you arrived earlier.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and look down at the floor. “The truth is that I don’t know when the cop was killed. Riley could have been in that building for hours before she got home. Or he could have managed to sneak his way in, leaving the cop for later. Something that surprised me most was the fact that her door was locked, but only the knob.” I wonder idly if Riley had left, met with his father outside of my building and then went back.
The buzz comes back, same as a moment ago, as I hear Red’s shoes hit the carpet.
He sits down next to me. “I know, but still, it makes me wonder.” He stops talking and I can sense his mood change to distress. “Good Lord, Mikah, you’re bleeding.”
I give Red a sideways glance as I try and recall how I could have started bleeding. He’s looking at my back. Shit! “Where?” I ask, a little bit of panic in my voice. I can’t feel any pain anywhere.
“There, on your shoulder and your back. Let me look at it.”
“No, it’s fine it’s probably not my blood,.” I say, as my body runs cold and as the vision of Vivienne splayed out on that bed, blood everywhere, goes flashing through my mind.