The Man I Love (16 page)

The bathroom door creaked open. Another pair of blood-stained work boots and maroon-spattered jeans. David, crouching down. Back in the theater, he had looked pale and grim. Almost stoic. Now he looked terrified. Though the florescent light was harsh, his pupils were enormous, eclipsing the deep brown irises. His eyes were black pearls, slick with tears, fringed in fear. “Erik,” he whispered.

Erik could not remember the last time David had called him by name. “I’m all right,” he said between sobs. “I’m all right.”

David put his hands on Erik’s shoulders. Put his forehead against Erik’s brow. Erik clenched handfuls of David’s shirt. Head to head, like twins in the womb, they hung onto each other, floating in the madness.

David,
Erik thought, filled with a desperate affection.
Her blood is on you, too. You are in the story now. You are part of my pack.

“Come on,” David said after a minute, wiping his face on a sleeve. “Let’s get out of here.” He stood up, put a hand down. Erik slapped his opposite palm against it and let David pull him to his feet. He went to the sink and splashed his face again, scraping the blood out of his hairline and eyebrows. He soaped his forearms, got as much as he could out of his fingernails. Watched the red fade to pink and swirl down the drain.

David handed him a couple paper towels. “You good?”

“I’m good.” He balled them up and fired at the garbage can in the corner. Perfect shot.

“Come on,” David said. He thumped Erik’s back, ruffled his hair. “Fishy, fishy in the brook, come along on David’s hook…”

For an hour and a half, Erik, Lucky and David sat in the main waiting room of Philadelphia Trauma Center. The admitting nurses would not tell them anything, other than Will and Daisy were both in surgery. Not even to Lucky, who covertly switched her grandmother’s sapphire ring to her left ring finger, laid the jeweled hand casually on the counter and said she was Will’s fiancée.

Frustrated and depleted, they dropped onto couches and chairs. After a few minutes, Erik summoned the energy to get up again and call his mother. Christine could not get an evening flight out of Key West. The earliest flight she could book was eleven o’clock the next morning. Erik wrote down the information and said he would pick her up at the airport. Or someone would.

“Call me when you leave the hospital,” she said. “If you go somewhere—anywhere different—you call me.”

“I will,” he said, and then yawned.

“Don’t you dare not call me. I need to know where you are, Byron Erik.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Erik said, leaning his head against the payphone. It was a riff they had developed since he had become an adult: she called him by full name—which he’d always detested as a child—and he retorted with
ma’am,
which Christine loathed.

Back in the waiting room, Erik sank into the couch cushions and put his feet up on the coffee table. He stared at nothing. Felt nothing. In a moment, Lucky toppled over and pillowed her cheek on his leg. He rested his hand on her shoulder, yawning again, his face splitting. He was a little hungry but too tired to do anything about it.

Lucky slept. The boys sat and withdrew further into their exhausted selves. David’s eyes blinked and finally closed. Erik absently played with Lucky’s spiral curls, picked at the dried blood in them. His mind dipped and rose on waves of disjointed thought until he too, fell asleep.

At the touch of a cold hand on his brow, he opened his eyes. Looked up at Daisy’s face.

I’ve slept a hundred years. I’m an old man now. And she’s grown old with me.

Then he realized it was Francine Bianco’s hand. Daisy’s mother, perched on the arm of the couch, her palm now cupping his jaw.

“Erik,” she whispered, except in her accent it was
Erique.
“Oh darling, what’s happened to you?”

Erik felt bruised and scraped. He put his feet on the floor, disoriented. Lucky’s head was no longer pillowed on his legs. David was gone, too. Joe Bianco walked over. Erik recognized his expression immediately: he was in the war room. Jaw tight, his blue eyes turned to hard slate, shoulders cloaked in disciplined control. He crouched down and clasped a hand on Erik’s upper arm. “How do you feel?”

Erik breathed in, let it out, testing his lungs. “I’m all right.”

Joe indicated the blood-smeared T-shirt. “Any of that yours?”

Erik nearly replied it was all his daughter’s blood, but quickly nipped the words and shook his head. “Where’s Daisy?”

“Still in surgery. Will is in recovery. The doctor is talking to Lucky.”

On the other side of the waiting room, Erik saw Lucky sitting with a doctor in green surgical scrubs. A few seats away sat a familiar, suited figure. Detective Khoury raised a hand in acknowledgment. Erik raised his back.

“Who’s he?” Joe asked.

“A cop. A detective, I mean.”

“Have you talked to police yet?”

“Yeah,” Erik said, a hand to his now throbbing head. He was insanely thirsty. And the thought of a cigarette leaped unexpectedly into his mind. He was a careless, clumsy social smoker but right now, a slow, deliberate drag into his throat and lungs and the bracing rush of nicotine would be perfect. He wanted it.

“Do you need a lawyer?”

“Joseph,” Francine said.

Erik blinked, confused. “No. I’m a witness.”

Francine spoke sharply to her husband in French. Joe didn’t look at her but his face softened and now both hands touched Erik’s arms and shoulders. A warm palm on his face and a tug on his ear. A father’s touch.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Erique?”

“I’m fine.”

“You poor thing,” Francine said, her voice cracking. Her arms around Erik again. Francine was holding him now, holding him like a mother, but she was crying. Was she mother or child? Erik struggled to think straight. He needed a drink badly.

“Where’s David?” he asked.

“I sent him down the street to the Sheraton,” Joe said. “We need a room tonight. I told him to get two rooms and whoever needs to stay can stay. Franci, chère, come here. You can’t keep crying on the boy and he’s about to collapse. Cry on me.”

“I’m sorry,” Francine said, wiping her eyes. “Where is your mother, Erique?”

“Florida. She’s coming tomorrow morning. I need to get some water. Do you want anything?”

“No, no. You go.”

Erik hesitated, nearly asked Joe for a cigarette, knowing he’d have them. But he didn’t want to smell like smoke later when he saw Daisy.

If they let him see her.

They better let him see her.

He found a bank of vending machines and got himself a Coke. Downing half of it in a few greedy swallows, he was mildly amazed his wallet was in one pocket, and his keys in another. Bits and pieces of an ordinary life. Clearly he’d gotten up this morning and put things in his pockets, but the morning was forgotten. Yesterday eluded his grasp as well, along with the previous week. Time rewound to James stepping onto the stage and no further.

James.

Erik reached back in his pocket. The flattened penny slid coolly against his fingers, the edges both sharp and soft. He took it out. Looked at it. In the glow of the vending machine light the flattened metal looked dull and morose. It seemed to give off a shamed vibe. As if it didn’t want to be looked at. Erik put it away again.

In the waiting room, Lucky was sitting with the Biancos.

“How’s Will?” Erik asked.

“The shot in the side was clean. In and out. Cracked a rib but no internal organs hit.”

“What about his hand?”

“He’s lost two fingers, pinkie and ring. Middle finger is fifty-fifty, they have to watch it. Index should be all right. Massive soft tissue damage to his palm. The tendons are a mess. I don’t know about the carpal ligament but all the bones in his wrist are intact, thank God. Surgeon says he did great.” Lucky’s voice fell apart. She let out a tremendous breath and seemed to deflate under the drape of Erik’s arm. She sniffed hard and Francine automatically passed her a tissue.

“Will they let you see him?” Erik asked.

“Detective Khoury is in there now,” she said, pressing the tissue to her eyes.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bianco?”

The party turned as one to the surgeon who had appeared in the waiting room. His scrubs were navy blue and he wore a patterned skull cap. Joe stood up.

The doctor came closer. “You are Margaret’s father?”

Margaret?
Erik thought, startled.
Margaret is James’s sister.

“I am Joseph Bianco, Marguerite is my daughter. This is my wife. This—” he touched Erik’s shoulder. “—is my son and the young lady is my daughter’s roommate. But she is family.”

“I’m Dr. Akhil Jinani. I’m a vascular surgeon and I operated on your daughter this evening.” He and Joe shook hands. “Please, sit down.”

Erik stared at the doctor. He was Indian. Or perhaps Arab. Dark-skinned and a bit of black hair threaded with silver peeking beneath his cap. Yet his features were young, almost pretty. A boy’s face in an older man’s body.

“Marguerite is resting and doing fine,” Dr. Jinani said, the words brisk and tight within the lilting accent. “And they are moving her from recovery into the ICU. She is not going to die, Mrs. Bianco. And right now there’s nothing to indicate we will lose the leg.”

He paused to let them all digest and for Francine to get another tissue. Erik was still stupidly struggling to grasp Daisy sharing a name with James’s sister.

“I will try to make this as simple as possible,” the doctor said. “In surgery tonight we explored the gunshot wound and found the damaged femoral artery. We were able to stop the bleeding and I placed a graft to bypass the injured section and establish flow distally. In other words, the pulses behind her knee and the top of her foot were restored, and the leg began to warm up.”

“Which is good,” Francine said.

“All good signs, yes. I am optimistic she will recover fully and retain the use of her leg.”

Another pause then, as the question passed unasked around the circle of people. To ask if she would dance again seemed trivial when set against the relief of her being alive and all right. But this was Daisy.

Dr. Jinani looked around his audience carefully. “I briefly heard what happened at the university,” he said. “On the news. And naturally we had to cut her out of tights and toe shoes. I assume she is an accomplished dancer?”

They nodded as one. Francine’s eyes closed and she held the ball of tissues tight to her lips. Erik thought about the purple leotard with the criss-cross straps. It was Daisy’s favorite. Gone. Dropped ripped and bloodied on the emergency room floor. Most likely thrown away by now.

“Mrs. Bianco,” the surgeon said. “It would be foolish of me to make promises about her future in dance right now. But let me say being a dancer was on Marguerite’s side today. She’s in phenomenal physical shape. I was somewhat amazed. Despite the shock and blood loss, her heart rate was steady all through surgery. She required no transfusions. And her blood pressure is quite satisfactory right now. As is the blood flow to the lower leg. Circulation is our priority and what we must monitor tonight. We can only go as far as we can see.”

“Of course,” Francine said, sniffing and blinking rapidly. “Of course. She’s alive. Nothing else matters.”

“Does she have any other injuries?” Joe asked.

“Only minor ones, sir. An incomplete fracture of the left fibula bone. That’s nothing—the tibia is what bears the weight, the fib just gives backup. I doubt it would need to be pinned. Swelling of the left ankle may indicate some ligament damage. She will have a full orthopedic assessment tomorrow. As I said, the vascular issues must take priority. It does no good to set a broken leg if we cannot get blood to it.”

“Of course.”

“But if you need an orthopedic surgeon, I recommend Dr. Bonanto at the Kendall Center. For this kind of case, he’s the one you want.”

“I’ll get him,” Joe said.

Dr. Jinani looked at Erik then, taking in his weary and bloodied appearance. “Were you there when it happened? Are you all right?”

Erik nodded.

The doctor nodded as well and his expression was both sympathetic and ironic—a corner of his mouth twitched as if he were trying not to smile too broadly. “Would you like to see your sister now?”

Erik exhaled soft laughter. Busted. Yet grateful. “I would,” he said. “Let my mother go first though.”

Francine made to stand up but Joe set his hand on her knees, stilling her. He looked at Erik. “You go on in.”

“No,” Erik said. “No, you go.”

Joe smiled then, raising a finger. “You go now, son.”

Erik went. The nurse got him a gown and she walked him to Daisy’s room. “Is she awake?”

“She was awake in recovery but then we started her on morphine for pain and she’s dropped off again. The best thing she can do is sleep right now.” The nurse stopped at the last door on the corridor and paused, her hand on the knob. “All right?” she said.

Erik drew in a breath. “All right.”

He went in.

“Isn’t she cold?” It was the first thing he thought. “She’s always cold.”

“She’s fine,” the nurse said, with a reassuring smile. “She doesn’t feel cold.”

They had her in an over-sized hospital johnnie, white with little blue flowers. Emerging from the short sleeves, her arms looked fragile, bony, like a starving child’s. A flimsy blue sheet was tucked around her waist and her right leg. Her left leg was exposed, the thigh swathed in gauze, the calf and foot stabilized between two long foam planks. IV lines in one arm, a blood pressure cuff on the other, along with a pulse monitor clipped to her index finger. A tube ran under her nose, delivering oxygen.

The nurse moved aside a rolling tray with some kind of monitor. “Go ahead, you can get close.”

Gingerly, Erik moved in. He felt the slightest misstep—a tube jiggled, a machine jostled, an inadvertent knock against the bed—might kill her. He curled his fingers around her hand, drew it into his palm, squeezed it. His other hand hovered above her forehead. He glanced at the nurse, who nodded. “You can touch her, it’s all right. Talk to her.” She stepped out of the room.

Erik laid his hand flat on Daisy’s forehead. Her skin was cool and dry. Miraculously her hair was still up in its ballet bun, although falling loose, toppled slightly sideways now. He bent lower, brushed his lips along her hairline, inhaling for just a hint of her perfume. A trace of sugar-soap scent would have been enough to soothe him. But her skin smelled sharply of alcohol, and dully of sweat, and another underlying odor, plastic and manufactured, like adhesive tape or latex.