Chapter 11 Emery
The plan is to move quickly and get Luca home under the cover of darkness.
He’s not exactly steady on his feet, so he’ll have to leave the way he came in: on the gurney.
He begrudgingly agrees; it’s being covered by a sheet like a corpse that takes a bit more convincing.
In truth, we’re lucky he agrees to anything.
He could just start screaming. He could find a phone and call the police.
He’d be taken to a hospital, I’d be taken to jail, and he’d never have to see me again.
Well, except when he’d be called to testify at my eventual trial.
I have to believe he doesn’t freak out because somewhere deep inside, a part of him remembers me, or at the very least doesn’t believe I tried to kill him. Which… whatever. I’ll take it.
Thankfully, Michelle is as hard-core about hydration near the end of her shift as she was at the beginning, and we catch her needing the bathroom again.
It’s a win for all of us: She doesn’t have to wait until her allotted break time when a replacement comes in, and I’m able to push the gurney (and Luca) through the door without her knowing.
Honestly, I wonder what Michelle does on the nights when people aren’t sneaking into the lab, but I can’t fixate on her potential bathroom hacks at the moment. I have bigger things to think about.
Like getting past Chatty Carl again.
When we reach the elevator, Annie goes first, distracting Carl by showing him that she can push the button (subtly using her thumb instead of index finger) and a different elevator will open and take them both to the tenth floor.
I use those few precious seconds to get Luca through the lobby unnoticed.
It’s mostly smooth sailing until we need to leave the gurney at the loading dock. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, but nothing about this situation is normal.
Luca has a limp, of course—he was hit by a car a handful of hours ago—but he also walks like it’s his first day with two new legs.
I can practically see the synapses re-forming as he attempts to steady himself, and while part of me wants to log everything—because quite frankly, this is fascinating to watch—the bigger part of me knows that the clock is ticking.
“We have to get him inside before Betty is up,” I say, guiding his arm over my shoulder while Annie goes to his other side to help. A thought stops me in my tracks. “Oh my God. What if she was watching out her window and saw?”
“Then she would have already called the cops on you.” Annie pauses. “Again. And they’d probably already be here. Or waiting for you at home…”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Who’s Betty?” Luca asks, voice strained as he works to put one foot in front of another.
“Our nosy next-door neighbor who’s obsessed with you,” I tell him. “She’s the neighborhood curtain-twitcher who writes down everything everyone does. She hates me.”
He’s quiet at this, and Annie and I exchange a glance as we register in unison that Luca thinks Betty might be justified.
Luca’s asleep before we’re even out of the parking lot, and then at home almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.
There wasn’t a SWAT team surrounding our house, so that’s one thing I have going for me. And Annie’s shady cleaner/delivery friend has obviously been here, because the broken glass is gone. And the blood? Like it was never there. Not a trace of gore anywhere.
This fixer has also set up every piece of medical equipment I could possibly need in the bedroom.
When Annie mentioned supplies, I imagined a couple rolls of gauze or alcohol pads, but no.
Thanks to her, I have an oxygen monitor clamped over Luca’s right index finger and a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm.
EKG electrodes are taped to his chest, and he’s beneath an electric warming blanket.
Out of an abundance of caution, I’m also giving him extra oxygen.
All this and I still can’t bring myself to leave his side and simply let him sleep. I haven’t eaten in… honestly, I don’t remember the last time I ate. I know I need to sleep, too. But adrenaline and anxiety streak through my bloodstream; I’m so jittery I’m trembling.
At around 5 a.m., I text Crash that Luca is under the weather, and after a series of thumbs-up emojis he lets me know he can handle their work solo today. Relieved, I drop my head onto the mattress at Luca’s hip.
Annie peeks into the bedroom. “I’m going to head out,” she says. “The dogs will riot if I’m not there to feed them by sunrise.”
I nod against the mattress, imagining the scene awaiting her.
Annie takes all the abandoned animals, often performing surgery or treating them herself before bringing them home.
She even bought a piece of property when she sold her clinic in the hope of one day turning it into some kind of animal sanctuary.
Right now, she’s got Lieutenant Dan, a twelve-year-old Chihuahua who lost both his back legs to intervertebral disc disease but probably breaks land speed records in his tiny rear-wheel dog cart; Tiny, a five-year-old Great Dane who might be deaf but can smell the cheese drawer open at least two seconds before it actually happens; Butterscotch, a one-eyed Yorkie who works a thankless full-time job protecting the house against the UPS driver; and Miso, an anxious Lab mix that gives such voracious kisses she could probably remove fingerprints with her tongue.
“I want to bring Honey here,” she says in the doorway, and I grunt my interest into the mattress. “I think Luca will feel better seeing how good she’s doing, how healthy.”
Now I look up. I hadn’t thought of this, and honestly, I should have. Honey, a nine-year-old golden retriever–husky mix, was the first dog we brought back with the BioVIVE.
She’d been hit by a car and left on the side of the road with no other identifiable information but a collar with her name on it.
She’d lost a significant amount of blood by the time she was found and technically died on a veterinary OR table, but was successfully revived using the BioVIVE protocol: injection with Compound Y within ten minutes of clinical death, followed immediately by treatment in the BioVIVE pod.
Annie took her in, nursed her back to health, and monitored her recovery. It was clear Honey had once been someone’s pet, but she wasn’t chipped, and nobody checked with the office to claim her. She also didn’t seem to recognize her name or even remember she had once been potty-trained.
Luca and I have long talked about getting a dog, but I always argued that I wasn’t home enough and wouldn’t want to put a pet through that. God, the obliviousness of past Emery.
I don’t plan to make that mistake again.
“That’s a really good idea. It could be good for them to have each other.”
She smiles at me. “Are you going to be okay if I leave?”
Exhaling, I feel the full weight of the day and everything that’s happened. I am absolutely not going to be okay. But Annie has done enough. “Yeah,” I say.
“You’re not going to draw a blood sample and try to take it to the lab to study?”
I should be offended that she thinks the first thing I’m going to do is leave Luca now that he’s alive again, but I guess I can’t be that indignant.
I hold up my hand, making the Star Trek sign. “Scout’s honor.”
Luca sleeps for twelve hours; I do not. I can’t. He wakes only to eat and drink a little before falling back asleep for another solid eight hours.
I’m trying not to panic and remind myself that of course he’s exhausted; every system in his entire body is working to recover in unison.
He was dead, Emery. Give the man a break.
His vital signs are good; his coloring is good.
He’s even started lightly snoring. Now all I can do is wait, get something to eat, and try to get some sleep, too.
I change out of my favorite dress and aggressively shove it and the ruined lab coat in the trash.
I manage to eat a bowl of cereal and drink some water; I log every medical detail from the moment Luca was injected until now.
The sun comes up, goes down, and comes up again, and still, sleep eludes me.
I long to curl up beside him, to rest my head on his chest, to hear the sturdy thumping of his heart, to gain calm and reassurance in the familiar comfort of our bed. But as far as he’s concerned, we’re strangers. If I sleep, it’ll have to be on the couch.
But then what if he wakes up and needs something? What if his temperature or pulse takes a nosedive? What if he dies… again? I quickly smother these thoughts in Bubble Wrap, tuck them in a box, and hide them away in a drawer in my brain labeled THINGS TO FREAK OUT OVER LATER.
Unfortunately for my restless energy, there isn’t much to do around the house. As the weekend passes, I fold a basket of laundry and unload the dishwasher. I order some groceries and update Annie; I continue to log Luca’s vitals. I organize my closet, and his.
Annie drops off Honey on Sunday afternoon and reminds me that she put the compound in the back of my fridge for now. She still doesn’t know what we should do with it, and frankly, neither do I.
When Annie leaves, I follow Honey around as she explores the house and investigates a sleeping Luca before happily curling into a ball at his feet.
She is the picture of contentment. Meanwhile, I am losing my goddamn mind.
Desperate for more ways to stay busy, I drag myself to the kitchen.
A recipe is nothing more than a series of measurements, times, and steps. One would think that I, a scientist, could handle that. One would be wrong. Creating Compound Y? A fascinating project. Making waffles edible? Brain circus: all clowns, no ringmaster.
Even so, I carefully thumb through Luca’s recipe box and attempt the pastina soup he makes when I’m sick.
The finished product is… well. It’s sort of the right consistency, but it’s gray.
Honey doesn’t even want it, and I distinctly remember her once trying to eat her own barf.
If I feed Luca this, he’ll really think I’m trying to kill him.
Pastina abandoned, I’m thrilled when Luca wakes long enough to drink a glass of water and eat a peanut butter sandwich.
“How are you feeling?” I ask softly, reaching up to brush his hair off his forehead.
“Tired,” he says. “And hungry.” His words trail off like he’s been drugged, which…
he has. Not only is he taking a narcotic for pain, but his body is also working overtime to heal.
I prop him up while he eats half the sandwich with his eyes mostly open, the second half with his eyes drifting closed, and only the bottom crust remains when he’s out again, slumped against my shoulder.
I know I need to lay him down, but my heart is so full it’s ready to burst, so I give myself just one more moment of physical contact.
Carefully, I massage his hands, his forearms—to aid his circulation, I tell myself—and then settle his limbs onto the mattress.
I tentatively brush my fingers through his hair and thank the universe for letting me have him back, whispering a hundred promises about how I’ll never lie to him again. He doesn’t hear a single one.