Chapter 19 Truth Will Out
TRUTH WILL OUT
JAKOB
My eyes open slowly, and the world resolves by degrees—a hazy wash of light, then whiteness, then a blurry slice of the world, and then I can see a hospital room.
A chair, empty; ceiling tiles. The weird stuff on the walls that does who-knows-what.
A window, the blinds closed, daylight peeking through the gaps.
A hospital?
I'm in a hospital? What happened? It's all vague and fuzzy. I have hazy impressions of things—a long walk through a tunnel filled with giant rats and spiders, which is surely a figment of my imagination; a giant press, gunfire…
And Brys.
Her eyes on mine, soft and afraid and worried.
"Brys," I mumble.
"Hey, I'm here." I hear her voice from my right side, sleep-thick. "I'm here."
I turn my head on the pillow, and there she is.
Honey-blonde hair has come free of the braid to drape in a wavy cascade down her shoulders and chest. She's absolutely filthy.
Her jeans are ripped and caked in dirt and bits of…
bone? Her T-shirt is similarly soiled, caked with dirt and blood and god-knows-what.
She has dirt and grime and blood smeared on her cheeks and forehead. Even her lovely hair is begrimed.
Yet she's here, in this hospital room with me, passed out in a hard plastic chair. After going through a hell I cannot imagine.
"You—" I break off with a cough, my throat dry and scratchy.
"Here," she mumbles, nudging the rolling tray-table-cart-thing over my lap, on which is a Styrofoam cup and straw. She sits forward and holds the cup for me. "Drink."
I want to guzzle and gulp, but I know better from heroin detox.
You vomit and vomit and vomit and shake and shiver, and you're so fucking thirsty, but you can barely manage to keep a single sip down. So you take a mouthful and let the roof of your mouth, your teeth, your gums, and your throat soak up the water, swish it around until it’s warm in your mouth, and then you swallow it.
Quenches real thirst far faster than gulping ever will—gulping will only make you feel worse anyway. Sloshy belly feeling, anyone?
Life pro-tip: don't do heroin. The high is like touching God, the crash and subsequent cravings are the most miserable existence you can imagine, and detox is even worse.
When I've sipped and swished and swallowed to satiety, I let my head fall back against the pillow. "Thank you, Brys."
"Yes, Jay—” she breaks off, blushing. "Sure, of course."
I laugh, which hurts like a bitch. "Oh god, don't make me laugh, please. Oh god, ow." I catch my breath. "I know what you were about to say."
Her blush is scarlet and endearing. "Jakob, don't."
"How can I not?"
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
I let her change the subject for now. "Kind of a silly question, is it not? I was shot, Brys. That's how I feel."
"You lost a lot of blood. Like, a LOT a lot. The wound itself wasn't that bad, apparently, but you lost so, so much blood. Like, close to forty percent. Over forty percent is irreversible, or so I’m told.”
"Well, the so-called bandage they slapped on wasn't much better than a band-aid, and the drive to that hellhole was pretty long."
"I don't want to talk about that place, Jakob." Her voice is low and shaking with intensity. "It was worse than…" she shudders all over. "I'd rather have brains blown out in front of me—or on me—than go anywhere near that fucking nightmare ever again."
“On you?" I ask
She tells me about being dragged—or rather thrown—out of the car, the fight, and almost being shot in the face before Nico saved her.
"I'm sorry, Brys," I whisper, shaking my head, dropping my gaze to my lap. "I am so, so sorry. For everything. For running into you in that alley. For using you as a distraction. Pulling you into all this. You don't deserve any of what's happened—none of it."
"You couldn't have known what would happen."
"Yes, I could have. I should have. I should have known better."
"You want to make it up to me, Jakob?"
"Of course. But it's impossible. I've totally derailed your life."
“You're giving yourself too much credit, buster." She pauses, glances away for a moment, and then back to me. "You can make it up to me, you know." She smirks at me. "No, not like that."
"That isn't what I was—"
"That is a whole separate conversation," she interrupts. "Tell me."
I frown, confused. "Tell you what?"
"Everything."
"Everything about what?"
"You." She pulls the chair closer to me, takes my hand in both of hers.
"You said twice that if I knew what kind of man you are, I would take my chances with Pugli and his gaggle of murderers.
Well, let's assume that's true. What do you have to lose, Jakob?
If you can't or won't open up to me, what point is there in you and me trying to…?” She trails off, shrugging, as if she can’t even finish the thought.
"So then I'm gone. And if you do tell me, maybe you're right.
Maybe it will be more than I can deal with.
But what if it's not? What then, Jakob? What if I can understand?
What if I'm capable of…of…I don't know what, Jakob, because I don't have a clue what you would tell me. "
I close my eyes. Search myself, physically and mentally. I'm in pain, but it's distant and dull. My head is foggy, my thoughts hazy and hard to pin down, sluggish and oozy.
"Am I…?" I peer up at the IV pole. "Am I on opiates?"
She frowns. "I…I'm not sure. Why?"
I fumble for the nurse call button and press it several times. A nurse bustles in. "And how are we feeling today?"
I tug on the line at my forearm. "Get me off the opiates. Right the fuck now."
"But sir—"
I give her a look of unadulterated fury. "I will not say it again. If I have to rip the I-V out of my arm, I will."
"Jakob," Brys says, "I don't understand what—"
The nurse, however, does, her face paling. "Oh—oh no. You're in recovery?"
"Just get me off of them, please." I do my best to sound less capable of murder.
She stops the drip and removes the bag. “I’m afraid without that, the pain will be—"
"Better than heroin detox," I finish for her. "Just get me some aspirin or Tylenol or Aleve or anything that's not a fucking opiate."
"Of course, sir." She leaves and returns moments later with a dose of plain old Tylenol.
When the nurse has left again, silence lingers between us.
"Jakob," Brys starts, her voice just above a whisper. "Talk to me. Please."
I know it's mostly in my head, but I can feel the pain returning—I tell myself to welcome the pain. It means I'm alive and not risking getting hooked again.
"One for one," I mutter. "I'll tell you a secret, but you have to tell me one."
She nods while sighing. "I agree to your terms." A pause. "But to be honest, I'm not agreeing because it's your terms. I'm agreeing because…" she trails off, shaking her head.
"Why, Brys?"
"Because I don't want to. Because I want to…" she looks at me. "I want to trust you. I don't want to keep everything inside anymore.” Her eyes shimmer. "There are things I've never told anyone."
"And you want to tell me?"
She huffs. "God no. I'm terrified. But I…it's festering, Jakob."
"I know how that feels," I whisper.
"So let's not make it an agreement, or terms of a deal. It's you trusting me and me trusting you. I'm scared, Jakob, and I know you must be, too. But I…I'm choosing courage anyway." She leans forward and presses her lips to the back of my hand. "Will you do that with me?"
"Why?" I can't help but ask. "Why trust…me?"
"You protected me. Fought for me. Killed for me."
"You wouldn't have needed any of that if it wasn't for me."
"There is zero R-O-I on blame-casting, Jakob."
I let out a breath. "I was born wealthy.
Very, very wealthy, from two very old and very important families.
I was educated by private tutors—and when I say my education was classical, I mean that I was taught Latin and Greek, fencing, horsemanship, diction and elocution, mathematics…
I was raised like a prince of old, Brys.
In Prague. My name really is Jakob…Jakob Kasparek.
But that person, the Jakob Kasparek who was born in Prague and emigrated to the States…
he died a long time ago. Well, he vanished.
" I sigh. "I'm getting ahead of myself."
I tell her all about my childhood. My nanny, my beautiful, quiet, poised, elegant mother. My stern, arrogant father.
I tell her about coming home to find my parents gone and our housekeeper in an unintelligible panic.
The hospital—my mother's still, thin form caught up in a spiderweb of tubes and lines, my father hunched over her bed, unmoving, for days.
Her death and my reaction to it
My father's violent expression of grief against me.
Following him home, watching him shut the door in my face. The short silence punctuated by the awful finality of a single gunshot.
I tell her about being sent to live with my father's cousin in Harlem with my inheritance that he stole. How he left me on a sidewalk in a terrible section of the city, far, far from anything I knew, which was very little to begin with.
I tell her about being homeless. Walking the streets all day and all night, being beaten up by old homeless men for prime sleeping spots beneath overpasses, digging in dumpsters for scraps.
I tell her about being taken in by Miss Amy. How she fed me, bought me clothes, and gave me a room to sleep in. How at first I thought she was merely kind, wanting to help a lost young man out of the goodness of her heart.
Brys's expression betrays her understanding of what happened before I say anything further. "Oh god, Jakob," she whispers.
I clear my throat, swallow hard. My eyes burn, and my throat is tight. "This is hard to talk about. I…in fact, I've only spoken of this period of my life in any detail one other time-when I told Isabel."
Brys's gaze is thoughtful. "I have a lot of questions about her, but I suppose that's part of the telling."
I shrug. "I suppose so, yes."