Going Too Far(31)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"This is what I wanted you to see."

Chapter 12

I wasted away. My flesh shrunk so quickly, I seemed to melt, to collapse in on myself. Through my transparent skin, my bones showed. I wiggled one finger back and forth, watching the bones grind together underneath.

The ammonia lodged in my nostrils like two Q-tips.

I meant to cross my right hand to my left arm and pull out the IV. I missed, and my hand bounced off my shoulder. I slid my hand down my arm, feeling for the needle. No IV.

I sniffed more ammonia, trying to get it past the Q-tips and into my brain. I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t open my eyes.

"Do not stick a needle in me," I mumbled. "Whatever you do, do not start an IV. I would rather die, do you understand? Go ahead and let me die."

"You’re not dying," came Tiffany’s voice. "And you’re crazy if you think they’d let me start an IV. I’m lucky I got to take your blood pressure. Which is very low, by the way, so don’t sit up yet."

I took one more big whiff and sat up. Outside the open square of the back of the ambulance, John stood chatting with Officer Leroy and another cop and Quincy. John was smoking a cigarette.

Bastard.

Bastard!

I moved toward him. Fell.

Off the ambulance? Heard Tiffany shriek.

Found myself lying on my back on the wet highway, the shock of the fall still rippling through my muscles.

John lifted me under the arms and stood me up against the ambulance bumper. "Watch that first step. It’s a doozy," he said around the lit cigarette hanging from his up."

I shoved him. His chest was solid under the dark uniform, and he didn’t budge. I shoved him again, as hard as I could, but only shoved myself back against the ambulance. I screamed at him, "I had cancer, you f**k!"

The other cops and Quincy crowded around. Suddenly I could see myself the way they saw me. a blue-haired girl screaming for no reason. I was about to get taken to jail for assaulting a police officer.

John’s cigarette dropped onto the wet asphalt and steamed there. I didn’t look up at him to see whether he was gaping at me and the cigarette had fallen out of his mouth, or he’d thrown the cigarette down on purpose. I didn’t want to know whether I’d mortified him in front of his macho coworkers. I didn’t care.

"I’m hitching a ride on the fire truck back to my motorcycle," I told the cigarette. "I’ve had enough of what you wanted me to see. I’m done for the night."

My legs wobbled underneath me as I staggered to the fire truck, but no one offered to help me, not even Tiffany or Brian. Keeping my head turned away from the wreck, I pulled myself into the roomy cab of the fire truck. I curled up like a cat next to the giant pliers from the jaws o’ life. Which was probably a good thing. I would need them to extract me from this fix I’d wedged myself into with Johnafter.

I HAD CANCER, YOU FUCK.

I was so tired. I’d almost finished my daily five-mile run in the park. And I hadn’t been to sleep yet. Well, except for a half-hour catnap in the front of the fire truck before the emergency response personnel dropped me off.

Even on my last leg, I managed a burst of energy, trying to outrun the memory of my own words.

I-had-can-cer-you-fuuuuuuuuu—

Part of me wanted to take it back. I hadn’t looked at John’s face when I shouted at him. I hadn’t seen the dark look of pain. But I could imagine. This macho pride thing was very fragile, I knew. I’d hit him where it hurt, in front of the older men he was trying desperately to be like.

Then I remembered the twisted body in the very small space of the mangled car, and I wanted to shove John harder.

Done. I reached the wall of handprints and walked around it to cool down. I half expected the ghost of Johnafter to round the bend toward me.

We hadn’t met in the park since that first afternoon. One night I’d asked him whether he was trying to avoid seeing me there. He’d responded like the honest do-gooder he was. Sometimes he had to stay late at the police station to finish paperwork for the arrests he’d made and reports he’d taken that night. So he didn’t get to bed until mid-morning. He was still asleep when I went running.

He ran later in the afternoon, when he woke up. I wasn’t willing to stay later and lose sleep to see him, any more than he was willing to get up early and lose sleep to see me. I guess we both understood that our relationship was built entirely on witty repartee, and neither of us thought we could be witty on four hours of shut-eye.

Wait a minute—what was I thinking? What relationship? We probably didn’t even have an appointment for sex anymore. John was gone, back into the yearbook from whence he sprung. And I didn’t look forward to spending my last night on patrol with Officer After.

My cell phone rang.

"John!" I exclaimed, sprinting to my motorcycle at the edge of the parking lot and pawing through my bag. We’d exchanged numbers in case another suspect tried to bash the door of the cop car while John wasn’t around. "Hello?"

"Hey!" Tiffany said. "I was afraid you’d be asleep, but you sound wide awake."

I tried not to huff out my disappointment. Wiping wet blue strands out of my eyes, I said, "I just finished my run."

"You’re running this week, even with everything else going on?"

"Have to."

"Well? Do you have leukemia?"

I held the phone at arm’s length and frowned at it. If Tiffany knew why I ran, I was even more transparent than I’d thought. I brought the phone back to my ear. "Not today."

"That’s good. How about last night? Were you okay last night? I’ve never seen anyone that mad."

I kicked my handprint on the wall. "Thanks to John." I should have been kicking John’s handprint, but it was too high.

"He went after you, you know. On your way to the fire truck, you looked like you were about to fall over those orange cones. But I called him back. I was afraid you’d hit him again and get in trouble."

"I’m a threat, all right." I felt my face flush at the thought of John coming after me. He cared, he cared! He cared so much that he made me faint on purpose! I was pathetic.

Tiffany cleared her throat. "Listen, I wanted your advice on something."

I laughed heartily. "Yeah, I’m a regular Dear Abby. Shoot."

"Brian still isn’t speaking to me. He won’t return my calls. But right before we went to the bridge, he had started hinting every other word that he and I should have sex—"

I knew what she was getting at. "No."

"—and he was trying to convince me to do it. But I didn’t want to." "No."

"Now, to get back together with him—"