Page 92 of Exit Strategy
I drew in a shallow breath.
Stay calm.
They talked her down, and of all people, it was Callie who brought her to earth.
Then, stunningly, Maddy just… left.
I could feel my feet, and I wiggled my toes. I could see them, they were still there, and I flexed my foot. My spine was intact; I wasn’t a paraplegic. That was good news.
“Oh God, I hope you’re okay,” Callie said, kneeling next to me.
“I’ve had better days.” I let out a cough and tried to force a smile. I didn’t want her to worry. “But not the first time I’ve lost this particular dance.”
“They’ve called the doctor who looked after me – the nice black lady,” Callie said. “She’s going to make sure you’re okay.”
“That sounds splendid.” I smiled grimly.
* * *
Doc Max was a handsome woman,and exceedingly polite. Polite enough that I felt a mild tingle of surprise that she wasn’t from London or Liverpool and was just a Chicago girl who found a special place, where she could do the medicine she wanted, and not have to deal with the paperwork and the lawyers.
The introspection came easy.
It was the morphine.
Enough morphine and a woman could be massaging my broken ribs, and I could let my mind wander to things like what song had been playing on the radio the first time I saw Calanthe. It had been an internet playlist, classic American rock. Gary Wright had been crooning “Dreamweaver” in my ear when Rex pulled up for our first face-to-face, and Calanthe had been with him in the car.
The car had been a convertible Ferrari, and possibly the only thing in the world a brighter shade of red than his wife’s hair.
That’s when she became Cardinal.
He would become Tomcat after the first time I had to drag a half-naked chippie out of his trailer.
I hadn’t fallen in love with her then.
The opioid haze made me want to be saccharine and nostalgic, like she was some dame who came sashaying up out of an exotic car and I knew at that moment I would burn down the world to have her.
But that wasn’t true.
That first impression, with the PA bringing her a low-cal dairy-free decaf latte, with her little nose and huge glasses, I thought she had to be the most shallow, self-obsessed Hollywood tart I could imagine. I had met a few of that type, with their designer tits and sculpted noses and threaded eyebrows. Vacuous, bland, boring, and Rex had mentioned a few things about them. He had called them anorexic sticks, that the only things going for them was that most of them had no gag reflex left, and that their egos were so fragile that a little negging and they would go from being starfishes in bed, just holes in the middle of a spread-eagle figure, too willing to humiliate and debase themselves in a vain chance of being further insulted.
Diseased people.
I felt a groan escape my lips as I was suddenly very hot.
The captain was on one side of me, and Kyle was on the other and I was being eased down into the hot tub.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I asked, as I felt the hot water swirl around me.
“Heat is not ideal at this point,” the captain said, then there were a large number of other words, and Kyle said a few too. That was okay. For some reason, my concern seemed to involve sharks.
That didn’t make sense, hot tubs were fresh water, not salt water.
Calanthe put her arm around me, and I felt myself relax.
Her embrace was really nice.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said in my ear, and that was good. I felt like I was starting to dissolve in the water, and for a moment, I was concerned about clogging the filter.
