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And there's too much going on,
but it's calm under the waves
in the blue of my oblivion.
Fiona Apple
"Sullen Girl" - Tidal (1996)
---
“What happened?”
Frank isn’t sure who this Claire is, but it is obvious Red knew what he was doing when he regained his consciousness and his wits long enough to recite her number. The gravely injured man initially managed only “Phone,” then “Claire.” But the burner cell phone that Frank found in Red’s pocket had succumbed to water damage. It had been hours before he awoke again to give the number.
The woman does not wait idle for his response. She checks Red’s pulse, his breathing. Running on auto-pilot, she briefly raises his eyelids, but she expels a short huff of air through her nose and lets the lids drop again without finishing the examination of the pupils.
She knows he’s blind.
“I’m not sure exactly,” Frank says. “All I know is I heard gunshots in a warehouse on the docks. He comes sailin’ out an upper window, an’ I hafta fish him outta the Hudson.”
“Has he been shot?” She pulls on blue surgical gloves.
“No,” Frank replies. “But he’s cut all to hell.”
The pair of them are kneeling on the floor next to the mattress Frank dragged from the bedroom into the living room the night before, upon which Matt lies, still unconscious.
Claire takes a cursory look under one of the bandages. “I can’t see down here. Do you have any more light?”
“Help me get ‘im back up on the bar.”
Working as a team, with Frank taking hold under Red’s arms and Claire gathering his legs, they lift him onto the bar countertop that divides the tiny kitchen from the area that served as both living room and dining room.
Claire, whose competency and cool-headedness Frank is quickly coming to realize is on par with the best field medics he has ever known, begins carefully removing the bandages. She pulls back a corner of each one, peeks behind to check for active bleeding before removing it entirely.
“Frankie, Lisa, c’mere. I wanna show you guys somethin’. See this big flat rock here?”
Two curious nods.
“If you ever lift up a rock like this, I want you to do it this way.” He leans over the rock and lifts it from the far side, pulling it toward him. He peeks behind it and sees dozens of pillbugs and an earthworm or two scurrying for cover. “Do you know why?”
“No. Why, Daddy?”
Frank smiles at his babies. His life. “Just in case there’s a big ugly snake. If there’s a snake, the rock will be between you and it, like a shield. See?”
Frankie and Lisa watch with intense expressions.
“The snake will be just as scared of you. Don’t drop the rock back down. But lay it down very slowly, ok? The rock is your shield.”
Lisa frowns. “Will the snake be sad that we moved his home?”
Frank ruffles her hair. “Probably. Which is why I don’t want you guys liftin’ up big rocks like this, ok? But I wanted to show you how to do it right, just in case. Stick with small rocks. I was always curious to see what was under rocks when I was a kid. I’m sure you will be, too. Just remember what I showed you.”
Claire reaches into her bag and withdraws an IV bag of saline, tubing, and a tourniquet.
“Do you have something I can hang this off of?” she asks. “A nail we can drive into the wall?” Already she has tightened the tourniquet around Matt’s arm and is feeling for suitable veins.
Frank’s mind races. For the first time, the bare necessities of his safehouse isn’t nearly enough. “I think...” Then he remembers something. “I’ll be right back.”
Heart racing, Frank exits the front door and hurries down the steps to the building’s entrance. He bursts out onto the sidewalk, squinting in the sunlight. To his left, a narrow alley separates his building from the next. He looks around the corner... yes, there.
Leaning against a dumpster, sprouting like a leafless sapling from a pile of garbage bags, is an old coat rack. Why his brain noted its presence during the past couple of days, he cannot say. But it will certainly come in handy now.
He grabs the coat rack and runs back up the stairs to rejoin Claire and Matt.
“You stitched him up?” Claire asks, surprise in her tone, when Frank walks back in. She already has the IV started and taped into place on the back of Matt’s hand. The saline bag rests, for the moment, atop Matt’s chest.
“Just the smaller ones,” Frank replies. “That big sucker there—“ He points toward the particularly brutal wound on Matt’s upper right side. “—I packed it to stop the bleeding. But it’s deep. Damn deep. Looks like someone stabbed him with a scythe or somethin’.”
As he speaks, he stands the coat rack on the living room side of the bar. It leans drunkenly but appears stable enough to support an IV bag. He picks the bag off of Red’s chest and hangs it from the rack.
Claire nods in approval at the improvised IV pole, then returns her attention to her patient. “These stitches look pretty decent. I think we can leave them. Let’s take a look here...”
Moving gently, Claire uses her gloved hands to remove the top layer of bandaging from the horrific wound. “Hand me that bottle there, would you?”
Frank takes up the small plastic bottle full of a clear liquid. A thin, curved spout protrudes from its top. He hands it to her. “What’s that for?”
“Saline,” Claire replies. She squeezes some of the liquid into the wound. “Wetting this gauze down will help prevent it from ripping out the clots when I remove it. With luck, we can do this without getting him bleeding again.”
Working methodically, the nurse alternates squirting saline into the wound, loosening the gauze, squirting, loosening, until the first wad of packing pulls free.
She peers into the wound. “More?” she asks, dismayed.
Frank shrugs. “Told you it was deep.”
Claire sets to work on the next layer of packing. “You were right not to sew this up. I’m going to have to do it in layers. Close it from the inside out.”
And this is what she does. It takes three or four layers of sutures—Frank can’t remember how many—to close the wound up.
With an air of gentleness and competency that Frank has only seen consistently in medics and mothers, the woman places a final piece of tape. Her slim shoulders rise and fall in a sigh.
"He's going to get himself killed," she says softly. She turns honey-brown eyes to Frank. "He would have died last night if it hadn't been for you."
Frank snorts. "He wouldn't let me take 'im to a hospital. Had to do what I could."
"I admit, it wasn't pretty," Claire replies with a smile to remove the sting, "but make no mistake: we'd be trying to find his next of kin if you hadn't done what you had."
Early that morning, after Red gave him the number, Frank called Claire and explained the situation. He gave her an address to a nearby gas station. (There was no way he was giving the exact address of the safehouse over a cell phone—even for Red.) She was just getting off her night shift at the hospital and promised to head straight there. She did. Still smelling faintly of antiseptic and whatever floral-scented shampoo she had used earlier.
After meeting her at the gas station, Frank quickly led her back to Matt. A full 24 hours had passed between pulling Red from the Hudson River and Claire's arrival.
Now, they carry Matt to the couch. Claire re-hangs the IV while Frank covers him with a blanket.
"So how did you manage to smuggle an IV out of the hospital?" Frank asks, watching her as she fiddles with the tubing.
Claire places her hands on her lower back to arch it into a stretch. "When you mentioned how much blood he'd lost, I had to make a decision. A transfusion was out of the question. I don't even know his blood type."
"Couldn't you use O negative?" Frank asks. "Isn't it... universal or some shit?"
"Technically, yes. But you never want to give too much unmatched blood. Besides, I never could have gotten it out of the building. As for the saline, it's not as tightly controlled." She grins. "A pharmacy tech has a huge puppy-dog crush on me. I gave him some song and dance about how I forgot that I have to go to my niece's Career Day at her school today, and how I hadn't had time to prepare anything, and how cool it would be to show the kids a 'real live IV bag.'"
She laughs, and Frank laughs with her.
God, his kids would have loved her.
His smile fades.
Claire continues, unaware of how her presence might have brightened his children's faces once upon a time. "I wish I had more than just the one bag, but it's better than nothing." She looks around. "Do you have an empty beer can or something?"
Frank blinks. "Uh, yeah. Bin under the sink."
Claire goes to the kitchen, opens the cabinet door, and withdraws a Pepsi can.
"Don't tell me you're gonna make a gurney out of that or somethin."
Smirking, Claire collects the needle she used earlier to start Matt's IV line. "Makeshift sharps container," she replies. She deposits the needle into the can with a metallic clink, then places it on the counter in an out-of-the-way spot. "Knowing him, I'm sure we'll need it later, so."
She regards Frank calmly.
He is not in the zone, and she is not a threat.
Because of this, her innate humanity is too much for Frank to bear head-on. He can only return her gaze piecemeal, his glances always fleeting and sidelong, shying away from the damage that compassion can do.
"I'll be back... when I can," Claire says, stepping toward the door. "I need to go home and get some sleep. At the latest, I'll come by again before my shift tonight. Try to keep him still."
Frank barks a laugh at this, and Claire casts a knowing, long-suffering smirk over her shoulder.
"That's why I said try. If I'm not back by the time the IV gets down to that red line, pull the catheter out of his hand. Should take about five hours."
Frank opens the door for her. He hovers uncertainly. "Thank you, ma'am. For comin."
Claire nods, looks briefly over her shoulder again toward the couch. "I never exactly signed up for this, but... he kind of draws you in, doesn't he."
"Yes, he does at that."
With that, Claire leaves the safehouse and disappears down the steps.
After closing and bolting the door, Frank grabs a bottle of water then hunkers down on the mattress—still stained with some of Red's blood—on the floor next to the sofa.
Frank watches Red for some time. Monitoring him for any shift in his breathing. Observing his face for any indication of pain.
That face...
The bruises and stubble and the little bandage over the bridge of his nose somehow work to accentuate his beauty, either by the starkness of the contrast or by the reminder of how fleeting this moment is.
Frank feels he could sit here for days, just staring. Memorizing every plane and angle of Red's face. Only the fear of waking him allows Frank to resist reaching out to brush that lock of hair off his brow. Dark hair that he knows will alights in a halo of copper when the sunlight hits it at the right angle.
"Red" suits you more and more, he thinks with an inner smile.
But he is operating on too little sleep and feeling the aftereffects of too many receded waves of adrenaline. Admitting defeat, he sets his alarm to wake him an hour before the IV is due to finish up.
Then with a sigh, he lies over on the mattress to surrender to the demons of his dreams once again.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"We have plenty of time, now that you're back."
She smiles at him and he smiles at her because how could he not? What did he do to deserve such a sweet life? Maria is the earth and Lisa is the sunshine and Frank Jr. is the air and he is the storm—controlled only for them, forever for them—and together what they have planted in this house grows until his heart can't bear his love for them.
Plenty of time.
Yes, they have plenty of time to make up for the months, years, lost to the sand. The wind-driven sand that eats at stone until it breaks down, breaks and breaks and breaks some more, until the pieces of the once great boulder become indistinguishable from the sand itself. It loses itself to the sand. Becomes the sand. No earth, no sunshine, no air. Only broken stone within a storm. The stone is a shield. Except now it is broken.
"We have plenty of time." The smile. "Now that you're back."
Yes, he is back. He is.
But not really. You don’t ever fully come back, do you?
He feels... sideways. The scene before him tries to tell him that he is sitting mostly upright, but his equilibrium insists that he is not, that he is lying on his side in sleep.
But that would mean this is a dream. And it can't be a dream. Because she's right here and smiling and telling him that they have plenty of time. She's here. She's solid. Solid as stone. Solid as a boulder.
...Except boulders get swept away.
And there's a gunshot and her sun-kissed hair is caught in the gale that blows the sand, and it takes pieces of her, pieces of her hair, pieces of her brain, and blows it all away...
"NO!"
Frank sits upright in the safehouse, his shout still ringing in his ears. The familiar tumblers in the lock of his consciousness fall into place:
Thank god, it was just a dream.
Spin.
No, it wasn't a dream.
Spin.
I'll never see them again.
Click.
The opening of this lock happens between one heartbeat and the next. The memory opens. And he remembers anew, just like he has every morning.
Every morning.
There's a wooden thunk and something falls to the floor, jerking Frank away from the edge of the abyss. It takes him a moment to focus on the source of the clatter.
Matt is awake, eyes wide in panic, his arms waving about. He has knocked over the makeshift IV pole.
It fully hits Frank then that Matt is well and truly blind.
Frank is beside him instantly. "I'm here, Red. Take it easy."
"Frank?"
Matt reaches for him in his darkness. Frank catches his seeking hand and sandwiches it between his own two.
"Frank, where are we?"
"We're in one of my safehouses, remember?" Frank drops his voice into a soothing rumble. "You got cut up pretty good. You gave me Claire's number—"
"Claire?"
"Yeah, she was here. Wasn't too happy about it, but she patched you up real good." Frank smiles. "She could give the best field medics I know a real run for their money, ya know? And prob'ly a few surgeons, too. Ah, shit..."
Matt, who has been calming, tenses up again. "What?"
"Nothin, Red. You knocked your IV onto the ground. Now it's draining the wrong way."
Reluctantly, Frank releases the hand he is holding, rights the coat rack, and checks the IV bag for leakage. The blood that began filling the tubing reverses course and returns to Matt's veins. He estimates that the IV has another hour.
"Frank?"
"Yeah?" he responds, not turning around.
"I don't feel right."
Frank sniffs. "I wouldn't think so. You're in rough shape." But he sits down on the edge of the sofa and, acting on instinct, presses the back of his hand against Matt's brow.
Too warm. Far too warm.
"Everything is too loud," Matt continues. "I'm having trouble filtering it out."
Frank reaches for his phone on the floor. "You got a fever. I used antiseptics and shit, but that water you jumped in ain't exactly drinkable. And you decided to go for a swim in it with open wounds."
After turning off the alarm on his phone before it can go off, Frank goes to Claire’s number in the outgoing history and sends a brief text:
PETE [15:14:18]
Fever
FLORENCE [15:15:22]
omw
PETE [15:15:43]
ETA?
FLORENCE [15:16:50]
Not sure. Rush hour starting. Got to get supplies. Be there ASAP.
PETE [15:17:11]
OK
Frank closes the phone and puts it in his pocket. He only first met Claire a handful of hours ago, and already he finds himself feeling better that she is returning. Red will be in better hands than Frank's soon enough.
“Claire’s on her way, Red,” he says gently. “She’ll set you to rights. Probably stick you full of antibiotics.”
Matt reaches out his hand again, seemingly to seek comfort, reassurance. Something to ground him in a world he cannot see.
Frank takes Red's hand.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Three-quarters of an hour later, Claire messages Frank that she is outside. After a quick peek outside the door, Frank stows his sidearm and lets her into the safehouse.
Taking Frank’s place at Matt’s side, Claire checks his vitals. She frowns at the reading on the digital thermometer.
“Hey, Claire,” Matt whispers, sounding faintly guilty to Frank’s ears.
“Hey, yourself,” Claire responds. “Good to see you awake. You really went for it this time, huh.” She pulls a fresh bag of saline from her large zippered tote and deftly replaces the old bag.
Weak though he is, Matt gives her a cheeky smile. “I didn’t want you going soft on me. Have to keep you on your toes.”
Claire sighs and shakes her head. Frank’s heart swells to hear a little of the old Red returning.
"You better thank Frank again,” Claire admonishes. “He acted fast on this fever. Hopefully we’ll nip this infection in the bud before it takes too strong of a hold.”
“My immune system is strong,” Matt replies.
“It better be,” Frank chimes in. “Swimmin’ in the Hudson with open wounds,” he adds to the air.
Matt exhales a breathy little laugh. “I’ll save the East River for burns.”
“And I’ll be sure to help you debride those burns,” Claire replies, “as painfully as possible.”
A stronger laugh escapes Red, but he immediately stifles it with a wince.
Frank watches as Claire draws up a syringe of what he assumes to be a strong antibiotic. She slides the needle into a port on the IV tubing and injects it.
Anticipating her needs, Frank retrieves the soda-can-sharps-container from the countertop and brings it to her.
“Told ya we’d need it with him,” Claire says to him, dropping the needle inside.
Frank can’t help a smile. “I didn’t disagree with you.”
Over the next several minutes, Claire changes the dressing on the worst of the wounds while Frank stands by, arms crossed, feeling as useful as screen door on a submarine.
When she finished, she bundles the used supplies into a small plastic bag. “Trash can?”
“Just leave it,” Frank says. “I’ll get it.”
With a barely contained moan, Matt runs a hand over his face. “The crinkling of that bag is so loud.”
Claire hastily puts it on the floor by the couch. “Sorry.”
“How long until the fever breaks?” Frank asks.
Claire stands and pulls the blanket back up to Matt’s shoulders. “The antibiotics won’t knock it down right away. I should have brought some Tylenol.” She exhales a little laugh through her nose. “I bring half a doctor’s office with me, but I forget Tylenol.”
Matt gropes for her hand and squeezes it, giving her a smile. “You’ve already done so much. Thank you.”
“I c’n go down to the gas station and grab somethin’ for his fever.” Frank looks at Matt with a smirk as he adds, “Maybe they got some of those adult diapers. Don’t want him shittin’ my couch in his sleep.”
Matt flips him the bird.
Amused, Claire removes a few packages of gauze bandages and sets them aside. “You probably won’t need these before I can return, but just in case.”
“Thanks,” Frank says. He starts to put them on the bar, but the dried smears of blood from the meatball surgery performed on Matt decide him to place the supplies on the counter instead.
“Again,” Claire continues, “just take out the IV catheter when the bag runs low. I gotta go to work, so I won’t be back in time.” She sighs. “I’m not sure I can get another bag of saline out.” The nurse looks to Frank. “Get some fluids into him. And try to get him to eat, but nothing heavy. Soup, stuff like that. If he gives you any trouble, text me. I’ll be sure to come back with a rectal thermometer.”
Matt laughs and winces again in quick succession. “Thank you, Claire,” he says seriously. “Be careful out there.”
“Look who’s talking,” she replies with a smile. She nods to Frank and, bag over her shoulder, she heads out.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It's sometime past midnight when Frank arrives at the 24/7 gas station where he rendezvoused with Claire the first time—what, eighteen hours ago? And it was about 42 hours ago that he skirted the lights of the station, shuffling along with Red as he slowly bled out.
Almost two full days with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen couch surfing in one of Frank's safehouses.
Beside the glass double doors of the gas station is an outdoor trash can for public use. Frank tosses in the plastic bag of bloodied bandages, packaging for IV tubing and syringes, and a few random bits of garbage he collected around the apartment. That task done, he enters the gas station.
The location is one of those that operates more of a convenience store than a gas station. Frank grabs a red shopping basket and sets to work collecting supplies: water, a few bottles of Gatorade hoping it will replenish some of Matt's electrolytes, a couple cans of soup. He passes a small section containing baby supplies, including a limited selection of diapers.
Frank smirks. Sorry, Red. No adult ones. Think you can wear a toddler-size pull-up?
Privately amused, he bypasses the diapers and makes a few passes up and down aisles to see if any unconsidered needs pop out at him. He grabs a package of saltines to go with Red's soup. Some disinfectant cleaning wipes to get the blood off the bar. A few toiletries that Red will need if he's staying for any length of time as he recovers.
At last, Frank heads to the counter. The medicines—all over-priced travel-sized packages—are housed on a shelf behind the cashier.
Frank starts unloading the basket. "And can I get, uh, five of those packs of Tylenol?"
The middle-aged woman working the register looks like she has seen everything. And, Frank thinks, if she's working nights in a convenient shop in Manhattan, then yes, she probably has seen everything.
"Regular or extra strength?"
"Extra strength."
The woman rings up Frank's items and bags them up. He pays in cash, then begins the five-minute walk back to the safehouse.
The moment he enters the safehouse, Matt is calling for him.
“Frank? Frank. I’m freezing. I need a hot shower or something.”
Bolting the locks on the door, Frank says, “A couple problems with that, Red. One, I’d want t’ get the ok from Claire that we can even get your stitches wet. Two, no hot water.”
Matt groans, and Frank can see now that the man is shivering with fever-induced chills.
“Hey, hey hey.” Frank sits on the edge of the couch. He pulls a Gatorade and one of the travel-size packs of Tylenol from the bag, then places the bag and the rest of the contents on the floor. “Here, swallow these Tylenol down. They’ll help with the fever.”
Frank opens the medicine and drink for him, then helps him to sit up enough to swallow them down.
“There ya go,” Frank says soothingly. “I bought some soup, too. Want me to warm ya up some soup?”
Matt does something that might be a shudder among his shivers. “I don’t think I can eat just yet.”
“Ok, no rush. Work on that Gatorade. Get some electrolytes in ya. Let the Tylenol do its thing. We’ll save the soup for a little later, yeah?”
Matt nods miserably. After a few moments of silence, he asks, “...Why are you doing this, Frank? Why are you helping me?”
Frank sighs and lowers himself to the floor, sitting with his back to the couch. “I’m not sure anymore, Red. You just... got to me or some shit. I dunno. Annoying little shit that you are, I think I’d actually miss ya if you weren’t around.”
“Why, Frank... that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Frank’s face wrinkles into a hard grin.
The grin vanishes when Matt moans again.
“I’m s-s-so cold...”
“I don’t have another blanket. I’m sorry.” Frank’s mind races. The man is shivering so badly that Frank is half afraid he’ll shake his stitches loose—though he is pretty sure that isn’t possible.
An idea comes reluctantly to him. He resists at first, but it seems to be the only way to provide Matt with any relief from his chills.
“I can’t sit here an’ watch you shiver all night,” he says. “Come on. Get down here on the mattress.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Frank stands and pulls the blanket off Matt, still dressed in only his shorts.
“Fuck, Frank! Cold!”
Frank can’t help but to laugh. “Did I get the choir boy to cuss? Come on. My wife used t’ complain that sleepin’ next to me was like sleepin’ next to a space heater.”
Moving carefully so as to not dislodge the IV, Frank half lifts, half drags Matt off the couch and lowers him to the narrow mattress. “Can’t wait ‘til you’re mobile again,” Frank teases. “Tired of shiftin’ your ass around.”
“Blanket,” Matt demands, reaching desperately toward the couch.
Frank breathes out a little laugh, grabs the blanket, and covers Matt again. He then kicks off his boots and, mindful of tubes and wounds, he settles down under the blanket. “Jesus, you’re the one who’s a space heater. C’mere.”
“Frank, what are you—“
“Just come here, dammit.”
Matt gives in without any more fuss, allowing Frank to snake his arm behind his neck. With a sigh, the injured man presses against Frank, resting his head on his shoulder.
Frank just lies there, holding him. Trying to tell himself that he hasn’t been waiting for a moment like this to present itself.
Gradually, Matt’s shivers decrease in intensity.
“—nk?” Matt says sleepily.
“Hmm?”
“I better say this before the medicine kicks in. I think the fever is about to lower my inhibitions.”
“Do you always talk like a lawyer even when you’re half dead?”
“I... I liked it when you called me ‘baby.’”
Frank’s heart skips a beat.
“Your heart just skipped a beat.”
“No, it didn’t.”
Matt smiles, those soft lips curling up at the corners. His broken eyes are closed. “It wasn’t just a slip, was it.”
Frank’s heart is pounding, and he hates that Red can hear every beat of it. Hell, with his head against his chest like this, it probably sounds like a freight train. “What if it wasn’t?” he replies at last. Then, “What if this is just the fever talkin’?”
“It’s me talking,” Matt says. “The fever is just letting me talk.” His voice is getting softer. The consonants just a little more slurred.
Frank just holds him in his arms, his chin touching Matt’s brow. His lips want to touch Red’s face, the bridge of his nose, his heavy eyelids.
Finally, he settles for pulling the blanket higher up, settling it around Matt’s neck and ears. “Go to sleep, Red,” he soothes, chest rumbling with his voice. “I’ll be here when you wake up. Baby.”
Matt drifts off with a smile.
So does Frank.