“I need to go to sleep,” I told him.
“Hang on for awhile, don’t go to sleep.”
“I think, if I go to sleep, it’ll stop hurting. I need it to stop hurting.”
After I said that, it felt like the knuckles of a hand came to my cheek, they rested there lightly for a second. Then it felt like fingers were sifting gently through the hair at the side of my head, pulling it way from my face.
Now that was even more bizarre because it felt nice, nice and sweet and lovely even though everywhere else there was pain.
“I know, mamita, but you need to stay awake.”
“Why can’t I sleep?” I asked.
“Because when you go to sleep, I want you to be somewhere with doctors so we can make sure you wake up,” Hector told me.
I shook my head in his neck. “That’s okay.”
“What’s okay?”
“It’s okay if I don’t wake up.”
“Sadie, don’t say that.”
I snuggled closer to his heat and felt fuzzier. It wasn’t a bad fuzzier but a good fuzzier.
There was an edging sense of peace sliding over me and I wanted it. Peace was good. Peace was great. I liked peace. Who didn’t like peace?
“No really,” I whispered, letting the sweet, peaceful feeling steal over me. “It only matters if there’s someone to care if you don’t wake up. It’s okay if I don’t wake up because there’s no one to care.”
After I said that, with tremendous gratitude, I welcomed the peace.
* * * * *
Lee
Lee held the phone to his ear, listening to it ring but kept his eyes on Hector and Luke.
“Yeah?” he heard Eddie say in his ear.
Eddie Chavez was Lee Nightingale’s best friend. He was Hector’s brother. Lastly, he was a cop.
“I’m at Denver Health. Hector and Luke just brought in Sadie Townsend,” Lee told Eddie.
“Fuck. What happened?” Eddie asked and Lee could tell by his voice that Eddie was up and on the move.
“Don’t know. Jack called me in. She drove into the parking garage under the offices. Jack showed me her tape. He recorded her driving into the garage and getting out of her car. Maybe five minutes he got before he left the surveillance room to get to her so he didn’t switch to the camera on the stairs. She was in bad shape, covered in blood.”
“Luke and Hector brought her in?”
“Luke says Hector wouldn’t wait for an ambulance.”
They both knew what that meant. They also both knew what Sadie meant. They’d been through this a number of times before.
So far they’d been lucky but luck had a way of running out. It had, in the past, gotten pretty f**king ugly.
But never this ugly.
“I’ll be there in ten,” Eddie said.