Break Me Open (7 page)

"Hey, miss?"

I startled. We were at my stop. I thanked the driver as I got out. I walked past block after block of manicured lawns. Kids played on some of them, smeared with white sunscreen.

A smile crossed my face. It seemed to be happening more now. Maybe a new appreciation for life. Odd that it took death to that. I giggled at how crazy the human brain worked.

But maybe it wasn’t the near death part of the experience that awakened me.

Kids shrieked nearby and rescued me from my thoughts. I watched them and wondered if  I'd chosen the wrong profession. I had been 50/50 between being a vet tech and a nurse. But nursing school meant I'd have to leave Gilsner. I wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

My own little lawn sat perfectly still. The grass had wilted to a straw yellow. I promised myself to water it as I walked up to my front door. It rattled open and I stepped into my refuge.

The smell of diesel and sulfur hung heavy in the air.

I should have turned and run. The world outside was bright, open, safe. A wheezing sound hit my ears though, and it sounded very much like hyperventillation. It sounded like a wounded animal.

I grabbed a long unused umbrella from the strand and crept around the entrance to the living room. A trunk-like arm swung from the side of the couch. A dark mass covered the cushions, billowing up and down. I saw the frizz of light hair and knew it was him.

My own breathing spurted into overdrive for a whole mess of reasons. I moved into view, but his eyes were shut, his other hand covering them. His jacket lay in a crumpled heap and he just had on a white shirt and jeans.

"Ghost?" I said.

My words froze. His body locked and he looked like a giant toy soldier. Ever so slowly, his face turned toward me. The hidden half glistened red.

"Katie," he said, "I need some help."

His words sounded very forced. His body remained locked still, but his arm gripped the bottom edge of my sofa and trembled.

"Did you OD?" I asked, still keeping my distance. He might know my name, he might be wounded, but he had killed a guy sober. If those muscles moved the wrong way on me…

"The opposite," he said. "I'm coming down."

His voice creaked as if keeping it on hinges was the hardest thing in the world. 

"Coming down from what?"

"Biosynthetic," he said. "Classified." His teeth broke out into a chatter, but he forced them tight and mouthed, "Please."

That was enough. I dropped my bags and rushed in. His hand came rattling loose and his entire body shivered on my cushions. I took his hand in mine with the idea to comfort him, but it was like trying to soothe a rodeo bull. My entire body rattled with his. I settled for a hand over his chest. It seemed to soothe him, though whether for real or for my benefit, I couldn't tell. He had blood on his cheek, but only a smear nothing serious. Over that, he actually had on a pair of aviators under the palm covering his eyes. I tried to lift them to see what his pupils could tell me, but he stilled my arm.

"No, too bright. Too bright."

I studied his shaking form. Even in this state, he looked impressive, like a tank with cranky threads. I was in way over my head. Even if this was purely medical I didn't have much training in pharmaceuticals. Pets rarely ODed. And they also didn't have the same depth of mental issues that a soldier might have. This could all be in his head.

"I need to know what you took?"

He looked at me, teeth clenched. Summoning some reserve. "Synthetic adrenaline. Acute dose. Rapid withdrawal."

"Do you have a sample?"

"In my spit."

This didn't make any sense. "You drank some?"

"My body can produce it."

This still didn't make sense. Adrenaline was the fight or flight hormone. We could all make it.  I'd interned at the clinic in high school. Seen druggies, army guys with PTSD and bullied kids all go through panic attacks. Pumped full of adrenaline. But I'd never seen anything like this. I texted Sandy. She knew more about OD stuff than I did.

"Quick Q. Acute Adrenaline OD. Treatment?"

"Huh?" she replied immediately.

"Quiz Q."

"Stop Studying!"

"I will. Just tell me this one first."

"Beta blockers. Duh."

"Med name?"

"What's this for?"

"Quiz - come on. It's been bugging me all day."

She texted me a couple compounds I recognized. None that I had in the house. The vet school kept a pretty tight lid on inventory. They only wanted us dealing drugs during school hours.

Ghost lay trembling. His face turned toward me, but without his eyes, it told me nothing new. I brushed his forehead. He was cold, awfully cold. 

"I have to get your drugs," I said. "I'm going to bike to my school. 40 minutes."

His hand dove into his pocket and dropped keys to the floor.

"My chopper... back there." He pointed at the back door.

His chopper? I picked up the keys. If I shouldn't be driving a car, I really shouldn't be driving his chopper. Though I did know bikes way better than cars.  I didn’t want to ride, but I didn’t know how he’d be if I waited 40 minutes.

I went out the back. I hopped the back fence and came out between the two houses behind ours.

His bike sat in the empty driveway of a house with an overgrown lawn and a For Sale sign. Whatever condition he had arrived in, he was still thinking tactically. Military, definitely military. And biosynthetic compounds? That sounded like special ops stuff. Actually, it sounded like science fiction.

I straddled the tan Harley and studied all the knobs and paddles. I gave it a minute to see how my body would react. No panic. Maybe it was the model that made me tell it apart from the sport bike my dad used to ride. The one he and my mom rode to their death. He had taken me on countless drives through the desert before. Before they became outlaw lands, and before Gilsner became a crap fest, it was just beautiful open land begging to be torn through. Near the end, he’d let me take the handlebars pretty often.

I switched it on. The engine thrummed between my legs and I felt wildly in control of my life. As if anything could now happen. Maybe my brain had just come loose.

I reared off the drive way, into the road and tried to ease forward. After nearly crashing into a couple parked cars, I was able to slowly set off down the road.

The route to the clinic was not long when you went direct, but by the time I got there my body rattled as much as Ghost' s had. A couple of other kids in our class stared at me as I shambled shakily into the hospital. They might not even recognize me. Or so I hoped.

I buzzed myself through to the storage room and searched for the names on my list. Sandy had texted me a half dozen times more but I ignored all of it. To my luck, none were classified as very prone to abuse and weren't behind locks. I stuffed a half dozen animal sized containers into my pocket and stumbled out and left the building before anyone could approach me.

The bike ride home went smoother and I parked right in my driveway. Neighbors be damned.

The satisfied smile on my lips dropped when I heard nothing as I came in. No breathing. I found Ghost turned into the sofa, shielding his eyes. His chest barely moved.

I filled a syringe with two bottles designed for very large dogs, prayed I wasn't about to commit murder and shot it up a vein.

His breathing seemed to ease, but his forehead still sat cold. I cleaned the blood off his cheek. Then, I eased back onto the coffee table and waited. 

I'd sat vigil over Sandy as she puked into a bucket a couple times (and her me, at least once), but that memory soon left and got replaced with a darker one. Sitting at Santa Maria Memorial, waiting for the doctor. When one had emerged with a chart and slowed once he saw me, I had felt my heart seize. I'd steeled myself to hear which parent I had left. 

Neither, apparently. The answer looped me around. Instead of feeling double, I felt nothing. I thanked him, even shook his hand and walked out. I think he tried to stop me, but I was 18 already, and they couldn’t stop me from going home. I had sat in our back porch, so empty now, and then laid down, watched the stars until the sun came up. Sometime in the day, Sandy had come to check on me, found me lying there and dragged me back to her place to feed me. She did this for a week, she said, but I had no memory of it.

It wasn't odd that this should come up, as I watched Ghost huffing on the blanket. It sort of must have been how I looked, with everything wiped out. Did the drugs affect his brain too?

The last thing I needed now was for Sandy to come and check, so I texted her saying that I was watching this totally hilarious episode of our favorite cooking travel show on TV. I knew nothing about reports of me staggering into the clinic from a motorcycle.

Ghost dozed peacefully and after I checked his vitals, I left him to go cook something. I tiptoed around feeling a bit like I had guests over - ones that I'd actually invited. I ate lunch, checked on him, watched TV for a long while. He was still out, so I pulled a blanket over him, and then made dinner.

When I clicked on the lights in the evening, he woke. One moment he was resting. The next, he was upright in front of the sofa. 

"Katie?" he asked.

"Ghost." I said, understanding his name even more. "How do you feel?"

He rolled his muscles, stretched. I watched each vast mound come to life and ripple into the next. Everything looked pretty good to me. He took off his glasses and his eyes didn't glow. They sat like blue stones in his strong rugged face.

"I'm fine," he said. "It's 7:30."

"That's...right." There were no clocks in the room.

"I was out for 7 hours?"

"You were pretty bad. I've never seen anyone in that state. Though, I'm only a vet. Well, no, vet tech. "

"It's something I have to deal with. Thank you."

"What is?" I said. " What did the military do to you?"

"That's classified."

He looked so serious, but it reminded me of a kid with a secret. I had to crack a smile. 

"Classified? Are you undercover in this biker club or something?" 

The look faltered. "No. But it's better if you don't know."

"So why'd you come here?"

"I needed you."

There was the moment where his meaning was clear, but I didn't speak and the meaning expanded. I forgot what I wanted to say.

He grabbed his jacket. "I  need to go."

"Whoa, wait," I said.

He waited.

What was I going to do, keep him for observation? I wasn’t a doctor. I had helped him recover. That was more than I should have been able to do. I had nothing else to offer. And nothing else I needed from him.

Right?

"I have some more stuff for you," I realized. 

I gave him a few more of the bottles I'd stolen from the hospital. He scanned the labels and pocketed them.

"I appreciate everything you've done, but I have to go back,” he said. “My club is in danger."

"The guy that tried to rape me."

Ghost gave me a long strange look. "The guy who tried that is dead."

"Oh," was all I could say.

"And others," he said. "We are at war."

I thought maybe I'd heard sirens lacing my dreams on the bus. "Is this because of the dead guy?"

"It didn't start there, but it did lead to this moment."

No start, no end. I wondered how many other bodies lay along the way. It was a clinical question though, and I didn’t really care about the answer. Ghost loomed over me now, fully healed and fully upright. His shirt swelled with him, the size chosen to showcase the power inside. This guy was designed for war, trained for it, and practiced at it. What would he do in peacetime?

Well, join a biker gang apparently. The longer I looked though, the more that answer wasn't enough. The silence swelled between us filling with the weight of unasked questions.

He started for the door. I went to block it. "You owe me something."

"No." His hand caressed my shoulder with unexpected tenderness. "I owe you everything. Which is why you deserve me out of your life."

"You saved my life, too. It's only fair."

He shook his head. "I saved your body, but you saved me. " He seemed to want to add more but stopped. "What do you want from me?"

Tell him. Tell him the last thing you want is him out of your life.

"Your name. Your real name."

His eyes pored over me, shining again in the moon as if the night gave him life. "Bryan Cross."

His lips barely moved, as if they were betraying him. It was a simple name, efficient, but it drifted over me like a gentle gust.

"And what are you?" I asked, my voice dropping to match his.

"Sergeant US Army. Unit classification G1-105. " Half his mouth curved up in a smile and all the toughness melted off him like it was big Halloween prank, but his body was still straight "Dishonorably discharged."