A fucking century.
I don't know how long it takes before I hear the sirens in the distance, the lights flashing as they pull up in front of the house. It's the police first, then the EMS. People swarm the house, officers and medical personnel. Someone grabs ahold of me, pulling me away from her. Karissa turns her head my way when I'm dragged from the foyer, and I don't hear her voice, but I watch as her lips move, mouthing my name.
Naz.
I'm dragged outside. It's chaos.
Another century passes.
Maybe it's just a minute.
I don't know.
I don't know anything.
"Just keep breathing," I whisper to myself. "Keep breathing."
I blink, and officers surround me.
Another blink, and Karissa's being hauled away.
I try to force my way past the crowd, trying to get to her, but I'm restrained. There are too many people here. Where the hell did they come from? No matter how much I scream, how much I fight, the ambulance leaves without me, tearing through the street at full speed, sirens blaring.
A few more blinks. People are talking to me. Their voices are garbled. I can't fucking think. I grip my hair tightly, pacing in a circle, not saying a word except "keep breathing."
I don't know when it happened, but suddenly Jameson is there. Crime scene tape surrounds my house. I'm standing on my front step, covered in blood, my hands shaking. He stands in front of me, a concerned expression on his face. He's a blurry mass, and I blink to clear my vision, realizing I'm crying.
I'm fucking crying.
Again.
"I have to go," I say, trying to step around him. "I have to get to the hospital. I have to be there."
He steps in my path, half a dozen officers flanking him, blocking my way. I glare at him, nostrils flaring. I can feel the tears burning my eyes. It's pissing me off more than I'm already pissed.
"You want to stop me?" I ask, taking a step toward Jameson. "I dare you to try. I dare you."
The man shows no sign of anger, his troubled gaze leaving mine to look around. His attention settles on the lump in the grass covered in a white sheet.
"Just tell me what went on," he says before turning to me again, his expression earnest. "What happened?"
I hesitate.
"He shot my fiancée," I say. "He wanted us dead."
"So you killed him."
"So I stopped him," I correct him. "Justice was already served, Jameson. Not like you'd get any for me, anyway, but your work here is done. I did it for you... again."
He nods before stepping aside. "Go ahead. I'll have some questions for you later, but go on, get to the hospital."
I step past him, grabbing my keys as I head for my car.
"You're just going to let him go free?" Andrews asks with disbelief. "He just confessed to killing him, and you're letting him walk?"
"It was self-defense," Jameson says. "I want him behind bars as much as you, but we don't want to look like the bad guys here."
I get in the car, spinning tires as I speed away. I left my house wide open, crawling with police, but I don't care. Not anymore.
They can search every inch of it if they want.
They can burn it down for all I care.
Hospital waiting rooms are Purgatory.
It's that place, between Heaven and Hell, where you're forced to wait for your time, for word as to where you go next. It's not pleasant. In fact, it's torture. But you sit there, and you cling to hope, telling yourself it's not that bad, because you know it could always get worse.
Because you know it just might.
The room is brightly lit, the florescent lights above me flickering and hurting my eyes. Every blink burns. Every muscle in my body aches.
A kid screams in the corner. His mother sobs. An old man keeps sneezing. A woman won't stop talking. The noises surround me, a haze of chaos that makes my ears ring as I grip my hair tightly and stare at the door.
I stare.
And stare.
And fucking stare.
Just waiting for it to open, and for them to give me the final judgment.
Heaven or Hell.
Life or death.
It feels like I'm strapped to a gurney with a needle in my arm, except I don't know if it's a hospital room surrounding me or if it's actually an execution chamber.
A few more minutes.
I keep breathing, in and out, over and over, praying she is, too. Just keep breathing.
The door swings open eventually and a doctor steps out. Everyone around me stares at him, looking hopeful, but he stares right at me, his expression blank. He pauses before stepping toward me, appearing nervous.
My stomach sinks.
No.
No.
Don't say it.
Don't tell me she's gone, too.
Don't tell me her last word was my name.
"Mr. Vitale? Can I speak to you in private?"
I look away from him, glancing around the room. The mother is crying again. The kid is still screaming. The old man blows his nose as the woman tells him about her goddamn canker sores.
It's already Hell, I've decided, not Purgatory.
"Just say it," I tell him. "Get it over with."
"If you insist."
"I do."
"She's in recovery."
It takes a few beats for those words to sink in. I look at him again. "Recovery?"
He nods. "It was touch and go for a bit… punctured a lung, fractured some ribs, but we repaired the damage. She was lucky you were there when it happened. Your quick thinking saved her life."
I should feel relief from that, but I don't.
I didn't save her life.
I almost had it taken from her.
"Thank you," I say. "Can I see her?"
"Soon," he says. "She's still unconscious, but she'll be moved to a room in a little while. The nurse will come for you as soon as you can go in."
It's three hours later when they come get me.
I know for a fact this time, because instead of staring at the door, I stared at the clock. In that time, the old man got good news, the chatty woman fell asleep, and the mother was told her world would never be the same again.
The nurse leads me to a dim room in the ICU. I pause in the doorway, staring at the bed. Karissa lies completely still. She's breathing, but not on her own.
She's on a ventilator.
"You can have a few minutes," the nurse says, "but then I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Visiting hours are already over, so you'll have to come back tomorrow."
The nurse walks away, and I stand there in the doorway, watching her, listening to her heartbeat on the monitor. I don't wait for the nurse to come back.
I just leave.
I don't go far, though, ending up back in the waiting room. I camp out in a chair in the corner, getting no sleep. People come in and out all night long and well into the next afternoon. I wander around the hospital occasionally, passing the minutes in a daze.
I'm standing along a far wall near the ICU twenty-four hours after Karissa was brought in, still wearing the same clothes, covered in her blood. I stare out the window, into the parking lot, watching as the cars come and go, when someone approaches from behind. "Mr. Vitale?"
I turn around, coming face-to-face with the doctor who delivered the news to me yesterday. He stalls when he gets a good look at me, stammering a moment. "You've been here this whole time?"
"Yes."
"You should go home," he tells me. "Get some rest."
I glance down at myself and shake my head. "There's nothing there for me."
"At least get cleaned up," he says. "Let me get you a pair of scrubs. We have showers you can use."
I want to argue, to refuse, but a shower sounds good right about now. I follow the man to the locker room on the next floor. He hands me a pair of dark blue scrubs, telling me to take my time.
I stand under the warm spray for a long time, wash
ing the red tint from my skin, trying to absolve myself of the memories but they haunt me. Every time I close my eyes, I see her ashen face, the stunned look in her eyes, the blood gushing from beneath her skin.
I shut the water off eventually, drying off and pulling on the scrubs. I discard my suit right in the trash before walking out. I stroll around the hospital again and head back to the ICU. I make my way to Karissa's room, pausing outside the doorway.
She's awake.
The machines are still beeping but the ventilator is gone. A nurse stands beside her bed, checking her vitals, as Karissa shifts around a bit. I watch curiously, quietly, waiting until the nurse is done. The lady walks out, flashing me a smile.
Once she's gone, I slowly step inside the room, watching her. Her eyes drift toward me. I'm not sure what to say. An apology is on the tip of my tongue, another fucking apology, but she breaks the silence and speaks first.
"Stealing scrubs again?"
Her voice is scratchy and faint, but she's joking around. It instantly sets me at ease, relieving the tension I've carried in my muscles since yesterday. I stroll closer, encouraged by the fact that she didn't tell me to get the fuck out. "You said we borrow them, remember?"
"I remember."
"So I'm trying out this look again. The black suits just aren't doing it for me anymore."
"I like it," she says, smiling softly. "You look… doctor-y."
"Doctor-y," I repeat, pulling a chair closer to her bed and sitting down. "I'll have to remember that."
Her smile wavers a bit as she stares at me. She reaches her hand out toward me, and it shakes when she tries to hold it there. Sighing, I grasp ahold of it, pressing it between both of my hands. Her skin is ice cold.
"You scared me, sweetheart," I say quietly.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," I say. "Never apologize to me. This isn't your fault… it's mine. If anyone should be apologizing, it's me."
She slowly shakes her head. "The doctor says you saved my life."
"I put you in that situation to begin with," I say. "You shouldn't have been there. You left, and I told you not to come back… I said if you walked out, to keep going, to never come back. Why were you there? What were you thinking?"
Her voice is even quieter now as she answers. "I missed you."
"You missed me," I say, laughing with disbelief. "Seriously… you missed me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
She stares at me again. She doesn't answer.
"You should've been rejoicing. I told you I wouldn't come after you, and I didn't. You were free and clear."
"That's the problem," she says. "I knew you weren't coming."
"I thought that's what you wanted, Karissa. You wanted me to let you go, so I let you go."
"I thought that's what I wanted, too, but what I wanted was the option. I wanted to have a choice. I wanted you to ask."
"I did ask."
"No, you didn't. You said you were asking me to stay, but you never asked. You never do."
It makes no sense to me. It's a petty argument. It doesn't matter how I worded it… if she wanted to go, she would go, and she did. She left.
And I don't understand why she would come back.
"I missed you," she says quietly as I stroke her hand. "I didn't expect to miss you as much as I did. I missed talking to you… missed the way you tease me, the way you look at me. I hate the things you do… I hate parts of you, monster you can sometimes be, but I don't hate the man I fell in love with. And he's the one I missed."
"I'm not a good man, Karissa."
"You're not a bad one, either, Ignazio."
It's the same argument all over again.
"I thought you hated the way I look at you."
"I do," she says, "but I love it, too."
Shaking my head, I let out a deep breath and lean down, kissing the back of her hand. "You should run far, far away from me."
"I know I should," she says. "I wish I could."
"You can."
She shakes her head and looks away from me, staring up at the ceiling. Her blinks are slow, heavy.
"I don't know why I came back," she says. "I don't understand any of this, but maybe I'm not supposed to. I shouldn't be here, but I am… I shouldn't love you, but I do. You have problems, Naz. There's something seriously wrong with you. But maybe there's something wrong with me, too, because no matter how much I try to hate you, or how much I want to stay away from you, I can't. I love you, but I don't understand… I don't understand why you'd do it, why you'd do that to me, how you could bring yourself to hurt me when you're supposed to love me, too."
"It wasn't about you."
"How can you say that?" she asks, her voice growing a little louder, stronger. "She's my mother."
"I didn't want to do it, Karissa," I say. "I didn't enjoy a second of it."
"And that's supposed to make it better?"
"No," I say, looking down at her hand in mine, my eyes tracing the IV stuck to her arm. "Nothing I say will ever make it better, Karissa. What's done is done, and it can't be taken back. I don't expect your forgiveness… I'm not even sure you should forgive me. Forgiveness… that certainly wasn't something I was capable of."
She's crying, quietly, silent tears streaming down her cheeks as she continues to stare at the ceiling. "She didn't know… about what he planned, about what he did, until afterward. She told me that, and I believe her. She didn't know until it was too late."
"That might be true," I reply, "but she spent years after it with the knowledge of what he'd done, and she protected him. She chose him. Despite what he did, she refused to turn her back on that man."
"Like mother," she whispers, "like daughter."
I stroke her hand for a moment, my thumb rubbing circles along her skin. "I'm not saying what she did warranted what I did. I'm not trying to justify it. I'm just saying, your mother made her decision. She knew what it would mean for her. She shot me. She knew this game would end with one of us dead, and I'm regretful it was her, Karissa… I am… but I can't be sorry it wasn't me."
She inhales deeply, as if to calm down, as she closes her eyes. "I don't know what I'm supposed do. They're holding her… she's in Watertown, and they tell me I can come, that I can… have her, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You lay her to rest."
"Where?"
I'm quiet for a moment, mulling over that question, before I let go of Karissa's hand. She lets it hover there for a second before pulling it back onto the bed, resting it against her chest.
"I have a place," I say, running my hands down my face.
She turns her head to look at me. "You have a place?"
"St. John's Catholic Cemetery in Queens. I own a plot there."
"You do?"
"Yes," I say quietly. "I think your mother would like it. Johnny was buried there months ago, so she wouldn't be far from him."
Karissa says nothing, but she isn't arguing against it, so that counts for something.
"I'll make the arrangements for you," I say, standing up. "You shouldn't have to do it."
I start to walk out when she calls my name.
"Naz, why do you have a plot there?"
"I bought it long ago," I say hesitating near the doorway to look back at her. "It's where Maria was buried."
"But don't you—?"
"I don't need it," I say before she even has to ask that question. "I don't belong there. Not anymore. Maria's life was marked by violence… she should be able to rest in peace."
It's two weeks later when Karissa is released from the hospital.
Two weeks later when we stand in the damp grass of the quiet cemetery, in front of the shiny black casket placed over the freshly dug grave. The reality of the situation surrounds the gravesite, a stark reminder of where life led us all. Carmela lived her life in hiding, and her death feels much the same.
Isolated.
There's nobody here.
Nobody to share memories.
Nobody to say goodbye.
Nobody, that is, except me and Karissa, along with a preacher and the guys from the funeral home. In the distance, over the hill, I can see the unmarked police car, but they're not going to come closer.
They're just watching.
Watching me, because despite it all, they're still determined to bust me for something.
"Shall we, uh, get started?" the preacher asks, as the strained silence surrounding us grows thicker.
Karissa doesn't respond. She stands right beside me, wearing a plain black dress, so close her arm brushes mine. Her head is down, eyes fixed on the grass, hands clasped in front of her. She sways a bit. She shouldn't be on her feet. But she's stubborn… so damn stubborn.
She ignored me when I told her to find somewhere to sit.
Tears linger in the corner of her eyes. She just wanted someone to care, someone to show up… somebody else who wasn't me. She wanted her mother's life to matter to somebody other than her.
Sighing, I turn away from her and glance around, freezing when I see someone approaching in the distance. Surprise runs through me.
My father.
He wears his usual work clothes, khakis and a white shirt, his grungy apron still tied around his waist. He came straight from the deli, I realize, and he forgot to take it off in his rush. He's clutching a bouquet of flowers, and when he gets closer I see they're pink roses.
Pink roses.
My gaze shifts toward the adjacent gravesite. The ring is long gone, unsurprisingly, but the roses remain in place. Wilted, sure, but they're still there.
And I think I know who gave them to her.
My father keeps his head down as he walks up, grumbling to himself as he approaches. Karissa's head snaps up at the sound of his voice, her eyes widening as she stares at him.
"Sorry I'm late," he says to nobody in particular. "Time got away from me."
"Not a problem," the preacher says, taking his hand to shake it, seeming damn relieved to have somebody else show up. "We're glad you could be here."
My father nods, turning away from the man, and places the flowers on top of the casket before stepping back. He clasps his hands in front of him, refusing to meet my eyes as he stands there, waiting.
The preacher starts.
There isn't much to say.