The Black Witch of Mexico (19 page)

“Thanks for what you did.”

“Do you have anyone who can sit with you?”

“Are you married?”

Adam shook his head.”

“Have you ever loved someone so fucking much you think you’d die without them?”

“I think I know the feeling,” Adam said.

His pager went off. He stubbed out the cigarette--it tasted foul anyway. “Have you called her family?”

His eyes were glassy and unfocused, he wasn’t even sure that he’d heard him. Adam patted him on the shoulder and hurried back inside.

He couldn’t think about this right now. It would have to keep until later; right now he had work to do.

Chapter 49 

He stood at the door of the ICU and watched her sleep. She didn’t look like Elena anymore. They had shaved some of her hair to suture the laceration to her scalp, and she was so pale her skin seemed translucent. He could make out the pale veins on her forehead.

She had fractured and displaced her pelvis, and the surgeon had performed an emergency hysterectomy. She had been resuscitated twice more on the operating table but now, twenty-four hours later, her prognosis was promising. They had taken her off the ventilator and there were no indications of brain damage. Death had caught her by the coattails but she had torn herself free.

Her eyes blinked open.

She frowned. For a moment she didn’t recognize him.

“Hi, Elena.”

Her lips curled into a painful smile. “Oliver. Baby.”

So that was his name. “No,” he said, “It’s Adam.” He looked at her chart; flicked through his own ICU notes, then the surgeon’s.

“Where’s Oliver?”.

“I don’t know.”

“He was just here.”

A nurse looked in. Elena repeated her question. “Oliver? He left two hours ago. He was here all night, I told him to go home and get some sleep. He looked exhausted, poor man.”

“I thought he was here,” Elena said. Her eyes flicked from side to side, confused. “I must have fallen asleep.”

“He’ll be back in a few hours,” the nurse said.

“I don’t remember what happened.”

“Drunk driver hit you,” Adam said. “You’re lucky to still be here.”

Adam squeezed her hand and stayed with her until she slipped back into another drugged sleep. He didn’t want her to wake up again and call him Oliver so he decided to leave.

As he was walking out he saw a thirty-something blonde woman get out of the elevator and hurry toward the ICU. She stopped when she saw him, couldn’t hide a look of distaste.

“Hello, Julie,” he said.

“Adam. How is she doing?”

“She’s doing better.”

“Thank God. I was here all last night with...”

“Oliver. We’ve met.”

That seemed to throw her. “I had to get home and take care of the kids for a few hours. God, I thought we were going to lose her. Were you...were you in the ER when they brought her in?”

He nodded.

“That must have been hard for you.”

“It’s hard now. At the time I had a job to do.” He didn’t want to stand here and do this. He nodded towards the ICU. “You should go in. Has anyone told her about the baby?”

“You knew?” “We caught up for a drink a few weeks ago and she was drinking orange juice. I sort of guessed.” She still stood there. “She won’t be able to have children now. Did they tell you?”

Her eyes filled up and she fumbled in her purse for a tissue. He wanted to feel sorry for her but that was too much of a stretch, even now. “Poor El...oh fuck... ‘

“You should go in.”

“Does...does he know?”

“You mean...Oliver? I don’t know. I’m not part of the family any more, Jules.”

He grabbed a handful of tissues from a nurse’s trolley and handed them to her.

“I’d better get back to work,” he said, but it was a lie because he’d finished his shift.

“Okay,” she said and went into the ICU, almost on tiptoes, like she was walking into a minefield.

He went downstairs and changed out of his scrubs. He walked home.

* * *

He cut through Boston Common, hands deep in his pockets. For no reason at all, he started thinking about the Crow.

If Elena couldn’t have children, would that change anything for her, or for her and Oliver?

Forget about it, Adam. What happened to Elena was an accident, these things happened every day, it had nothing to do with the Crow.
The only guy to blame for this tragedy was the drunk guy in the pick-up who ran the red light.

I was one of the good guys. I shocked her heart back into rhythm, got her blood pressure back up, stayed calm and focused and got the job done.

Remember that.

* * *

It was dark by the time he reached Beacon Hill. He lived in a narrow street of Federation style row houses: there were gaslights, converted stables, Grecian doorways. If it wasn’t for the cars parked up and down the street it would be easy to think he had stepped through a hole in the fabric of the world, gone back two hundred years.

A little like Santa Marta.

Back in his apartment he found the bourbon and poured what was left in the bottle down the sink. He transferred the dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher and put the CDs back in their right boxes.

He spent the next two hours tidying up. He had let things slip since he got back from Mexico. It was time to get things back on track.

He made himself dinner then turned on the TV. At a quarter to four in the morning he was still staring at the screen, some detective show from the sixties. Where had the last eight hours gone? He made himself a cup of coffee and sat on one of the barstools and put his head on the breakfast bar for a moment and fell asleep. The alarm on his wristwatch woke him. He showered and put his cold cup of coffee in the microwave. He remembered it when he was halfway across the common.

He just wished he had gotten that photograph back from the Crow.

Chapter 50

They had met at a costume party for Jay’s birthday down in Cape Cod. Lynne had always teased him that he thought he was God, so he thought it would be fun to go dressed as the Devil. He chose the costume, complete with a plastic pitchfork from a costume shop in Cambridge. He drew on a goatee and twirling moustache with a marker before he left the ER and drove straight down after a twelve-hour shift.

* * *

Jay had booked a friend’s art gallery for the night. It had once been a church, and the local stories of a haunting only added to its cachet, and certainly didn’t harm art sales. It was built out of red brick, and was probably no more than two hundred years old.

When he arrived the party was already well under way. The walls were pulsing with the throb of the music. He hoped the ghost like techno-pop.

Most of the guests were Jay’s friends from Harvard, there were a few nurses from the ER, Fiona and Jackie were there, but they had an unspoken agreement to ignore each other outside work.

He got himself a beer from the bar in what used to be the nave and decided to take a look around. He went up a dark brick staircase to the choir loft.

He didn’t notice her straight away; she was standing in the shadows watching the light show and the dancers below. He didn’t know what made him stare. It couldn’t have been her face because it was hidden behind a very elaborate brown beard and her body was mostly concealed under a long, flowing robe. He liked blondes, but he didn’t know she was blonde because she was wearing a wig.

Perhaps it was her legs; the robe wasn’t as authentic as anything the real Jesus would have worn. It was slit to the thigh. But it must have been more than just the flash of a long and shapely leg. There were lots of girls there that night with nice legs.

Perhaps it was her animation when she talked, or something in the way her friends looked at her. Even a woman with a bushy brown beard can have charisma; that was what he told himself later, anyway.

She was with a couple of girlfriends. One of them drifted away to dance and then a man joined them and started hitting on her friend, so he took his chance. She was drinking punch. He got her another.

He held out the glass. “can I tempt you?” he asked, which was perhaps an obvious thing to say to a girl dressed as Jesus, but he couldn’t think of anything better after twelve hours in the ER.

“If you could it would be a miracle.”

“Like your costume. Where did you get it?”

“This isn’t a costume. I really am the Messiah.”

“I didn’t know the saviour of all mankind had such great legs.”

“If you really want to be saved you shouldn’t be looking.” She looked him up and down. “I like the horns. They’re very...upright. Not so much on the rest of it though. I don’t like to be mean, but I have a better beard than you.”

“Be careful what you say. I’m the one with the pitchfork.”

She smiled. “So when you’re not tempting the Son of Man, what do you do?”

“I bargain for souls. What about you?”

“Different line of work entirely. I’m a graphic designer in an advertising agency.”

“I didn’t know Jesus was in marketing.”

“My book’s been a number one bestseller for two thousand years. I’d say I’ve targeted my demographic pretty well.”

They talked for hours while the party went on around them. She had a comeback for everything. She was smart and funny and when he said:
who knew the Devil and Jesus would get on so well
, she said
yes, but I think we could have issues later, especially if we have children.

“I’d want them to go to a Catholic school and I’m not sure you’d make a good impression with the Board.”

He asked her how she came to be at the party and she pointed to one of the nurses he knew from the ER. “She’s a good friend of mine. What about you? Are you a medic as well?”

“I’m a psychiatrist,” he said, playing with her.

“Really? Have you been analysing me this whole time?”

“I’d say it’s obvious you have a messiah complex.”

“But I
am
the Messiah.”

He sighed. “But that’s what all they say.”

“You should have me on your couch sometime,” she said. “Examine me properly.”

“I’d like that very much. Are you troubled by many bad thoughts?

“Well, you should know, Lucifer. You’re the one who puts them into my head. But I wouldn’t say they trouble me. In fact I quite enjoy them.”

“Are you
very
drunk?”

“I think so. I’ve been drinking since lunchtime. It’s my birthday, but no one knows. Do you have a car?”

“It’s parked right outside.”

“Would you like to take me for a drive?”

“Why not? A little devil like me, I’m always looking for trouble.”

Chapter 51

They didn’t drive very far. He was distracted by her hand on his thigh. He found a deserted parking spot near the beach and pulled over. He turned off the engine and killed the headlights.

“I’ve never made love to Jesus before,” he said.

“That’s all I need, a virgin. It’s the story of my life.”

“If I take off my devil suit, will you take off your beard?”

“I can’t take it off. It’s real; I’m transgendered.” She slipped her underwear off underneath her robe and twirled her g-string around her fingers like car keys. “Want to break a few commandments with me?” She ripped open the Velcro at the front of his suit. She looked down and smiled. “I see you’ve really got a fire down below.”

“And you thought it was my tail.”

She hooked up her robe and straddled him.

“Lead me to sin,” she said.

“I’d rather take you to heaven.”

“In the front seat of a car? I don’t think so. Just do the best you can.”

* * *

Afterwards they walked along the beach. Moonlight rippled on the water.

“You want to go for a swim?” shesaid. She stripped off to her underwear and ran in. He took off his red Lycra suit and ran after her.

Later they went back to the car and she dried herself off with her robe. It was early summer but the night was cool and they were both shivering when they climbed back into his car. He turned the heater on full blast to try to warm them up and then drove her back to her hotel.