All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 54

54

Patch did not die that night.

In the waiting room she spread her jacket along two chairs until an orderly took pity and gathered blankets and a pillow. She breathed disinfected air, drank vending machine soda, her teeth furred, her skin dry and greasy.

Saint heard talk of another infection. A line in his veins would pump him full of powerful drugs now they had stabilized him, stemmed the internal bleed, drained air from his lung, and left a chest tube in to reinflate it.

A week in and she found Misty Meyer sitting like an apparition in the chair opposite, too polite to stare at the mess of a girl who graced the front pages of every local newspaper within a thousand miles. They called Saint a hero. Just like the boy.

On the chair beside Misty were flowers, and she looked deeply

embarrassed about them.

“Is he awake?” Misty said.

Saint sat up. “Sometimes.”

“Is he…”

Saint did not know what was coming next, but she spared the girl.

“They won’t let me see him.”

“But he won’t die,” Misty said, her voice catching on that last word. She sat with her hands across her lap, her Mary Janes buckled over white tights.

“No,” Saint said, with conviction.

“Did the photographer really do it?”

Saint rubbed her tired eyes. “Yes.”

“He used my school photo on his poster?”

Saint nodded.

“He was creepy. He asked me a ton of questions, asked about stuff I believe in. If I had a boyfriend. But Patch—”

“Maybe he got free and got lost on that land.”

Misty did not belong in that waiting room at that hour. It was reserved for the strugglers, for the uncertain and for the desperate.

“It said in the newspaper you might’ve killed him when you started the fire.” She whispered the words, like they weighed so heavy they’d fall from her mouth and shatter Saint’s chances of rejoining normality.

“Yeah.”

“But they can’t find him.”

“No.”

She stayed another hour, and Saint did not have the energy to speak, and so lay down and pulled her knees to her chest, and before long she slept.

She did not feel Misty cover her with the blanket.

And when she woke to splinters of sun, she saw Misty had been replaced by Chief Nix, whose hat lay on the table beside his belt and gun, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, dark hair spilling from his chest.

Saint sat up as the fear shot her through.

Nix raised a hand, told her to calm, that he could not sleep so had driven over in the night and watched the kid awhile.

“How you holding up?” he said.

She did not reply.

“You need to see someone…what you’ve been through.”

“I need to see Patch, no one else.”

“You did a good thing, kid. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

Nix sipped coffee from a paper cup, prefatory, like he needed the caffeine kick before he spoke mindless words about the difference she had

made.

“How’s Mrs. Macauley?” Saint asked.

“Not ready for this. Dr. Tooms is with her. He sleeps in the chair in their den. I don’t know if she realizes, with the pills and all.”

“Will Patch be the same?” she said.

He stood and stretched and collected his things. And he touched her cheek as he left. “None of us will be, kid.”

—

At the break of day eight, when she managed to slip past the night crew and crawl up onto the bed beside him, and curve her bony body around his and tuck herself neatly into his side, Patch woke.

And for a long time she knew he was awake by the change in his breathing and the ruinous realization that their world together would open till it was not them and them alone. And for that time she kept close and choked her tears back and would not let him see just how much the past months had undone her.

When she finally looked at him she sucked her breath deep.

“The cops took your Playboy.”

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