Sapphire Scars

Chapter 2 Episode 2

Contrast that to the first time I realized Adrian had a drinking problem. Everything about that memory feels sharp, like a thorn hiding beneath the petals of a rose, waiting to cut you when you least expect it.

I remember the smell of vomit. I remember the clothes he was wearing. I even remember that feeling of doom that hung in the air like the last ringing note of his piano.

This is the end. Not the one you hoped for, but the one you deserve.

I fall asleep on the brown couch I’d bought with my first paycheck. I fall asleep trying to catch my sepia-tinted memories and the hope of possibility. I fall asleep praying that when I wake up, things will be right.

I fall asleep knowing they won’t.

I wake up to the flashing of a red and blue light right outside my window, a banging on my front door, and a dull pain across the left side of my face. I know I haven’t slept for very long because it’s still dark outside and I can still smell Adrian’s dried drool on the sofa cushion.

The noise is loud and insistent. It’s enough to make me feel like I’m the one with the hangover.

“Jesus,” I groan, forcing myself to my feet. “Adrian, I thought I told you to fu—”

I pull open the door and the expletive on my lips freezes against my tongue. It’s not Adrian, that much is certain. For one, it’s a woman, and for another, she’s dressed in uniform. My eyes go right to the gun holstered on her hip. It catches the red and blue lights whirling on top of her patrol car and swallows them up like it’s saving them to unleash later.

“Ma’am, I’m very sorry to wake you at this time, but—” She cuts off abruptly. “You’re bleeding.”

Oh. Duh. The slap. The ring. The cut, right in the same spot and shape as the last one and the one before that. “I, uh… I walked into a wall earlier.”

The cop looks perplexed, but she falls back into her script. “Right. Well, ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s been an accident.”

My initial thought is that Adrian got into another fight. It wouldn’t be the first time. None of this would be the first time, actually.

But for some reason I can’t explain, that story doesn’t feel right tonight. The look on the policewoman’s face is all wrong.

“What happened?” I croak again. My voice isn’t quite as steady as it was when I asked the same question a moment ago.

“Do you know an Adrian Cooper? We found your number on his person.”

That’s a weird sentence. Why would she say it like that?

“There was an accident, ma’am,” the cop says, her eyes lighting with sympathy. It’s the engineered kind of compassion, though. The kind that’s trained into you in the academy. Just another mask to put on to get her through her shift. “Mr. Cooper was involved. I’m afraid you’re going to have to come down to the precinct.”

I shake my head to get the bizarre pieces of this story to settle into place. “If he got hurt, shouldn’t I go straight to the hospital?”

Her eyes gloss over. More of that manufactured sympathy. Double-thick, dense and horrifying, like glue I can’t get off my fingers. “Ma’am, I’m afraid Mr. Cooper didn’t make it. We’re going to need you to identify the body.”

I close my eyes as the breath catches in my throat.

There it is again: that visceral sharpness that comes with the bad moments in life. I clock every insignificant detail and know even as I’m doing it that I’ll remember these things for the rest of my days.

The gleam of the cop’s silver gun.

The impersonal disinfectant tang of her uniform.

The way her eyes keep flitting to the dried blood I can feel caked on my cheek.

“It’s not Adrian,” I say confidently. “He’s not dead.”

“Ma’am, I’m sure this must be shocking for you—”

“He can’t be dead,” I repeat.

“If you would just come down to the precinct with me and identify the—”

“Fine,” I spit. I’m being catty, but only because I know she’s wrong. They made a mistake somewhere along the way. Adrian isn’t dead; he’s snoring and drooling on some cheap, scratchy motel bed. Or maybe he didn’t even make it that far. Maybe he’s curled up in the nearest ditch, behind a godforsaken hedge, in someone’s backyard. He’ll be back in the morning, repentant as always. I don’t know what I’ll do then, but I know one thing for sure.

She drives me to the station. It takes exactly thirteen minutes. I watch every single one of those minutes tick past on the clock set in her dash. My knee is bouncing—the hurt one, not the good one—which is strange. I tell myself I’m just tired. It’s late and I’m exhausted in the way that only repeating the same cycle again and again can exhaust you.

“I should prepare you,” the cop tells me as she walks me through the precinct to a claustrophobic stairwell in the back. “The Accident resulted in a head-on collision that toppled both cars and ignited an explosion. The top half of his body was burned pretty badly.”

We go down and enter the morgue. It’s freezing cold in here. I wrap my arms around myself, teeth chattering. She’s still talking, but I’m barely hearing her. I’m too busy smelling.

I’ve always been good with smells. But you don’t have to be good to recognize the charcoal stench of burned flesh. It clings to the walls of this place. Makes me want to hurl.

“Prepare yourself, ma’am. We’ll do this as fast as we can.” Then she’s pulling the blue sheet off the form stretched across the metal table.

My stomach turns, but it’s not a personal kind of horror. It’s the human instinct to recoil from something awful, something rotten, something wrong.

But after the initial wave of nausea passes, I can breathe again. Whoever this poor, barbecued soul on the table is, he’s not my Adrian.

“Like I was trying to tell you, he can’t be—”

The words die on my lips when I see the corpse’s hand.

The ring on one finger, to be specific.

It’s gold and glistening bright under the cold fluorescent lights overhead. Like it’s mocking me. Winking at me one more time from beyond the grave. I touch my cheek, and even though it stings because the wound is still fresh, I let my touch linger. The same smooth curve of the metal is embedded in my face.

I have two choices now, I realize. I can either scream into the void…

Or I can fall into it.

I choose the latter. At least that one comes with blissful oblivion.

“You’re in the hospital, ma’am.” The voice is female, bright, and faux-cheery in a briskly professional sort of way. “You fainted.”

I honestly kind of wish I was disoriented. But as soon as she says that, I remember exactly where I was when I passed out. I remember exactly what I was doing. Or meant to be doing, anyway. I’m not sure I properly identified my boyfriend’s corpse before I hit the ground, though I doubt it matters much. I’m assuming that even New York’s finest can put those pieces together.

“I want to go home,” I whisper.

“The doctor has to clear you first, darling,” the voice explains. “He needs to make sure your little fall didn’t hurt the baby.”

I blink and crack one eye open. Maybe I am disoriented, after all. “What baby?”

“Your baby, dear,” the nurse says. Her face hangs over me like a gigantic sun I want to run from.

“I don’t have a baby.”

Her eyes go wide. They’re a pretty brown, aged prematurely with decades of sad stories passing through her ward. “Oh, dear… You didn’t know.”

“I’m so sorry, darling. We thought you knew,” she says, her eyes softening instantly. Real sympathy, not the engineered kind. “You’re pregnant.”

I’m pregnant at a funeral.

I’m pregnant at my baby’s father’s funeral.

A startled gasp escapes my lips. I’ve been jumpy for days now. You’d think that being in a crowded funeral hall would eliminate that feeling for a few hours, but apparently not.

“I’m sorry,” the man who spoke says from behind a smile that’s veering uncomfortably close to creepy. I frown, vaguely recognizing his spindly hunch and his distinctive beaked nose. I’m pretty sure I’ve been creeped out by that smile before. “I scared you.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m just… on edge.”

“Of course. This can’t be easy for you.”

He’s the first person to speak to me in twenty minutes, since Adrian’s old work colleagues all left. It was nice of them to show up, but it made me sad to realize that they came out of a sense of obligation rather than any real affection or lasting friendship.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” I ask, hoping he’s not offended by the fact that I can’t really remember him.

He smells of stale cigarettes and strong mint gum that’s failing to cover up the tobacco stench. “Yes, we have. Adrian introduced us at his last recital.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Adrian hasn’t—hadn’t—performed in over two years.”

“Was it that long ago?” the man muses, still not volunteering his name. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”