“Don’t be going nowhere, doctor’ll be in to see you in a minute, dumplin’.”
“Where am I gonna go?” I call after her, sad to see her go. “Gorgeous guardian angel, huh? Whodathunkit?” I muse to myself as I fall back asleep, dreaming of a man in a grey hoodie rocking me against his chest.
***
“Jade! Oh my god, look at you. JADE! ARE YOU OKAY?”
Harriet’s voice jerks me from my sleep.
“Wha?” I try to sit up, but fall back down when the room starts spinning.
“Whoa. Dude. What the hell happened to you? You poor, poor thing.” She grabs my hand and leans over the bed her face inches from mine.
“Harriet,” I say softly, happy to hear my voice is coming back.
“Yes, hon?” She asks, worried, leaning in even closer, so our noses are almost touching.
“Did you enjoy your ham and pickle sandwich?”
“Um, yes. How did you know…”
“Because I can smell it on your breath,” I tease her.
“You can not! Witch! Ugh!” She squeezes my hand and sits down on the chair by the bed. “Guess you’re feeling just fine!”
I smile at her, it is so good to see a familiar face. Truth is, in the five years I’ve lived in Manhattan, Harriet is the one who has made life bearable when the homesickness gets to be too overwhelming. “Just kidding, you’ve had a ham and pickle sandwich every Thursday lunch for as long as I’ve known you.”
She pokes her tongue out at me and squeezes my hand tight again. I can tell she was worried.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask. I haven’t gotten much information from anyone yet, just that I’ll be okay and in the hospital for a few more days. The “gorgeous, guardian angel,” as Ruby and I call him, has yet to make an appearance since I woke up that morning.
“Oh my God, you’ve missed all the drama! And it’s all about you, how ironic! All this gossip and you’re the subject and you don’t even get to enjoy it! Everyone’s been hanging around! There’ve been police and reporters and some weird library customers who think they know you just because you checked out a book for them!” Harriet gushes a mile a minute.
“Harriet.”
“Yes?”
“I have a head injury. I need slow, short, not-too-loud words.” I draw out my last sentence dramatically.
“Oh, sorry!” she says in a loud whisper, not all that quieter than her normal voice, “Well, Harold got a call from the documents translator on Tuesday morning telling him that you didn’t deliver the manuscripts on Monday and he was SO mad. But then a few minutes later, he got a call from the police asking if a woman – late 20’s, brunette, about 150 lbs, green eyes with a tattoo of a book on her ankle – works there.”
“Ugh, lucky guess with the weight,” I pout.
Harriet grins at me, “He DID say ‘pretty’ as well.”
“Did not. Anyway, they all say that. Have you read those Readers Digest articles about murderers and rapists? They always start by describing the victim as ‘caring, happy and pretty.’ Humph.” I sulk but am still intrigued to hear more.
“Anyway, so Harold jumps out of his chair and runs out of the office, not even telling me what’s going on, I had to chase him half way down the street. And he tells me that the police got an anonymous call on Monday night, telling them that a woman had been attacked by two thieves outside of our back entrance and that she was being taken to the hospital, but the police should go catch the thieves who had supposedly been knocked out by the guy who saved you.” She stops to take a breath, her eyes wide from the excitement of telling me.
It is starting to come back to me.
I gasp as I remember the feel of the cold knife against my throat, wet from my own blood. I cover my mouth as I remember how scared I was, how I’d begged to be let go. Tears sprang to my eyes, and my body ran cold as I remember their voices, the feel of his hands on my mouth, slapping me across the face, stabbing into my back.
“Oh, honey,” Harriet stands up and hands me a tissue, softly stroking the hair off my forehead. “It’s okay, you let it out. You’ve been through a lot.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to dwell on it, I just want to make the memories go away.
And then I remember his voice. Soft and almost inaudible, whispering to me, telling me I’d be okay, that he had me, that nothing would hurt me now.
My guardian angel. He saved me.
Blowing my nose, I turn to Harriet, “Do you know anything about the man who saved me?”
“No, sweetie, the call to the police was anonymous and apparently the hospital staff don’t know anything about him at all, except that he said his name was ‘K’?” Harriet shrugs.
“‘Kay?’ That’s a weird name for a guy,” I ponder.
“No, I think they meant, like, just ‘K,’ the letter.”
“Oh. Even weirder,” I snort. It was weird. “Curioser and curioser… Ruby, my nurse, tells me he’s super mysterious but has a body she’d, and I quote, ‘leave her ol’ man for’… if he were still alive. So, you haven’t heard anything about him?” I ask.
Harriet grins a grin I know all too well.
“Whaaat?” I am almost too scared to ask.
“Do you have a cru-ush on your mystery man?” She asks, annoyingly chipper now that she can see I’m going to be okay.
“Er, no. Wouldn’t YOU be curious about a man who came out of nowhere to save your life and who just disappeared when you woke up from a head injury?” I argue, not without reason.
But Harriet is unflappable. “Eh, mildly curious, not ‘the only thing I can think about’ curious.”
“I’m not!” I protest.
“Oh, really? All you’ve asked is about Mr. Mystery Man. You haven’t asked what else has happened in the time you’ve been out, what’s happened with the two men who attacked you, who’s been to visit, how my sex life is…” She pouts.
I laugh, the last of the tears dried. She has a point.
I just can’t stop wondering, who is he?
HIM
I watch the clock as it ticks over to 5:30 a. m. and reach for the alarm button just as it is starting to sound. I wonder why I even bothered to set it. I haven’t gotten a wink of sleep all night, third night in a row. ‘Ever since you saved that woma-‘
“Shut up,” I cut off my inner voice. I know exactly when my insomnia started.
I throw off my duvet and climb out of bed, carrying my water bottle into the adjoining gym room. Pulling on a pair of boxers and tracksuit pants, I click the TV onto CNN and climb on the treadmill. Setting it on the hardest program, I start the 45-minute steepest uphill run. If I don’t sleep tonight, it won’t be because I’m not tired.