8Julia looked at herself in the mirror and froze in shock and horror at what she saw. An open gash, from the corner of her right eye down to the right-hand corner of her mouth... someone, somehow had torn her face open so violently that the flaps of skin were hanging slightly. She could almost peel the skin aside and see the muscles of her face underneath. Horror turned her skin cold and her hands to shaking; she could barely turn off the faucet. Her eyes widened till the color could barely be seen in them. She stumbled out the door.
How had she gotten here? Because 'here' was a bar, and not one of the relatively tame ones she knew of, either. As she stood in the bathroom doorway, trying not to look too out of place and frightened, she was regarded all around by unfriendly eyes. She was rudely shoved aside by a woman who reeked of beer and was stained the orange-yellow of too much time on the road, and the action jerked her out of her reverie. She noticed that the bar was silent, that everyone was staring at her, and that there were signs of a fight in the area kitty corner to the bathrooms. The whole front window was broken. She didn't know what had been going on.
She had to get out of there. Julia swallowed, edging nervously away as a man pushed past her again, muttering something that sounded like 'crazy' and a rude name. She didn't stop to hear the rest of it. There was only one person who could get her out of this kind of mess, and as much as she hated to call on him for anything... she was so far out of her depth here that she was drowning.
Thankfully, she had remembered to put phone change in her jacket pocket. She didn't know if she'd brought her purse into the bar, but if it was on the other side of the room she was damn well going to leave it there. Fumbling for the correct change, she dropped the coins into the pay phone and dialed the number she knew by heart, despite all better judgement.
"Martine. Go."
She opened her mouth and, absurdly, burped. It tasted of sweet alcohol and spaghetti. "Martine... it's Julia."
There was a pause. "Julia. And what felicitous event brings you to telephone me?"
She scowled, then winced, then bit back a cry as all the actions made her face hurt even more. "I need your help... I'm in trouble."
Another pause. "Julia, I'm not in the mood for..."
"I'm in a bar."
That shut him up. Even he knew her well enough to know that she hated alcohol and stupid people in any kind of quantity and combination, and bars had plenty of both.
"I'm in trouble... I don't know what happened, I don't even know why I'm in here... but there was this huge fight, it looks like, and my face..."
Now he sounded angry. "Oh, my poor dear, is there a blemish? A bruise? A small sign of battery on that lovely visage of yours...?" Sarcasm practically dripped out of the reciever.
"Dammit, Martine, I have a gash eight inches long and two inches deep in my face and if you don't come down here right now I'm going to faint and die of blood loss and then you'll be sorry!" She said it loud enough that she was sure the people on the other side of the room could hear her, but she was upset. Confused, scared, and upset. She didn't really care what they thought; if they got to her before Martine arrived, she was dead anyway. And Martine was being conspicuously silent. "Martine?"
"I hear you, Julia," he said, more gently than she would have imagined. "I'll be there as soon as I can." He hung up.
Julia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Help was coming, so that was something, at least. The blood was still running down her face, though... sluggishly and sticky, but it was running. She was already starting to feel faint. "Help..." she murmured, not really expecting anyone to hear. There wasn't anyone around who was going to help her...
Except maybe the bartender. She threw him a grateful look as he pressed her purse into her trembling hands. She was only now starting to realize that she hadn't told Martine where she was, and for all he knew she could be on the other side of town from him. She only hoped the bar... whatever it was... showed up on caller ID. For that matter, what the hell was she doing there?
"Better get out of here," the bartender said, not unpleasantly. "This crowd might get rough in a few minutes." He wasn't exaggerating, either. Every minute she remained was another minute where a face in the bar turned from suspicious to overtly hostile. What the hell had happened here?
"Thanks..." Julia murmured, pushing off of the wall and staggering outside. It was a warm night... or at least, it had been when she'd left her apartment. She checked her watch... it was the same date as when she'd left. She hadn't lost that much time, then. But... what was going on?
Julia reached the sidewalk without incident. Sat down on the curb next to a couple of old but well-cared for motorcycles and put her purse in her lap, her hands on her purse. Tried not to bleed too much, and put the tips of her fingers to her face, trying to hold the edges of the cut together. Her loose skin felt rubbery and dead under her fingers. She let her hand drop immediately.
"You look a mess..." a smooth, soft voice said from behind her. She screamed, high and sharp, before she realized who it was.
"Martine! You bastard... you scared the hell out of me!" Her words were cut off as he reached out and probed at her face with long, slender fingers.
"That's deep... and it might already be infected, given where you came out of." He gestured behind her where a humming neon sign entitled the building 'The Rabid Raccoon.' "Come on..." he turned, moving down the street to where she saw he'd parked his bike, "We'd better get you to a hospital before you bleed out or get an infection or something."
She swallowed. She wasn't sure she was up to a bike ride with her face and however much alcohol she'd had to drink and whatever else was going on. "Martine..."
He turned back to look at her, seeming to know what she was thinking. He always seemed to know what she was thinking. His thin lips turned up in a parody of a smile. "I won't let you fall, if that's what you're thinking."
Julia swallowed again, hard and dry in her throat. If he said he wouldn't let her fall, he wouldn't... but she didn't like that smile. She'd never liked his smiles. "Okay."
He motioned for her to get on first, presumably so he could keep her on the bike. His trenchcoat flapped dramatically in the wind as he threw his own leg over, and she was uncomfortably aware of the warm length of him pressed up against her back and the backs of her thighs. His low chuckle in her ear told her he was definitely aware of it too. "Hang on, kiddo. We wouldn't want you to fall off and suffer a further injury..."
She blanched, put her hands on the handlebars just below his, and held on. The bike started with a roar and a lurch between her legs, humming. Martine obviously kept the thing well-tuned. As they practically flew through the night (she was sure they were breaking all kinds of speed limits), the vibrations of the bike and Martine's body heat all around her mingled with the blood loss and sapped her strength. Julia could feel her eyes drooping closed.
"Stay with me, Julia," Martine shook her gently while they were stopped at a red light. "Don't pass out. You would not like it if you passed out now, believe me." She noted with the abstractness of shock that he pronounced 'believe' as if it had three syllables... be-lie-ve. It made her giggle.
"How far?" Her voice came out slurred.
"The hospital isn't far. But you need to stay awake at least until we get to the emergency room. I don't know what happened and I don't know how much you remember, so you'll be the one needing to answer the questions there. So stay awake." He shook her again.
"I'm awake," she scowled, then bit the inside of her cheek as the movement tore at her face a little more. "I'm awake."
"You'd better be," Martine said ominously. Her eyes widened, and she sat up a little at that.
"What do you..."
"We're there."
He pulled up to the emergency room exit, making a rude gesture she couldn't see at the car he'd cut off when he parked. She tried to swing her leg off, tried to stand up, but barely suceeded in getting off the bike before she started to sink to the ground. Martine caught her effortlessly.
"This had better be worth the bill for my dry cleaning," he muttered before he scooped her up into his arms. She curled up gratefully and allowed him to carry her into the building.
"I need a doctor." He didn't shout it, but nevertheless his voice carried, resonated like a stage actor through the room. Julia swung her face away from his shoulder, exposing her gashed cheek to the room, and even as her vision blurred and swam she could hear the pat-pat-pat of nurse's shoes. "She has been severely injured, and has lost a great deal of blood." It might have been her imagination, but she thought he muttered something about 'all over my shirt.'
"What happened, miss..." Martine was letting her go. She clung to him, ignoring the .. what sounded like a doctor... in favor of not being dropped on the ground. And then her hand touched cloth, and she let him set her down on a gurney.
"Julia Tremain..." She took a deep breath. "I don't know. I don't remember anything... I remember leaving my apartment earlier today, catching a bus... and then it's all blank until I woke up standing in a filthy bathroom in a bar called the Rabid Raccoon and my face was all cut up..." Hysteria turned her words into harsh, gulping sobs.
"All right, all right..." The doctor... it must have been the doctor, because Martine would never be capable of sounding that compassionate without also sounding... well, sleazy. "Just take it easy, there, Miss Tremain. We'll take good care of you."
Julia heard the doctor murmuring something to Martine, and the soft whispers that Martine made in return. She heard the sounds of the hospital all around her, the chaos of the emergency room, and heard the doctor ask her something about allergies that she didn't understand. The jab in her arm was almost unnoticeable through the shock and the pain from her face, but when the lights went out and her eyes closed, she thanked the kindness of the doctor for sending her to sleep before...
Martine watched the doctor stitch up the young girl's face with no emotion but the faintest hint of regret for beauty permanently marred. It occured to him somewhere in the back of his mind that he should display some sort of concern for her, but he couldn't be bothered with putting on the mask of feeling. Let the doctor think he was a sociopath. It wasn't going to make much difference to Julia's treatment in the long run, who she came in with.
"Do you know what happened?" the doctor asked him calmly. Well, he was an ER doctor. People covered in blood and screaming in pain probably came into his room every day.
"No... she called me from the bar. She sounded frightened out of her mind, and suffering from what I presume to be post-trauma induced amnesia. She doesn't remember what happened to her."
"So she said..." The doctor finished stitching her up and applied what looked like a topical antibiotic, and started unrolling a length of bandage. "Does this sort of thing happen often?"
Martine shrugged. "Not to her."
The doctor glanced sideways at him, catching the implied statement. Julia might have been sacrosanct, safe in her little haven of a university and protected in her bubble from the rest of the world, but Martine knew better. He could almost feel the doctor blatantly looking at him for scars or other signs of the harder life. "I see," was all he said, though.
"The fugue state is unusual, for her. I can only think of two other times she has mentioned to me that she's experienced it, and both of those times were induced by severe stress, trauma. The first was a car accident involving her and her parents, in which only she survived. The second was a similar bar fight that she was drawn into as she was passing outside the establishment. I happened to be on hand for the second, though I did not know she carried no memory of the event until later. I haven't mentioned it to her since."
The doctor... Harrison, the name-tag read, listened to Martine's calm recitation of the facts. "So she is given to amnesia when suffering severe physical stress, but this is the first time you haven't been on hand or known what was happening? Do you have any idea what she'd be doing in that part of town?"
Martine didn't ask how Dr. Harrison knew what part of town the Rabid Raccoon was in. "I have no idea. Usually she confines herself to the better districts."
The doctor nodded slowly. "Well, nevertheless, we'll have to draw blood for drug and alcohol tests. She'll be admitted overnight for observation, in case the wound turns septic, and I'll write her a prescription for a painkiller and an antibiotic just in case..." he was writing even as he spoke, the traditional illegible scrawl of a doctor.
Martine nodded, already starting to look uncomfortable at being in a hospital so long. He hated hospitals at the best of times; if he remembered nothing else, he remembered that. The white, sterile environment, devoid of any other emotion but pain and despair (and occasionally, when things went well, flares of hope) grated on his every nerve. He closed his eyes briefly against the glare of the lights, tried to hold in his mind exactly what he was doing here and where he was going to go afterwards. It was so hard to think.
The doctor was still talking. "... anyone I should call when she wakes up. Does she know how to get hold of you..." he noticed Martine's lack of attention. "Mr..."
"Martine..." he snapped out of it. "Just Martine will do. And yes, she knows my telephone number if she should choose to use it, but she will probably phone one of her other friends instead..." He pulled the doctor's pen and the prescription pad out of his hands before the other man could object. "Here is the number of her apartment; she has roommates who will be able to pick her up if she wishes. And here is the number of her parents, in case anything should go wrong." He didn't remember if she'd given him the phone numbers or not, but it was the sort of thing a friend should have.
"Thank you..." the doctor said, giving Martine a distinctly odd look. He turned over to a table with a series of clipboards and forms. Martine hated forms. "If you wouldn't mind, Mr. Martine, she'll need to be formally checked into the ..." He turned around. The man in the trenchcoat was gone. "Hospital."
"Well, shit."
It was a sentiment that Martine would have echoed if he'd heard it. He stood outside, staring at his bike for a few seconds as if he didn't recognize it. Then, fastidiously ignoring the blood that was dying to a tacky substance on his chest, he vaulted astride it again and zoomed off. The hospital staff stared after him in confusion so intent he could feel their eyes on his back. He didn't care. He needed to get out, get back, get home. He needed someone who could understand what had just happened, because he certainly couldn't make head, tail, or edge of it. His face, as it so often did when he wasn't paying attention, maintained its impassive lack of expression. Fortunately Julia wasn't around to see.
Julia. Poor Julia. He had no idea how she'd gotten into that bar, but she'd definitely come out of it much worse for the wear. For a brief second he ached for her, for the beauty she would never have again, not with that glaring scar down her face. But then, scars gave their own kind of beauty, he supposed. Oh well.
The cars and lights and neon signs flashed by unnoticed. Martine found his way back to his loft apartment more by instinct than by any sense of direction. The blood on his shirt (and probably also on his jacket) was distracting him, driving him out of his mind. He needed to shower, to change, to throw himself down on his cool silk sheets and be able to forget everything that had happened. Unfortunately, it didn't look like he could do that. Simone was sitting on the steps outside his building, waiting for him. Her eyes widened when she saw him steaming up.
"What happened to you?" she asked, fixing her gaze on the huge bloodstain.
"It's not mine," his mouth said without him, reassuring her even as he wondered, "It's Julia. She encountered some sort of trouble tonight, and required assistance to the hospital." The word came out almost French-sounding. Oh-Pi-Tahl.
"Oh... oh! Oh, poor girl..." Simone's face lightened with comprehension and then fell again. "Will she be all right?"
"I don't know... I think so. She didn't lose an excessive amount of blood, and the doctor on call was particularly competent. I am afraid I may have given him a bit of a turn, though."
"Well, you have that effect on people," she said, gently taking his arm and steering him up to the door. "Come on. Get upstairs, get changed, leave the door open. I'll walk your bike to the garage and meet you inside."
He went up the stairs without another word, grateful for Simone's quiet acceptance of just about anything. She'd known him longer than he'd known almost anyone else, and she'd gotten very used to him by now. He unlocked the door out of habit, flipped the low lighting on, peeled his jacket off and hung it up, peeled his shirt off and immediately dropped it into the sink to soak. A little bottle that smelled faintly of ... was that vinegar? dropped some colorless liquid into the sink. He didn't know what it was. It seemed to get the blood out, easier, though. He left the shirt in the sink, turned the water off, and went into the bathroom.
Simone found him leaning over the tub, still in shoes and slacks, hot water pouring down over his torso long after the blood had washed away. He didn't remember turning the shower on. She turned it off and draped a towel over his hair.
"You have an idea of what happened." It wasn't a question. She was staring at his face intently as they sat on the couch.
"I believe so," he admitted. "But there is someone I need to phone to make sure."
She regarded him measuringly for a moment. "I'll stay here until you go to bed," she said, also not bothering to make a question of it. "Just to be sure."
"Probably for the best," he admitted, and reached backwards over the arm of the couch for a phone. This number, at least, he knew who it belonged to. It was ingrained on what passed for his memory. "I may be a while on the phone."
"I can wait..." Simone said firmly.
Martine nodded once and then turned his attention to the phone, which was ringing. It rang twice and then was picked up by an ambiguous female voice. "Yes?"
"Daniel Ryan, please." He glanced over at Simone, hoping to indicate somewhere in his face that this was to be a private call. Mercifully enough, she got the message, and went quietly into his bedroom. The thought flickered across his mind that that would be a problem to be addressed later, and then it was gone.
"What extension, please?"
Extension. What extension was Ryan at. He couldn't remember. "Research, I believe."
"What extension, please?" the woman repeated, sounding tired and on the verge of being annoyed.
"Loki crosses the mountains," his mouth said, without being aware of the action. He blinked. Loki crosses the... what the hell?
There was a slight pause. "One moment, please."
Martine took a deep breath. This phone call would have probably happened sooner or later. He just wished it hadn't been sooner rather than later. And he wished it hadn't involved Julia. The equation was starting to become more visible in the forefront of his mind, not just being worked out in the hindbrain. He just hoped it made sense to...
"Who is this? How did you...?"
"Dr. Ryan?" Martine had rarely been so glad to hear the man's voice.
"Martine? What are you doing calling this number so late, and ... oh, never mind. What can I do for you, my boy?"
It occured to Martine that he hated it when Ryan did that. "Something's come up. I believe the drug has gotten loose, somehow, and is on the streets. Either that or someone spiked a friend of mine's drink with a decided overabundance of Rohypnol."
There was a very long silence, till Martine almost began to wonder if the other man had hung up. "Explain."
"Earlier tonight I recieved a call at my apartment from a young woman of my acquaintance, named Julia Tremain. She was in considerable distress... she didn't remember much of the events of tonight, and she had a horrible gash in her face, quite deep and very messy. I accompanied her to the hospital, where she was admitted and lies under observation tonight. They have drawn blood for tests..." Not, he thought ruefully, that they had to go very far for that, "and are determining if she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time. She says she does not remember how she received her injury."
Ryan sighed. "Martine, it's probably just a simple case of someone slipping something into her drink. It's not like it hasn't happened before, and it's not like it doesn't happen in this city every day. I'm sure she'll be fine. Just keep her out of the shadier bars from now on."
Martine briefly entertained the idea of arguing with the man, trying to explain to him that Julia wasn't the sort of girl to go to bars and get tanked. But then, he also figured that Ryan wouldn't believe him, or wouldn't believe that he knew Julia that well. And with good enough reason. "If you say so," he said dubiously. More silence.
"And what about yourself?" Ryan asked, as Martine had known he would if he stayed on the line long enough. "How are you doing?"
Martine wasn't sure what to tell him. His vision blurred for a second as he realized he was crying. He didn't know what to tell the doctor, didn't know how far he could trust him. "Getting worse," he said finally, giving up for the night.
"Martine, this can't go on much longer. Sooner or later you're going to have to..."
"I know what I'm going to have to do!" Martine said, suddenly furious. "I know! I do not need you prattling to me about my obligations to myself and to your institution! I am fully aware of my responsibilities and the d..." he swallowed, "... the dangers."
"All right," Ryan said, in one of those calm-the-madman sorts of tones. "All right. But it is getting worse, right? You don't need to answer that, I can hear it in your voice." And in the outbursts. But neither of them said it.
"I have to go," Martine said lamely, by way of getting out of the conversation. He could still hear Ryan talking, trying to reach him, as he hung up the phone. He leaned back and felt the cool leather of his couch against his bare back, closing his eyes and feeling the tears trickle down his cheeks. He tried to make sense of the events of the whole night. "I have to go," he murmured again, but he didn't know where.
Simone came out of the bedroom, dressed in a long and elegant blue slip that he didn't remember owning. "Martine? I heard shouting..."
"It's all right," he said tiredly. "It's all right. It's not what I thought it was... it's all right."
She gave him that look, the one that said clearer than words, which one of us are you trying to convince when you say that? Her lips tightened and thinned, but she didn't actually say it out loud. Finally, she stretched out her hand to him. "Come to bed, Martine," she said softly, kindly. "You need the sleep."
"All right." He stood, took her hand, and allowed her to lead him to his bedroom and his cool silk sheets. He was too tired to object anyway.