The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

55: The Apartment

Officer Oviedo rubbed my back as I puked stomach acid into a paper bag. A nurse crouched with a concerned hand on my knee, cooing sympathetically each time I retched.

"I'm so sorry," I managed to bite out between heaves of my innards.

People like me shouldn't have been allowed into hospitals. I offered the vomit-filled bag to the nurse, grimacing in apology. She accepted it in cupped hands like it was a relic and swept away down the corridor.

Officer Oviedo folded herself neatly onto a chair next to me, one of a cluster of haphazardly-arranged chairs that made for a makeshift waiting area by the elevators. After the quiet of Will's hospital room, the corridor was bright and echoed with the distant din of hospital action, the dirty-clean smell coating every surface, and lingering in my nostrils.

"I'm fine now. You don't have to sit with me...Officer Oviedo?"

"It's OK, Zeph. I know you. Teresa's always talking about you." I thought I'd recognized the name. Officer Oviedo. Ruby.

The door to Will's hospital room creaked open and Ruby jumped up, standing to attention opposite as if Will was gonna bust out any moment. Charlotte emerged from the room, red-eyed and clawing at her necklace.

I clung to the chair, my head still pulsing with nausea, but that didn't stop me from tapping my near-exhausted reserves of blind rage for a final push.

"Why did you do that? I told you I didn't wanna talk to him. You never fucking listen to anyone. You just bulldoze your fucking-"

"I'm so sorry, Zeph." Charlotte sank into a chair, red eyes trained on me. "I thought it was just the counterfeit passport-smuggling. I thought he'd just done the one bad thing, and that you'd forgive him if you talked. I didn't think that he'd...that you'd...I'm really sorry, Zeph."

For a D.A., Charlotte was fucking dumb, or, more likely, her normal logic and reason left her whenever her brother was involved. She hardly knew him, yet waded in to administer whatever she thought was best for him at every given opportunity.

"What about what I wanted? This isn't anything to do with you. You don't even know us." I slid low in my chair. "I didn't wanna see him again."

"I'm so sorry, Zeph." Charlotte whispered. "Let's go get some sleep."

"We're driving back to Arenosa?"

"No, we can stay at my apartment here tonight. You can stay with us in Arenosa this weekend and I'll find you a guarantor Monday."

"Ms Graz?" Ruby piped up. "Sofi said that it's a conflict of interest to-"

Charlotte threw Ruby a look that could etch steel. Ruby stood to attention again, lips tight shut.

"I'll go to a safe-house," I said, clinging harder to the chair. No fucking way was I gonna spend another second with Charlotte.

"It's your choice, Zeph. But the offer to stay with us stands. You don't have to talk to me all weekend if you don't want to. I deserve that. Please come get some sleep."

Homeless again, and at the mercy of whichever deceptively benevolent scheme Will or Charlotte or Sofi were running at the time. I knew the drill. Sofi would drive me to Este precinct, I'd fill in a ton of paperwork, and by five a.m. I'd be rotting in a shitty safe-house until my flight home. If I was gonna get Raheem back, it wasn't an option.

But I was so furious with Charlotte that I couldn't imagine getting into her car without first putting a brick through the windshield. One thing I knew for sure: I was fucking done with being in hospital for Will, yet again.