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| [Persistence] |
13. Confliction
Regret. Do the Job long enough and it‘s inevitable. But this wasn’t some unsolvable John Doe homicide or sex crime. A happy ending was looming, it just didn’t include her.
Hazed by the anesthesia and cast in unnatural hues, Lilly squinted into the florescent glare and recognized her so-called regret for what it was: Envy.
Awash in self-pity, she paled. Her stomach churned, waves of post-op nausea gripping her gut and tightening her throat. There was little consolation to be found in the room’s noxious pink walls. Perhaps meant to soothe patients and visitors alike, the paint aggravated the ill-will brewing within.
The painkillers were wearing off and she was alone. A far cry from the hero the morning news proclaimed her to be. Her head rolled to the side, the stiff, sterile pillow crinkling against her hair. Throwing back the gloomy grey blanket, Lilly paused at the sight of her swaddled thigh. Mortality seeped through the bandage—defiant against its sterile confines. The illusion of immortality, the façade of invincibility fled as she prodded the wound. Synapses fired, neurons flared and Lilly Rush gasped, trembling as the white hot agony crippled her once more. Of the hundreds, maybe even thousand fired, one bullet had felled her. Sobering as the notion was, pride bubbled still. She did it. They did it. We won.
Lilly held her breath. Now what? She gathered the blanket to her shoulders, hiding her wound—the fallacy of the Job written in crimson shades of her—their victory, her failure, the underwritten betrayal and her thoughts drifted once again to Olivia.
Why’d she do it? It was just a case, nothing special. And each time she bought into the lie, she tripped on the consequences. If Olivia hadn’t accompanied the file, pressing hard for a resolution, would she have pursued it even after everyone told her to stop? She would have gone the distance for any case, but putting her badge on the line for one was a stretch, even for Lilly. No, it was time to admit the real reason she chased this case to the brink.
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Olivia had been reluctant to leave the tangle of limbs despite the confusion she felt when she woke. Alex had threaded herself around Olivia, an impossible coil of arms and legs heavy with sleep. It would have been suffocating were it not for the anxiety that was squashed between their bodies when Alex had invaded her bed. And wanting to avoid waking her at all costs, Olivia suffered through the rogue spring that jutted into her back, the shoulder to fingertip numbness, even a three-coffee-capacity bladder. Through it all, she waited. Patient from the pinks of pre-dawn to the yellow blare of mid-morning and only then did Olivia slip away.
She drifted quietly through her morning routine, drawing it out, stalling in the shower still, Alex didn’t stir. Sitting in front of the smudged mirror Olivia watched her. Her features were not so changed by time that she was unrecognizable, but the worry of her exile had left her marked just the same. Her once-full cheeks were gaunt, her body frail with fatigue. This Alex was a literal shadow of her former self and, Olivia supposed, so was their relationship.
She’d done the impossible. When everyone had given themselves over to complacency—to ‘wait and see’—Olivia pressed harder. Now, with her eye on the prize she felt more conflicted than ever. Doubt not once crossing her mind during her great quest had unexpectedly reared up and knocked the wind out of her. She couldn’t stop being a cop and though it was her job, she couldn’t bear to treat Alex as a victim. She was supposed to be beating on Olivia’s chest: Say something! I can’t stand it when you look at me like that. Walking away when things got too real, sending her away when they didn’t. It was supposed to be messy… but not like this.
Her stomach rumbled. She not only felt the pull of hunger twist inside, but that of guilt. She had to see Lilly, after everything that happened, a hospital visit was the least she could do. Olivia picked at the what ifs like stray threads on her quilt of confusion. If she had crossed paths with Lilly earlier, if they hadn’t found Alex, if she’d spent that drunken night in Lilly’s bed instead of on her couch where would she be? Where would they be?
Alex shifted, the first time in hours and sighed. The delicate hum bound by a whoosh of air—a sound so familiar yet foreign for so long—tempered Olivia’s emotional upheaval. So, it’s come to this.
Twenty four hours ago she chased the ghost of a chance and now her phantom was sleeping it off. Soon, she’d tell her story, things would be clearer, and Olivia’s patience would be rewarded. In that moment, Olivia gave herself over to the notion that this wasn’t her decision to make. It was as it always had been: Alex’s. And that, as it always had, made her antsy.
Olivia scratched a message onto motel stationary, placed a chaste kiss on Alex’s forehead, the note on her pillow and slinked into the light of day.
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Part Fourteen
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